Gratitude

“Being unappreciative might mean that we are simply not paying attention.”

I found myself talking to the trees.

Though stopped shamefully when I realised that I might be overheard….

Despite the vagaries of the weather this year, the fruit harvest from the few young trees we nurture has been incredibly bountiful.

We’ve been very fortunate. Elsewhere, the wider bounty of the Earth is in peril. We are in the middle of the planet’s sixth great extinction, our rainforests, the lungs of the earth, are being reduced to savannah as they approach a crucial tipping point, wildfires have destroyed homes and floods have left millions destitute.

All of which feels undeniably distant from my own experience of collecting apples and pears from the trees in an English garden.

Yet as the global ecological crisis rattles our intellectual capability and shakes our capacity for collective reason, the trees have quietly insinuated themselves in my bones and entwined my heart. We’ve known each other for a few years now and, as they root themselves into my feelings and emotions, I feel their presence and, with their gift of harvest, notice my own thankfulness arising.

So with each fruit carefully picked from the tree, I find myself chattering away, offering shy devotions out loud.

Really?

Of course I’ve no empirical evidence that the trees are at all affected by my gentle monologues and offers of thanks. But I don’t think that matters.

What matters is that I behave as if we were together, in relationship and conversation.

Our modern preoccupation with objective, disembodied, science has discounted the value and potential of feelings and emotions in our day-to-day lives. Yet we constantly fail to reason away climate change or social injustice, our intellectual silver bullets simply melt away as they fly.

But if we can feel our way towards nature’s benevolence, joy and beauty, engaging sensually in our participation with the world, we can find a different, deeper conversation and experience of value in our ecosystems.

Which isn’t a bad thing.

Even if the neighbours think I’m crazy.

Notes:

I published this photograph on Twitter a few days ago. Photographing the apples and pears on our kitchen table has become an annual ritual; a digital, visual marker in my year that promotes a sense of well-being, appreciation and self-care.

You might appreciate this film (50mins) featuring the work of Arne Naess who founded the ‘Deep Ecology’ movement, based on the philosophy that all living beings have inherent value regardless of their ‘usefulness’ to humankind.

Finally, Theodore Roszak, in Ecopsyhology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind notes that, “Some are quick to see elements of sentimentality or romanticism in our growing appreciation of the sacred ecologies …[…]… This is mistaken. There is nothing ‘mystical’ or ‘transcendent’ about the matter as we might understand these words. It is homely common sense that human beings must live in a state of respectful give-and-take with the flora and fauna, the rivers and hills, the sky and soil on which we depend for physical sustenance and practical instruction.'“