Serviceberry

All Flourishing is Mutual

As a young girl, I cherished my poetry album. A book that went from friends to parents, to grandparents, to neighbors, to teacher with the request: please write a poem in my book.

There is one I remember that I can share here, given it is a verse in English.

A smile is quite a funny thing

It wrinkles up your face

But when it is gone,

You’ll never find

Its secret hiding place.

But far more wonderful

It is to see what smiles can do

You smile at one,

He or She smiles at you

And so one smile makes two.

The words pop up after reading The Serviceberry.

Robin Wall Kimmerer’s dance of words around an Economy of Gifts and Abundance. In her words gifts multiply. The Serviceberry tree receives many gifts: air, rain, soil, visits from the many insects that love the flowers and support pollinating. Birds that spread the seeds. Just to name a few.

Or the gift of a smile 😉

Understanding something you receive to be a gift, changes how you treat it.

You honor the berries you picked by making jam or a pie that you share.

Or you sing whilst picking them.

You join an ecosystem of giving.

And in doing so you meet an important need.

You connect.

‘The move toward a local food economy, is not just about freshness and food miles and carbon footprints and soil organic matter. It’s about all of those things but it is also about the deep human desire for connection, for honor, to be in reciprocity with the gifts that are given you’.

With ‘The Serviceberry: An Economy of Gifts and Abundance’ Robin Wall Kimmerer offers us a great gift.

She shares her journey around the theme of giving, sharing and ‘storing the future in my neighbor's belly’.

Gatherings are online via Zoom.

From 10-11.30 PST

19.00-20.30 CET

Participants all ensure they have their own copy of the work.

We ‘cover’ 33 pages of the work every gathering.

Our gatherings will start and end with a short meditation on receiving and giving. Building a Central Fire together. We will read some of the words together and exchange on how they affect us and how we would like to bring them alive. The gatherings will blend all being and sharing together with small break out groups.

The recordings of the gathering will be made available to participants.

Your guides will be Odette Bovenberg and Dorine van der Wijk

Odette Bovenberg

The Gift Economy explained by the Serviceberry. That alone gives me a smile. Intrigues. ‘I have no claim to these berries, and yet here they are in my bucket, a gift’, writes Robin Wall Kimmerer. Words that resonate with me. I have no claim to the wisdom she shares in this book and yet it is here on my table. An important gift for more sharing without exchanging money is a powerful thing. It brings a different energy to the table in a community. Dorine and I are very inspired to organize a Reading Circle to explore her words on an economy of gifts, community building by gifts. So we may learn together about these topics that are increasingly important in turbulent times.

Dorine van der Wijk

With a loving heart, I practice the path of flow, in receiving a gift, feeling wealthy in sustenance and friendship, trusting I can spread the gift, flowing the energy when is needed. In bringing my art activism to social experiments, I anchor spaces for personal reflection and collective enrichment, inviting us to a personal embodiment experience in re-imagining a picture of wealth, inspired by the wonders of Life.

All Flourishing is Mutual

As a young girl, I cherished my poetry album. A book that went from friends to parents, to grandparents, to neighbors, to teacher with the request: please write a poem in my book.