Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast.

I'm Emanuel Vaughn Lee, host of this show, an executive editor of Emergence Magazine,

located on the unseated ancestral lands of the Coast Miwok people in present-day, Marine County.

Each week, we feature interviews, stories, poetry, and author-narrated essays, exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality.

You may have heard me use the phrase practical reverence in the season's themed talks we shared on the podcast last month.

I was struck when I first heard it used by Patowatomi Botanist Rob Moak Kimmerer

when I spoke with her last year about her latest book

and the possibilities of a new economic system.

For me, practical reverence gets at the heart of the urgent need to engage with the earth

with a reciprocal love and care that is not abstract, but grounded and lived.

I now find myself asking regularly, what does it look like to live in practical reverence?

How can I integrate this way of being into my daily life?

This week, we return to this conversation I have with Robin,

where she talks about the book, The Serviceberry,

which builds on an essay she wrote for us several years ago

about the potential of a gift economy

to restore what's been broken by our extracted economic model,

and recognize the sacred nature of Earth.

And while such a transition may feel impossible amid the churning machine of capitalism,

Robin describes how a gift economy is not foreign to us, but in fact deeply intuitive.

For her, the responsibilities inherent in the gift economy, the sharing of

abundance, not taking more than you need, acknowledging the gifts you're given, are deeply

...