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 Marin County.

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

ecology, culture, and spirituality. In this week's episode, the final of the year, we're

returning to one of our most cherished stories, the serviceberry by Patawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Robin has recently turned this essay, which he wrote for us back in 2020, into a wonderful

new book of the same name.

If you missed it, head back a couple of episodes to find my recent interview with Robin, where

we delve deeper into the book

and speak about how a framework for embodying a practical reverence can help us step into

an ethic of reciprocity and gratitude for the earth.

But in this episode, you'll find the original essay, which we felt was the perfect story

to share as we immerse ourselves in the holiday season

and a space of reflection as this year winds to a close.

As Robin harvests service berries alongside birds, she wonders how we can follow the lead of our

oldest teacher, plants,

to imagine new currencies of exchange that recognize everything we consume is a gift of the earth.

Writing that to name the world as gift is to feel one's membership in the web of reciprocity.

She explores how we can move away from an economy of scarcity

to one rooted in relationship and gratitude.

She draws our attention to the gift economies flourishing all around us,

between plants, animals, neighbors, and in local communities,

...