104 Season of Creation 2023
Wendell Berry (b. 1934), The Gift of Good Land
To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood
of Creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully,
reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly,
greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration. In such
desecration we condemn ourselves to spiritual and moral
loneliness, and others to want.
75
David Orr (b. 1944), Dangerous Years
Hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up as something we
do in daily practice, not just something that we wish for
or talk about. It is a discipline requiring skill, competence,
steadiness, and courage. It is practical. It bonds us to
each other, and to real places, animals, trees, waters, and
landscapes. The hopeful are patient, not passive. They are
creators of the gyres of positive change that could, in time,
redeem the human prospect. They are people who will
know how to connect us to better possibilities waiting to
be born.
76
Robin Wall Kimmerer (b. 1953), Braiding Sweetgrass
Restoration is imperative for healing the earth, but
reciprocity is imperative for long-lasting, successful
restoration. Like other mindful practices, ecological
restoration can be viewed as an act of reciprocity in which
humans exercise their caregiving responsibility for the
ecosystems that sustain them. We restore the land, and
the land restores us. As writer Freeman House cautions,
“We will continue to need the insights and methodologies
of science, but if we allow the practice of restoration to
become the exclusive domain of science, we will have