Reciprocity with the earth is a hard-won harmony, not a naturally given state

Evidence

My struggle with the bow drill is a struggle to achieve reciprocity, to find a way that knowledge, body, mind, and spirit can all be brought into harmony, to harness human gifts to create a gift for the earth. It’s not that the tools are lacking—the pieces are all there, but something is missing. I do not have it. I hear again the teachings of the seventh fire: turn back along the path and gather up what has been left beside the trail. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 1377

Categorization

• XREF: Reinforces ch21’s ‘ecological balance is active work’ and ch47’s ‘deepening by giving back’ — reciprocity as effortful craft, relevant to all four courses. — connects to: Reciprocity with the land is possible even where land and nature are absent — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 867; I-Thou relation to a nonhuman other is reciprocal, not imaginative projection — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 377; The Andean principle ayni requires balanced reciprocal giving to earth and community — , A Year of World Stories, 10687 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• The Andean principle ayni requires balanced reciprocal giving to earth and community #exemplifies (0.85) — , A Year of World Stories, 10687
• I-Thou relation to a nonhuman other is reciprocal, not imaginative projection #corroborates (0.78) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 377
• Genuine alterity is reciprocal, whereas mythic Otherness denies reciprocity #corroborates (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 652