Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world

When the failing avocado tree in our yard suddenly puts out perfect creamy fruit, and I find out it was because the compost I made healed the tree, I feel a kind of joy that has something a lot bigger to say about thriving. What the avocado tree teaches about right relations—between people or between countries—and how to build the kind of world where everybody can flourish. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe [https://priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Do we have everything within us to make good decisions? When Abraham Maslow lived among the Blackfoot people, he learned their answer was yes. Today we hear from Indigenous voices on knowing from within, or “sovereignty of mind.” And we look at the long habit in Western history of defining knowledge instead as the ideas handed down from outside authorities—a habit feeding the rise of authoritarianism and fascism today. Plus a moment from my own life when I took a step toward reuniting with my own heart. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe [https://priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

That time a tree came to talk with me and I started to really learn. How spirits are different from ghosts. And how a Yurok man’s thoughts about talking with the spirits of trees provides the foundation for living in balance with our more-than-human kin. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe [https://priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

As a child I recited the Christmas story of the baby born in a manger, but the story comes to life in deeper ways when you read it in light of Mary's Song, a freedom song that she sang while pregnant with her son. She celebrated the upending of the social order, when the hungry are filled and the rich sent away empty. In her birth story, poor people get the positions of honor: the poor young single mother, the lowly animals, the rough shepherds. Together, they show that this birth is about divine justice, where human inequalities are overturned and peace is defined by sharing and equity. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe [https://priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

A lesson from fifth grade lasts a lifetime—and makes me wish I'd learned about honeybees instead! What honeybees know about fair and democratic decision making. And how the story of human origins held in this society—that we are selfish and violent by nature—keeps us from imagining better ways of relating with nature and each other. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe [https://priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]