In the Anishinaabe worldview, it’s not just fruits that are understood as gifts, rather all of the sustenance that the land provides, from fish to firewood. Everything that makes our lives possible—the splints for baskets, roots for medicines, the trees whose bodies make our homes, and the pages of our books—is provided by the lives of

“There is symbiosis at every single level of living things, and you cannot compete in a zero-sum game with creatures upon whom your existence depends.”

That, I think, is the power of ceremony: it marries the mundane to the sacred. The water turns to wine, the coffee to a prayer. The material and the spiritual mingle like grounds mingled with humus, transformed like steam rising from a mug into the morning mist.

To name the world as gift is to feel your membership in the web of reciprocity.

What if scarcity is just a cultural construct, a fiction that fences us off from a better way of life?

I care for the gift so it can keep on giving.

Might cultivation of gratitude be part of the solution?

Ecological economists ask how we might build economic systems that meet citizens’ needs while aligning with ecological principles that allow long-term sustainability for people and for the planet.

Enumerating the gifts you’ve received creates a sense of abundance, the knowing that you already have what you need. Recognizing “enoughness” is a radical act in an economy that is always urging us to consume more.