Is it any wonder that the Sun has always been revered as the source of life?

The wealth and security we seem to crave could be met by sharing what we have.

The relationships created by the gift weave myriad relations between insects and microbes and root systems. The gift is multiplied with every giving, until it returns so rich and sweet that it burbles forth as the birdsong that wakes me in the morning.

I don’t think it’s pie in the sky to imagine that we can create incentives to nurture a gift economy that runs right alongside the market economy.

and I can see how my delight levitates her, too.

This abundance of berries feels like a pure gift from the land. I have not earned, paid for, nor labored for them. There is no mathematics of worthiness that reckons I deserve them in any way. And yet here they are—along with the sun and the air and the birds and the rain,

Making good relationships with the human and more-than-human world is the primary currency of well-being.

Rebecca Solnit, in her stunning book A Paradise Built in Hell, describes how gift economies seem to arise spontaneously in times of disaster.

when you open your awareness and give them a name, you can see gift economies all around you.