Have you ever known a plant say Thank You? Look at the food and the medicine they provide for you
When was the last time you attended a ceremony? It was probably before COVID-19 and maybe was in the form of a wedding, funeral, or a birthday party.
When was the last time you attended a ceremony for food?
We love gathering - we are social creatures and feel the energy of the room. Our hearts fill up when we receive messages of love on our birthday, we mourn together at funerals, and we celebrate the bond of two people at weddings. We witness how important love is for one another all the time, but yet we do not have ceremonies of love and celebration for our land.
Is it because we don’t receive text messages from the pine tree saying “Happy Birthday! Enjoy driving down the windy road of life!”? Or no long embraces from the moss when our father passes away? What if we could change our perspective and start noticing how the lemon tree says ‘I love you’ and ‘Thank you’ through its delicious fruit?
Plants sustain us. They provide us homes, food and medicine. They are essential to every ceremony - showing up in forms of loving bouquets and yummy cakes. But there is a big difference between celebrating our agriculture specifically rather than the wild life being mere spectators for our celebrations. Ceremonies are a wonderful way to unite a community. Most of our modern ceremonies are held through organized religion, which is always difficult for me. Growing up , I always felt forced to go to church every Sunday because someone said that would save my soul from the fires of Hell. I was forced to attend my confirmation ceremony even though I debated with my pastor over what happened to miscarriages, suicides, and other religions.
It wasn’t until I started practicing yoga and spending more time outdoors that I found what true spirituality felt like.
I was sitting with a dear friend and we were about to eat our meal when I noticed her praying. After she was done she caught my look of astonishment. She told me that she was giving thanks and celebrating the plants that lay on her plate. I always saw prayer before a meal as a thanking to God for giving us the plants… not a thanking of the plants for showing their love and giving themselves to us.
Indigenous people have many ceremonies for the land and the agriculture. Their culture is rich in giving thanks to earth. Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass says Indigenous cultures use ceremonies as a way to “remember to remember”. But as we have stolen and impoverished the native’s land, we have also stolen the idea of ceremonies and made them into something one sided. So what if you came back to giving thanks to the land?
What if you regenerated plant ceremonies? By creating a ceremony for the plants you are creating a bond between human and land. You are recognizing the ‘thank you’ of fruit, seed, vegetable, medicine, and returning the ecological compassion through your ceremony.
How you can start having a plant ceremony:
For each meal look down at your plate in silence. Notice each fruit, vegetable, legume, grain, animal. Tack where each came from (where is quinoa primarily grown, what farm did your asparagus grow on, etc.). Give your form of thanks or acknowledgment to your food - this can look/sound like anything that feels honest for you.
You don’t need to be living in a pine forest to interact with nature daily. Start growing herbs in your city apartment. You can purchase ready planted herbs from your local plant store. Start cooking with these herbs. The more you can handle food from soil to plate, the more an ecological compassion will be formed.
Once you have your herbs going, start planting seeds. Care for and watch how seeds become sprouts, become saplings. Thus creating more empathy, mindfulness, and thanksgiving.
Start growing fruits and vegetables. Get a grow light and get busy! If your roommates complain… well… I’ll discuss how to live with a non-environmentalist soon.
*Organized religion works for a lot of people, and I’m not saying that if you worship a God you are disconnected from nature. This is an offering to also identify and celebrate the resources that are right here on our planet instead of skipping past them and going straight towards giving thanks to your God. These plant celebrations create mindfulness, gratification, and overall present bliss.*