Between Walter Simpkins' lessons and Robin Wall Kimmerer's essays in The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, we've been afforded with rich, practical wisdom to co-create a future of mutual flourishing.  Core to both of these sources of wisdom is an emphasis on the power of practicing gratitude and reciprocity. 


Walter Simpkins offered clear guidance to help our communities grow beyond what he called "the Love-Scarcity issue that has plagued our city."  He emphasized the practice of cultivating awareness of what is working for wellbeing, rather than looking through a lens of negativity that contributes to burnout and disempowerment. Over his life, he adopted practices that allowed him to connect to love as an infinite resource and energy - in his words last year,  "I live a life where where life and love shines on me, like I wouldn't have believed it."  One of the ways he arrived to experience this sense of love-in-abundance was by committing to a practice of gratitude. He started a gratitude list, and every time something good happened, he wrote it down. The practice was transformative, allowing him to connect to a power much bigger than himself, and filling him with so much love he became free to share it with others in abundance.

Walter Simpkins was clear that love is far more than a feeling - it's a universal source of abundant power that's meant to flow generously between each other in our communities:  

"When we learn that we have all the love we need - that we've got plenty to share - we're not to going for people to love us because we need to be loved; we're going to people who come to us because they're in alignment with the love that we are, and we're in alignment with the love that they are. ... --This is a universe that has its own propulsion here! And so therefore, all we need is someone who's willing to share their love with us, and we're willing to share our love with them. But not out of scarcity, but because we know we've got plenty!  I've got Love that I can love people all over the place!"

This theme of natural abundance also reverberates through The Serviceberry, suggesting that practices of gratitude could not only be transformative for an individual, but entire communities and economies. 

"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. Data tell the story that there are “enough” food calories on the planet for all 8 billion of us to be nourished. And yet people are starving. Imagine the outcome if we each took only enough, rather than far more than our share. The wealth and security we seem to crave could be met by sharing what we have." (p12)" 

Robin Wall Kimmerer shares stories of cultures that have sustained economies of abundance over time, through practices of gratitude and reciprocity. As Walter Simpkins observed, when we're feeling blessed by an abundance of love, it becomes natural to want to keep that love in motion by giving it to others. Robin Wall Kimmerer extends this pattern of natural law to our food systems (especially the plants that nourish us and other beings):

"If our first response to the receipt of gifts is gratitude, then our second is reciprocity - to give a gift in return. What could I give these plants in return for their generosity? I could return the gift with a direct response, like weeding or bringing water of offering a song of thanks that sends appreciation out on the wind. I could make a habitat for the solitary bees that fertilized those fruits. Or maybe I could take indirect action, like donating to my local land trust so that more habitat for the gift givers will be saved, speaking at a public hearing on land use, or making art that invites others into the web of reciprocity. I could reduce my carbon footprint, vote on the side of healthy land, advocate for farmland preservation, change my diet, hang my laundry in the sunshine. We live in a time when every choice matters." (13-14)

One the one hand, realization that every choice matters might feel completely overwhelming - on the other hand, it is a blessing to know that each moment we live, we have the opportunity to create and shape change. Small shifts in our attention and action can create ripple effects in our interconnected communities. Walter Simpkins refers to this as the "butterfly effect" in his interview with Kaheem Priest. The exciting thing is that these small shifts toward generosity and small gifts of love multiply as they circulate in our interpersonal interactions and beyond.  In Kimmerer's words: 

"Gratitude and reciprocity are the currency of a gift economy, and they have the remarkable property of multiplying with every exchange, their energy concentrating as they pass from hand to hand, a truly renewable resource." p14

Walter Simpkins and Robin Wall Kimmerer are both clear that practicing reciprocity - both by training ourselves to look out at our world with an appreciative gaze and by working to give our gifts in kind - is an essential practice for harnessing the life-giving, truly renewable energies that transform scarcity into abundance.