Inspiration from a Messenger of Nature
…I find myself cringing every time I hear how someone ‘uses’ a particular herb. To me this implies taking advantage of the plant, in the negative sense of that expression. My suggestion is to replace the word ‘use’ with ‘cooperate’. To cooperate implies that you are participating in your own healing process and that you …are working in concert. When you use, you are engaging in ‘colonizer mind’ … a resource or commodity instead of your kin. When you cooperate with, you recognize the beginnings of a collaboration … Pam Montgomery, Co-Creating With Nature: Healing the Wound of Separation
Something drew me back to this passage last evening as I began thinking about ‘blog day’ with a curious mind inquiring what wanted to be shared. I’ve been thinking quite a lot about the language I use and how loaded it is with separation and all the ills that have grown from that. Language has embedded separation in us like toxic weeds that take over a garden.
I thought of my mealtime gratitude prayer of giving thanks to the animals, the plants, the soil, the Sun, the waters, the Earth, the air; to all the hands that brought the ingredients to my table; and to my body for receiving, digesting, and using the food for my health, immediately noticing ‘using’ and sensing the subtle separation that implies when I take a moment to honestly reflect.
While my ritual calms me and brings me to being present with the food and touches into how life and lives are intertwined, I’ve often sensed something was missing or ‘off’. The porridge wasn’t ‘just right’. This morning I experienced the difference this subtle pivot of thanking my body for ‘cooperating with’ the nutrients, deepening my gratitude and feeling my prayer more closely reflect how all Life is interconnected. The porridge, my prayer, finally feels ‘just right’.
It seems subtle, perhaps inconsequential, to some and yet our words and language matter. Every shift we can make away from extracting, colonizing language feeds the collective a step toward recognition that we are kin with one another and with All Life. A step away from domination and toward cooperation. A step away from conflict and toward understanding that holds the potential for peace.
Montgomery shares a beautiful exercise to experience this pivot:
Open your heart, breathe deeply, and listen to the following sentences.
‘I’m going to use Dandelion to clear my sluggish liver from toxins in order to restore my liver to health.’
Continue to breathe and listen even more deeply.
‘I’m going to cooperate with Dandelion to clear my liver from toxins in order to restore my liver to health.’
How do you feel when you ‘use’ and how do you feel when you ‘cooperate’?
I especially appreciate Montgomery’s use of ‘dandelion’ in the exercise as it reminds me of author, activist Rivera Sun’s Dandelion Insurrection the first book in her Dandelion Trilogy, an eerily prescient and inspiring story written for the time we are navigating now and demonstrating the cooperation required in revolutionary times. Time where we have opportunities to make the kinds of pivots toward co-creating a society that honors, respects, and cooperates with All Life.
I’m aiming to incorporate this language of ‘cooperating with’ wherever I observe myself ‘using’, not just food, herbs, supplements, and such but cooperating with water to cleanse my body and water my plants. I sense it will deepen my recognition of and gratitude for all my kin. I’m curious to explore more places to experiment and to discover where ‘cooperating with’ will be challenging – perhaps the unhelpful ‘customer service representative’ who doesn’t seem to grasp the concern I’m trying to resolve.
Let’s cooperate with every breath we take!
And more inspiration!