Mom, do you know who we need to thank the most?
Who?
The earth.
Some nuts & bolts:
Dear You,
2 weeks ago, I served up an op-ed style letter. Then a story. This week = a Thanksgiving Address.
Also - last Friday, I learned from
and that it’s best practice to include a little blurb (slug?) at the top of my posts for folks who are new. Makes sense. Here you go:Also, please subscribe:
Tl;dr
Today, I’m not offering my traditional tl;dr (too long; didn’t read) summary — though I try to do that most of the time. Instead, this time, I hope you will pause and take some quiet minutes to read – maybe under a tree or with a view of nature from a window or next to a potted plant with a cup of tea.
Here, I’ll show you what I mean:
Primal Gratitude
Mom, do you know who we need to thank the most?
Who?
The earth.
As I sit down to write this, my daughter’s wisdom – offered months ago wrapped in bedtime snuggles and nestled between stories and songs – washes over me.
We should end every day and start every day thanking the earth.
Lying next to Clara (5) in the relative darkness of her room, her sister (Nora, 3) already snoozing in her own bed just a few feet away, I nodded.
And then the sun rose on the next day. I got busy with my morning routine (which often involves 5:04am wake-ups to eke away moments to write before my world awakens) and my behavior didn’t change. I made breakfast. I implored Nora to put on sunscreen and brush her teeth for-the-love-of-God so we could get into the freaking car and get to school and I could get to work. I flustered about in the frenetic chaos of why-is-it-so-hard-to-get-two-children-out-the-door? The earth kept rotating and the tilt of my own axis remained apparently unchanged.
Now, I’m riddled with a sense of guilt for the ways I haven’t yet followed up and supported Clara’s primal instinct of gratitude for Nature. And, while there are no do-overs in parenting, if we’re fortunate, there are more chances.
So, I will take this Thanksgiving to circle back to Clara’s wisdom.
But I need some help.
I may have a lot of words, but there are people and other beings and elements far wiser than I. In my quest to follow-up with Clara, I’ve decided to turn to ancestral, Indigenous wisdom. Which is why it was timely that
just shared the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address in which the Haudenosaunee (also known as the Iroquois Confederacy or Six Nations — Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, Onondaga, Seneca, and Tuscarora) thank the Natural World.From Dancing for All People, I learned that the Thanksgiving Address is recited to open and close special occasions.
And, pertinent to following up with Clara, it is also said as a sunrise prayer.
In the address, 17 life-sustaining elements are thanked: THE PEOPLE, THE EARTH MOTHER, THE WATERS, THE FISH, THE PLANTS, THE FOOD PLANTS, THE MEDICINE PLANTS, THE ANIMALS, THE TREES, THE BIRDS, THE FOUR WINDS, THE THUNDERS, THE SUN, GRANDMOTHER MOON, THE STARS, THE WISDOM KEEPERS (also The Enlightened Teachers in some versions I found), & THE CREATOR.
While I feel connected to the entire address, two stanzas call to me a bit louder than the rest: The Enlightened Teachers and The Earth Mother. These two specific stanzas read:
The Earth Mother
We are all thankful to our Mother, the Earth, for she gives us all that we need for life. She supports our feet as we walk about upon her. It gives us joy that she continues to care for us as she has from the beginning of time. To our mother, we send our greetings and our thanks. Now our minds are one.
The Enlightened Teachers (also known as The Wisdom Creators)
We gather our minds to greet and thank the enlightened Teachers who have come to help throughout the ages. When we forget how to live in harmony, they remind us of the way we were instructed to live as people. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to these caring teachers. Now our minds are one.
Honoring my own Primal Instinct
Even as I support Clara in her primal gratitude – to thank the earth morning and night (maybe just night though…because who-am-I-kidding-mornings-with-strong-willed-3-and-5-year-olds-are-nuts!), I want to offer a stanza to speak to my own primal instinct that we MUST grow nature-connected schools EVERYWHERE and that Enlightened Teachers are the medium by which this will happen.
It feels good to respond to the invitation offered in the Thanksgiving Address’
Closing Words
We have now arrived at the place where we end our words. Of all the things we have named, it is not our intention to leave anything out. If something has been forgotten, we leave it to each individual to send their greetings and their thanks in their own way.
Here is my own way to greet and thank nature-connected learning experiences:
Learning Nature
We are grateful for relevant, embodied Learning Nature. We love counting seeds and listening to trees. We feel calm when the leaves blow in the breeze, as we pause mid-sentence on the sun-dappled pages of our books. Our Teachers collaborate with Learning Nature so we connect and grow as a community and develop a sense of agency to care for our shared planet. We send thanks for the ways Learning Nature nurtures our roots as we reach toward the cosmos. Now our minds are one.
Invitations
With that, I’ll turn to some more gratitude invitations — for you and for me.
For you:
Take some time to read through the beautiful slides of the Thanksgiving Address featured on Dance for All Peoples’ website.
Watch a video created by Dan Abrahamsson featuring these words and nature photographs.
Print out this version from the National Museum of the American Indian to read in community with others this Thanksgiving.
Read Giving Thanks: A Native American Good Morning Message, a children’s book based on the Thanksgiving Address.
Write your own stanza for the Thanksgiving Address (and share it in the comments!)
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For Me:
Follow-up with Clara to tell her I haven’t forgotten and let her know some ideas to support her instinct moving forward.
Integrate the Thanksgiving Address into our Thanksgiving rituals.
Add the Thanksgiving Address to our
morning andbedtime routine.
Thinking about Clara and being a parent and doing better, I wonder how many more beginnings and ends of days, sunrises and sunsets, Clara and I will share?
I hope many.
Each one is an opportunity to thank the earth.
And my daughter.
🦋,
Becca