the fecundity of God (erin jean warde)

I pray we keep offering our prayers, so when future children search desperately for a reason to believe, they might receive a reminder of the faithful fecundity of God, against all odds.

Today’s art is “The Wisdom of the Universe” by Christi Belcourt (Michif).

the fecundity of God

The story of our relationship to the earth is written more truthfully on the land than on the page… We need to unearth the old stories that live in a place and begin to create new ones, for we are storymakers, not just storytellers.

From a very young age, I have been writing. Recently I’ve been asked a few times what inspired me to write a book, and I like to go back to the most tender first moment of calling: when I won a writing contest at the age of 10. It was the first time someone really looked into my work and noticed it, one of the first times I felt special. And of course it wasn’t the first story — I had told many, most unwritten — but it was the first story that felt noticed.

As the world changes, an immigrant culture must write its own new stories of relationship to place—a new ilbal, but tempered by the wisdom of those who were old on this land long before we came.

One of the profound synchronicities between Kimmerer’s book and my soul is the heart for noticing. It isn’t just that we appreciate the earth and all that is in it, but that we notice it. I talk sometimes about what I call holy noticing, which is noticing with attention to the Spirit. Paying attention and asking the Spirit to illuminate for us what it is that we are truly beholding. To unearth the old stories of the land is not to just appreciate them, but to bring them out of shadow and into light, to give them pride of place in a world fighting for attention, to receive the old story and dare to let it live on through writing it anew.

Many Indigenous peoples share the understanding that we are each endowed with a particular gift, a unique ability. Birds to sing and stars to glitter, for instance. It is understood that these gifts have a dual nature, though: a gift is also a responsibility. If the bird’s gift is a song, then it has a responsibility to greet the day with music. It is the duty of birds to sing and the rest of us receive the song as a gift. Asking what is our responsibility is perhaps also to ask, What is our gift? And how shall we use it?

Noticing, however, is not just external. When we practice holy noticing, we don’t just notice the outside, because we let the holiness of our noticing connect land to soul; we let this holiness connect story to the truth of our history.

We may not have wings or leaves, but we humans do have words. Language is our gift and our responsibility. I’ve come to think of writing as an act of reciprocity with the living land. Words to remember old stories, words to tell new ones, stories that bring science and spirit back together to nurture our becoming people made of corn.

I know this holiness of language in my bones, in my breath, in who God created to me to be. I am shaped by this way that wisdom speaks deeper than mere words, more profoundly than if it was confined to speech. The holiness of language would seem to be revealed as holy in part through the many ways this language shows up to us — in word, in land, in sacrament, in doubt, in faith, as gift, as responsibility, as unfettered gift, and as the calling to reciprocity, to just scratch the surface. Having faith, for me, has long been the way my story can remember the old stories; faith has long been for me the way ancient mystery is present hope. It is because people believed before me that I can believe today, against all odds.

It has been said that people of the modern world suffer a great sadness, a “species loneliness”—estrangement from the rest of Creation. We have built this isolation with our fear, with our arrogance, and with our homes brightly lit against the night. For a moment as we walked this road, those barriers dissolved and we began to relieve the loneliness and know each other once again.

I offer my story as a prayer that it might one day be one of the old stories that helps someone generations to come have hope when hope feels impossible. The way intimate prayers of old have become hope for me in this day, I pray we — in this moment — keep offering prayers knowing they might become the holy language future children of humanity need when search desperately for a reason to believe and their own words seem to fall short.

Yes, we suffer a deep species loneliness — an estrangement from the rest of creation. And the estrangement from creation can become estrangement from the Spirit, because the Spirit’s activity in creation is part of what we are so far away from. When we think about the fecundity of the world, how it is ordered to be, the way Kimmerer has shown us the beauty of the earth, these are all divine gifts — reminders of the fecundity of God, how God sets tables in the wilderness, how the faithfulness of God ransoms us when we feel barren. I wonder how deeply this distance from the fecundity of God has given us into isolation, fear, and arrogance. I wonder: if we begin to place our feet in the earth, really begin to notice the provision and gift from divinity, would we release some of this species loneliness. And, if we began to believe in the fecundity of God, would it remind us that isolation, fear, and arrogance will never have the last word?

The news makes me feel powerless. I can’t stop bombs from falling and I can’t stop cars from speeding down this road. It is beyond my power. But I can pick up salamanders. For one night I want to clear my name. What is it that draws us to this lonely hollow? Maybe it is love, the same thing that draws the salamanders from under their logs. Or maybe we walked this road tonight in search of absolution…. “Weep! Weep!” calls a toad from the water’s edge. And I do. If grief can be a doorway to love, then let us all weep for the world we are breaking apart so we can love it back to wholeness again.

I need this proclamation of the holiness of language, the gift of how my story becomes part of the bigger story, and more earth under my bare feet — because I need this reminder that isolation, fear, and arrogance will never have the last word. I need the comfort of the stories that came before me, and I need to believe

If I watch the news too much, which I do, I will never believe in the abolition of isolation, fear, and arrogance, because they are so prevalently on display, so obviously shaping the world around me. As I discern my relationship with social media, I began to wonder as I was reading this if this is part of it — if this is the calling to turn away from the barrage of news, not to act ignorant, but to turn toward the wisdom of old stories, the calling to write my own, the need I have to look into nature not as an escape, but to witness the fecundity of God, and in witnessing it, believe in the hope of a future. No, I don’t wish to turn away, I wish to turn toward — toward the gift of the earth that models how we might experience hope for the world.

The land gives us so many gifts; fire is a way we can give back. In modern times, the public thinks fire is only destructive, but they’ve forgotten, or simply never knew, how people used fire as a creative force. The fire stick was like a paintbrush on the landscape… Our people were given the responsibility to use fire to make things beautiful and productive—it was our art and our science….

Sacred fire…. The fires we use to carry prayers, for healing, for sweat lodges. That fire represents our life, the spiritual teachings that we’ve had from the very beginning. The Sacred Fire in the symbol of life and spirit, so we have special firekeepers to care for them. You might not get to be around those other fires very often… but there’s a fire you must tend to every day. The hardest one to take care of is… Your own fire, your spirit. We all carry a piece of that sacred fire within us. We have to honor it and care for it. You are the firekeeper.

I love how Kimmerer — and the trusted wisdom bearers of her life — invite us to honor the complexity of fire. They remind us how fire can be destructive, but also creative. How many other facets of our lives right now feel trapped in this same precarious space of teetering between destructive and creative? I know I feel very palpably that now is a time of discernment, a time of reckoning with the fine line between creativity and destruction, and making the choice to turn the tides toward creativity in the wake of the destruction we witness so commonly.

I carry a fire, and it’s one I must tend to. But I can’t imagine honoring and tending to the fire of my soul without the witness of the stories before me, and the hope I have that stories will be told after me. I am a firekeeper, but I keep it as a prayer that it might continue to be lit for creativity, not destruction.

What does it mean to be the people of the seventh fire, to walk back along the ancestral road and pick up what was left behind? How do we recognize what we should reclaim and what is dangerous refuse? What is truly medicine for the living earth and what is a drug of deception? None of us can recognize every piece, let alone carry it all. We need each other, to take a song, a word, a story, a tool, a ceremony and put it in our bundles. Not for ourselves, but for the ones yet to be born, for all our relations. Collectively, we assemble from the wisdom of the past a vision for the future, a worldview shaped by mutual flourishing.

My faith calls me to walk back along this ancestral road, to pick up what was left behind. And yet, it is a road of discernment, of prayerfully asking the Spirit to reveal to me what is medicine for the living and a drug of deception (both physically and spiritually, which I say laughing, as if there is necessarily a difference).

I cannot carry it all, but I do hope to carry some of it. Inside the hopelessness that surrounds us, I wonder if I could carry one salamander. Is it possible I could carry it across to the other side? Is it possible that one life — one story — matters in a culture of death? I pray so. I pray it matters to sing the song, to write the word, to tell the story, to craft the tool, to celebrate the ceremony.

I pray we keep offering our prayers, so when future children search desperately for a reason to believe, they might receive a reminder of the faithful fecundity of God, against all odds. So they may receive an old story to hold them up when the story of their days feels destructive, not creative.

More than anything, I want to hear a great song of thanks rise on the wind. I think that song might save us… Whatever our gift, we are called to give it and to dance for the renewal of the world. In return for the privilege of breath.

Thank you for going on this Braiding Sweetgrass journey with me. I pray we hear a great song on the wind, a lyric calling us to give our gifts into the gulf of hope and flourishing. And may this offering invite us to dance for the renewal of the world — out of gratitude for the privilege of breath.

With love & care,
EJW

braiding sweetgrass series ends

I hope you have enjoyed our time reading Braiding Sweetgrass!

For the next few weeks, I will be focusing my attention on sharing more with you about my book, Sober Spirituality, in lieu of this reflection. Newsletters and healing moments will continue! I will be sharing podcast interviews and articles about my work you can enjoy, too!

In not too long, this space will return to being a private space for paid subscribers. I’m still thinking about how this space might continue. I don’t know if we will pick another book, but I might pick a topic to dive into each month? We will see. While I enjoy keeping the content somewhat fluid, I will soon return to content that is private to the paid community.

I’ll keep saying it — Deeply grateful for each of you. <3

Hey y’all, this event was moved! I hope you’ll join me and the Stevenson School for Ministry on April 26th from 7:00-8:30EST!

This workshop will explore the importance of hospitality in Christianity, name the current challenge our culture faces with alcohol, and talk through fun and thoughtful ways churches can grow in showing compassion toward those who don't drink. Churches growing in hospitality to sober people serves not just to change our churches for the better, but to grow them, as churches can become safe places for sober visitors and their friends.

This workshop will meet for 90-minutes on Zoom. The Rev. Warde will share her experience and offer resources. The content presentation will be recorded. A brief question time will also be included at the end and will not be recorded for distribution.

The cost of this workshop offsets the operating costs of the Stevenson School for Ministry. SSFM is dedicated to the lifelong learning and discernment processes of all Episcopalians in the Diocese of Central Pennsylvania and beyond. This workshop has a price tier option. Whether a complimentary ticket, $15, or $30 fee fits your life - everyone will receive the same experience.

For questions contact ssfm@diocesecpa.org.

Waco friends, come hang out with me May 3 at 7:00PM at St. Alban’s! I’m really excited to be talking about my new book and seeing friends, both old and new. There will be books available for sale if you don’t have your copy yet and would like to get one!