By the Alliance Newsletter Team
While many people have completed their trashy summer reading, we were talking about what are some of the books that have most deeply affected us as we move into the fall. Today, on National Read a Book Day, we’d like to share a few of the books that have been most meaningful.
Five Books That Rewired How We See the World and Live Our Lives
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
By Robin Wall Kimmerer
I found this book tucked inside the pages of another I adore by Ross Gay, with no warning that it would quietly take my whole worldview apart and reassemble it into something new. Braiding Sweetgrass gave me words for the vague notions of reciprocity that were trying to find a mooring in my brain, taught me how (and why) to honor other-than-human beings and opened a path to becoming indigenous to my place without overstepping. That’s a wish I’ve harbored since my suburban childhood.
Kimmerer names the ache so many of us live with: “species loneliness,” defined as “a deep, unnamed sadness stemming from estrangement from the rest of Creation, from the loss of relationship.” Reading that passage felt like being handed a diagnosis I didn’t know I needed. And then, like braiding three strands of sweetgrass into one, she shows you how healing actually works: indigenous wisdom, science and the quiet, direct teachings of plants.
Now I understand my compulsion to lie under the hardy hibiscus in my yard, staring up into its fascinating branches and smelling its unbloomed scent. If you’ve ever felt this particular loneliness, if you’ve ever had the sense that you’ve lost the language for belonging to the earth, here’s the book that gives it back to you.
– Contributed by Alliance Communications Coordinator Amy Durr
The Ecology of Commerce Revised Edition: A Declaration of Sustainability
By Paul Hawken
Business sustainability used to be an oxymoron. But no longer, in large part due to The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability. When written in 1993, people felt business could never be environmentally responsible. However, it illuminated a path forward, arguing we had no future unless business could fundamentally shift to sustainability. The book was a “spear in my chest”, said Interface CEO Ray Anderson, who consequently turned around the world’s largest commercial floor covering manufacturer from being a major polluter to a successful sustainability model.
This landmark book by long-time environmental leader, eco-entrepreneur, brilliant author and visionary Paul Hawken helped shift business thinking as he pointed out that everyday consumer items contained toxic chemicals. Hawken not only nailed how damaging our commerce was, but his beautiful prose called for a different business future based on nature. He explained there is no waste in nature, as each organism ultimately provides the life source for the next.
That concept was core to the Natural Step, the scientifically-based Swedish approach to sustainability he helped introduce to North America in this book. Better yet, Hawken went on to practice what he preached by becoming the Chair of the Natural Step in the US and invited me to become one of the first instructors, a move that helped shift me and the Alliance from a focus on agriculture to overall sustainability, including in business. Thanks to this book, the Natural Step remains a core part of the Alliance, from our Akepa Youth & School Program to our business trainings and consulting.
– Contributed by Alliance President Terry Gips
The Sabbath
By Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
My name is Terry and I once was a 24/7 Jewish environmentalist trying to save the world. But a curious thing happened one day that got me to stop and take a day off every week – a day for resting, renewal, appreciating all of Creation and being with myself, family and friends while celebrating freedom from slavery of all kinds – a veritable model of sustainability.
I was speaking at a Jewish environmental conference in Colorado and needed a break. I left the auditorium only to discover a long table of books with a woman standing behind it. I felt sort of smart-alecky so I asked her, “Is there one book on this table that if I read it, my life would be transformed? Oh, and it has to be short.” She smiled and without hesitation said “Yes” as she walked over and picked up a book and handed it to me: The Sabbath by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.
I sat down and read the entire book. Indeed, it fundamentally transformed my life. I got the hidden value of stopping work, taking a break, and observing a Sabbath. I have been observing it ever since and feel it’s been the greatest gift in my life. As this mystical Orthodox yet social justice Rabbi who marched in Selma with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote way back in 1951:
“To set apart one day a week for freedom, a day on which we would not use the instruments which have been so easily turned into weapons of destruction, a day for being with ourselves, a day of detachment from the vulgar, of independence of external obligation, a day on which we stop worshipping the idols of technical civilization, a day on which we use no money — is there any institution that holds out a greater hope for human progress than the Sabbath?”
– Contributed by Alliance President Terry Gips
This One Wild and Precious Life: The Path Back to Connection in a Fractured World
By Sarah Wilson
I had no idea who Sarah Wilson was when I picked up This One Wild and Precious Life – I was drawn in purely by the title’s nod to Mary Oliver’s famous question. Then came her first gut-punch: “Ironically, in such inverted times, it’s our disconnection that actually unites – or connects – us.” I began reading faster.
Wilson names the thing so many of us don’t want to say out loud: our “evolutionary response to shut down and go numb” when faced with a “horrible threat.” One of her solutions, one we at the Alliance return to again and again, is kindness, and she makes it startlingly practical.
Ask someone, she suggests, “How is the state of your heart, in this breath?” Ten words that transform an ordinary moment with a friend into an opportunity for honest sharing, deep listening and meaningful connection.
I’ve started asking it myself, and my relationships are becoming more restorative. Oliver asked what we plan to do with our one wild and precious life. Wilson’s answer, quietly and urgently, is: come back to each other. We can begin together, right now.
– Contributed by Alliance Communications Coordinator Amy Durr
The Year of Magical Thinking
By Joan Didion
Joan Didon’s beautiful interpretation of human grieving and coping with loss found me during a tumultuous time in my life. While I was not coping with traditional grief, I was experiencing the loss of my childhood, and a transition to a life with new responsibilities and expectations. Looking for a way to name the feelings I was feeling led me to Didion’s work. We discovered the complexities associated with grief’s unpredictable timeline together through The Year of Magical Thinking.
Grief is not ‘one size fits all’, and can be felt in an abundance of ways. We look back at times of grief and wonder why we acted a certain way, but the permanent space grief occupies leaves a vacuum of instability, making ‘reasonable’ responses almost impossible. Through her memoir, we see how Didion copes with her husband’s death of the events which had transpired, using bent logic to cope with the trauma and create sense within a senseless void.
It is not a simple path from sad to better, as illustrated in Didion’s writing – we see how her mental state ranges from shock to obsessive to delusional, all ways the human psyche copes with the idea of permanent loss, a seemingly inconceivable idea. Didion’s journey through grief reminds us of how loss is not one emotion, but an alteration of our beliefs, and an acceptance of an irreversible change.
Ultimately, Didion reminds us that the journey of grief can change an individual, but the true resilience is moving forward without letting the grief permanently consume you. Didion’s writing gave me permission to grieve and understand permanent loss through a lens of actual human emotion, rather than the cold and analytical explanations generically given to anyone struggling.
– Contributed by Alliance Intern Sofia Pavlenko