Honorable Harvest

What you seek
is seeking you."
-Rumi

SEEK
Oil, gold leaf, glazed. 48"x24"x2". Birch substrate. Labyrinth impression.

I finished this piece this week, in the midst of harvest season. It brought to the forefront for me the words below. The button links the website where I read the words; May we live our lives better from them.

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Honorable Harvest

Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Potawatomi scientist, articulates it best:  "The Honorable Harvest, a practice both ancient and urgent, applies to every exchange between people and the Earth. Its protocol is not written down, but if it were, it would look something like this:

Ask permission of the ones whose lives you seek. Abide by the answer.
Never take the first. Never take the last.
Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.
Take only what you need and leave some for others.
Use everything that you take.
Take only that which is given to you.
Share it, as the Earth has shared with you.
Be grateful.
Reciprocate the gift.
Sustain the ones who sustain you, and the Earth will last forever.
Though we live in a world made of gifts, we find ourselves harnessed to institutions and an economy that relentlessly ask, 'What more can we take from the Earth?' In order for balance to occur, we cannot keep taking without replenishing. Don’t we need to ask, 'What can we give?’ "