Braiding Sweetgrass
Did you ever read a book and wish that the rest of the world would read it too?
Braided Sweetgrass is one such book for me. Professor Robin Wall Kimmerer is a biologist and a botanist. She is also a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She draws on both of these systems of knowledge to explore and celebrate the ancient and ongoing reciprocal relationship between the human and more-than-human world. I found it beautiful, uplifting, heartbreaking and inspiring.
It is also a perfect example of the richness that can emerge when two potentially opposing paradigms are allowed to dance together, rather than be pitted against each other. Given the predicament humanity finds itself in, we have so much to gain from participating in a dialogue between western science and indigenous knowledge with open hearts and minds. I wish that for New Zealand / Aotearoa and for the rest of the world.
The ability to embrace multiple perspectives is vital for our development, as individuals and collectively. The plethora of information at our fingertips could have made this easier - but often seems to have had the opposite effect. Over recent years I have encountered several hundred leaders, either through coaching or leadership development programs. I have noticed how many do not read regularly, outside of what is required for their work. Many have expressed how they used to love to read, and how they miss it from their lives. But now there are simply too many emails and reports to get through, leaving little time or energy for 'non-essential' reading. I understand and empathise with that. It is also troubling.
To face into the complex challenges we are living through, and those to come, we need to grow our minds, challenge our assumptions, find new ways of seeing, and become wiser, more compassionate, more humble in the face of all we don’t know and need to learn. I know books are not the only source of such growth. But I know of no better or more accessible way than to read widely and as often as we can.
Which are the books that have stretched your minds?