By Revd Fiona Bennet (From Seeds October – November 2025)
Earlier this year, I read a very inspiring book by Robin Wall Kimmerer called The Serviceberry: an economy of gifts and abundance.*
Robin is a botanist. She looks at the life of the serviceberry (a bush with fruit that can be eaten by animals and people) and asks what economic model it reveals to us.
The bush produces abundant sweet ripe berries, to entice other creatures to eat so that they will then spread its seed. The bush does not eat the sweet berries for its own nourishment, it is nourished by the soil, rain and sun. It receives its nourishment freely and gives its fruit freely in the cycle of living.
It does not claim to own its fruit, nor does it hoard back its fruit for a ‘rainy day’; it lives in an economy of reciprocity where it freely receives what it needs to live, and protects its species for a ‘rainy day’ by investing its fruit in the stomachs of others. No one has told it that economies are based on the principle of scarcity and individual protection.
The economy of the serviceberry and the planet is reciprocal, creating its own culture of balance and respect. It is an economy which invests its profits in its neighbour’s ‘stomach’, and trusts and protects not individual wealth but collective abundance.
How egotistical we humans are to think we can own what the earth freely gives.
How deceptive and stupid we are to trick ourselves into hoarding selfishly out of fear, when the planet offers us life abundantly and models for us the wisdom of reciprocity.
How fortunate we are to be alive within the reciprocal economy of life, which, despite how it may feel at times, is shaped, energised and sustained by forces and wisdom greater than humanity.
How blessed we are when we recognise and live reciprocally, with gratitude and respect.
In the words of the Revd Kathy Galloway, who sadly died recently:
Oh, the life of the world is a promise of blessing, in the rain that renews, in the heat of the sun; in the heart that confesses and the act that expresses all things and all people are one. Oh, the life of the world is the breath of our being, it is fragile and precious and offers a choice; shall we share the earth wisely, can we touch the earth gently, will we listen to earth’s silenced voice?
* The Serviceberry is published by Penguin. A very good summary of it was published in Emergence