Caring For Each Other and Our World


July 22, 2017


Quote of the Week

"Like the mother of the world, touch each being as your beloved child." -- Buddha

Caring For Each Other And Our World

"Being a good mother means teaching your children to care for the world, and so I’ve shown the girls how to grow a garden, how to prune an apple tree. The apple tree leans out over the water and makes for a shadowy arbor. In spring a drift of pink and white blossoms send plumes of fragrance wafting down the hill and a rain of petals on the water. For years now I’ve watched her seasons, from frothy pink blossoms, to gently swelling ovaries as the petals fall away, to sour green marbles of adolescent fruit, to the ripe golden apples of September. That tree has been a good mother. Most years she nurtures a full crop of apples, gathering the energy of the world into herself and passing it on. She sends her young out into the world well provisioned for the journey, packaged in sweetness to share with the world."

This week we offer you a moving passage from the inspiring book Braiding Sweetgrass, in which Robin Wall Kimmerer beautifully shares what she calls "The Way of the Mother." In it, she poetically describes the journey from beginning our lives as a child, to becoming a parent, a teacher and a grandparent. As we learn, grow and evolve in these roles, she invites us to reflect on how we can expand the love we have for our own children to include the global community together with our world. How can we serve each other and our planet, while nourishing our own inner journeys? [read article]

Recommended by: Pancho Ramos-Stierle

Reading Corner

Title: The World Came To My Place Today
Author: Dr Jo Readman
Ages: 4-8

Why? "The world really does come to visit George when his grandpa arrives, with a globe, to look after him and his sister for the day. Grandpa explains how everything from the cereal they eat for breakfast and the chocolate bars they love, to the rubber in their bicycle tyres and wood in their toys, come from plants all over the world. The lively, simple text follows George's day as he discovers the wonder of plants and how they affect his daily life. With eye-catching, quirky illustrations coupled with photographs of the original grasses, fruits and plants on the right hand side, this highly original and entertaining book follows the ethos of the Eden Project by increasing awareness in children of the natural world around them." -- Publisher

Be the Change

Watch this video together with your children, Charlie and Lola - Look After Your Planet and talk about some of the experiments you would like to get involved with as a family to take care of our world.