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How can we solve the problem of greed? Most people think we can’t; it’s just human nature. But being pessimistic about human nature is just a choice—and a choice that won’t help us build the world we want. Today, we look at how we learned to think poorly of ourselves, how we built it into the social systems we live by, and what we can do to change it. We look for inspiration at two Indigenous traditions, who solve the problem of greed in creative ways. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe

Did you know the Earth has a hum? It's way too low to hear with our physical ears, but there are ways to enjoy it anyway, and today we explore one of them: a guided meditation to hear the ultra-low humming of the Earth. This meditation will take us into the ocean, which is the actual source of most of the hum—because visiting the ocean, even in our imaginations, is deeply soothing and refreshing. So here is a guided meditation for experiencing the power and gentle support of the Earth. (The meditation itself begins in the audio at 11:44.) Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe

Why does wealth have such a tight hold on people’s imaginations? Today we look at the origins of inequality in Western cultures, going back 5000 years to the carvings on an alabaster vase from Mesopotamia. The show a harvest ritual that was also a wedding, a culminating event that brought together heaven and earth. Looking closely at the images on the vase shows how hierarchy, when it gives a few people permission to control others, damages the whole society’s connection with nature. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe

People often think nature spirituality is about love and inspiration, and politics is something else entirely. So today we explore how connecting with nature means connecting with nature’s ways—aligning our lives, including our social and political lives, with the natural world. And how this means honoring and respecting the spirit in each person so that they may live as sovereign beings, free of repressive authority. We take a brief look at the authoritarian history in Europe, the land of my ancestors, and how I was introduced to a different model of community—a different kind of politics—by two people of the Dagara tribe of Burkina Faso. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe

The bougainvillea around my kitchen window many years ago showed me something so precious that it changed me for good. It helped me work my slow way beyond the dualistic world of Descartes and toward a world of kinship. Today, some reflections on the decades it can take to step into a relational worldview, a world where every being and element in nature is alive, everyone is speaking, and everyone has wisdom to share. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe

A morning filled with hope and joy on Maui as volunteers gather at a greenhouse to care for the plants who will help to restore the native dryland forest at the top of Haleakalã. Reflecting on what it means to live in a sacred way. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe

Wading into the troubled waters of election integrity. There's a new field of study called election forensics that applies statistical analysis to public election data. Careful analysis of the 2024 election is raising some serious questions. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe

To stand up to fascism, the most important thing we can do, every day, is to plant ourselves firmly in the truth. We talk today about how we recognize what is true—by finding the place of the heart. Guided by Ilarion Merculieff of the Unangan people of the Pribilof Islands and by my own teacher, we reflect on the differences between linear thinking and the awareness arising in the heart. We talk about how finding the heart means taking a vacation from the thinking mind and entering a place of greater ease and spaciousness, where we can lead with empathy and letting-be. Centering oneself in the heart, every day, leads to clear perception and wiser, humbler ways of living. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe

Third in a series on living in authoritarian times. Today: staying seated in the firmness of our own knowing, our own heart. We look at three daily practices for support: Touching silence, touching joy, and touching Earth. Each of them helps us declare daily independence from those who would try to control us, building a foundation of resistance from the inside out. And a close look at my own daily practice combining all three: waking up with the birds and enjoying the dawn chorus. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe

Tara Westover’s memoir, Educated, grabs me hard because her story resonates so deeply with mine. So today I use both of our stories to explore mental abuse or epistemic abuse—attacking the mind of another, trying to control how and what they think. It’s key to authoritarianism. And we explore the 2000-year-old form of authoritarianism in Western history and how it rests on a religious idea that took hold as Rome was crumbling. The fixes we need today run even deeper than education because the academy too is rooted in authoritarian patterns, as Indigenous thinkers such as Daniel Wildcat (Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma) and Ilarion Merculieff (Unangan) remind us. We need a new worldview—one that begins with the knowing inside us, honoring the waters of life within each one. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe

When the failing avocado tree in our yard suddenly puts out perfect creamy fruit, and I find out it was because the compost I made healed the tree, I feel a kind of joy that has something a lot bigger to say about thriving. What the avocado tree teaches about right relations—between people or between countries—and how to build the kind of world where everybody can flourish. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe

Do we have everything within us to make good decisions? When Abraham Maslow lived among the Blackfoot people, he learned their answer was yes. Today we hear from Indigenous voices on knowing from within, or “sovereignty of mind.” And we look at the long habit in Western history of defining knowledge instead as the ideas handed down from outside authorities—a habit feeding the rise of authoritarianism and fascism today. Plus a moment from my own life when I took a step toward reuniting with my own heart. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe

That time a tree came to talk with me and I started to really learn. How spirits are different from ghosts. And how a Yurok man’s thoughts about talking with the spirits of trees provides the foundation for living in balance with our more-than-human kin. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe

As a child I recited the Christmas story of the baby born in a manger, but the story comes to life in deeper ways when you read it in light of Mary's Song, a freedom song that she sang while pregnant with her son. She celebrated the upending of the social order, when the hungry are filled and the rich sent away empty. In her birth story, poor people get the positions of honor: the poor young single mother, the lowly animals, the rough shepherds. Together, they show that this birth is about divine justice, where human inequalities are overturned and peace is defined by sharing and equity. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe

A lesson from fifth grade lasts a lifetime—and makes me wish I'd learned about honeybees instead! What honeybees know about fair and democratic decision making. And how the story of human origins held in this society—that we are selfish and violent by nature—keeps us from imagining better ways of relating with nature and each other. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe