While thinking about Earth Month and surfing the web to check out how companies and not for profits were celebrating, I discovered that Starbuck has a major commitment to the environment. They recognize that caring for people and caring for the environment are linked when they say on their website, “When we take care of people, we take care of the environment”
At Gratitude Leads we believe that sharing nature with kids, caring for the environment, teaching respect, responsibility, kindness and gratitude for all the gifts of nature means we are creating a sustainable future for all our children. It is so easy for us to take for granted that the environment we experience today will be there in the future for our kids. It is also easy to forget that our health, our children’s health and the health of the earth are inseparable.
One of my favorite authors, Robin Wall Kimmerer, whose book, “Braiding Sweetgrass” is now on the New York Times best seller list wrote in her book, “Many indigenous peoples share the understanding that we are each endowed with a particular gift, a unique ability. Birds to sing and stars to glitter, for instance. It is understood that these gifts have a dual nature, though: a gift is also a responsibility. If the bird’s gift is a song, then it has a responsibility to greet the day with music. It is the duty of birds to sing and the rest of us receive the song as a gift.
Asking what is our responsibility is perhaps also to ask, What is our gift? And how shall we use it?”
This month, I invite all of us to be mindful of our responsibility and “what gifts of mind, hands, heart and voice” can be offered by us, our children and grandchildren on behalf of the earth and the renewal of our world.