Gifts:

Giving and receiving

Giving and receiving gifts became an important part of our co-operative inquiry practice. A gift is a thing or action or sentiment that is offered freely. The giver does not expect the recipient will reciprocate, even like or value the gift. They may do with it what they please. The giving of gifts is a discipline of give-away and letting go, of reciprocity with no attachment to outcome. Of course, in everyday human interaction, appropriate etiquette is usually observed with thanks and expressions of gratitude. When gifts are offered to River, no such etiquette can be expected.

Offering to falls in Llantony valley. Photo David Peters

In bringing gifts to River, we are freely reciprocating the gift River gives to us. As Martin put it

There are so many ways of reciprocating the gift, what can we give in return to all this all these gifts that we're seeking: clearing rivers or picking plastics, these are all such wonderful ways of doing it. And in addition, it seems to me that artistic activities, focusing on river rituals, festivals… are as important ways of gathering community for possibilities of communion.

Around the time of the United States Thanksgiving holiday, Andrea suggested the Sentient River inquiry group visit River at the same time and recite the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address in a shared ceremony:

I start quietly and quickly get lost in the words.  I shift my attention with each passage moving around my candle fire wanting to be absolutely present to the words and to my gratitude.  Sincerity is critical and I speak aloud clearly… The words are complete, I breathe in Tah-la-lu… As I look, really look, at Tah-la-lu, I see cloud reflected in the water reflected in the sky and the perceived levels of separation - sky, air, water, earth – are fuzzy and transposed.

As Andrea leaves, she feels deeply blessed Andrea full account here

On the same occasion Ezekiel created his own spontaneous ceremony of gratitude

I place my hands palms down on the surface of the water. I close my eyes. Thank you, water. For giving life. For cleansing. For your music, your sustenance, your abundant gifts. I open my eyes. I’m so sorry, water. For the ways we’ve trashed you, disrespected you, taken you for granted, used you, forgotten you. I straighten my legs and stand. As I lift my gaze: a blue flash speeding downstream. Belted Kingfisher! I think of all of you. I think of water waking up through us as the world weaves itself back together. I feel a wild pulse of gratitude in my chest.

Kathleen has had many relationships with owls during the inquiry: the owl that took hp residence on her land, owls she has discovered dead in the street, killed by passing cars which she has buried under Se-di, the Black Walnut behind her house

I have been wanting to get out in the dark – Owl time – to make an offering of incense to Owl, but the persistent drizzle has impeded such desires until early this morning. I am up with the crowing of pesky teenage Roosters, first at 3:00 and then at the more respectable hour of 6:00. In these days leading up to the longest night, the dawn doesn’t light the horizon until after 7:00. I grab my coat, a blanket, a warm morning beverage, and some incense and head outside to Owl’s resting place by Se-di. I greet Se-di, offer ki some of my warm beverage, light the incense and place it next to Owl, and chant a few bars of the Land’s Indigenous name song to signal my desire to engage. 

Se-di, Black Walnut. Photo Kathleen Wood

All is still quiet, except for the ever-present hum of the city to the east, and a faint mist hangs in the early morning air, giving everything a dream-like feeling. I sit on my blanket beneath Se-di, breathing in and out slowly, drinking in the silence, and enjoying the sensations of love, kinship, and companionship with Se-di. I imagine Owl’s spirit, rising with the smoke of the incense, being set free to join the mist. I am struck by the stillness, by how in the vacuum of noiselessness, time itself seems to stand still. 

Simple attentive, loving presence is in itself a gift, maybe the most important one. But, as living cosmos panpsychism teaches us, communication with the living world primarily takes place in a symbolic language of things. Physical gifts are also important. People offered flowers and leaves, altars and ceremonial bundles, water from other streams, drops of tea from our flasks, crumbs from our biscuits. We sang and we chanted. Often the gifts were silently received. Sometimes it was if they were rejected. Jacqueline offered rose petals which were blown back in her face. One group agreed to write poems on paper boats, expecting them to float serenely downstream; but many were caught in eddies or stuck on mudbanks.

And as Robin Kimmerer tells us[1], asking permission to engage respects the personhood of the other, and invites us to open our senses to fully discern the response. For River as person may be unavailable to encounter on any particular day, and fussing around with ceremony, insisting River pay attention, is impolite, to say the least. And one really has to pay attention to the response, as Catherine found

On my second visit, it felt important to offer you a gift of some kind. I approached a nearby collection of violets and asked to pluck one – I sensed a yes, but perhaps I was too hasty – as I took a flower from its stem, the sharp prick of a stinging nettle caught my finger. It was like the bush was saying you don’t need to meddle here – why are you taking from this place to give to that?

Often, however, a response – inner or outer – could be discerned. Just as ceremony can create the conditions for encounter with the world as living, communicative presence, so gift giving can shift the inner state of the giver. Andreas writes of his visit to the Havel in northern Germany:

I go to the river today looking for help. I am searching for consolation, something strong and timeless. I hope to look into the mirror of the ever-turning cycle that puts everything in its place, so that nothing ever can become undone...

While riding the bus to the river shore, I clasp the two pebbles in the pocket of my jeans. They are warm from my touch and from staying close to my body all day. One pebble is a rounded rose quartz I have found in the forest behind my flat on a scorching summer day, and it seems that it has not lost its warmth since then. The other, a blackened fragment of Serpentinite, comes from the bed of my other home river, the Vara in the Italian Apeninnes. Months of carrying the stones around have made their surfaces even smoother than they already were.

I have the stones with me all the time, as tokens of my belonging. Today I will give one to the water, will gift it to the cold grey liquid, which knows more than I do, and which has travelled immensely farther than I have and will do so for all time.

When I finally stand in front of the water, I know that everything is just fine... It is an ecstatic moment, both joyful and sad, and also somehow matter of fact. It just happens. And I don’t understand it… Gary Snyder calls this presence “thusness… the nature of the nature of nature. The wild in wild”…

I throw the warm pebble I brought into the river. I have chosen the rose quartz, as it is more precious to me. If you believe some systems of relating stones to characters, rose quartz t is “my” stone. I throw it with a casual gesture, from below, as I’d flick a tennis ball to someone supposed to catch it. I murmur a thanks to the Havel while the pebble describes a low curve. With a muted “plop” it cuts through the surface. It is gone. I will never get it back. It was a nice stone, and to know that something has irreversibly turned, that the stone is now lost forever, gives me a rush of sadness. It is with the river now, I think.

Altar. Photo Luisa Brando Laserna

Luisa often creates altars as part of her engagement with Manzanares. One day she felt she had been away from River too long:

I missed coming to see you… I brought you a gift. Roses. They were a birthday gift from, a very close friend who taught me about love, femininity, expansion, and trust. Now I give one to you. It becomes the cycle of giving.

And she tells how this gift giving changed her experience:

I gave the roses and invoked the seven directions. It was then that my breath change and my attention changed. I felt the touch [of the leaf on her face]. And I started drawing, feeling the shadows entered the drawing. At the beginning I felt distant, but then it became reciprocal. But then again, even in in those moments, I still go in and out. I'm in and out, observer and co-creator.

 Dave finds that through the gifting he experiences an unexpected beauty:

To give River the water from my stream 
I reach into my coat pocket, take out a little round jar 
And with my right arm send the water out in a sweep from left to right 
The arch sparkles briefly, silver in the moonglow
Bigger and brighter than I’d expected
It showers a train of droplets
Each one exploding a circle of ripples on the dark water 
A swerve of countless ripples wravelling together and travelling out

My impulsive act manifested beauty 
It appeared, transformed, mutated, vanished.
River slow to settle, washes away all fleeting forms 
Now comes swell from further out 
The fading energies of earlier oars-folk

At times participants experienced a direct response from River to a gift offering. In his narrative Cracked Open with Love Peter writes

I have brought with me a bottle of water collected from the River Thames a few days earlier, as part of my preparations for a ceremony of invocation. I stand to offer Water to River. As I do so, Kingfisher flashes past. From the bank I speak to River out loud and directly, invoking ki as living presence. I offer the Water and ask for teaching. Then I gently pour the Water in a stream, watching the twisting braids glisten in the low sunlight, the bubbles spreading out across the surface. As I look up, Kingfisher flies from the mouth of the River Frome to my left, downriver and under the railway bridge; then a second Kingfisher crosses left to right across the Avon in front of me. Each flight appears to draw a turquoise line across the surface. For a few moments, I feel myself in a different quality of presence: my internal chatter stilled, the world more subtly alive. Then all fades back to quiet persistence. Just as I notice this change, Kingfisher flies back low across the water; a breeze ruffles the surface and my face; the sun brightens; the contrails have cleared, and the sky, now a deeper blue, is once again dappled with fair weather clouds.

Drawing all these theme of gratitude, giving, receiving, and response, is Jacqueline’s meeting with River Glen:

Bow to river. Greet. Sing. Toss water from home in a high arch. I speak and mention my beloved river friends each by name… Andrea, Dave, David, Luisa, Kathleen, Ezekiel, Peter. I ask for healing and love to flow their way. I treasure the ties that bind us. Continue singing, stamping feet both in rhythm and the urgent need to keep toes warm. Suddenly – music. Familiarity. My heart leaps. I scan for the sound… there. Dipper, on a rock opposite. Singing and singing. I join them. We sing our morning prayer together.

1.         Kimmerer, R.W., Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants. 2013, Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions.