Robin Wall Kimmerer recently published a small book: The Serviceberry: Reciprocity and Abundance in the Natural World (2024). In it, the serviceberry tree is a teacher to us. From the serviceberry and her relationship to the land, the birds, and the human world, we learn the movements and pivots of a “gift economy,” rooted in the reality of abundance. Gift economies are the original economies, but they now operate alongside the market economies we are more familiar with – economies rooted in what Kimmerer would call the “cultural construct” or “fiction” of scarcity. 

In a gift economy, human and more-than-human participants trust abundance while practicing restraint, respect, reciprocity, and reverence. When we harvest from the abundance of our neighbors, we would do well to follow the usually-unwritten rules Kimmerer offers us. Here are just a few:

• Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you can take care of them.
• Ask permission before taking.
• Never take the first one; never take the last.
• Take only what you need.
• Take only that which is given.
• Never take more than half. Leave some for others.

Kimmerer invited us to this way of being already in her 2013 book, Braiding Sweetgrass– a book I listened to last year. When I heard her invitation to never take more than half, I linked it to a comment I had received a couple of months prior from one of my Reformed Journal readers and friends. He said, “What’s great about your writing is that you steer so close to sentiment, but then you don’t cross over into it.” I heard the compliment in his words, but I also saw between the lines a yellow flag (whether my friend was waving it or the Holy Spirit or both of them, I do not know!): “If you are not careful, Heidi, you might cross the line into sentiment!” In the economic language of giving and receiving, my writing sometimes took (and perhaps still takes) more than half.

In her memoir, Lost and Found: Reflections on Grief, Gratitude, and Happiness, Kathryn Schulz defines sentimentality this way: “the emotion produced by tearjerker movies and corny commercials and sappy circle-of-life country songs. That word implies an excess of emotion, typically provoked through manipulative means.” When my writing crosses the line into sentimentality, I am taking more than half, by which I mean that I am doing my own emotional work, but I am also trying to do your emotional work. Sentimental writing is rooted in a sort of scarcity and fear: I must define and name and own all my emotions while also trying to capture and hold your emotions. If I do not, I am afraid I will not have you and you will not have me. 

So also, sentimental photography. Marilyn McEntyre encourages us toward appropriate distance and space, especially when it comes to sharing images of grief. In a section of her book, Word by Word, titled “Watch from a Respectful Distance,” she writes:

I remember a photo in the Los Angeles Times of a young widow on her knees, weeping at her husband’s new grave. She lived in a combat zone where bombs could, and did, fall on civilians and military alike. Her visible sorrow was unlike anything I’ve yet been called on to experience. I was both compelled and troubled by the image. It was too close. I assume it was taken through a zoom lens, but it put the viewer into uncomfortably intimate space. The privacy of sorrow seemed to have been violated, perhaps in the hope of invoking sympathy, perhaps in the hope of getting a good shot onto the front page. (p. 70)

The photographer took more than half. 

To create art from a heart rooted in the reality of abundance (rather than the fiction of scarcity) is to never take more than half. It is to leave some for others. “Elegance, to me, is writing just enough” (Dana Vander Lugt quoting Claire Keegan in yesterday’s book review!).

This is a boundaried kind of artistry that doesn’t get too close–doesn’t take too much. Writers, photographers, musicians (and even the best theologians) know and trust the abundance of the world around them, leaving and creating room for the subject matter to exist and shine between and beyond their craft. The creators also leave room for their interpreters to find in their work even more truth and beauty than they originally had in mind. Words, images, and music in the gift economy are restrained, keeping themselves from saying or showing too much and trusting the reciprocity of relationship to complete and propel the work. 

Is this not how God interacts with us? In every “Let there be…” of the creation story, I hear our Creator self-restraining and setting the world free. When Jesus taught in parables, he was taking only half –giving only half– creating and leaving room for his disciples to learn and grow. And the Spirit herself does not opt for sentimental prayers but intercedes for us through wordless groans.

As I leave about half my thoughts on the cutting room floor for this blog, I commit to the continued work of learning to write for you. Of course, I am not so much writing for you, as I am writing with you. You are my fellow creators, communicators, and interpreters of goodness, truth, and beauty. There is an abundant reciprocity in the gift economy of this journal, and I am so grateful to be a part of it. I will do my best to take only half, to leave some for you, and to continue to enjoy what you leave behind for me.

Header Photo by Georg Eiermann on Unsplash