This winter, I read two books, and at first glance, they don’t have much in common.

One is written by an Orthodox Christian convert living in rural Ireland, the other by a Potawatomi botanist living in upstate New York.

The books I am talking about are Paul Kingsnorth's Against the Machine, and Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass. 

Kingsnorth writes like a man standing on a cliff’s edge, witnessing the end times. ‘Amongst these dark satanic mills’, he writes with a theological fire for a world that is being consumed by a great destructive machine, one that hollows out what it means to be human. For him, the Machine is a spiritual force, an idol, a false God, wearing the clothes of progress but actually a force of destruction. The overconsumption, the slavery to economic forces, the ripping apart of the Earth, they all feed the Machine.

Kimmerer writes like a grandmother at a kitchen table, palm open, holding yours. She explains how we've forgotten how to be in relationship with the living world, and that this forgetting is the illness underneath every crisis we currently face. Her answer is reciprocity: receive the gift of the land, give something back, learn the names of the plants, say thank you in a way that changes what you do tomorrow.

So far, so different. One book is a call to rise from a father. The other is a warm remembrance from the mother.

But when you read them back to back, they meet and converge into balance.

Kingsnorth wants us to resist the Machine, Kimmerer to remember our gift. But ask either writer what they would be doing on a Tuesday afternoon, and the answer is uncannily the same. They would both be planting something. 

The Machine is a Western word, born of a Christian tradition losing faith in itself. The Windigo is a Potawatomi word, born of a tradition that faced harsh spirits. Kingsnorth uses one, Kimmerer uses the other, and they turn out to be describing the same thing: the hunger that overconsumes without gratitude, reverence, or meaning, and which grows louder and louder, and louder, the more it is fed: the place where desperation and gluttony align.

If two different traditions can reach the same understanding, there is universal wisdom being expressed, and something asked of us.

What I've carried from the two books, more than from either on its own, is this: the answer is older than almost anything modernity has invented, it's available to anyone, and it requires a willingness to belong somewhere, give something back, and refuse extraction in favour of relationship and meaning.

Kingsnorth would call this an act of Christian service, Kimmerer walking the path. What I have learned is that the human world creates boxes to organise things, and the divine uses all of them to speak through to us; that's the beauty of diversity.

I'm thinking of returning to Canada early next year, to Indigenous land and old forests, a place where both of these beliefs and traditions are lived. I expect to come back changed by it in some way I can't yet predict. 

But here in Cornwall, spring has sprung. I'd best get out there and plant something. 

Talk soon,

Rob

PS. Here’s the link to both: Braiding Sweetgrass by Kimmerer and Against the Machine by Kingsnorth