Bring me all of your dreams, You dreamers, Bring me all of your Heart melodies That I may wrap them In a blue cloud-cloth Away from the too-rough fingers Of the world. –The Dream Keeper, Langston Hughes

In The Serviceberry, Robin Wall Kimmerer gives us a short and sweet glimpse of what life could look like if we loved, trusted, and respected the Earth and one another. Rather than a weighty tome with complex economic theory and equations, we’re given something peaceful, easy, and light. I honor this choice; there are enough books and headlines that devastate and confuse us, giving the impression that a different world is impossible because it’s simply too complicated to enact. We need things that give us hope and care, and, on that, Kimmerer more than delivers.

Reading the words in this book felt like sipping warm broth. It doesn’t cure you right away, but it replenishes you and leaves you feeling loved and tended to. It’s what I needed, someone to remind me that consumption, scarcity, individualism, and fear aren’t the only realities. In fact, they don’t have to be reality at all if I embrace the abundance, flow, sharing, and community that’s already present in the world, that’s been present for ages.

My only criticism, and the reason why I’ve selected 4 stars over 5, is the lack of mention of racism. The reason why the US and its allies are uninterested in indigenous wisdom is racism. Our current way of life and economic systems were created by greedy, violent people who wanted the land that Indigenous peoples had lived on, cultivated and cared for for millennia, and they were willing to kill and dehumanize them to do it. It’s not that they didn’t know or couldn’t perceive a different way of being. They didn’t want to; they chose a system that would enable inequality and instability because it allowed for some to live as gods while the majority struggles for basic survival. I acknowledge that including this discussion would’ve tarnished the peaceful vibes a little bit, but bitters aid in digestion and allow us to enjoy the sweet things more.

Fortunately, perfection is not required for enjoyment, and I’d encourage anyone who is interested in this book to read it and engage with it for what it is: a remembrance as well as a dream keeping of a harmonious future, one where Earth and humanity are in balance, reciprocity and care are core, and abundance is the norm instead of the exception.