by Lilly Lombard

For Christmas this year, my botanist daughter offered me a sweet little book by fellow American botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry. Already familiar with Kimmerer’s poetic style, talent as a scientific educator, and indigenous perspective of humans as part of rather than separate from nature, I read The Serviceberry with slow pleasure. From its pages, I drew inescapable parallels between the serviceberry (genus Amelanchier, a native, flowering shrub that produces abundant berries) within nature’s “gift economy,” and my experience within Servas.

In the book, Kimmerer details the interdependence within which the serviceberry has evolved–enjoying diverse relationships with other plants, fungi, insects, and humans/animals. Some of its partners consume the shrub’s nectar and fruit while helping to pollinate or disperse its seeds. Below ground microorganisms and fungi feed on serviceberry sugars. They also provide micronutrients, enhance soil, and transport excess sugar from plant to plant. The symbioses are myriad, complex, self-correcting, and about as far from capitalism’s tendency toward hoarding and greed as our imaginations could conjure.

Kimmerer calls this exquisite web of resource exchange “the gift economy.” In the gift economy, one-for-one transactions are not the norm, and unidirectional extraction or exploitation proves nonadaptive over time. Rather, generosity is widely practiced, and abundance is shared because it improves the whole. A stronger, more interdependent community is a more stable and resilient one. Kimmerer laments how far modern capitalism has deviated from nature’s principles of the gift economy, and the extent to which unrestrained exploitation threatens all of Earth’s inhabitants.

I’ll bet the parallels between nature’s gift economy and Servas are jumping out at you. Servas was born out of World War II, when attempts to brutally subjugate and exploit some by others upended global stability, led to acute horrors and widespread suffering, and ultimately failed to improve any lives. Servas founders envisioned a more peaceful global community nourished by diversity, cross-cultural sharing, mutual reliance, respect, and trust. They encouraged relationship-building, one meal, one conversation, one act of kindness, and one song at a time.

Over 75 years, and continuing, Servas has cultivated a worldwide network for greeting and harboring curious and humble travelers with no money-exchange involved. Everything offered was in the spirit of “gift” and “abundance.” The currency of Servas has always been friendship. Personally, I have never considered whether participation in Servas was a financially “good deal.” Priceless memories, friendships, tolerance, and insight spring from my participation. I imagine the same is true for thousands of members.

Since reading The Serviceberry, I have reflected on ways to engage more actively in the gift economy, and how to invite newcomers to experience more non-transactional exchanges. To that end, this May I co-hosted a Servas community potluck that reached out, not only to existing members, but potential ones too– curious nearby college students, young families in the neighborhood, and friends. If, like me, you have experienced Servas’ abundance, consider spreading the joy. Host a Servas potluck, walk, tea, or library talk.  Go to our website for ideas and support, and to create and promote your Servas event. Let’s tear a page from The Serviceberry. We can harness Servas’ gift economy to grow peace, community, and joy in the world.

Note: Robin Wall Kimmerer (1953) is a Potawatomi botanist, author, and the former director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF). As a scientist and a Native American, Kimmerer is informed in her work by both Western science and Indigenous environmental knowledge.