Elder Wisdom Wednesday – Grandma Agnes Baker Pilgrim
What does reciprocity mean to you?
Grandmother Agnes Baker Pilgrim was shaped and born from this land in Southern Oregon that I am now blessed to call home. For 22,000 years her ancestors tended to this land and it’s waters. She is the eldest member of her tribe and the eldest on the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers.
“I am trying to teach reciprocity,” she says. “We two-legends are always taking and rarely giving back. Without reciprocity, the balance of nature is thrown off. Ritual and ceremony create the energy of reciprocity.”
I’ve sat and listened to Grandma Aggie’s stories on several occasions. It is a blessing to sit at the feet of wisdom. It feels like remembrance, so that we may look up and see that it is we who should stand up now, preparing to take the staff and carry it forward so that we and our children remember how to live in right relation to the Earth and all beings.
Grandma Aggie is 94 and declares that she wants to live until at least 100. Please consider participating in reciprocity by making a direct donation to Grandma who “is a voice for the voiceless”. Support her health moving forward. She has recently been recovering from blood poisoning and the community has surrounded her in love and offered to help financially as she takes care of her self in a good way.
“We must stop this spiritual blindness, this inability to see and feel the sacred around us.” -Grandma Aggie