{"id":13837,"date":"2020-10-14T08:37:24","date_gmt":"2020-10-14T15:37:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/?p=13837"},"modified":"2020-11-11T09:08:45","modified_gmt":"2020-11-11T17:08:45","slug":"pitcher-plants-other-great-teachers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/radical-joy-revealed\/pitcher-plants-other-great-teachers\/","title":{"rendered":"Pitcher Plants &#038; Other Great Teachers"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>When we\u2019re challenged by hard times\u2014environmental, social, personal\u2014nature can offer valuable lessons on how to endure. In her book,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/books\/ecology-of-a-cracker-childhood-anniversary\/9781571313256\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ecology of a Cracker Childhood<\/a>, about growing up\u00a0in rural Georgia, Janisse Ray describes the life lessons she learned from a pitcher plant.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>\u201cThe pitcher plant taught me to love rain, welcoming days of drizzle and sudden thundering downpours, drops trailing down its hoods and leaves, soaking the ground. In my fascination with pitcher plant, I learned to detest artificial bouquets of plastic and silk. Its carnivory taught me the sinlessness of predation and its columns of dead insects the glory of purpose no matter how small. In that plant I was looking for a\u00a0manera de ser, a way of being\u2014no, not for a way of being but of being able to be. I was looking for a patch of ground that supported the survival of rare, precious, and endangered biota within my own heart.\u201d<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>We don\u2019t have to travel to remote, exotic places to find great teachers. They\u2019re everywhere\u2014in the back yard, the city park, the night sky, even in our house plants or in the ladybugs who have a knack of suddenly materializing on the window ledge. Their lessons are direct, subtle, and often surprising. Spending a few minutes hanging out with a \u201cbeing\u201d from the natural world may give us just the boost we need to keep going.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When we\u2019re challenged by hard times\u2014environmental, social, personal\u2014nature can offer valuable lessons on how to endure. In her book,\u00a0Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, about growing up\u00a0in rural Georgia, Janisse Ray describes the life lessons she [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":13839,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":23,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"place":[],"event-year":[344],"media-type":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13837"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13837"},{"taxonomy":"place","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/place?post=13837"},{"taxonomy":"event-year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/event-year?post=13837"},{"taxonomy":"media-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radicaljoy.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-type?post=13837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}