She put down the pot, gestured: “Now you fill mine.” John did so, unsteadily, and then the pot went around the room. Each pourer filled someone else’s cup. “We start every meal this way,” the old woman said. “It is a little sign of how we are together. We have studied the old cultures, before your global market netted everything, and in those ages there existed many different forms of exchange. Some of them were based on the giving of gifts. Each of us has a gift, you see, given us freely by the universe. And each of us with every breath gives something back.” “Like the equation for ecologic
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