One Wish: Gary Nabhan ’73

Gary Nabhan ’73 is an Ecumenical Franciscan Brother, Lebanese-American founder of the Sacred Plants Initiative, 2024 Takreem Foundation Laureate, and MacArthur Foundation Fellow.

My deepest wish for the next year is not only a true cease-fire among the eight countries currently at war in the Middle East, but deep healing for the traumatically stressed children who have survived, and for the wounds in what many of us still call the Holy Lands. By wounds, I mean the damage that has not only been done to hospitals, mosques, synagogues, and churches that harbor those who have been physically or emotionally wounded, but to the lands, waters, and sacred plants that have been revered and used ritually there for thousands of years.

And so I have launched a multicultural, interfaith coalition called the Sacred Lands Biocultural Recovery Initiative to involve spiritual leaders and youth with the replanting of sacred plant populations destroyed or desiccated by missile fire, damage to irrigation systems, and desiccation of springs in the Middle East. When we heal the lands, we heal ourselves. 

When we stand in a rain garden basin or on an ancient terrace and pass a young sapling from our hands to the hands of a person of another faith or political persuasion who also wants the earth to heal, we heal the wounds between us, often without the need for words. The Cedars of Lebanon, Palestinian pistachios, Syrian rues, Jerusalem sages, frankincense, and myrrh remind us that the Spirit of Creation/Creator is within all of us, not just in our own kind. Join me and many others who have chosen to put down our swords and reforge them into digging sticks, planting spades, and tree supports that bring us hand in hand to reaffirm our shared values.

Read all 11 Wishes for 2025 from Cornell visionaries.