On the last Sunday of June, I was asked to facilitate a church worship service tied to Indigenous spirituality since it was National Indigenous Awareness Day on June 21 in Canada. I decided to work with a major teaching of Indigenous spirituality, namely to “only take what we need.” In this blog, I want to share my reflections from that day plus the insights my faith community shared with each other as we discussed in small groups in worship what this teaching might mean for us. Indigenous Reflections: Taking Only What We Need I first became aware of this Indigenous teaching from Clarence Cachagee, an Indigenous Elder and founder of Crow Shield Lodge. I first got to know Clarence when I was pastor of Mannheim Mennonite Church (2013-2020). He reconnected with his foster mother who was a member of my church before she died. This reconnection caused our church to have Clarence shared about his Indigenous spiritual practices and teachings with us. Even though I am no longer pastor at Mannheim Mennonite Church, I continue to connect with Clarence. He is now helping Lisaard and Innisfree Hospice, where I currently work as a Spiritual Care Provider, work at become sensitive to the Indigenous beliefs and practices around dying. Throughout these different education opportunities, Clarence has often stressed the teaching, “only taking what you need.” So what does it mean to only take what we need? I began my contemplation in the church’s worship service by sharing some thoughts from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book titled “Braiding Sweetgrass”. I became aware of this book through reflections shared by Leah Bowman during a May worship service of the Burning Bush Forest Church, an alternative church founded by Wendy Janzen, a former pastor of Mennonite Church of Eastern Canada. In the book, Kimmerer writes about reciprocity; the idea that there should be a give and take between humans and non-humans. Bowman notes that "Kimmerer sometimes refers to this idea as the Honorable Harvest, where you only take what you need. For far too long, humans have been doing a whole lot of taking; too much taking; taking to the point of extinction; taking to the point of resource depletion; taking to the point, as some may say, of no return". ( https://www.burningbushforestchurch.ca/reflections--prayers) Here is a quote from her book: “all flourishing is mutual. We need the berries and the berries need us. Their gifts multiply by our care for them, and dwindle from our neglect. We are bound in a covenant of reciprocity, a pact of mutual responsibility to sustain those who sustain us.” (p 382) Through these Indigenous reflections, we begin to get a picture of what “only taking what we need” might look like. The Bible and "Taking Only What We Need" It is interesting to note that this Indigenous teaching is not very dominant within the Christian tradition, even though there are hints of it within the Bible. For example, the Lord’s Prayer is a common prayer spoken by many Christians, and many Christians know this prayer by memory. Have you ever considered that there is a phrase in this Lord’s Prayer that hints at this teaching? When I asked, during my meditation time in worship, what this phrase might be, there was a pause from the congregation but soon people responded, “give us this day our daily bread.” Does not this verse really mean, “God, give us this day what we really need, our daily bread?” Hearing this phrase in the Lord Prayer in this way causes me to pause. What does it really mean for God to give us this day what we really need? In the Bible, there is also an Old Testament story that highlights the importance of the Hebrew people looking to God to provide for their daily needs. This Old Testament scripture captures the speech the Hebrew people heard before they entered the Promised Land. This speech begins by Moses reminding the Hebrew people how God had provided for them in the past. When they were starving in the wilderness, after having fled from slavery in Egypt, God provided them with a mysterious substance called manna that appeared like dew each morning. They were told to just gather enough manna for what they needed on that day; on Friday, they could gather enough manna for two days because of the Sabbath. If they gathered more manna, the manna would rot and become infested with worms. Taking more than what they needed led to real physical consequences for the Hebrew people. Through eating bad food, they would get sickness, even die. They had to learn to live one day at a time, trusting that God would always provide what they needed. They had to learn to take only what they needed, no more. Moses, after reminding them of God’s faithfulness. then looks into the future. It is interesting how Moses saw the dangers of being in the Promise Land where people were not longer required to live from hand to mouth. They now had bountiful harvest but with this bountiful harvest, Moses noted, came the risk of believing that we, humans, now controlled our destiny, that God was no longer needed or necessary. We would outgrow God. Little did they know back then that human’s unsatiable desire for bigger and bigger bountiful harvest could lead to damaging Mother Earth. However this text in Deuteronomy does hint that there are consequences… “If you do forget the Lord your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish” (Deut 8:19) We are beginning to understand what this perishing might look like as we begin to see the impact of climate change and how we are taking more from Mother Earth then we need. We are also seeing the impact of us taking more than we need in terms of the human community around the world, where the rich get richer and poorer get poorer. These disparities are breeding conflict throughout the globe through political unrest, polarization, and distrust in governments, corporations, and human leadership. There is a third Bible text that can be tied to this practice of “only taking what we need.” It is often called the Golden Rule…where we are to treat others as we want to be treated. One version of this golden rule is found is Luke 6. “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” I used to think that the golden rule was the highest standard of love and human treatment one could practice. Until this past year… when I learned about the Platinum Rule. Has anyone heard of the platinum rule? Rather than “treat others as we like to be treated”, which is defining actions of love based on what we want, the platinum rule says this “we treat others in ways that is best for them.” Now, that is a totally unselfish understanding of love. If we were to practice the platinum rule, would we take as much as we wanted…or would we take only what we needed, or would we even go a step further, thinking about the needs of others first before we do any taking. We live in culture that sees our Creation, Mother Earth, as a resource that we can take and use as much as we want. We have had little sense of the Indigenous teaching where we take only what we need. It is only just in my recent lifetime are we seeing the consequences of such selfish thinking and the hurtful actions that come from such thinking. Children Story "The Octopus and the Shark" There is a children story that illustrates this point vividly. The story is called the Octopus and the Shark. The story comes from an excellent movie titled “ Short Term 12” (2013), a story based on the challenges for caring for young teens in a group home, that I watched a couple of months ago. Here is a link to a clip from this movie that contains the following story (https://thatnameasif.medium.com/short-term-12-shark-octopus-story-1fe16bfd1fe1). (In this movie, this octopus and shark story is used in the context of parental sexual abuse, not abuse of Mother Earth as I am using it here) Once upon a time, somewhere miles and miles beneath the surface of the ocean, there lived a young octopus named Nina. Nina spent most of her time alone, making strange creations out of rocks and shells. And she was very happy. But then, on Monday, the Shark showed up. “What’s your name?” said the Shark. “Nina,” she replied. “Do you want to be my friend?” he asked. “Okay, what do I have to do?” Said Nina “Not much,” said the Shark, “Just let me eat one of your arms.” Nina had never had a friend before, so she wondered if this was what you had to do to get one. She looked down at her eight arms, and decided it wouldn’t be so bad to give up one. So she donated an arm to her wonderful new friend. Every day that week, Nina and the Shark would play together. They explored caves, built castles of sand, and swam really really fast. And every night, the Shark would be hungry, and Nina would give him another one of her arms to eat. On Sunday, after playing all day, the Shark told Nina that he was very hungry. “I don’t understand,” she said. “I’ve already given you six of my arms, and now you want one more?” The shark looked at her with a friendly smile and said, “I don’t want one. This time I want them all.” “But why?” Nina asked. And the shark replied, “Because that’s what friends are for.” When the shark finished his meal that night, he felt very sad and lonely. He missed having someone to explore caves, build castles and swim really really fast with. He missed Nina very much. So, he swam away to find another friend. The children story you have just heard provides a vivid picture of how many humans and corporations treat Mother Earth...like the shark treated the octopus. What would it look like if we were a true friend to Mother Earth and only took what we needed, and no more. What would it look like for us to practice the Platinum rule with Mother Earth…where she is treated in a way that is best for her needs, not ours. Small Groups Reflection Following this story, I had the congregation break into smalls groups of 10 to 15 people. In these groups, I got them to reflect upon the following three questions: 1. How is Mother Earth like the octopus in the children story? What are the sacrifices Mother Earth is making for humanity? 2. What makes it so hard to live out the practice of "only taking what we need"? What are the cultural beliefs and practices that get in the way? 3. What are some ways we could begin to practice "only taking what we need"? After 15 minutes, the small groups returned to one large group and I invited each group leader to share some highlights from their discussion. Questions 2 and 3 were the questions that caught the most traction within the groups. Let me share some of the responses I heard about question 2:
In terms of question 3, here are some of the responses I heard:
Closing Reflection There is one more feature that is unique to the octopus. It is very uncommon to find a octopus that has fewer than eight arms, at least partial arms. The reason for this is that as soon as an arm is lost or damaged, a regrowth process kicks in to make the limb whole again. While many lizards regrow their tails, these tails are of poorer quality than the original tail. Not so with octopuses. When the arm grows back, it is basically as good as new. I share this unique trait of the octopus because Mother Earth has similar regenerative properties. I remember the days in my youth when Lake Erie was a dead lake. In the 1950s. the population of fish plummeted due to overfishing caused by gill nets. Furthermore, it was due to human pollution. In fact, the pollution was so bad due to combustible chemicals that in 1969 the river that flowed through city of Cleveland into the Lake Erie caught on fire. But thanks to changes in laws outlawing gill net fishing, and changes in human behavior where we stop polluting the rivers flowing into Lake Erie, Lake Erie came back to life. During the past 5 years, the fishing for walleye and other fish in Lake Erie has been phenomenal. https://www.fieldandstream.com/sponsored-content/the-magnificent-resurrection-of-lake-erie-walleye-fishing/ This suggests that if we, humans, only take what we need and care for Mother Earth, Mother Earth has the potential to heal itself, to restore itself back to its original healthy condition.
Let us become friends of Mother Earth that care for her…rather than be like the shark that only see friends as a resource to be used. Let us truly become caregivers of our world and the many people who live within it. Amen. Let it be so. Gord Alton MDiv RP CASC Supervisor-Educator
2 Comments
MaryLynn Forrest
7/9/2023 05:15:16 pm
Hi Gord. A very insightful and true blog. Many years ago I was with an elder who was quite ill. She said to me : we can’t keep taking from Mother Earth without letting her replenish herself. This has stayed with me ever since and I now pay more attention to the teachings of the Indigenous people. We can learn a lot if we just listen…deeply. Thanks for this blog.
Reply
Gord Alton
8/7/2023 10:53:35 am
Thanks MaryLynn.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |