I
met a woman named Audrey last week. She lives in Arctic Village,
Alaska. I met her when she stopped in to visit Florence, my host for the
night in the village, after church last Thursday. She came in for conversation
from the Arctic spring evening, still light at 9:30, and only 10 degrees below
zero (which is 40 degrees warmer than the winter!).
On
the way into the house, she passed the freshly hunted caribou left by the door
earlier in the evening. She offered to come by the next morning to
prepare the meat for Florence, an elder of the village. She did.
Her work produced three large sacks of fresh meat for Florence and her
family.
While
sitting around and talking, Audrey mentioned that she had prepared seven
caribou that day. She proudly showed me the tools she used, one with a
beautiful handle made of a bone worn and polished from many hours of Audrey’s
use. And Audrey described her work.
The
hunters bring her the caribou. She prepares them and places the meat in
heavy-duty sacks made of tarp-like material. Then she drags the bags on
the snow delivering the fresh meat that is the staple of the Athabascan diet to
the people of the village. She describes it as what she does now that her
arthritis prevents her from doing heavy work.
It
did not escape my attention that she was telling me about this immediately
after sharing in the village’s first Eucharist in several months and in the
same breath as how much she wants the traditions of the church to be taught to
the village’s children.
But
here’s the amazing thing to me. When asked how much she charged to
prepare a caribou, Audrey said, “Oh, I don’t charge anything. It’s just
what I do.” There was one exception. As long as people eat the meat
and share it with others, Audrey doesn’t charge anything. “But if they’re
going to take it to Fairbanks and sell it, then I charge.”
The
Athabascan people of Arctic Village have what we would describe as a
subsistence culture. Although this is changing, traditionally at least,
they hunt what they need to survive, they eat what they have hunted, and then
they hunt some more. They take what they need to survive from the herd
and from the land and no more. What Audrey does is part a living out of
that culture.
To my ears, formed in a European culture, subsistence
means something different than it does to Audrey. To me, it means barely being able
to survive. To Audrey, I learned, it just means surviving, something I
might more likely use the word living
to describe. My understanding leads me to ask, “How much do you
charge?” Audrey’s understanding is “It’s just what I do.” It’s just
about living. There is a world of difference.
I’m
not finished processing all the important things I think there are to learn from
Audrey, at least the ones I can grasp. But one of them seems to have
something to do with this Holy Week and the Easter that follows it.
I’m seeing the resurrection through the eyes of a new
understanding of subsistence this year. From Audrey’s perspective,
subsistence isn’t barely
enough. It is just enough.
One Eucharist in a few months isn’t barely
enough. It is just enough.
I
wonder if I’ve been looking at Jesus as barely enough. I think what
Easter may be about is that Jesus is just enough. That’s all that is
really necessary—enough. And really, that’s all I need to know about
it. It is enough. Anything beyond enough, like taking caribou meat
to Fairbanks, gets charged for.
Easter
is enough to survive. And it comes at absolutely no charge. When we
try to take more than we need, that’s when things get messed up. The way
of Jesus, the Easter way, is a subsistence spirituality, at least in an
Athabascan sense of the word. It is enough for living.
So
that’s the Easter I wish for all of you this year, a subsistence Easter, and
the peace that comes from knowing, not how much to charge, but that what we
have been given is enough, not barely
enough.
Happy
Easter!
Peace,
