Lenten listlessness

One week down, almost six to go. Bet a lot of you didn't know that.

I'll be honest: I'm not taking the season as seriously as I once did. Oh, I did all kinds of fast-like things at times. My high-point, I think, was while I was in California, hustling my way through the Silicon-Valley buzz. There are all kinds of fasts these days. A brief internet search will reveal way more than you ever wanted to know. Being a fan of tradition (while not being a slave to it), I've always leaned toward the more well-known ways of participating in the season: giving up meat, beer, alcohol in general, sweets, you know, that kind of thing, but one year I decided to get real about it all.

In the olden times, Jews, for example, fasted on Mondays and Thursdays; the early Christians, in order to differentiate themselves from their primarily Jewish brethren, chose Tuesdays and Fridays as fast days. That's why when I was growing up, my Catholic friends couldn't eat meat on Friday, but that got loosened in the past few years and meatless Tuesdays have popped up again. All my Catholic friends that I asked couldn't tell me why that all was, but I really don't expect most people know why they do half the things they do. Nevertheless, I decided, on a whim -- how else? -- to do the "real deal", or at least what I could determine that might have been.

It turns out this regular fasting meant drinking only water during the day, and when the sun went down, eating only bread and salt. (The bread part is obvious, and if you ever spent any time in a desert, you get the salt part too.) I wasn't going to get this past the family, of course, being that at most times they're more concerned about dad's health than their own, I compromised. I only had water during the day, and after sundown, only something light for dinner: a tomato-and-lettuce sandwich, a bowl of cereal, you know, something like that. Oh, I still had to put up with a lot of squawking, but each intercession gave me an opportunity to at least thematicize Lent-relevant topics, like fasting, belief, physical needs, habits ... a whole array of topics. You should know that dinnertime in our household was more a food-augmented discussion rather than a meal in the traditional sense of the word, even when it wasn't Lent. Evening dinner in our house could go on for hours; to me (and I think to the others) it was special time together.

No, I had no enlightening experience during those 40 days, but you couldn't help but notice that the world was different. I finally realized how little is actually required in order to get along physically well, and that the time spent with the family, even without eating, is time that cannot be better spent. I came to see that what we truly need is not necessarily food, though there is a lower limit we should not -- and cannot -- dip below, but rather the presence and interaction of others that makes all the difference in the world. I also finally understood that Life is something to which we are connected by the slightest of gossamer threads. And, I grokked what it means to be thankful, for the least of anything. The last lesson was the surprise lesson of the exercise. The food I ate in the evening were some of the best meals I have ever had.

We all have to gather our own experiences in this phase and time of our existence. No one will argue that. But, I can assure you that too many of us miss far too many opportunities to get the most out of the experiences we have. Sometimes it takes a lot of effort. Sometimes a very slight shift in viewpoint -- like a fast, for example, during Lent -- can give us just the nudge we need. If you never look, you'll never see.

What are you giving up?

Yes, it's Lent ... the 40-day fast leading up to Easter. It's the time of fasting, of preparation, of ... well, my Christian friends should know what I'm talking about. Truth be told, it's them I think about most at such times.

Yes, I have quite a number of friends and acquantances who have accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior and who have been washed clean by the Blood of the Lamb and are ... according to them ... guaranteed a place in Heaven. Just like the guy who shot up those people at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado.

I know, I know ... I shouldn't be so cynical. You're right. I shouldn't be, but unfortunately, I can't help but be when confronted with ideas like that.

I have other friends, you know. Yep, friends who are intelligent, enlightened, awakened, who know that all that religion stuff if mumbo-jumbo and only science holds the keys to truth. Yes, these self-proclaimed Enlightened Ones also missed the quantum-physical revolution in which it became clear that matter is scientifically verified to be an illusion and something other than matter and alleged laws drive the universe. There is more than one form of superstition alive and well in the world.

If you think I'm picking on either of these groups, you would be sorely mistaken. I'm not. Why should I? As long as they believe what they believe and don't try to make others accept their own personal delusions and are not harming anyone, why should it bother me. At heart, they're all really nice people: friendly, generous in their own ways, and wanting nothing more that the world be less violent, unjust, and surreal than it is. Good luck.

Whether you think Easter is anything worth celebrating, it is, like Christmas (though under under names) a festival that has been celebrated since time immemorial. Yes, animistic, mythic, pagan, Christian ... it doesn't matter. At this time of year, somebody somewhere had some reason to celebrate and it's still around today. The "reasons" may be different, but we celebrate all the same. In times passed, people prepared for their celebrations. Today, well, we have no need to do anything we don't want to or don't feel like doing. We're free and liberated human beings -- or so we like to think -- and besides, we're going to Heaven anyway: after all, we said the right words in the right way at the right time in the right place. What could possibly go wrong?

There was (and still is) something of a reason for Lent, and an even more important reason for observing it. Even as obscure as it is, Lent is (yet another) opportunity to get in touch with your real you, the you inside, the you you've been avoiding as long as you've been alive, the you that's brought the world to the eve of destruction (to paraphrase and capitalize on a well-known oldie-but-goodie).

OK, giving something up for Lent won't save the world. I don't think it will even save just you alone. But giving things up, denying yourself something you really like, even if just for a short period of time, if done seriously, can help you get a different view of the world in which you find yourself. It doesn't hurt, and who knows what good might come of it.

Of course, if you already have a get-out-of-hell-free card it doesn't matter, just as it doesn't matter that you believe nothing at all. The real world, though, is still somewhere in-between, where the rest of us mere humans live.

Hold fast to your fast fast

It's not a good sentence (the title), but it's grammatically correct. That's what's so fascinating about language: the statement can be completely correct, but it means little, and sometimes nothing at all (as in, who can forget Chomsky's infamous "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously"? Whereby I find that particular sentence more poignant than many I've heard in the latest run-up to the primaries in America.) Yes, yesterday was the the kick-off, so to speak, and tomorrow is the big day: Tomorrow, Lent begins. Are you going to fast, or are you above all that? And, if you are, do you know why you are doing it? It's all not self-evident, you know, even if you think it's clear.

I don't know many people who fast anymore, other than for dietary reasons. It used to be that everyone fasted two days a week (Monday and Thursday, if you were Jewish; Tuesday and Friday, if Christian ... tells you something doesn't it?). At least for my Roman Catholic-influenced friends, bells should be ringing. What is more, there were particular times of year (for example, since we mentioned it recently, from 11 November till Christmas, and now Lent, prior to Easter ... which is also two times, which should also tell you something).

Some people will tell you that this was because food was scarce and it simply made good economic sense. Others will tell you, well, nothing, because they have no idea or never thought about it. Most people familiar with religion don't really know why these fasts were proclaimed, and the only ones we ever really hear about these days -- and this most often in an act of belittling and denigration -- is Ramadan, the great Muslim fast of the year. In a religious context, however, it was always about being aware of one's own body (and its needs) in contrast to the Spirit which was, at times, seen complementary to the body and since the rise of the Church (and certainly since Descartes) as its opponent, if not enemy.

When seen in such simplistic terms, I agree, we should just stomp it all into the wastebasket (dustbin, for my Anglo friends). This playing off of the body against the spirit was one way of looking at things, to be sure, and it served its purpose in its time, but we should be beyond that now. Having said that, though, we would be remiss in dismissing the spirit because it doesn't fit into our materialistic worldview. Even serious physicists have acknowledged that consciousness (yes, spirit) has an important and intimate relationship with matter. Perhaps it is time to start rethinking some of the things that we simply take for granted as true.

Body and mind are not a duality, they are part of a whole that is greater than either of them, a synergy, if you will. Our mind can affect our bodies (self-healing of congenital illnesses, psychosomatic illnesses) and our bodies certainly affect our minds (ever try to solve a life-crisis when you're ill?).

Fasting -- and there are many ways to describe it -- is, if properly understood, a way of reactivating the link between the physical and non-physical. Instead of merely thinking that this is another old custom that has outlived its usefulness, perhaps we should slow down, reconsider and recognize that there were good reasons for things long before we even knew what reasons were.

Lenten blues

It's time for a change of pace. Did you know we're already a third of the way through Lent?

It's not clear to me that all of us are up to speed on Lent. Oh, I'm not pushing a religious agenda here. I firmly believe that everyone has to decide to believe what is best for them. What I've always liked about religions though has been their feast and fest days. They have times of year when there are good things to eat and one is encouraged to share them with others. We all enjoy good food and good company, so regardless of the "reason", these are good times to keep an eye out for.

OK, for those who know, Lent is pretty much the opposite of that. For those who aren't so familiar with the tradition, let me bring you up to speed:

These days, Lent is considered roughly the period between Ash Wednesday (the end of Carnevale or Mardi Gras) and Easter. Traditionally, in the Roman Church, it lasted from the Sunday after Ash Wednesday (known in the church calendar as Quadragesima, derived from the Latin word for "fortieth", since there are exactly forty days from then until Good Friday (the Friday before Easter). The starting and ending dates were changed along the way, so that there just wouldn't be forty days in this time, rather forty workdays in (that is, not counting Sundays). Traditionally, and even for many to this day, it was a time of doing penitence either through fasting or simply giving up luxuries; it was a period of preparation for the High Holiday of Easter. In fact, in German it is still referred to as Fastenzeit (Fasting Time). I'm sure there are a lot of you who see in this just another way for a powerful organization to keep a stronger thumb on its members, but if you stop to think about it, it's a lot more meaningful that it may first appear.

Giving something up, be it chocolate, meat, going to the movies ... it really doesn't matter ... brings this simple, generally harmless, thing more sharply into focus. By consciously doing without something, we come to realize just what a role it plays in our lives. As I'm not a big chocolate fan, giving up chocolate would not only be easy, but more importantly, I probably wouldn't even notice it. I wouldn't miss it for the simple reason that it doesn't play a very big part in my life. If what I've decided to give up plays a big enough role, however, I will find myself thinking about it, and each time I do, I have an opportunity to reflect upon why this particular thing plays such an important role in my life. In other words, consciously doing without something makes us generally more aware, of ourselves and what we are doing with our lives.

This isn't a great exercise in awakening or illumination, and it certainly isn't a systematic means of punishment for alleged transgressions. There is value, though, in stopping to reflect from time to time on what is important and not so important for us, what moves us and what leaves us cold, what we are and what we'd like to be. Awareness ... particularly self-awareness ... isn't a bad thing. Too bad we don't take the opportunities we are given, even when we are being reminded of them. Such is Lent.