Giving Up to Get a Lot

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JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Friends, it's happened again. My week and Ash Wednesday coincide once more, and, as your resident observant deist, I'm going to talk about it. In past years, I've pointed out the near-universal practice of fasting, shared my painful sacrifice of sweets, and we've discussed the day just past: Shrove Tuesday, a/k/a Pancake Day, a/k/a Mardi Gras (the consensus was none of us wanted to go to New Orleans for Carnival, but we all liked powdered-sugar pancakes and beignets.)





In some ways, February and March are ideal for revisiting some of the good resolutions and self-denial we were all  super charged up about on January 1st. We've all had the chance to fall off the wagon - did you really stick with the intermittent fasting? How are you doing with being nicer to your in-laws? A little wiser, a little more sober, we can take a look at the disciplines we'd like to integrate into our lives and take another crack at it.

Another reason? What else are you going to do to get through what's arguably the dreariest time of the year? Yes, okay, those of you in Arizona and Southern California are enjoying the weather God intended for the Garden of Eden. But, as Debs recently pointed out, for most of the rest of us, February, March and early April are one long, wet, chilly, slushy slog to Spring. What better time to gird your loins and Do Something Meaningful?






Do I have a suggestion for something meaningful? Readers, you know I do. The past two years, my church has asked us to consider abstaining from - or at least cutting down on - our habits that harm our local environments and our climate-challenge world. What does that look like? Let me share something written for our church newsletter by our own Celia Wakefield:

To observe "a season of penitence and fasting", takes some discipline. This discipline received new wheels last year as we were asked to cut back on single use items in our lives. Refusing straws, trying not to use one off containers for drinks etc.(Though I haven’t yet worked out how to enjoy a milk shake without that big paper beaker.) Carrying a small towel to class for hand washing, or a cloth napkin if it was lunch out on the run.

In addition, I worked on some other ways where I could do better. I carried reused plastic bags to the supermarket, or didn’t use a bag at all. Does one head of broccoli really need a bag? I bought fabric bags for veggie storage and to use when shopping. I made sure there were always shopping bags in the car. I also tried to cut down on paper products in day to day use. Instead of automatically reaching for paper towels, I stocked in more fabric dishtowels for spills. Washing my hands when out finds them drying on my butt more often than not! (So far no dread illness or reaction from that choice.) Even just shaking them after washing finds they are dry within a minute. 

 

What can we do to build on this this Lent? Save Water. Americans use on average 88 gallons of water daily. Colgate toothpaste prints on their wrapper that running water while brushing used 4 or more gallons. We read that dishwashers clean perfectly well when plates are not rinsed, and that saves water. This is from the EPA site - According to a 2014 Government Accountability Report, 40 out of 50 state water managers expect water shortages under average conditions in some portion of their states over the next decade. Well, not in Maine! In Maine we have the best water evah! But there are many more states facing scarcity.

Over the forty days I encourage you to think about your use of water. Please email --- with thoughts, saving ideas, your own water plan. We will share, expanding our ideas for the planet. 

So, Reds and Dear Readers, here's a challenge for you to get you through the next forty days until blissful spring - what changes can you make in your life to help the environment?

40 Days

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning, for many Christians around the world, of the season of Lent, a forty day period of  "fasting and abstinence."

Don't worry. I may write about an Episcopal priest, but I'm not going to sermonize you.  What fascinates me about Lent - about the idea of a time set apart with discipline and self-denial - is how widespread it is. Ramadan, in Islam. The Hindu festival of Navatri. The Days of Awe between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It seems as if wherever people gather together, they strike upon the idea of doing without. Voluntarily.

Of course, self-discipline and voluntarily doing without is practically the American way. We foreswear gluten, and carbs, and eggs and bad fats. We haul ourselves up on our exercise bikes and treadmills and dutifully put in the miles. While the citizens of France and Germany are enjoying their six-week vacations, we're putting in overtime at the office. Maybe calling our habits voluntary is a misnomer. Instead, it's a lot of cultural expectations and guilt.

Any country that pretty much invents a new eating disorder - orthorexia - has the "fasting" thing down pat. For most people, that's the definition of Lent, and Ramadan, and Yom Kippur. Giving up food, whether it be meat on Fridays or meals between sunrise and sunset. Giving up is another thing we're good at in contemporary America - we give up smoking, and eating animal products and toxic relationships. Sometimes, we're really stupid about the things we give up, like vaccines and privacy.


The problem is, it's too easy to give up things (I'm going to make a broad exception for cigarette smokers.) Lent rolls around and people will say, "I'm giving up chocolate." Or wine. Or tea. (I gave up tea one Lent while in law school and I nearly passed out from caffeine cravings during my Property Class.) The most devastating wits will inform you they are "giving up Lent." That one was old back in the days of the Avignon papacy. 

I don't mean to say that it's easy to stop eating Doritos or drinking beer for forty days - mmmm. Beer and Doritos. Just that when you live in a country where most of us have better food, warmer houses and more stuff than your average 15th century monarch, giving up Hersheys isn't much of a sacrifice.


What we are bad at is doing without. We don't like to do without giant agribusiness, or gas-hogging SUVS, or clothing that's cheap because it's made by people working for twenty-four cents an hour. We don't like to do without 139 channels and pizza delivery guys and really low property and income tax.  We're great at giving up - especially if what we're giving up is guaranteed to make us Lose Weight, Look Years Younger and Get Healthy in 21 Days. (Hint: it won't.)

There's something in human nature that wants to fast and abstain, in these short periods of time when, if you're lucky, self-discipline can work a transformation in you. Imagine what we could transform with a little less giving up and a lot more doing without. Or, to put what it took me nine paragraphs to convey into just two sentences, this is what the prophet says:

             Is not this the fast that I choose:
             to loose the bonds of wickedness,
             to undo the straps of the yoke,
             to let the oppressed go free,
             and to break every yoke?
   
             Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
             and bring the homeless poor into your house;
             when you see the naked, to cover him,
             and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?