Sunday 17th February 2002
Every major religion has its periods of fasting and abstinence. The aim is to help concentrate the mind and focus it on the spiritual nature of the Deity. In the Christian Religion these usually lead up to a specific event. Advent, the time of waiting for the Nativity of Christ had many days of suggested abstinence, the Three Ember Days being a main focus of self discipline, however here the intent was to heighten the eager anticipation of the Saviour's Birth rather than the rigorous restrictions of Lent, the period before the great Triumphant Feast of Easter. When I was a child Fridays in Lent were really quite grim as they were days of Fast rather than mere abstinence. Abstinence of course means the refraining from flesh foods i.e. meat or poultry, and in some strict establishments this was extended to include eggs as well.
Fasting if strictly followed for any length of time is a process which heightens the sensibilities. We now know that the light headedness and feeling of induced euphoria comes from stimulation of the endorphinal glands, a sensation sought after by anorexics, bulimics and people with exercise addictions alike. It is easy to see how in the Early Church this could have been confused with a spiritual state. Indeed Christ's fasting in the Desert raises the question of whether the devil or indeed the mountain top were actually there or endorphinally produced hallucinations. Curiously to me the latter makes them even more real, as inner demons are always harder to cope with; and the thought that Christ voluntarily suffered them is very reassuring to me. The more positive side of Fasting if not taken to extremes is that it removes the food element from our daily lives and clears space, if you like, to devote to the mystic and the spiritual. As a cook I am well aware how much of even the average day is given up to the buying preparing and eating of food.
I have always admired the pragmatism of the Church in adopting as holy practices some of those which exist from necessity, and giving them a benevolent and indeed beneficent slant.
Take the timing of Advent and Lent: Advent in midwinter was a necessary time to conserve foodstuffs but still maintain a proper diet against cold and infections. To me, the greatest Act of Faith in uneducated and primitive times is the celebration of a midwinter festival where believers use up dwindling food stocks for a much needed sugar high, and an affirmation that the sun and the spring will return. That the Church took Yule and turned it into the celebration of the greatest joy of Christianity, the Birth of the Saviour, was brilliant timing and an acceptance of the need for such a morale boost. After all there is no Biblical evidence that Christ was born at Christmas and I believe the date was not finalised until the 2nd century AD. Lent on the other hand was a time where food was fast running out, and the animals were breeding.
After all St Valentines day is the day the birds start nesting and mares are taken to the stallion, the salted meat from winter is gone and the hens are only just starting to lay. There was very little to eat and the body needed encouragement to eat green shoots, slippery elm bark, coiled newly emerged bracken croziers and such like foods to dispose of the winter bred scurvy. How clever to turn this necessity into Virtue: to drag hunger fed anxieties from introspection to focus on Faith, self sacrifice and God Triumphant.
It is quite fascinating to me that when the Reformation occurred and the fear of hell fire was removed from days of abstinence the Tudor Parliament passed 10 statutes trying to impose fish eating days. Fish days were important both to conserve live stock and to maintain the fishing fleet as a training ground for the Navy. All the statutes failed to have any effect despite the fact that the last one under Elizabeth I carried a top fine of £300, a fortune in 16th century England.
I heard an unidentified cleric say on the radio the other day, that it was now old hat to give things up for Lent; and I thought: how people pleasing, how foolish. We live in an age of plenty in 21st century Britain; poverty in many cases seems to constitute not being able afford a designer cell-phone or state of the art trainers. There is no seasonality in food, no shortages caused by climatic conditions, Last year's Foot and Mouth or this year's wet spring adversely affect our Farmers but there is no absence of imported products on the Supermarket shelves. Any restraint therefore must be self imposed, we can no longer make a virtue of shortages. This is harder, more demanding of self discipline and, per force, more rewarding. We are told the USA spends $50 billion on overseas aid and $500 billion on dieting; our own Government spends a fortune on advertising advising people to give up cigarettes, so I am not sure where my strange cleric got his idea that it is old fashioned to give things up. What has become unfashionable is to give things up for God!
I can remember my mother taking literally the old Christian Aid days where you ate bread and water for lunch and sent the price of the meal you'd saved to the Missions. We would all eat the prescribed meal and my mother would tot up the cost of her most lavish Dinner Party (and believe me, some of them were very lavish) and send off a cheque for that amount. It used to send my Father, a dedicated atheist, into paroxysms of rage.
I think in these days of plenty, self-indulgence and a rather cosy over-forgiving God, it is particularly important to Fast in Lent. After all, 1st century Judea was very similar to the present day: the Roman Empire imposed a nanny state on its subjects; it was a period not only of plenty but of lavish extravagance, after all Salome didn't ask for a square meal to be put on her golden dish; and even the harsh God of the Israelites had become somewhat toned down, semantics rather than hair shirts being all the rage.
Consider what a rarity John the Baptist was considered by his peers. Christ chose voluntarily to fast for 40 days and nights as a period of contemplation of the Path Ahead. I am as many of you will know, a recovering alcoholic, and for me the period of Lent is a good time to practice our 11th Step which reads "sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand him, seeking only to know his will for us and the power to carry that out". As someone said: religion is for those who don't want to go to hell, spirituality is for those who've been there, and it is going the extra mile, the self imposed self discipline that distinguishes the difference, What are you all doing for Lent?!
CLARISSA DICKSON WRIGHT
Writer, brodcaster and columnist, Clarissa Dickson Wright is perhaps best known for her on-screen partnership with the late Jennifer Paterson in "Two Fat Ladies."