Huw’s essay on Lenten praxis is well worth the read.

It’s finally here – today is “clean monday”, the fast has begun. So here’s the question: what is “the fast” all about anyway?

Athanasius writing in the fourth century said that a bit of moderate asceticism was useful for everyone – not just ascetics (read – monks, virgins, nuns and vowed widows). But the age of “asceticism” which has played an enormous role in shaping Christian praxis – is ostensibly over (something lamented by fifth and sixth century writers). Does this mean that the Great Fast no longer has purpose?

The fast before Pascha has taken on a life of its own – originating in an act of solidarity with those preparing for baptism it has grown from a one week communal event to a 50 day extravaganza. This is not a bad thing – rather it is simply the natural progression this practice took.

Similarly – in modern practice at least – many of the “mini lents” that preceded the major feast days are no longer observed – instead our communal act of asceticism and solidarity has been collected, sorted, and sunk into “Great Lent”. Are we not perhaps missing out on a valuable opportunity for re-investing in personal and communal praxis?

Stepping away from the mechanics of the when, and how of fasting – lets look at the connection between the act of fasting and the theology of food, and the relationship we as sacramental Christians have with food, and with one another through the symbolism of foods and eating. Without looking in your copy of the Gospels – recall some of the major “it” moments in the Gospels: the wedding at Cana, the feeding of the multitude, dining with Zaccheus, Jesus annointed by the woman with the alabaster jar, the last supper, the revealation on the road to Emmeus . . . Each of these major moments in the unfolding of the Salvation narrative happened in the context of a meal – of sharing food. Food, the act of eating together and alone has theological value in sacramental Christianity. If you missed that, what were you doing when you last went to liturgy?

But “food” and eating is something we in Western Europe often take for granted – it is unconsciously separted from our experience of the sacred. We rush out to grab a sandwich or a take-away during the working day – in order to inhale it at our desk, and continue ploughing through work. We attend lavish balls and parties because it is an expression of the host’s largesse (read – wealth and self importance), and it gives us a notch on the bed-post of our own accumulated status. Food is a means to an end, a means of aquiring status, but it has no overt or intrinsic link with our spirituality in day to day affairs. Periods of “fasting” throughout the liturgical year then can help us re-tune that link, restore awareness of the value and meaning of choosing, preparing, and eating a meal. Cooking and eating as praxis – who would have thought!

Revisiting the idea of solidarity for a moment – many of us are increasingly aware of how our consumer choices are having an impact on the environment, and on others. The recent mad dash for bio-fuel has meant that poor nations seeking to reap the immediate benefits of a cash crop switch from food production that is consumed locally, to crop production which is then taken away in exchange for money. The problem of course is that when you are no longer producing your own food – you have to buy it, possibly from a more expensive, non-local source. Throughout the Great Fast we can take the opportunity to choose differently, and in so doing perhaps make a positive contribution to those who have fewer choices available. This by the way ought not to be taken as a replacement for our duty to give alms during Lent.

For the reasons of solidarity with others, of re-investing in the relationship between food and praxis, I’ve wondered out loud for the past few years if it would not be better to resurrect the older model of multiple mini-fasts throughout the year. This would have the effect (in theory at least) of developing a year round awareness, and praxis rather than the mad dash to cram an enormous amount of meaning and activism into one month.

Today we commemorate the expulsion of Adam & Eve from Paradise – in preparation for the beginning of Lent tomorrow (Monday), and Cyril & Methodius Enlighteners of the Slavs. Notice something missing (ha ha ha)?

The expulsion from Paradise cannot, must not be seen as “history” in the strictest sense of the word. Rather it can only be appreciated as mythology – and there is nothing wrong with that – indeed it is through the imagery of mythology that some of our most nuanced perceptions of the divine-human relationship can be communicated, reflected upon, and even acted upon.

Adam & Eve’s exile is not about a petulant divinity having a bad hair day and giving the first humans a very long time out in the cosmic no no corner. This overly simplistic view of the opening narratives of scripture only leads to some very bad theology – such as the abominable belief that humans are intrinsically evil, naturally bad, or loathsome. To be sure we often act that way towards one another but it is certainly not the natural state of play.

The exile from paradise is about a loss of trust, a breakdown in confidence, and its consequences. Eve was persuaded by the slick presentation style of the Serpent and in a momentary lapse of good judgement, reason, and trust in God – she lost everything. Eve was not evil, nor was she treacherous, or deceitful, rather she heard the argument, and made a choice, thinking that the grass just might be greener on the other side.

What she and Adam soon discovered however, was that there was nothing but dust and rocks on the other side and now they were very much alone.

There is another piece of the puzzle here. When we loose confidence in another, and the intimacy once shared dissipates, or is held in suspension, our sense of who we are shifts, our identity is altered. Adam & Eve were created out of an expression of love. As such the finite nature of created things was intolerable to God, and so he infused them with the image of the Logos. When Adam & Eve instead chose a relationship with Death (through the deception of the Serpent) their identity shifted, and that infusion of divine reason, of Life itself, was lost. Thus, Adam laments his nakedness: “before the gates of Paradise, bewailing his nakedness and crying out – “Woe to me the loser who have listened to wicked deceit and have been driven away from glory!”

The Irish politician Feargal Quinn has written in the Irish Times (27 March) that the EU must set a fixed date for Pascha. His argument runs that the movable date is inconvenient to parents and schools organising vacations, and time off. That it negatively affects the tourist industry, and causes inefficiency in other businesses attempting to market their Easter related products. The current system, asserts the Senator, is considered by many to be a hassle and needs to be fixed. The EU he points out is great at unifying and systematising things – so why not the date of Easter? Afterall, it would, he believes, be enormously popular since we all find the movable date of Easter so irritating.

First lets deal with the most obvious issue. As part of Quinn’s argument he attacks the Orthodox for, as he says, being the ones preventing the adoption of the WCC proposed unified date of Easter (never mind the fact that it would still be a moveable feast!). If the EU were to undertake the project, it is unlikely that the rest of the world will follow suit. Think about this for a minute, we need only look at developments in the Anglican communion over the past ten years to see that Nigeria and her sister churches would see this as yet another decadent, heterodox intrusion by the liberal homosexuals in Brussels. Now – we have three, no, four dates of Easter. I can imagine any number of churches in the US that would follow suit.

There’s another problem here too and that is – if the EU, a secular authority is to set the calculations for one religious festival, then for the sake of consistency, and fairness – it must set them all. So, what do you think of the new European wide Pascha-Ramada-Pesach? It would be efficient – Muslims, Christians and Jews would celebrate their major feast on the same day, making it easier for the tourism industry, soccer mom, and oh, of course lets not forget the all important businessman trying to make a living by hawking tawdry holiday crap at a time convenient for him.

Yeah, there’s a reason why it’s a religious festival and not a secular one. Our calendar is messy – true. But it’s got character, and history, and it makes the liturgical year have a sense of organic rhythm that it would most surely lose if we started pegging our movable feasts down – not for reasons of discernment, and good praxis but for “convenience”.

I’m all for a unified date of Pascha – it is, interestingly enough, the only festival that that ancient canons specifically state must be celebrated by the whole church on the same day. Other feasts have regional variations even now. But, it also took over 300 years to arrive at the decision for a unified date of Easter.

My own community, until recently, struggled with the problem of the two Pascha’s for over a decade – because we had both Eastern and Western rite communities and missions. Every year we would raise the spectre of debating the date, and every year we had to set it aside because neither side was happy to abandon its “traditional” date – and it must be said for some very interesting, and very well thought out reasons.

I raise this point not only to place this firmly within an OC/IC context, but to make the point that it is not a theological, or even a traditional reason that we should be concerned about a unified date of Pascha – but an ekklesiological one: that on this one day the whole Christian world confess “with one heart and one mind” our trust in the risen Christ, and to celebrate together our liberation from the fear of the dark places through which we must sometimes walk alone. Every year in our community as Great Lent arrived the old divisions between the two sides of the community emerged, and one side tried to push forward its own date. Every year we were reminded of how fragile a union we shared, and how, dis-unified in some respects we truly were as a “community”. Pascha is about our union with Christ, as much as it ought to be about our reaffermation to be in union with one another as community – locally, within our individual parishes and synods. If we can do that – then I’d venture to guess that we could learn to become a stronger “community” across the OC/IC movement.

Every week during the liturgy we sing the cherubikon: “Let us who mystically represent the cherubim . . . now lay aside all earthy care that we may welcome the king of all invisibly escorted by angelic hosts . . .” How often have we sat and reflected on what it is we are saying here? What does it have to do with the Great Fast?

Oliver Burkeman wrote an interesting column in the Guardian a few weeks ago. Citing Thomas Merton, Burkeman observes that the overload, and stress we create in our lives through “busyness” and “multitasking” has become a twisted form of self harm, a “frenzy that destroys our inner capacity for peace.” But the “problem” is not merely created by our modern way of life – though to be sure, unchecked it does have a way of gaining overwhelming momentum, dragging us through the streets of chaos – rather we are actively responsible for it as well. Psychologists have argued that this maniacal busyness is not only a perverted, inefficient method of bolstering our individual self worth, but it s also an avoidance mechanism enabling us to not delve into important questions, and make needed positive change in our lives. And so, we “claim” to have no time for X since we don’t even have five minutes for ourselves.

During the Great Fast our “discipline” (asceticism) changes radically. Because of the traditional food customs – no meat, no dairy, etc. – we are cutting things out, setting things aside. We have to consciously think about the ingredients we use, and often find that we have to do more food preparation ourselves because of it. This requires “time” and patience. It requires a degree of focus, not just now, but three days from now – not necessary to open a box of M&S ready meal and pop it in the microwave. There is therefore a quality of time spent issue here. How much of our “busyness” is time spent in quality activity? How much time in our day to we fill with insubstantial “stuff” treating it all with the same sense of value and urgency? How much of it really needs to be in our day? What can be dispensed with, making room for reflection, silence, companionship, and a quality meal – the things that transform our living, enriching our sense of “being” in the moment, with Christ, and with one another.

How full is your mental inbox . . . I mean truly how full is it? Now is the time – this is the season – to really, truly train ourselves to “lay aside all earthly care” and recieve the King of Glory.

**PS – yes, I’m behind a bit here . .  . . I’ve been .  . . “busy”

Consider for a moment what it is we “do” during Lent. Because of the fast, we consciously consider our diet, we adjust what we eat, we are increasingly aware of the ingredients – are they vegetarian or not. During Lent the discipline of the season shapes our daily life, it informs and refines our choices. But too often our focus is on “following the rules” because this is the tradition – rather than the purpose and effect of practicing “discipline” or asceticism.

The discipline of Lent is not about deprivation and dieting. The discipline of Lent like any ascetic practice, is about refinement and conscious action. Our fasting practice erupts into our daily life and challenges us to integrate spiritual practice into daily life. Too often we divide the two letting one overshadow the other, compartmentalising the “public” and the “private” aspects of our life. So here’s the question – in your experience of our Christian faith which is public, and which is private? Does this paradigm require an adjustment? How can you carry this conscious integration into your post-Lent living?

Half way through the first week of lent the first stichera of Vespers points to Isa 58 and, reminds us of the purpose of the great fast. “While fasting with the body, brethren, let us also fast in spirit.” Sack cloth and ashes, surrendering chocolate and beer – too often the discipline of lent is seen as our annual demonstration of personal holiness, an attempt to attract the benevolent attention of God, if only for a short time. God likes our suffering – because it shows our solidarity with him. This brutal perspective is both warped and joyless. It focuses on the “rules” of fasting and attention to religious rites rather than the conscious integration of important ideas of our faith into the life of the community.

“This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke; sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own. . . . If you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech; if you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted; Then light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday . . .” (Isa. 58. 6-10)

Fasting in Spirit then is an expression of solidarity with humanity (itself a living ikon of Christ); and an expression of how we are Christ in the world, and to the world by embodying the teachings of the Master – transforming the world around us one encounter at a time.

There has been a mini-media storm here in the UK cultivated by a number of Christian figures and organisations claiming that “we” [Christians] are persecuted in Britain. Um . . . er. . . . yeah. . . .not so much, no. When I consider that Chinese Christians are imprisoned, Indian Christians are murdered, and Iraqi preists have been murdered, and Pakistani Christians imprisoned, and even executed I cannot take seriously the shrill complaints of some of my co-religionists that they are “persecuted” in a relatively liberal western industrialised state.

Over the past decade I’ve observed, both in the US and in the UK, how some Christian groups employ the term “persecution” as a cipher for “they don’t like us”. This raises some other interesting observations and questions about how Christianity is lived in today’s world of competing religious ideologies and “Christianities”.

It does seem that this shrill complaint about Christian persecution is simply one way of drawing attention to one’s particular Christianity, an attempt at scrambling to the top of the pile. There are however, negative consequences to this method, including an ever-increasing marginalisation of the authentic “voice” of Christianity – the voice of substance and praxis, rather than of perceived slights and hysterical screeching. A brief scan of recent media reports on the perceived slights decried as “persecution” demonstrates that no one is actually listening, rather they are gawking at the silly freaks on the street corner moaning about how nobody likes them.

The fact is – we ought to be looking to those in the faith, regardless of their tradition, who are in fact true confessors, and yes, even modern martyrs, who under the strain of true persecution continue to live the faith, and confess their conviction that the teachings of Christ are transformative.