Season of Lent highlights ethic of self- restraint , giving to others
Could expanding periods of sacrifi ce common to many faiths ultimately help save our planet?
My vigorously atheist uncle always smiled when he acknowledged he stopped drinking alcohol during the Christian season of Lent.
Uncle George Fox opposed traditional Christian doctrines. But he had to admit there was something to be said for the religion’s roughly 40- day period of inner reflection and self- restraint.
He was a bit ahead of his time on the West Coast of Canada. Judging by news coverage and conversation, there seems to be a new movement in secularized North American society to take more seriously old rituals of self- discipline.
Along with Lent, the fasting and soul- searching that occur during Muslim Ramadan and Jewish Yom Kippur are attracting more attention in North American consumer culture. And many have adopted the self- restraining ethos of Buddhist- tinged vegetarianism.
My partner and I, since Ash Wednesday on March 5, have been avoiding alcohol during Lent, though it is, admittedly, only the most minor act of self- discipline. But it has brought up opportunities for contemplation and it generally feels refreshing.
What if the self- limiting principles of Lent and similar sacred periods were followed on a much deeper and more global level? Some believe it could have a profound impact on the planet, countering poverty and environmental degradation.
Self- restraint
Before we get to the larger vision, however, a few words about Lent.
It is traditionally a season in the Christian calendar devoted to penance, selfdenial and charity in advance of Easter, which marks the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross, followed by his spiritual resurrection. Lent echoes the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness, where he stared down temptations, such as the allure of power.
Beginning Ash Wednesday, when many Catholics and Protestants allow clergy to mark their foreheads with a cross made of ashes, Lent echoes rituals in Judaism, Islam and Buddhism. The ashes symbolize that human beings are mortal, and will ultimately return to “dust,” the Earth.
Even though many spiritual themes have been associated with Lent over the centuries, the principle that today seems to tie together the season is self- restraint.
The core message of Lent is we are finite creatures who only become fully human, fully alive, when we restrain our desires and excesses — and realize we are inextricably related to everything, particularly other humans, the transcendent and the natural world.
A Vancouver Buddhist has picked up on this Lenten theme of self- limitation in a piece in Convivium, an eclectic Canadian faith magazine that tends to advance a literate, Orthodox Christian world view.
Trevor Carolan, an author who was raised Roman Catholic before converting to Buddhism, applauds the Christian season of Lent for countering “consumer gluttony” and upholding “self- reflection and contrition.”
From his boyhood, Carolan remembers Lent as a period when families practised “inner strength;” whether it was mothers giving up cigarettes, fathers giving up drinking or children giving up chocolate. Carolan once shocked his friends by using Lent to abstain from smoking pot.
Every Lent, Carolan continues to reflect on how both Buddha and St. Francis walked away from a life of ease in order to serve and be kind. “I reflect … on the prayer of St. Francis, which echoes through time: ‘ Make me a channel of your peace … for it is in pardoning that we are pardoned.”
Hope for downtrodden
Few spiritual thinkers, however, have done more to promote the ethic of self- restraint than Sallie McFague, a renowned Vanderbilt University professor who has written many books, talked with the Dalai Lama and has been theologian in residence at the Vancouver School of Theology since 2000.
An outdoorswoman and ecologist, McFague has made self- limitation a central theme of her latest book, titled Sallie McFague: Collected Readings ( Fortress Press).
The book explains why humans need to develop the value of what the ancient Greeks called “kenosis,” which McFague defines as “self- limitation so that others may have place and space to grow and flourish.”
Believing self- restraint is keenly relevant to the global crises of poverty and environmental deterioration, McFague says Jesus’s life and death was a “mirror reflecting God’s own self- emptying love for others.”
Much like the ecumenical social- justice organization, KAIROS, which publishes Lenten meditations on its website, McFague believes if more people in the welloff West practised self- limitation ( which she equates with “self- emptying love”) it would give hope to the world’s downtrodden.
Building on previous books, including Blessed Are the Consumers: Climate Change and the Practice of Restraint, McFague also maintains humans need to practice selflimitation in energy consumption to save the planet from climate catastrophe.
Since she believes “self- giving” characterizes both divine and evolutionary processes, McFague says: “Loving God and sharing energy are one and the same thing. This kind of spirituality leads not only to delight and joy in the beauty of the world, but also to kenosis, limitation, self- restraint, ecological economics, a sense of finitude, the need to share space, as we come to realize who we are in the scheme of things.”
McFague’s work points to a spiritual paradox central to most world religions: That we can only find ourselves, can only live “abundant” lives,” by curtailing our desires and giving ourselves up for others.
For most people, Lent ends on the day that Christians call Maundy Thursday ( this year it is April 17), which is the night before Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
But it wouldn’t be a bad idea at all if we extended Lent’s ethic of self- restraint throughout the year.