In the Thick of Lent

It's funny to me that spring is at once bursting with promise and notoriously lean. The bursting-with-promise part is easy to imagine as spring bulbs begin to pop up everywhere. However, the notoriously lean part only occurred to me after reading (or re-reading) one of my favorite non-fiction books, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver. The second-to-last chapter in Kingsolver's book about eating locally with her family for a year is entitled "Hungry Month: February-March." She writes:

"January is widely held to be the bugbear of local food, but the hungriest month is March, if you plan to see this thing through. Your stores are dwindling, your potatoes are sending pale feelers out into the void, but for most of us there is nothing new under the sun of muddy March, however it might intend to go out like a lamb. A few spring wildflowers, maybe, but no real eats. Our family was getting down to the bottom of our barrel" (322).

She goes on to extol the wonders of the chest freezer, but I won't go into that here. :)

When I take my almost daily walks up to Whitworth's campus, it doesn't look like spring will ever come. The grass is dank and yellowed and it's hard to imagine it will ever be lush and green or that the trees will ever have blossoms and leaves. If you really do live off the land and what you have to eat is all in your freezer and root cellar, you have to be creative with what you have left. The root veggies of winter are wrinkled and woody and the asparagus, lettuce, and spinach of spring are only just beginning. It's an awkward, in-between time.

I'm definitely in the thick of my Lenten discipline. We're already four weeks from Ash Wednesday, but we're still two-and-a-half weeks from Easter. For one deprived of sugar on a daily basis, Easter seems especially distant. (As I write, my housemate is making double chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen. Really? Is this fair?!) If I'm honest with myself, I am longing for Easter, but I also like that Easter feels distant and that my deprivation weighs on me and temptation surrounds me. These are the necessary and even, dare I say, good rigors of Lent. I love that the Church Year acknowledges the times in the course of a normal human life that are in limbo. It's not winter and not yet spring. It's not Christmas and not yet Easter. Primroses on racks outside Fred Meyer and royal purple crocuses are the only harbingers of spring.

That makes me wonder about the harbingers of Easter. When we look to Jesus' life and ministry, I would say baptism, temptation, cross, and grave. The road ahead of us to Easter is Lenten and is so very like this time between winter and spring. Where there is life after Easter and spring, we see only death during Lent. Yellowed grass and gnarled trees. Temptation and deprivation. Sin and selfishness.

But the great news about Easter is that it radically changes everything, and it's not just the appearance of things that change. It's not just that the grass becomes green and lush and the trees bud and the flowers bloom. It's not just that I can once again eat cookies and ice cream. It's that our very nature changes.

"We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ...for when we died with Christ [in baptism] we were set free from the power of sin. And since we died with Christ, we know we will also live with him" (Romans 6:6-8).

Temptation gives way to victory. Darkness becomes light. Death leads to life. And, best of all, the crucified Christ becomes the Risen Christ.

I Declare February to be Freezer-Emptying Month

My blog tends to catch me at the highs or lows of life. I'm particularly tired tonight, and I think it's because I've had several particularly long days of work and lots of desserts in the past few days. A couple people at lunch today at Partners hypothesized that eating sugar makes one feel groggy and sluggish. I've given up sugar for Lent at least twice before, and it's my plan again this year. I'm actually quite looking forward to it. Sometimes food can be a kind of bondage and fasting has a great way of freeing us.

As part of this Lenten initiative, I decided that I would try to use up what's in my chest freezer downstairs. The majority of what's in there is chicken broth, tomatoes, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, and peaches, so this is going to be a fruit-sweet month. Good timing! I will keep you informed of my progress in emptying my freezer.

I have found two creative uses for my freezer food this Monday. I'm hosting a children's ministry committee meeting for church. The other challenge in making this meal is that our group has a vegetarian, two gluten intolerant folks, and one person who avoids dairy. After much deliberation, I decided to make a pot of chili with tomatoes from my freezer. To this, people can add in sour cream, shredded cheese (also from the freezer), and onions and/or scoop up chili with gluten-free Fritos or corn tortilla chips. I'll make a big salad with a balsamic dressing. For dessert, I'm going to serve vanilla ice cream (thank you Tillamook and Fred Meyer for the sale this week!) with lightly thawed peaches and blueberries and homemade hot fudge sauce. Yum! I'm also making a gluten-free, no-bake cookie that has cornflakes, peanut butter, and butterscotch chips.

It sounds extensive, but it's really a ridiculously easy meal for company since so much can be prepared a day or two before. So, slowly but surely, I will clear out the old in the freezer and make room for the new.

Tonight, I volunteered with a friend from church at the Mead Food Bank. We packaged food based on the number of family members. I was in charge of the fruit station. I grabbed a random can and happened to look at it before putting it on the scale: shoestring beets. I almost gagged. I sneakily moved that can to the back and grabbed a can of sliced peaches instead. As I continued to pile cans of fruit cocktail, applesauce, and pears in plastic bags, I had to wonder. Since when did I become so fortunate that I had so much wonderful, fresh/frozen fruit in my freezer? Volunteering, like walking and fasting, gave me a new perspective.

I'm praying that this Lent will be all about new perspectives. I need a new perspective on my sinfulness, so that I understand Christ's mercy and grace more fully. I need a new perspective on life to realize anew that life is enriched by love of God and others. I need a refreshed view of food as something to enjoy in its proper place. Lent is about stripping away the old to bring in the new life of Christ, and I'm ready for it.

How do you plan to mark the season of Lent? Will you add a discipline? Give up a negative habit? I'd love to hear more about your plan.

Holy Saturday Reflections on Fasting

I decided sometime back in Lent that I wanted to try fasting again. Real fasting. Like not eating for an extended period of time. (ACK!) At first I had decided to fast from after the Good Friday service at my church to Easter morning. But then, my friend Heidi called and wanted me to go to a Jon Foreman concert with her at the Service Station, a local coffee shop and concert venue. I definitely wanted to go, as Jon Foreman is a phenomenal solo artist (after leading the band Switchfoot for many years), but fasting didn't seem very compatible with a concert. Least of all, my stomach rumblings might seriously distract the other concert-goers. So, instead, I've been fasting from about 10 a.m. on Friday until now-ish, 3 p.m. on Saturday. Whenever I finish writing this post, I'll eat my fast-breaking meal of spinach salad with sliced radishes, golden raisins, and a balsamic vinaigrette dressing. Yum!

Fasting has made me realize a number of things. I hope you don't mind another list. :o)

1. I use cooking/baking as a means to avoid doing the things that I should do and want to do, but also don't take as much time to do as I should, such as reading, journaling, praying, cleaning, blogging, e-mailing, etc. When I came home from the grocery store at 10:30 this morning, I sat myself in my favorite living room chair and almost haven't moved since then because I've been reading, blogging and e-mailing. It's been great! When I'm cooking and baking, there's always something else to do...more dishes to wash, more baking time on that casserole, more sorting through my chest freezer to find the ingredient I want. But I've lately felt a driving need to just be...to plow through the growing stack of books in my room, to journal and self-reflect, to take the time to pray for others. To attend to, I guess you could say, the things of life that are like oil and gas to a car. The things that keep us running.

2. Food is as food does. Several times in the past two weeks, I've been so hungry before a meal that I get snappish and mean. I've also gotten into a habit of eating too much and thinking about food/cooking too much. It's definitely my main-stay hobby. There's no doubt in my mind that food is gift from God. But it has its place in the hierarchy of importance. If my eating and cooking causes me to neglect time with God or with others, then it's become a disordered love (as St. Augustine might put it).

3. Ironically, fasting has made me realize how much joy cooking, baking, and eating bring me. I really do use food as a means of loving, encouraging, communicating with, and caring for others. Serving people home-cooked meals, both impromptu and planned, delivering baked goods to work, eating my own creations, trying to be a good steward of my resources (both money and food), etc. are life giving to me. On Sunday, I made a whole wheat pizza with pesto that I had frozen from last summer, the last of my Monterey Jack cheese, asparagus (which is now in season and which I am trying to eat a TON of), broccoli, and wilted spinach. It was delicious! It gave me great joy to cook and eat the pizza that evening and enjoy it through the rest of the week.

4. Fasting makes me realize my frailty, how dependent I am on others and on God. As I was walking down the stairs in my house today, my legs were quivery. My hands are not quite steady. After missing the first meal, my thoughts weren't entirely clear. It's an infinitely good thing that God has made us so dependent on things and people outside ourselves or else we might be tempted to pride and independence more than we already are. Tomorrow, I'll enjoy a lavish Easter dinner with my mentor and her husband and seven others. I will provide the potato casserole. Dottie will provide the ham, asparagus, yams, and rolls. Stacey will provide the dessert. This meal in which we sit down to celebrate the amazing LIFE that we receive in the Resurrection will also be a testimony to our interdependence.

5. Fasting has made me thankful. In light of the super-abundance of Easter in which Christ lavishes forgiveness, new life, and freedom on us, I realize that my life is a continuous witness to the grace of God.

A blessed Holy Saturday to you as we live in the tenuous in-between of Christ crucified and Christ risen. Easter is on its way!