Lent, Christ, Worldly Consolations

I am sorely tempted to tell you the truth and say that I don't relish the idea of Lent.

Oh. Look what I just did.

As I mentioned in my last post, self-denial and self-discipline are not my strong points. I am so weak, in fact, in these matters, that I might as well go ahead and admit that even the idea of giving up some luxury or addiction leaves me hostile. There's something in me that shrinks from the idea itself - a voice that says, "Yes, I'm weak. I know I'm weak. God knows I'm weak. Can't we leave it at that?"

Fortunately (unfortunately), there are those out there who approach the concept of Lenten fasting with enthusiasm and willingness to do what God asks of them in this period. I just read a quick blog post from Frank Weathers, in which he presents what he deems "a modest proposal": he suggests that, rather than give up whatever it is you're giving up for forty days, to do it for forty years. Or possibly for the rest of your life. Whatever comes first. I shuddered. I quaked. I snorted in discomfort. I will not read Frank Weathers again. Fanatic, man. (Just kidding, Frank!)

Meant to be ironic. Kind of.

Naw. I'll stick to my forty days, and I'll pull through, perhaps, by the skin of my teeth, but I'll pull through. I've given up sugar - to what extreme I have yet to decide, and likely will only decide as I go along. I am a coffee addict - I do mean addict - laden with milk and sugar, easily six or seven times a day. It's almost indecent. I'll no longer put sugar in my coffee. And this - even this small small action, is difficult. It's not the not scooping sugar into my cup of liquid joy - it's the idea of it. I know it's small, I grapple with the fact that it's small, so small that I think, "Why bother? I can't be bothered," but I will do it. There's something so humbling about taking even the tiniest of actions to prove your allegiance to God, knowing full well that He gave literally everything for you, willingly. The sacrifice He made was His idea. As such, I am humiliated by my own hesitations. That may be the point. But it's unpleasant.

I got to thinking about worldly consolations in relation to Christ, while my stomach was growling on this obligatory day of fasting. Christ's human nature is a mystery to us all, of course, but I was trying to apply my limited knowledge of life 2,000 years ago and picture what consolations Christ may have employed - if He did. (I'm entering foreign territory here, so bear with me.) Our consolations - coffee or what-have-you - are not bad, in and of themselves - they are only bad if they separate us from God. What would Christ's worldly consolations have been? He was man - ate and drank and woke up in the morning just like we do. We know that He fasted. We know that He was capable of hunger, just as we are. (Luke 4:2.) During Christ's forty days in the desert, in the midst of His fasting - His hunger, He was tempted, and sorely. Christ took on that temptation, and defeated it, as later He would take all sin upon Himself, and defeat it. There's comfort in that. He did what we can't. That's the point of focus in our humiliation during Lent. Now if I could just get myself to remember that...

Well. Happy Lent, all! Good luck in your own endeavors.

Nuns. Just Nuns.

I don't know if it's just me, but all of my life, I have looked at nuns and monks (and priests, for that matter, but we'll save that for another entry) with a strange mixture of pity and intimidation. It's hard for me to imagine someone choosing the life that monastics have - rigorously structured days of (what my impression has been) self-denial and self-effacement and all of the other self fill-in-the-blanks that tend to give me the shakes and leave me clawing for a cigarette when I even stop to consider applying them to my own life.

Back in the Protestant days, this was the only impression I'd ever received about nuns.

C'mon. Cute as a button, man. Who doesn't love Sound of Music?

But, like I said, that's all I had to go with. The massively Hollywood story of an innocently mischeivous, charmingly rascally young postulant who doesn't know her heart until she meets the rich and emotionally aloof young sea captain and his seven a-friggin-dorable kids. It all works out, of course. They learn to sing again and escape from the Nazis and everything.

Well. Well. I just got done reading In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden. The book is about a Benedictine convent, and the story of the nuns in it, both before and after they take their vows. I don't know what led me to read the book, other than that it was kind of laying around. But typically, I'll avoid the topic of nuns and convents - something about there actually being people out there who choose to forego worldly consolations and move into a stone fortress of some type, and then spend every waking minute of every day attempting to reconcile their will with God's sends me into twitchy guilt and defiance. I have the unfortunate tendency, I suppose, toward assuming that if I wouldn't like something, no one would, and if I couldn't do something, well, dammit, it's not worth doing in the first place. Luckily the rest of the world doesn't cater toward my tendency. We'd all be screwed.

I digress. Back to In This House of Brede. I won't go into the intricate play-by-plays of the book - although they're masterfully done -  but I will say that the story opens with Philippa Talbot, successful in the worldly sense of the word, who has made it into her forties without any thought of nunneries or even Catholicism.  I'll quote her: I thought I was very well as I was; a human, balanced person with a reasonable record; with the luck of having money, friends, love. Only suddenly it wasn't enough - not nearly enough. Everything seemed - not hollow, but - as if suddenly I could see beyond them, into an emptiness, and all the while there was this strange pull; no one can describe it to someone who hasn't felt it. That's how Philippa depicts her call to monastic life. The rest of the book tells of her experiences in the convent, and Godden aligns the religious and the practical elements of nunny existence well - extremely well. 

Godden gives characters for the reader to both sympathize with and not sympathize with, and this normalizes the nuns - somehow, I'd always assumed that nuns were more miserable than the rest of us, or more holy, or both. Likely both. This makes utterly no sense, I realize - holiness is accompanied by joy, but, having no real-life experience whatsoever with holiness, that's easy for me to forget. But the characters are so realistic - capable of petty cruelties, boredom, homesickness, humor. If no one at the convent is holy, what's to stop all hell from breaking loose in an environment that demands everything of you? The idea is fascinating to me - but only because I somehow expect everyone to approach the idea of monastic life with as much trepidation as I do. 

It is a leftover Protestant inclination, I suppose, to view nuns and monks as archaic, a waste of potential, almost. The concept of monastic life is no longer commonplace - even Catholics are unfamiliar with it. We have our priests, and that's about as close as the most of us get to a life set apart the world. 

...Food for thought.