MAKING LENT 2010: A WEEKLY LENTEN RESOURCE FOR THE PEOPLE OF ST. MARY’S AND THE ST. MARY’S COMMUNITY

The Third Week of Lent: Thomas Ward— Chocolates and Uncertainty

I always used to enjoy giving things up for Lent. It was a chance to prove to myself that I cared enough about whatever religion meant to me in those days to deprive myself arbitrarily of some small but enjoyable thing for forty days. The decision of what to forgo was often arrived at in a somewhat haphazard manner-usually involving my forgetting until a week into the season and then choosing something from among the several pleasures in which I happened not to have indulged up to that point-but once the decision was made, I was pretty good at sticking to it. Easter always brought with it some measure of pride to make up for the humility to which I had willingly submitted myself: not only had I made God happy by conserving, in however small a way, the planet's precious chocolate supply, but I had exercised Restraint and, in the process, proven that I could reign in my appetites-that I was in control.

Fasting Buddha, at the Lahore Museum. 2nd Century AD

This strikes me now as precisely the wrong attitude to have taken toward a season meant to teach us that we are all but dust. However much we might think we can, by an act of sheer willpower, declare our independence from the world, Lent calls to us as persistently as a box of delicious, forbidden chocolate and reminds us that we come from the very earth we walk upon and, in reality, probably have about as much agency. If there is a value to renouncing something, perhaps it is that doing so gives us the chance to experience firsthand the failure of our resolve.



But that can't be quite right either; if Lent is meant to remind us of our human limitations, it won't let us escape from the responsibilities and the powers we do have to make decisions that might have a positive effect in the world.

In thinking about whether or not to give something up this year, it struck me that, forasmuch as it is meant to inspire a sense of humility and, perhaps, of connection to those who go without on a daily basis, there is actually no greater luxury than that of being able to choose to forego something. It might be right to say that only within a culture of prosperity could a virtue be made out of not enjoying the things one is otherwise in a position to enjoy. And yet, it is a luxury that seems, oddly, to be available to everyone, no matter how poor: indeed it sometimes seems like rich people have less interest in taking advantage of their increased capacity for self-imposed privation.


Lent is full of paradoxes: it is supposed to remind us that we're mortal and that our sense of being in control is an illusion while at the same time it calls us to do something; it presents privation as a luxury, and one that seems more often to be indulged in by the poor. I actually don't know what Lent means: that is, I've been sitting in front of a blank computer screen for some time trying to think of a neat way of summarizing what Lent means to me, and I'm getting nowhere. However, if there's one thing that I think Lent really challenges us to do without, it is the certainties we spend the rest of the year holding onto, consciously or unconsciously. We're sometimes told that Lent is a time to learn about oneself, but perhaps it is time when we enter into reflection without the expectation that anything will be revealed. There are very few times when we aren't responsible for coming up with an answer for things, but it strikes me that we might take this opportunity to explore possibilities of being that don't involve being able always to explain what we're about. And it is the kind of uncertainty best dwelt on, I would suggest, over a nice box of chocolates.