Lenten Fast 2013: The Cupboard Challenge Begins

I love the church season of Lent.  Part of that probably stems from growing up in a "traditional, liturgical" church where the church calendar was serious business - it signified when to change the felt banners and candle colors and which section to mark with the ribbon markers in the pew hymnal.  I remember giving things up some years, like ice cream, and wailing to my mother about its absence while clinging to the freezer and trying to cheat.  Because, for real, a day without ice cream in my growing life was a day hard to come across.  (Chocolate chip cookie dough flavor with pancake syrup. weird. yes. but don't knock it til you try it.)  Amidst my griping, I also recall the Lenten soup suppers our church had on Wednesday nights, where two people from the congregation would each volunteer to make a huge tureen of soup for all those that would show up.  We'd have a short service afterward, and I don't remember those much, but I remember being introduced to Tomato Tortellini soup heaven.  Oh. my. word.  It was a cozy feeling for our church community to gather around a simple meal weekly for 40 days.

On to life today... I am not a creature of discipline.  Not in the slightest.  I fought my mother on every single clarinet practice session growing up, and I still fight with myself over piano practice that should happen yet conveniently gets replaced by more "pressing" things. (probably part of my love of being good at things instead of the things themselves - I highly recommend reading this blog post Chris wrote as a guest blogger for Off the Cuff Christian. The quote he references wrecked my life in a pretty darn good way.)  I let rooms of our apartment fall into total disarray and then belittle myself for my sloppy inattention and procrastination.  I get ideas of what to do with an evening, and suddenly 94 minutes have past and I'm still searching a Facebook newsfeed.  I walk into Target vowing that I will NOT buy another unnecessary albeit cheap piece of clothing, and 10 minutes later I'm grazing the alluring clearance racks.  So yes, discipline = not my tendency.

Enter Lent.  Defined.  Public.  Community-based.  Bleak midwinter.  No excuses.  YES.

When asked to give something up, it's easy to default to the ice cream, chocolate, alcohol, etc. vices that we enjoy.  Depriving ourselves of physical pacifiers definitely has merit.  But just the other day, we had a joking but lively dinner debate about what constituted "bread" and what did not for our friend that was going to give it up for Lent.  (Are scones bread?? Thoughts??)  When we come to this place of splitting hairs about what we can and can't have under our self-imposed restrictions, or when we drool into the freezer and whine and pout about our denial, we've missed the whole point of the sacrifice.  We have the chance to be emptied, to let the Spirit fill us and refresh us.  To let prayer and our Comforter be the thing we depend on in our moments of weakness instead of an immediate physical comfort.

I have also heard people say that Lent can be a season of taking things on, not just giving things up.  I saw a link circling around of 40 tasks to accomplish, a different one for each day, for the season.  I agree there can be good in taking on habits and experiences... but if you're telling me that in our American culture of absurd amounts of food, media, communication, possessions, money, transportation, you name it, that you can't find SOMETHING you could go without for 40 days, then I think our culture has fooled you as much as it's fooled me time and time again.  With doing a different thing each day for 40 days, I'm sure a lot of them are helpful and could be eye-opening.  But we are a culture of minute time spans who don't even want to watch a full 5-minute YouTube video.  This notion of changing things up daily, for me at least, feeds right into that self-taught impatience and ADD.  By all means, do it if you feel called - I am sure there are many for whom routine is normal, and shaking things up every day would let the Spirit work.  But I think we, especially young adults, hate to commit to things, and making a 40 day commitment can return us to roots of dedication and discipline we have long set aside.

Back to the thoughts leading up to our fast.  This year, Chris has been good about trying to get us to actually use some the groceries we accumulate.  He's been poking through the freezer and cabinets, pulling out things to throw together into a meal rather than rushing out for more ingredients to make a pre-prescribed recipe.  The man could create chili out of next to nothing.  To give you a frame of reference, he lived - willingly - for over a year in a place that looked like this:

Above: the cleanest and emptiest the "bathroom" ever looked. Yes, it was the entire, open basement. Yes, that's water festering on the floor.  He survived longer than I ever could.  He gets this whole "minimalist" concept that's foreign to the rest of us Americans.

And then he married a woman who grew up with a "Canned Goods Room" in her basement.  Family friends would joke about "shopping at the Laymans'."  True, we didn't have a 'pantry' in the kitchen.  So, instead, this is the Apocalypse Grocery Mecca Shelter of Things That Were On Sale So We Bought Twelve:

On the left: the chest freezer (which is the third operating freezer in the house, and it's filled to the brim), followed by shelves generally including cereal, bottles, granola bars, chips.  On the right: shelves of canned goods, juice, pasta, paper towels, etc.  Behind you on the right: more cabinets of canned goods.  And this is LESS than what was there when we were growing up. Not that it is not a closet.  It is an entire room.

So, having A bottle of ketchup was a foreign concept to me.  (Right now, we have three.  Big ones.  How big?  They were too heavy for me to lift with fractured ribs.)  How could you NOT buy at least five of something if you found a super good deal?!  STOCKPILE!!!!!!

In light of trying to follow Chris's lead, while he was at work the other day I compiled a list of (almost) every food item in the cabinets we use as a pantry next to our fridge.  I mean, I know we have stuff, but it didn't look like that much!  Here's the view:

This is what I came up with:

 It is backwards.  Not to prevent you from reading it.  

But because I took it with PhotoBooth and can't figure out how to reverse it.

People.  Seriously?!  There are things in there that I moved from my old roommate's house.  I lived there for over four years.  And yet I've given them exactly 2 seconds' consideration in terms of actual consumption.  This list does not even TOUCH what's in the fridge and freezer right now.  Look at all of that.  It's funny; on this tiny picture, it doesn't appear as long of a list.  But there are 71 DIFFERENT items on this list, and many of them have multiple cans/boxes in that cabinet.

And there are dear ones - some a plane ride away, some a WALK away - that would cheer if they had ONE of those items in their house to eat tonight.  One.

My heart twinges more and more each passing day when I see our overabundance and know that we are in the top 4% of the world's income.  That's a public school teacher and a children's library associate with musician side jobs - not exactly "high" salaries by America's standards.  But to millions, we are rich.  And I cannot abide another person saying "It just makes you thankful that we're fortunate and blessed, doesn't it?  Thank you, Lord, for blessing us.  Oh, and please, may You bless those less fortunate someday.  Amen."  NO.  It makes my stomach hurt.  For I do not think that God, who made himself human in such a way that he spent much of his ministry with no place to lay his head, is looking at me and saying, "Bless you, child.  I grant you the means to buy more spaghetti than you could eat in a year to build a fort in your cupboard, and that is precisely what you should do with it.  This is how I show you that you are loved."  (no, we don't have this much spaghetti. but we're in an apartment with minimal cupboard space. put me in a house with legit storage and I fear for my future and whether or not it will involve an episode of Hoarders.)  I'm pretty sure each time Jesus is confronted with any type of wealth, his directions are to give it to the poor.  I'm certain he gives US the tools to bless others with the wealth that already exists on this earth.

So, this is our Lenten journey this year:  We are allowed to buy milk and produce if we run out and are truly in need.  That's it.  Fresh produce is nourishing and part of our Year of Health guidelines (we instituted those after our 1st anniversary, when we realized how few of our clothes fit from the Fat Happy Lazy Married Times of year 1).  Milk is a beverage and an ingredient, so we will allow it.  Beyond that, we're restricted to whatever is in our cupboards, fridge and freezer for 40 days.  If we depleted almost everything, could we revisit and buy some essentials?  Sure.  Sadly, I bet we won't need to.  But maybe it will give us the TINIEST inkling of those so near us who have absolutely no choice about what they are going to eat for dinner - if they have one item, it's that; if they have nothing, they eat nothing.  And maybe, beyond thinking of them and saying a quick prayer before we chow down, we'll actually be moved to be Love to them and bring them what they need.

 

An American family of 4's food waste for a month. Oh, my heart.

(And no, we won't just go out to dinner if we think we have "nothing to eat" or don't "see" anything - the shameful, sinful response thought we both have all too often when we peek in that cupboard).  Last year, we gave up eating in all restaurants for Lent, and that helped us get over our cravings of quick, easy, cash-sucking, and often terrible-for-us food.  We'll probably go out a few times, but the goal is to eat here as often as possible.)

I plan to chronicle what we eat for my own curiosity - I want to see how lavish our meals remain despite these restrictions.  That blog post may come in pieces or all at once at the end - we'll see how long it gets.

Thank you, Jesus, for showing us that fasting can cleanse us and make more room for Your spirit in us.  I pray you do that in us - as our excess decreases, give us eyes to see what we truly need and what those around us need.  Please increase.

(On a side note, Jenna personally is fasting from her personal Facebook account for Lent.  If you've left her love there, you are not being ignored!)