�鶹��

Available for over a year

Good morning. A newspaper article last Sunday warned about the health risks of baby boomers drinking too much. I noticed that my wine consumption puts me in the ‘at risk’ category. My family find it hilarious that every year I announce that I’m giving up wine for Lent. Today is Ash Wednesday. Last night, I carefully emptied the dregs of the wine bottle, the way a conscientious housewife might once have emptied her kitchen of eggs and butter and other indulgent foods. The tradition of baking pancakes on Shrove Tuesday – the day before Ash Wednesday – comes from the need to use up all these ingredients before beginning the Lenten fast. Today I’m full of good intentions about making the next six weeks a time of disciplined reflection and abstinence, even though I know I’m likely to fail. During Ramadan, I’m humbled by the observance of the daily fast by some of my Muslim students. I know I lack the determination with which they practise their faith. Yet there’s something important and meaningful for me about this annual attempt to live differently for a few weeks, to try to refocus and remind myself what really matters in my life. Over the last half century, the advertising industry has turned many Christian vices into virtues. The slogan greed is good encapsulates a culture in which conspicuous consumption is regarded as a worthy pursuit. For many, whether or not they have a religious faith, Lent is a time of questioning such values, of trying to consume less in order to become more. It’s also a time of charitable giving when, in the words of a campaign by a Christian aid agency, people are called to live simply, so that others might simply live. Yesterday I read a report about how starving people in southern Sudan are eating grass in order to survive. It’s tempting to shy away from such distressing realities, but Lent calls for greater openness to those for whom life is a daily struggle against poverty, starvation and death. Ultimately, for Christians the penitence and fasting of Lent should be a preparation for the celebration and joy of Easter. In the fourth century, Saint John Chrysostom said in an Easter homily, “Rejoice today, both you who have fasted and you who have disregarded the fast.” Fasting is not about misery, self-punishment and joylessness. It’s about realizing that, when every day is a bloated feast, there are no feast days. It’s only possible to truly rejoice in the feast, when we have truly experienced the fast.