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Good morning. Today is pancake day, Mardi Gras, Shrove Tuesday. The day when the tradition was to confess your sins, while eating up all the luxury foods in the larder: butter, eggs, flour. There is something wonderful about the simplicity of pancakes: so light and golden, frosted with sugar and an astringent last-minute squeeze of lemon. At least that’s how I like them. A little boy I knew so loved pancakes that he argued that he ought to have them all through Lent, which rather undermined the point. Because today is the last day of indulgence, not the first. I usually spend Shrove Tuesday in a lather of indecision about what I am going to give up. It’s harder than usual this year, because I am rather in sympathy with those who are saying that the whole of the last twelve months have been like Lent, and they are not going to add to their miseries by abstaining from some small pleasure like chocolate or an evening drink. I’ve become aware in recent years of how I have tended to secularise the whole idea of abstinence. Seeing it as a way of giving our over-indulged bodies a break from things that are bad for them, like the diet that begins the day after Boxing day or dry January. And I could go on. Plant based food instead of meat. Fourteen hour fasts between dinner and breakfast. High fibre bread instead of sliced white. More good gut bacteria. All very true and healthy of course, but nothing necessarily to do with what [the season of] Lent is all about. Historically, fasting and abstinence in Lent was expected of the poor as well as the rich, the badly nourished as well as those who had plenty. It wasn’t about my health, but about endurance. You ate pancakes before the start to prepare for a long slog through a time of scarcity. It has been shocking to realise how many people live with empty fridges and bare cupboards, some even having to queue for food in the cold. Those like me, for whom food and drink are only a supermarket delivery away, might do well in the light of this deprivation to think about what endurance really means. I suspect people with very little money understand Lent in ways that the more affluent don’t. It’s a season for recognising that I don’t have control, that I can’t jump the queue, that life is provisional even at the best of times. I could practice moaning less about how deprived I feel at not being able to go where I want to go or see who I want to see. And instead of worrying about sourdough or seeded with my breakfast I could explore the scripture text: “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”