Giving up consumerism for lent (Column)

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the first day of the Christian penitential season of Lent, as observed by Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and even many Protestants, although our Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters began their Lent yesterday. For Western Christians, today is Shrove Tuesday, the past tense of a somewhat archaic English word ("shrive," past perfect "shriven") meaning to have confessed and been forgiven one's sins.

The forty days of Lent are traditionally a time of fasting -- abstaining from food, especially rich foods -- in penitence for one's past sins, for the grace to amend one's life, and in memory of the forty days Christ fasted in the wilderness. Therefore today is also sometimes called "Pancake Day" or "Doughnut Day," for the same reason that the French (including the Cajun French of Louisiana) call it Mardi Gras, literally "Fat Tuesday": making doughnuts or pancakes is a good way to use up all the fats and oils in the house, before the Lenten fast begins.

If you see a friend or neighbor with what looks like a smudge of dirt on their forehead tomorrow, Ash Wednesday, it is the mark of ashes, imposed by a priest or pastor in order that the recipient may "remember that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return." It is a sober, and indeed salutary, reminder of our own mortality, and the fact that we don't have an unlimited amount of time to get our lives in order.

Traditionally, Lent has been largely about individual sins, whether of commission or of omission: "We have left undone those things that we ought to have done; and we have done those things that we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us," in the words of the traditional Anglican prayer of confession. But individual sins often manifest in ways that affect other people, or even the larger world, and it's to some of those that I'd like to direct our attention as we -- whether Christian or otherwise -- move into the season of Lent, the season of repentance.

To repent of something one has done is not just a matter of feeling sorry about it. It means to literally turn back or turn around, and proceed in a more positive direction. So you may consider this, if you like, a call to both individual and collective repentance.

I would like to call us, first of all, to repent of our pattern of consumerism, of conspicuous consumption, which the Christian tradition has historically named as "greed." Despite notable exceptions, many of us have internalized, to one degree or another, the absurd notion that "whoever dies with the most toys wins," a recipe for social inequity and environmental catastrophe. Consumerism is a good word for this, as we are consuming the world's resources -- many of them, like fossil fuels, irreplaceable in any kind of human timescale -- at a frightening rate.

Closely allied to this, and equally needful of repentance, is the arrogance of power which allows us to carelessly or callously exploit both other people and natural resources in our "climb to the top," whatever we consider the "top" to be. Striving is not a bad thing, nor is achievement. But they become damaging and hurtful when we pursue them to the extent that we forget to love our neighbors as ourselves, or to practice responsible stewardship of this Earth, our home.

Finally, I want to call us to repent of over-emphasizing those elements in our spiritual traditions which direct our attention primarily, even solely, to the next world, to the exclusion and even detriment of this one.

Expectation of a continued spiritual existence in a world to come, a belief common to most religions, can empower us to live more fully and hopefully in this one. But an excessive emphasis on our heavenly home which allows us to devalue, degrade, and damage our present, earthly one is, I believe, wrong-headed, dangerous, and even sinful. Just as Jesus said you cannot love God and hate your neighbor, so you cannot rightfully claim to love the Creator while doing violence to the creation.

And so, on this Shrove Tuesday, as you eat your pancakes or doughnuts and ponder how to observe the Lenten fast, I hope that you'll consider emphasizing simplicity over consumerism, humility over prideful ambition, and care for the good earth God has given us over an obsessive concern for the world to come. These thoughts in mind, I wish you a holy Lent.