The Wardman Wire

Whilst everyone else is calling for the head, or at least the beard, of the Archbishop of Canterbury, MP’s everywhere are breathing a sigh of relief. The heat is off. The media pack has found another prey to chase. But you’d better keep those receipts just in case.

How good it was, in the prehistoric era that was Shrove Tuesday this week, to find both Labour and the Conservatives donning their hair shirts in readiness for Lent.

Very fitting, as the season of fasting begins, for our MP’s to display their contrition, and rein in their appetites for expensive dinners and well paid relatives.

Lent is the lost season. The shops are filled with cards for Valentines Day, Mothers Day, even Easter eggs, but nobody makes much of a fuss about Lent. Indeed, the Health and Safety fundamentalists managed to kill off the Shrove Tuesday pancake race in Ripon this week. Maybe next year we’ll see a backlash, there’s always hope.

We ignore Lent at our peril. We are culturally averse to giving things up. It is destroying us, and it is destroying our planet.

Too Many Toys, Not Enough Planet

The root of the problem is ingratitude. We simply aren’t thankful enough.

Try a case study:

• 2 boys: one has 1 toy, one has 100.
• Both are given a new toy.
• Who will appreciate it more? Unless he’s clinically depressed, or it’s a Barbie, it’ll be the kid with 1 toy.

The less we’ve got, the more we appreciate it. The converse is true, the more we have, the less we appreciate any individual item.

Economists call it the law of diminishing returns. This law drives consumerism in circles:

• We have more stuff.
• We aren’t satisfied with it.
• We buy/experience even more to compensate.
• But with each new purchase/experience our capacity to be satisfied falls.

Global Consumption is Consuming the Globe

And ingratitude is at the root of global warming. Our consumption of the worlds resources is running ahead of the planets capacity to cope.

But what is we stopped buying gadgets…

But what would happen if we didn’t want more?

What about all those shiny toys … the plasma TV, the foreign holiday, the quad bike for the kids, the 15 gadgets on standby from the phone charger to the electronic toothbrush - what would happen if we could be happy without any of this stuff, and just didn’t have it?

If we were thankful for what we had, we wouldn’t want for more.

…and stopped caring about buying them

It’s tied up with depression too.

Consumer culture teaches us to be dissatisfied with pretty much everything:

• our possessions,
• our bodies,
• our homes (the Radio Times review of ‘Grand Designs’ this week begins ‘covetousness crouches at the elbow of this programme’),
• our children,
• our partners,
• our cars,
• our jobs,
• our holidays.

There’s only so much of this a normal person can cope with before they turn into Eeyore.

Oliver James says as much, but in a slightly more nuanced fashion, in Britain on the Couch. No wonder that 1 in 4 of us experience a major depressive episode at some stage, and the Timeshad some good (but alarming) stuff on workplace depression earlier this week.

Depending on your outlook, you’ll probably ask a different question at this point.

The economist will ask how we can allocate resources better. The teacher will ask if there’s an educational solution.

Who didn’t eat all the pies?

As a “spiritual health consultant “, my question is this: what is the spiritual discipline which helps us to be thankful and happy?

The answer is a surprising one: fasting.

Fasting, abstaining from food, or a whole range of other things, voluntarily for a set period, has been core business to the Christian spiritual life every since Jesus took 40 days in the desert, without food, to gear himself up for his life’s work. What does fasting do for us?

1. It teaches us to live with less. The great thing about just doing without food, chocolate, TV, blogging, credit cards, etc. for 40 days, is that you have a get out. You know on day 1 that on day 41 you can quit. It’s just that by day 40 you’ve lived long enough without it that you realise you can cope, and your life is better for it.

2. It makes us thankful for what we have. I will enjoy my Easter Sunday pint of Abbot Ale more ecause for 40 days (which can be done 2 ways: you can either fast 40 days straight in Lent and finish on Palm Sunday - March 16th this year - or you can have Sunday off fasting each week and spin it out till Easter Sunday) I’m trying to do without alcohol.

3. It trains our will. The will is like a muscle. Muscles develop and grow stronger when they encounter resistance. Trying to lift weights which require some effort, on a regular basis, gives you either bigger muscles or an appointment at the sports injury clinic. Exercising the will, by saying ‘no’ to things we’d really like to have, makes it stronger. Abstaining from 1 thing for 40 days makes it easier to say ‘no’ to any temptation at any time. Jesus has sufficient willpower after 40 days fasting to turn down free world domination. We want leaders - don’t we? - who have a strong enough will to resist temptation and short term expediency - and whose character is built around a sound vision and a trained will.

Historically, Sunday has been the day when this happened, a day of rest and abstention threaded through the fabric of life. Power was given up: because nobody worked, there were no boss-worker power relationships in operation. Identities and personas forged at work and play were given up. For 1 day a week, people came face to face with themselves, and their God.

Wrapping Up - Quit While You’re Ahead

We’ve lost that now, and may never get it back. And before all traces of Lent are removed from public consciousness, we do have a chance to recover a bit of ancient wisdom. Quit something whilst you have the chance. Only a thankful society has a future, and only a society which knows how to do without things will be thankful enough.