different ideas to make that part of the year distinctive. It was not until 900 years after Jesus died that there was international agreement that a season of penitence should begin on Ash Wednesday, lasting just over six weeks, during which Christians had a chance to reflect on their lives and seek God’s forgiveness for all they wanted to be rid of. It was (as this book is) a chance to go through a spiritual detox. A disciplined attitude to eating and drinking was regarded as essential to that process. It took a very short time for the Christian population to discover for themselves the joy of using up all the forbidden foods of Lent in one big, now-or-never party on the day before, Shrove Tuesday.
| To fast is to learn to love and appreciate food, and one’s own good fortune in having it. Monica Furlong, writer, born 1930 |
Only those who speak English know the season as Lent. In France it is Carême and in Italy Quaresima – both of which are based on the Latin word for forty. Our word Lent is from the Anglo-Saxon word for ‘lengthen’ or ‘swell’. That is, of course, precisely what the hours of daylight are doing at this time of year, by about five minutes each day.
By the time our train reached the station evening was closing in, and my friend and I found an Indian restaurant close by. Looking at the dal dish on our table, I suddenly wondered whether the lentils that are one of my favourite foods share a meaning with Lent. In fact, I subsequently discovered, they do not. But dal, the word used for lentils in Indian languages, is full of meaning. It means ‘utterly pulverized’, which is what happens to the lentils to make them into the curry that is a highlight of an Indian meal.
It cannot be a coincidence that when the poorest people of India chose a name for themselves to replace ‘untouchables’, to which so much stigma was attached, they chose to be known as dalits.-They are part of a caste system which means that people who are born into poverty find it very difficult to escape. So dalit people get the worst jobs, like cleaning sewers by hand, and are paid the least money. Poor, scorned, and with limited access to education and health care, it is easy to understand why they would describe themselves as utterly pulverized.
| Do not limit the benefit of fasting merely to abstinence from food, for a true fast means abstaining from evil. You do not eat meat, but you gobble up your brother. Loose every unjust bond, put away resentment against your neighbours, forgive them their offences. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, 340–97 |
I am planning to eat carefully for the next 40 days. I may even try not to eat between sunrise and sundown on a couple of the days. And I plan to eat some simple foods, like lentils (which will not be a hardship because they are delicious). I am going to do it so that the dalit people of India stay in my mind. So that, as a relatively rich person, I am reminded of those who are poor – just as some of my friends do during Ramadan.
May I suggest that you try thinking about how you eat for the next 40 days? Don’t think of it as eating less; think of it as eating well.
| Detox: Try to recall everything you have eaten during the past week – the meals, the snacks, the treats. Think about the speed, the company, the nourishment, and the habits you have got into. Is God trying to tell you anything about your life through your attitude to food? |
God of my life, as the days swell, so may my heart. Help me to appreciate every moment, every mouthful, every meeting. Amen.
Day 2 Have a health check
| [My dear friend Gaius], I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well. 3 John 1.2 |
No one pays much attention to the fact that the writers of the letters in the New Testament were very concerned for the physical health of the people to whom they were writing, as well as their spiritual health. Paul gave some very practical advice to his young protégé Timothy. Knowing that the purity of the water supply in Ephesus was unreliable, he recommended that his friend kept himself pure by drinking ‘a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses’. It is not the same advice that we might give to someone who had just got underway on a detox, but it had the same purpose! He had previously reminded Timothy of the value of exercise, before adding that it is more important to work out spiritually than physically, because this has an impact on ‘both the present life and the life to come’.
When John prayed that his friend Gaius would have a body that was as healthy as his soul, it was in contrast to the philosophy of the ancient Greeks. They assumed the body to be an evil thing, trapping the all-important soul until it is released from its prison by death. But Christians have always viewed God’s creation, particularly the human body, as full of goodness. Paul calls our bodies ‘temples of the Holy Spirit’. There could hardly be a bigger contrast than between a prison and a temple. Honourable behaviour is required in a temple, and that should have an impact on the way we treat our muscle and bone. A godless view of the body sees it merely as a vehicle for reproducing more life through as much sex as possible. A Christian view of the body sees it as something to cherish.
| Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your bodies. 1 Corinthians 6.19–20 |
Jesus dignified the human body wonderfully by choosing to inhabit one when he walked and talked on our planet. That has implications for the most basic activities of our lives. It means that sex is more than just an animal urge, but something to be enjoyed imaginatively and passionately in a unique relationship of love. It means that eating and drinking are more than cravings to pour salt and fat and sugar down our throats, but are activities that can sustain our bodies in a balanced way. It means that exercise and relaxation are more than leisure pursuits, but are methods that God has given us to be comfortable inside our own skin.
This 40 day detox begins with your body because if you feel fitter and more energetic because of the attention you are paying to your physical circumstances you will be in a much better position to make life-enhancing changes to your spiritual circumstances. How do you know that your body needs a detox? Some of the tell-tale signs are blotchy skin, swollen eyes, breath that doesn’t smell fresh, unexplained mood swings, an uncomfortable neck or aching muscles, too many trivial, sniffly illnesses and an irregular digestive system. Severe instances of any of those, of course, need the advice of a doctor. But minor, irritable instances may simply be symptoms of treating your body like a prison, not a temple.
| Be careful to preserve your health. It is a trick of the devil, which he employs to deceive good souls, to incite them to do more than they are able, in order that they may no longer be able to do anything. Vincent de Paul, philanthropist, 1580–1660 |
The writer of the Proverbs in the Old Testament recommended that the way to achieve health is to look to age- old wisdom that served previous generations well. ‘When I was a boy,’ he wrote, ‘in my father’s house, still tender, and an only child of my mother, he taught me and said, “Lay hold of my words with all your heart . . . for they are life to those who find them and health to a person’s whole body”’ (4.3, 4, 22). This is in the same spirit as the advice of those who write in health magazines today about the impact of toxins on our well-being. They point to the fact that industrial chemicals are stronger, food is more highly refined and pollution levels are higher than they were 50 years ago. Sometimes they send us back to the ways of our grandparents’ generation for solutions. By doing this, the self-healing and self-cleansing techniques that God has designed as part of the way he created our bodies will have an opportunity to work as he meant them to before the amount of toxins we inhale and ingest become too much for our systems to deal with.
The piece of grandmotherly advice that all experts agree on is that we should drink more water. Choose it as an alternative to sugary drinks or coffee. Refined sugar and caffeine both enter the bloodstream very quickly and have, in their own ways, negative or addictive impacts,