Mardi Gras

I have a friend out in New Orleans whom I keep intending to visit before he moves on in his life. I'd love to see the parades once in my life, and to celebrate the occasion with him.

Tonight is the last few hours before the beginning of the Great Fast of Lent. One of the tremendously healthy things about the Church is its maintenance of this concept of a yearly fast. Feasting and fasting are both healthy, if they are done in their right hour. Lent is a time to tame passions, to regulate habits, and to reconsider the ways in which you are not living in a virtuous way.

For that reason it can be unpleasant. After all, you are giving up pleasures for a relatively long time, especially if they are habitual pleasures. I'm going to give you Kant's remarks on this matter this year. He was writing against "monkish asceticism," of which I have a different opinion. But he also gives you cause to focus on cheer [Ak. 6:485]:
But such punishment [as asceticism] is a contradiction (because punishment must always be imposed by another); moreover, it cannot produce the cheerfulness that accompanies virtue, but rather brings with it secret hatred for virtue's command. -- Ethical gymnastics, therefore, consists only in combating natural impulses sufficiently to be able to master them when a situation comes up in which they threaten morality; hence it makes one valiant and cheerful in the consciousness of one's restored freedom.
That's a big part of what we are doing in the season in the wilderness: discovering a restored freedom from habits that threaten virtue. As Tex says, the locus of control is the self. For an hour -- for forty days and nights -- we demonstrate it to ourselves.

In doing so, we recover our freedom.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. There remains one last feast first. Go enjoy it.

5 comments:

Cassandra said...

That's a big part of what we are doing in the season in the wilderness: discovering a restored freedom from habits that threaten virtue. As Tex says, the locus of control is the self. For an hour -- for forty days and nights -- we demonstrate it to ourselves.

In doing so, we recover our freedom.

Nicely put.

Sort of tangentally related, I was thinking the other day about how we (in America, at least) tend to celebrate holidays with food: Christmas dinner with roast beef, turkey, or goose; Thanksgiving with turkey; Easter with ham or lamb (or both), etc. I can remember as a child hardly being able to wait for holiday dinners.

They're still special, but less so (IMO) because our diets have changed so much. So many things that were rare treats are now relatively commonplace. And so the idea of a holiday dinner loses something, because it doesn't occur as a special break from more ordinary fare: these days, ordinary dinners are often very special too - in a way we could never afford earlier.

Forgive the random musing :)

Grim said...

It's a good point. I was thinking the same thing over Christmas. There are still a few things we only make at that time of year -- what is called around here "Christmas fudge," for example. Some things really ought to be reserved for the highest holidays.

Cassandra said...

For us, it's homemade egg nog (to die for), tiny ginger cookies, and we really only have standing rib roast and Yorkshire pudding at Christmas. And the desserts - I bake much more for holidays.

I think it's more that the quality contrast between every day meals and "fancy" holiday dinners seems to have lessened.

I think back to the kind of food I ate for dinner growing up - mostly tuna, ground beef, or chicken casseroles because meat was expensive, so you stretched it out with noodles or rice or other ingredients. Vegetables were usually canned. Frozen veggies were relatively expensive and we hardly ever ate prepared foods. Dessert were made at home, not purchased.

I still cook mostly that way (few frozen or prepared foods, though on work nights when we get busy, we sometimes have frozen Healthy Choice dinners so no one has to cook). But I've been trying hard to cook a home meal lately b/c the Unit enjoys it, and it's healthier. I rarely make dessert,though - it's most likely to be purchased already made.

Now, for us at least, there's a serving of meat at every dinner - we tend to skip the starches and go with meat-and-veg (or lately, we have a couple of vegetarian dishes a week). Veggies are mostly fresh, which was an undreamed-of luxury when our kids were young.

Ymar Sakar said...

The Mormons seem to have a fast every X Sabbath day: sunday.

Grim said...

I don't know much about Mormons. In the Church as in the Jewish faith, the Sabbath is a feast day. Indeed, you've not feasted until you've been invited to a large, observant Orthodox Jewish Shabbat meals of a Friday evening.