Over at Reluctant Vegan, my thoughts after ending the first week of the Lenten fast, particularly how this week has revealed to me how outsized and unreasonable my appetite for food is during normal time, and how I can get by with a lot less (not such a bad thing to learn with grocery prices going through the roof).
Oh, and a just-added bit with an example of off-putting vegan sanctimony, versus the sensible approach of the Humane Society.
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"I'm simply surprised that it hasn't been harder, and take from that a lesson that I normally eat way more than my body really needs (which is why I put on that extra 15 to 20 pounds in the past six months or so)."
I hear you!! :)
And I wasn't thinking spiritual pride so much as the discouragement that can set in when fasting starts to seem more distracting to prayer then helpful to it, and when the numbers on the scale hold steady even though you know you're barely eating anything.
Pasta and bread with actual olive oil tonight! And a merlot...
Actually, not too hard this week, though everything is already starting to taste like cardboard. My problem is that I don't have the 15-20 lbs. that Rod has, so I'm Mr. peanut butter now, trying to keep my fat intake up.
Oh, and I can only assume that monasteries are "noisy" places with all the veggies they eat. Sounds like a tuba chorus in my house.
I've been Orthodox for seven years and am still genuinely curious as to why so much discussion about the fast focuses on the food.
For instance, does anyone ever say, "I hardly had any sexual urges at all the first week of lent!" Or, "I didn't get angry once!" Or, "I wrote three checks to charity!"
Of course not. It would be prideful and unseemly to talk about those dimensions of the fast in that way. But we feel safe talking about food in those terms. Why is that?
Again, I'm genuinely curious and am not being flippant. I'm glad you had a blessed first week of Lent and hope the rest of Lent is a blessed experience for you too.
Well, speaking for myself, I write about food and food culture a lot, so it's a natural for me to discuss it. I don't wish to write about my sex life or my charitable giving habits on this blog, and I think it's fair to say nobody cares to read about it either.
I thought Mr. Pippin's points were well taken. He accurately describes the contortions ethical people have to go through to justify a meat-eating habit, and also in my view accurately characterizes how you use your religiosity against others. With all respect, Rod, you seem to have no problem calling out what you perceive to be other people's moral deficiencies, but seem rather thin-skinned when subjected to the same (or easier) treatment, at least in this instance. Mote/beam and all that...
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