Lenten follow-up
Contemporary culture tends to see the spiritual and the practical as opposed. Specifically, anything spiritual that has practical benefits is bound to be viewed with cynicism, "seen through". Oh, the REAL reason why [spiritual practice] exists is because of [current or past practical benefit]. This is true when the practical benefit is an individual one, but it really comes out when there's a (real, perceived, or mythical) group, societal, or corporate benefit.
IE "the reason why you eat fish on Fridays is because of Roman fishing industry blah blee".
Being Catholic, I'm especially familiar with all the Catholic canards, but I know it's true for other religions too (all the "real" reasons for keeping kosher etc).
All of this presupposes one of two things: 1. that nothing can have both spiritual and material benefits; or 2. that only the material exists, so everything must have a materialistic explanation.
Obviously, spiritual people cannot accept #2 as an unspoken assumption, so it needs to be called out if it seems to be the background in someone's questions. If you accept (even for the sake of argument) a spiritual dimension, then the assertion that the spiritual and the material are completely unrelated seems question begging in the extreme.
In Lenten abstinences and fasting, I for one see a beautiful seamless blending of spiritual and material benefit. Unfortunately most of the societal benefits are impossible without a far greater participation in these practices. What I mean is, to moderns, the foods that are abstained from make little sense. "Why eat fish and not meat? Why eat fish and not dairy or eggs?"
Well, what IS a practical benefit of not eating meat, dairy, and eggs for a season in the early spring? If you've ever lived on a farm, you probably have a lightbulb going on. Oh yeah--animals need to raise their babies!
Fish, on the other hand, live in the ocean and don't have the same kind of seasons, nor (until very recently) were they at all farmed--they were pure unexplained bounty, whether the catches were good or ill, they were nothing influenced by man.
But we can see that it wasn't purely a matter of allowing animals to raise the next generations--after all, you can keep a few chickens still laying, and cheese will last for months, and while preserving wasn't up to modern standards, certainly some methods of preserving were known.
That's not even getting into health benefits and other benefits. And not to mention of course... the spiritual benefits... :)
I think sometimes religious people get so irritated by the constant insinuations (or outright assertions) that practical reasons (and often supposedly corrupt reasons) are the ONLY reasons such-and-such practice exists, and get so keen on strenuously denying this, that especially when we are setting up our own spiritual practices, we forget that spiritual benefits and material benefits usually go hand in hand. We try to set up ascetic practices without considering the practical side at all. Then we fail, or we cause negative consequences that we should have foreseen.
We have some inchoate yet insistent voice in the back of our head telling us that considering whether a certain ascetic practice is livable is ipso facto a sign of weakness, cowardice or unspirituality, instead of a proper and prudent understanding of the indiscreteness of spirit and matter.
Especially because this will be a familial penance, I wanted to make sure that this is something that would work on a practical level, which Iis why I tried my best to think through such issues as leftovers, shopping, and meal planning. An ascetic practice that results in wasting food, ordering take-out, or giving a toddler anemia is NOT properly penitential.
---
On a different note: tofu.
I have disliked firm tofu ever since my first traumatic experience with it, where it was served at a family dinner of a friend of mine (Chinese) and nobody bothered to mention to me that the white things in the dish were not chicken. I bit into a piece, expecting the familiar chicken texture. I got tofu texture. I spit the mouthful out and said "this chicken is rotten!" (They thought this was hilarious.)
Ever since then--I was about 8--I cannot eat firm tofu without thinking about rotten chicken. I can eat soft tofu in soup, tofu pudding, and tofu bamboo. I can't eat any of the fermented tofus--to a certain extent I think this is because they remind me of blue cheese (which I don't like either) but the texture is like firm tofu and that just adds an extra layer of bad.
Anyway. If I'm going to be eating more meatless meals, I need to broaden my meatless protein arsenal. So that has got me thinking about tofu. I'm willing to give it another shot. I found a tofu cookbook which suggests that many of the texture issues people have with tofu are due to experiences with the extra-firm variety and they might like the firm variety better, or the firm variety of silken tofu.
I definitely like that silken tofu can be aseptically packaged and stay in the pantry. The cookbook has a recipe for clear soup with silken tofu, sweet potatoes and mustard greens which sounds both healthy and comforting. I might try that first. Or a basic miso soup with tofu.
IE "the reason why you eat fish on Fridays is because of Roman fishing industry blah blee".
Being Catholic, I'm especially familiar with all the Catholic canards, but I know it's true for other religions too (all the "real" reasons for keeping kosher etc).
All of this presupposes one of two things: 1. that nothing can have both spiritual and material benefits; or 2. that only the material exists, so everything must have a materialistic explanation.
Obviously, spiritual people cannot accept #2 as an unspoken assumption, so it needs to be called out if it seems to be the background in someone's questions. If you accept (even for the sake of argument) a spiritual dimension, then the assertion that the spiritual and the material are completely unrelated seems question begging in the extreme.
In Lenten abstinences and fasting, I for one see a beautiful seamless blending of spiritual and material benefit. Unfortunately most of the societal benefits are impossible without a far greater participation in these practices. What I mean is, to moderns, the foods that are abstained from make little sense. "Why eat fish and not meat? Why eat fish and not dairy or eggs?"
Well, what IS a practical benefit of not eating meat, dairy, and eggs for a season in the early spring? If you've ever lived on a farm, you probably have a lightbulb going on. Oh yeah--animals need to raise their babies!
Fish, on the other hand, live in the ocean and don't have the same kind of seasons, nor (until very recently) were they at all farmed--they were pure unexplained bounty, whether the catches were good or ill, they were nothing influenced by man.
But we can see that it wasn't purely a matter of allowing animals to raise the next generations--after all, you can keep a few chickens still laying, and cheese will last for months, and while preserving wasn't up to modern standards, certainly some methods of preserving were known.
That's not even getting into health benefits and other benefits. And not to mention of course... the spiritual benefits... :)
I think sometimes religious people get so irritated by the constant insinuations (or outright assertions) that practical reasons (and often supposedly corrupt reasons) are the ONLY reasons such-and-such practice exists, and get so keen on strenuously denying this, that especially when we are setting up our own spiritual practices, we forget that spiritual benefits and material benefits usually go hand in hand. We try to set up ascetic practices without considering the practical side at all. Then we fail, or we cause negative consequences that we should have foreseen.
We have some inchoate yet insistent voice in the back of our head telling us that considering whether a certain ascetic practice is livable is ipso facto a sign of weakness, cowardice or unspirituality, instead of a proper and prudent understanding of the indiscreteness of spirit and matter.
Especially because this will be a familial penance, I wanted to make sure that this is something that would work on a practical level, which Iis why I tried my best to think through such issues as leftovers, shopping, and meal planning. An ascetic practice that results in wasting food, ordering take-out, or giving a toddler anemia is NOT properly penitential.
---
On a different note: tofu.
I have disliked firm tofu ever since my first traumatic experience with it, where it was served at a family dinner of a friend of mine (Chinese) and nobody bothered to mention to me that the white things in the dish were not chicken. I bit into a piece, expecting the familiar chicken texture. I got tofu texture. I spit the mouthful out and said "this chicken is rotten!" (They thought this was hilarious.)
Ever since then--I was about 8--I cannot eat firm tofu without thinking about rotten chicken. I can eat soft tofu in soup, tofu pudding, and tofu bamboo. I can't eat any of the fermented tofus--to a certain extent I think this is because they remind me of blue cheese (which I don't like either) but the texture is like firm tofu and that just adds an extra layer of bad.
Anyway. If I'm going to be eating more meatless meals, I need to broaden my meatless protein arsenal. So that has got me thinking about tofu. I'm willing to give it another shot. I found a tofu cookbook which suggests that many of the texture issues people have with tofu are due to experiences with the extra-firm variety and they might like the firm variety better, or the firm variety of silken tofu.
I definitely like that silken tofu can be aseptically packaged and stay in the pantry. The cookbook has a recipe for clear soup with silken tofu, sweet potatoes and mustard greens which sounds both healthy and comforting. I might try that first. Or a basic miso soup with tofu.