Spring Cleaning

Friends,

The longer days and increased sunlight create an urge to tidy up our lives. We may tackle the disheveled garage, clean out a closet, or rake around the new leaves of the tulip bed, or we may just want to take a good look at the status of our personal commitments and the pace of our days. It's that time of year.

This past week I have also noticed that all three of the Abrahamic biblical traditions commemorate important annual religious seasons during the springtime: Lent, Ramadan, and Passover. The term lent is actually derived from the Old English lencten meaning springtime. And all three religious seasons emphasize some mixture of sacrifice and gratitude to commemorate the liberation their historical faith has provided them. And each encourages a “spring cleaning” as preparation for their observances. The forty days of Christian lent traditionally meant some form of dietary abstinence; during Ramadan Muslims are to observe weeks of fasting during daylight hours in gratitude for Mohamed's revelations recorded in the Koran; Jews have a tradition of meticulous cleansing of their homes from leavened bread and eat only the unleavened matzah cracker-like substitute as a reminder of the hardships and gratitudes associated to their Exodus from Egyptian slavery. Each traditional observance is much more nuanced, of course, than my bare summaries. But my point is that these religious commemorations invite a time of reflection on our the status of our lives through some form of abstinence and “cleansing” of leading up to a celebration and gratitude of the liberation and grace of God at the end of the initial preparations.

I don’t know how many of us now actually make a deep personal commitment to observe these traditional disciplines of preparatory abstinence and reflection that have been observed for generations, but I think it is a loss that these observances have been largely neglected.  I assume fewer of us sincerely honor those traditions because fewer of us actually are part of religious congregation, let alone devout practitioners. So in our modern, secular world I doubt many of us take these traditional observances as unique times of abstinence and personal reflection - including myself. I remember how I admired my Catholic friends of my childhood steadfastly refusing to eat meat on Fridays during Lent while we protestants only made a very casual effort at giving up candy, for example. And I always admire my Jewish and Muslim friends who still hold to their family traditions of Sedars and Eid al Fiti celebrations. But a sense of religious disciplines, and the deep meaningfulness they have represented for generations, have largely become only a casual personal or family ritual without profound meaningful observance and reflection on  the history of suffering and liberation they represent.

I envision a contemporary national “religious” type practice similar to Lent, Ramadan, and Passover, that would be widely observed as a "holy observance,” some form of preparatory discipline, perhaps an abstinence, to help us acknowledge and reflect upon the historical struggles our people have historically endured - and certainly continue to endure. And, yes, we do have separate observances like St. Patrick’s Day this week and war memorials. But I would like to initiate an observance that would include a serious commemoration of all those times our whole nation has faced dark times and overcome monumental adversity successfully and found historical liberation such as the abolition of slavery, armistice from war, and the New Deal’s challenge to capitalism’s abuse of labor, for example. And we can do this again. What if, nationally, we would all unite to abstain from something meaningful in our common lives - not eating any form of bread for a period of time, for example - as a reminder of all who struggle with their economics and well-being of their lives and include in that observance a commitment to change, to “spring clean” those laws and practices that separate us from each other and from a holy sense of benevolence and grace from God. 

Of course I am proposing only a wish, a revolution of heart, a conversion in religious terms, which may seem even more wishful given how poorly we observe the old practices. But is it totally naive to propose we become a people truly united in our common struggle for liberation from economic and political oppression inspired by what is possible as commemorated in our religious traditions? Revolutions and conversions usually follow a period of preparation, of abstinence and acknowledgement of the injustices that need “spring cleaning.” Maybe that is what is happening as we now endure and struggle our way through the “exodus” of the present turmoil and threats of a dictatorial leadership of the Trump administration. The biblical Exodus story says that the Jews faced some forty years of profound of want and uncertainty during which they had to trust God before they received deliverance.from their desert hardships and formed a new nation. The biblical narratives and seasonal observances of overcoming suffering and achieving liberation are powerful lessons of hope.

Peace,
Tom