The Bun is six, which is never easy, but she seems to be suffering from sixness more than average.  I can’t remember how it all came to a head, but the SuperHusband and I agreed we needed to take drastic action.  Child would be sent to either Piano or Karate.

Piano won for a whole host of reasons.  But wow: Expensive.   (More so because for part of that host of reasons, we opted to go with Not the Cheapest Teacher.  Even though said teacher tells me we are getting a parishioner discount.  I don’t want to know what full retail is.)  Apparently I have been massively spoiled by our super-bargain activities up to now.

So the deal is, and it all fits with the Addressing the Sixness action plan, that the Bun will clean up the trash in our yard once a week, thereby earning $1.  And she will put that money in an envelope and give it to her teacher, and we will pay the balance of her tuition.  Her teacher is thrilled.  (Yay teacher!  This is why we picked you.  Plus you are a good musician, that didn’t hurt either.)  The children have pointed out:

• It is hardly any money at all.
• We, the parents, are paying her that money.
• Which she then gives back to us.
• So how exactly does that help?

The mother silenced this questioning from the masses with pointed observations about her powers to tax, commandeer, and empress.

But the mother feels this way herself.  Not towards the Bun.  We are extremely happy with the piano plan all around.  Our yard is cleaner (yay!); our six year old has two different fronts on which she is developing confidence, skill, and self-discipline; and she has a sense of ownership over her lessons.  She helped pay for it with her own labor.  It is valuable.

No.  The mother feels this way towards God.

The Bun correctly observes that her contribution is very, very little.  My contribution to the work of Jesus?  Very, very, very little.  (Technically: Even littler than that.)  Plus the other similarities: Everything I do give came from Him anyway.  And He has to hound me even more relentlessly than I have to supervise the piano-player.  And He’s perfectly capable of taking care of the entire universe Himself, so what use am I anyway?

And this is a great consolation.  Our era is awash with talk of greatness.  Jesus isn’t asking me to be great.  He knows I can’t be great.  He knows the size of the problem — our whole fallen world.  He knows that He has to carry the load.  But He’ll let me help him, if I’m willing.  He’ll let me really help, and it will be good for me, and it will be the amount that is the size for me.

So that’s what I’m thinking about lately.   Being more like the Bun.   I like it.

In reading and talking with assorted friends elsewhere, the details of the various lenten penances keeps coming up.  What if you’re a vegetarian, do you have to do something extra?  What if your favorite meals are meatless anyway?  What if you are forced to go to a barbeque buffet on a friday (social obligation, large gathering, no one studying your plate)?  What if your life is such absolute misery right now that though you had planned extra penances on top of the obligations, you are too sick to pull them off?

And meanwhile, here are the Orthodox, who don’t play around with their fasts.

My thought is this:  Just do what the Church says.

The church doesn’t ask the impossible.  We’re told when we fast, to eat enough to maintain strength.  There are exemptions for people with medical needs that prohibit fasting or abstinence.

The Catholic Church takes sort of an opposite tack from the Orthodox, but either approach makes sense.  Catholics are given a bare-minimum assignment, and reminded that we who can do more, should do more.  Always.  How we fill in that blank is up to the individual to discern.  The Orthodox go hard and strong as  a blanket policy, and then your priest directs you on how to modify your observance of the fast per your state in life and spiritual maturity.  Two sides of the same coin: What you can do, you should do. What you cannot, you cannot.

As Catholics, I think our Lent Lite approach helps focus us on one thing: Obedience.

Not creativity, not “spirit of the law”, not Who Can Be the Saintliest.  If you are vegetarian, it is easy to obey.  If you are at the barbeque buffet forced to eat nothing but rice and mushy greenbeans and the little protein bar you stuffed in your pocket because you knew this was going to happen, well that’s a little harder.  (The Orthodox are laughing at you, of course, as you offer up your macroni-and-cheese-eating, but never mind.  They are laughing at all of us.)

But obedience.  Simple, unfettered, unworried obedience. That seems to be message #1 the Church wants us to learn today.

Seems timely.

 

[And yeah, it makes people super mad when you admit to it: That you’ll change your life in some small way for no other reason than The Church Says So.  Which is kind of a perverse pleasure for us curmodgeons, thinking of who we can really shock and alarm by eating our tuna with such docility. Ha.  Lent has its upsides.]