Giving up, and taking on

At the beginning of this Lent, like so many Lents before, I thought long and hard about a) whether I should give something up, and b) if so, what? Now I don't have that conversation with myself because I don't want to give up something I enjoy, but it has always seemed hollow to me to, for example, give up chocolate for the sake of giving something up for Lent. Not that I take any decision involving chocolate lightly! The presence of chocolate in my life has probably been a major contributing factor to my not whacking someone over the head when they enraged me, and chocolate is definitely part of the glue that helps to mend a broken heart. In my world anyway. 

But the point is, if I am giving up anything for Lent, why am I doing it? Like so many Christians around the world, I have done it in the name of fasting - almost without thinking about it. We sacrifice something as part of the process of remembering the sacrifice Christ made for us. But there came a time when that, in and of itself, began not to sit very well with me. It was not going far enough - by which I do not mean that there was not enough "suffering" in the equation; it was simply that I felt there was another step which I needed to take for this to be a meaningful exercise. 

And I think what was making me uncomfortable was this focus on giving something up, as if that was where the buck stopped. I give something up, I've done my bit? No. I give something up to remind me of Christ's sacrifice - yes. But what does His sacrifice mean? Why did He do it? What implications does that have for how I live my life? Now we're on to something. 

So, what is really important, to me, is my relationship with the living God. That sacrifice was made so I could live, which means for me, Lent is about taking a good hard look at what God really wants us to be doing, how He really wants us to be living. 

"Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter - when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?"

                                                                                     -Isaiah 58:6-7-

So, I am giving things up in order to make room for something else. I am trying to give up the things that are getting in the way of my relationship with God, and to take up things that bring me closer to Him. 

I will give up chocolate that is made on the backs of the working poor, that enslaves children and puts them in dangerous working conditions. And I will take up Fairtrade chocolate. 

I will cut down on Facebook time. And I will take up a pen and a piece of paper, and write a note to someone I love, to an old friend, to someone sick or someone lonely. 

I will cut down on TV or whatever else I use to distract myself. And I will talk to my granny with more attention, take up stronger relationships, give more time to prayer. 

I will try to give up resentment, and I will take up love. 

I will try to give up shame and guilt, and I will take up my inheritance as a child of God. 

A Japanese-American, an Indian and an Irishman walk into a Tokyo karaoke bar...

I'm sure you've all heard about the earthquake that hit Japan on Friday afternoon. When the news broke, we happened to be watching CNN - one of those hysterical American political "debates" between a gun-toting soccer mom, a political blogger who appeared to have no knowledge whatsoever of foreign policy, and an actual reasonable expert who looked increasingly embarrassed to be part of the who circus. But I digress. 

I have friends in Tokyo, and so I sat there, glued to the screen for hours, watching buildings crumble, roads break into chunks like so much peanut brittle, and people - afraid, hurt, worried for loved ones, or just wondering how they were going to get home now that the bullet trains had ground to a halt. 

With no public transport available and the roads in chaos, most of Tokyo's workers, students and tourists resigned themselves to the long trek home, or at least towards some kind of transport in the suburbs. I wondered about my friends, J, R, and P, who I know work at one end of the city and live at the other, a pain of a commute even when everything is running smoothly. 

For this story to make sense, you need to know a little about out heroes. They met at MIT as undergraduates ten years ago, where they all did some incredibly complicated degree involving computers. J, a Japanese-American, is an amazing artist. R, originally from India, is, so they tell me, an outstanding computer programmer, and with his business nous, Irishman P could very well be the next Donald Trump, only nicer and better looking. Together, the intrepid three have been in Tokyo for the last year, working the computed game design market and aiming to set up their own company. 

Anyway, on Friday afternoon, J, R and P set out on the long walk home. They had been going for five hours when they got fed up and decided it was too cold and too dark to proceed. They looked around for somewhere to spend the night, and realised they had stopped on the threshold of a karaoke bar. Well, when the universe extends you an invitation like that, how can you say no? And so it was that a Japanese-American, and Indian and an Irishman walked into a karaoke bar in Tokyo...

The bar was already full of salarymen who'd had the same idea hours ago, if the number of empty beer bottles lying around was any indication. The arrival of fresh entertainment was greeted with gleeful shouts of "boyband des-ne!", giggles and guffaws. Before they knew what was happening, the mic was wrenched from the slightly desperate grasp of a middle-aged middle manager who had been subjecting the bar to a very morose rendition of My Way, J, R and P were (gently) pushed up onto the stage, beers appearing miraculously in one hand and mics in the other, and the boys found themselves performing The Osmonds' Crazy Horses, quite a bit of the Backstreet Boys early material, a Motown medley, and finally, a life-affirming I Will Survive to which the entire bar sang along. 

The next morning, the erstwhile bar flies did what they could to help one another on their way. The next few weeks, or months, are going to be anything but fun and games for the people affected by the earthquake and subsequent tsunami. But I give thanks for the resilience of the human spirit, and for the fact that these people were able to snatch some joy from a situation that was anything but. As long as I know how to love I know I'll stay alive.