Dear Friends
I learned a fantastic new word recently: “Koyaanisqatsi”. This is a Native American Hopi word which means “nature that is out of balance or a way of life that is so crazy that it cannot continue long-term”.
We know that the planet is struggling under the weight of all that we demand from it. Ocean acidity has increased over 25% from pre-industrial times, increased carbon dioxide is causing glaciers to melt which in turn is causing sea levels to rise, causing more floods.
We are told that 18% of the world’s greenhouse gases are produced by livestock, so eating less meat and fewer animal products is brilliant for helping to re-balance nature. Recently the Pope has called on Catholics to return to the tradition of fasting from meat on a Friday. Even when I was a school child, fish was served on Friday for lunch and now I realise why. Fasting on Friday was a tradition because Jesus was crucified on a Friday and of course, Sunday was always a feast day because that was the day that Jesus rose. Of course, we tend to prefer feasting to fasting. However, perhaps we would enjoy our Sunday roasts more if we had abstained from meat on a Friday.
In Isaiah 58:6-7 we are told: “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked to cover them and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”
We have always taken these words seriously as Methodists, and perhaps that’s why we don’t have a tradition of fasting to draw on. Nevertheless, in the face of the Koyaanisqatsi of human-driven climate change and a corresponding increase in natural disasters, perhaps we too should wonder about the benefits of fasting from meat once or twice a week. I’m not sure that we will manage it on a Friday in the manse – the youth work that we do on a Friday tends to be based around pizza – but I have been thinking for a while that we need more fish in our diets and I think that a weekly fish-eating day will not be a bad thing. I don’t think that a few of us changing our diets a little will make a big enough change, but by joining in with something the Catholics are doing who is to say what small but significant improvements we might make by such an ecumenical act?
God bless,
Vicci