Lent is Anti-Capitalism

We live in a world where the worth of a human being and relationship is ascertained on the ground of productivity. The more one produces or rather contributes to the production the more valuable s/he is deemed. This is the typical consumeristic ideology exploited to the core by the capitalist regimes. In a capitalist world view contemplation, rest, meditation, fasts, renunciation, critical appraisals, self-importance, doubts, questions and anything that antagonizes the existing pro-consumeristic system is reckoned as a threat and strong attempts are made to decimate it. Since Lent helps us to muster the prudence to say “enough” it is anti-capitalist. It is imperative at this point to give heed to the analysis of Thomas Merton;

We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products of our factories and printing presses and movie studios and all the rest.[1]

Correlating this matrix of perception and Orthodox ecclesiology I feel that the Desert Fathers, Mothers and monks could be considered as anti-capitalists. It is highly challenging to have the nerve to renounce in a world where procurance burgeons. Despairingly our generation feels that they were victims of domesticated and individualistic spirituality since they were not “act-oriented”. This is a prime example of capitalistic cognition where we equate the credibility of someone based on their performance. It is so absurd to use adjective such as “efficient” for humans which essentially should be used for machines. Doesn’t this ratify capitalism?  An exclusively performative spirituality is unhealthy and fatal. Activism without contemplation is like a ship without the rudder. Meister Eckhart remarked; “What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action.” Mark van Steenwyk further explicates;

A radical discipleship that is merely performative, one that is animated only by a desire to do everything right and oppose everything wrong is an uprooted discipleship. Radical discipleship needs deep roots. It must be animated by the Spirit, who give us life. I’m not saying that the struggle for justice is secondary to our personal spirituality. Nor am I saying that attending to our spiritual life, by some divine magic, will automatically transform us into radical practitioners. No, what I am saying is that our radical discipleship must be transformative, not just performative. Radical discipleship is about discernment, not following a script. Radical disciples aren’t simply trying to be LIKE Jesus. Rather we try to do the work along with Jesus.[2]

Lynn White remarked; “The Greek saint contemplates; the Western saint acts.”[3] This misappropriated notion could be shattered by a story in “The Sayings of the Desert Fathers” “The devil once asked a monk, who was sitting, doing nothing, “What are you doing here?’’ To which the monk replied, ‘‘I am doing nothing; I am simply keeping this place.’’ Monks are called to keep the places of the commons from the predatory gaze of greedy capitalists who belittle the intrinsic value of anything and focus exclusively on the instrumental and lucrative value.  To choose to abstain when you have the resources to acquire could be appropriated as foolishness. But Christians have a tradition of being fools for Christ – Yurodivy whose revival was demanded by Mother Maria Skobtsova.

The life of the fool for Christ unmasks all false holiness that hides true identity behind the make-up that covers not just the face but sometimes the whole body, as do, say, the garments of a monk or priest. To use iconographic terminology, the fool for Christ calls for an inverted perspective on reality that uncovers every hypocrisy and reveals Christ’s truth. A fool shows us how not to possess even the identity based on our own holiness, how to invert the wisdom of the world, to turn our own wisdom into the wisdom of Jesus Christ. To be a fool for Christ is to give up all possessions, including the inner possession of ourselves. To be rooted in Christ means to lose the self, but not for one’s own sake: the fool for Christ serves as a model of service to the world.[4]

Lent calls for contemplation, meditation and rest but we prefer to keep ourselves busy.  Theologian Monica Furlong describes busyness as an illusion, something we choose for ourselves because it “anaesthetises the feelings of inadequacy and insignificance which assail us when we admit that we have remarkably little to do”.[5] It is only when our bodies protest against this through aches and addictions that we begin to question our motives. Furlong indicates the dangers of ignoring the natural voice of our body which tells us when to rest and when to be active. If we ignore it often enough, either through willpower or through artificial stimulants, then we eventually forget how to listen until it becomes insistent through illness.[6]

To conclude, Lent is certainly about engaging and getting messy. But our engagement should be focused towards disengaging with the powers that perpetuate unquenchable consumerism. This can happen through renunciation and this is the reason we fast. We should be like fish in salted waters resisting to become salty. Just as activism without contemplation is unhealthy so is contemplation without activism. There needs to be an equilibrium. We cannot be in our ghettos of contemplation without acting. Butterfly cannot insist on getting back to its caterpillar cocoon. It has been given wings to fly not to brood. Amen

Prayers

Dn. Basil Paul

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[1] Quoted in Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, “Is a Contemplative Life Still Possible” https://sojo.net/articles/contemplative-life-still-possible?fbclid=IwAR0VX0v6XPdnjkWmxJrl4Sje7Iifd2nEFFAXT51094vGOvy3Bj7B8-eErBo.

[2] Mark van Steenwyk, “Where we put down our roots” https://radicaldiscipleship.net/2019/03/11/where-we-put-down-our-roots/?fbclid=IwAR1jKGdjPSU8e7I8Xt0xlge1At7eqBaei2B10zbC_ZJKf9lDY0LTQtVCTyc

[3] Lynn White Jr. “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis”, in Science 155, 1967: 1203.

[4] Katerina Kocandrle Bauer, “Non-Fundamentalist Monastic Spirituality of Mother Maria Skobtsova” https://publicorthodoxy.org/2018/09/11/mother-maria-monastic-spirituality/?fbclid=IwAR2ldAigjE3y4UGLxoO8Bw5MfjRUuJwPnF5UOogHYC3hbkx8j4eESY_3ZlQ

[5] Monica Furlong, Contemplating Now (Cambridge: Cowley Publications, 1983), 16.

[6] Christine Valters Paintner, “The Practice of Contemplation as Witness and Resistance” in The Way, 46/4, October 2007, 42.