Feasting before the Fasting

In these cold, northern parts we don't make much of Mardi Gras or Carnival (from the Italian for take the meat away or from the Middle English carne vale, which means farewell to meat). But this year, with Lent beginning so early (February 6), many of us will have a Carnival experience this Sunday afternoon around the Super Bowl festivities. Seems a good time to offer this great text from The Supper of the Lamb by Robert Farrar Capon:

O LORD, refresh our sensibilities. Give us this day our daily taste. Restore to us soups that spoons will not sink in, and sauces which are never the same twice. Raise up among us stews with more gravy than we have bread to blot it with, and casseroles that put starch and substance in our limp modernity. Take away our fear of fat, and make us glad of the oil which ran upon Aaron's beard. Give us pasta with a hundred fillings, and rice in a thousand variations. Above all, give us grace to live as true folk: to fast till we come to a refreshed sense of what we have and then to dine gratefully on all that comes to hand. Drive far from us, O Most Bountiful, all creatures of air and darkness; cast out the demons that possess us; deliver us from the fear of calories and the bondage of nutrition; and set us free once more in our own land, where we shall serve thee as thou hast blessed us-with the dew of heaven, the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine.

And if that doesn't get you in the Carnival spirit, heed these words from the Book of Ecclesiastes: There is nothing better for mortals than to eat, drink and find enjoyment, for these are from the hand of God! (And it says that right there in the Bible!)

Still not convinced? Try this from ancient Hebrew teaching of the Talmud: One will have to give an account on judgment day of every good thing which one might have enjoyed and did not!