2 weeks Ago
These lighter nights are nice, aren’t they? But I don’t need the sun to tell me what time of year it is. Not with a mobile phone. And frankly I’d be lost if I was relying on the stars.
Likewise, I can barely tell a snowdrop from a cyclamen. Emails from residents are a pretty good sign though. They’ve taken over from the farming year.
January to April is pothole season. April to August is overgrown twitten time. September to December is flooding.
It’s the same at college. Students have suddenly discovered my email address having been here since September. And beautiful emails they are too – much improved since Professor AI was hired.
I don’t mean some dissident Chinese artist. We couldn’t afford that. How about this email: ‘I am writing to inform you that I will be unable to attend today's class due to having a fever.
’ There’s nothing abstract about that. It’s the time of year again for these emails from students: “I am writing to ask if it’s possible to adjust the timetable during..
.” How would you finish this sentence? Would it be with a) Lent or b) Ramadan? Why don’t we have students emailing us about the hardships of Lent? After all, this year Ramadan and Lent overlap. We certainly know which students are Muslim.
But the Christians are hiding under a bushel. Surely, in these end times, with our fixation on extreme dieting and ultra running, the example Jesus gave us of fasting for 40 days and 40 nights – let alone in the desert – should make him a poster boy for Zoomers. You know, a bit of a change from Che Guevara t-shirts.
But still a bit dangerous. I say ‘our fixation’ very loosely. Most of us just watch joggers and dieters from a safe distance.
I was a scout. I could tie a bowline and read a map. I could even put up a tent, with help.
But you’d never catch me camping in the real world. Outside toilets and creepie crawlies? And sharing a tent? No way. What hope the future of mankind in my hands? I love the understatement of the gospel of St Matthew: ‘After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.
’ You’re too right he was hungry. What a difference from the flannel of today. Matthew knew less is more.
Maybe it’s a Christian thing. His readers realized forty stood for any large number. But we live in a more literal age.
Numbers get more clicks. There’s Kenny Saylors who lived on water alone for 40 days – he actually extended it to 55. He lost 55Ibs, shrinking to a weight of 271 IBs – that’s 19 stone to you and me.
He made it, with 2.7m views of YouTube. Others don’t.
Like Zhanna Samsonova who died living on pineapple juice. She said she felt ‘like Jesus’. I’ve tried a 5:2 diet – you know, two days on 600 calories, the other five normal, and it worked, although it might not look it.
But I couldn’t keep it up. Radioactive yellow Monster Munch just too tempting after a day in the office. Jesus also faced temptations.
Do you remember what they were? Tell these stones to become bread was the first. His response was ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ Bread is not enough; we also need spiritual nourishment.
Am I wrong in thinking it’s Mr Beast we trust more? If Jesus was alive today, there’d be huge pressure for Him to film the 40-day fast live on YouTube and Instagram. How would He resist hanging out with survivalists like Bear Grylls, or my favourite, the cuddlier Ray Mears? He’d been talking health with Bryan Johnson – he of the Don’t Die community who thinks he’ll live forever by injecting his own son’s blood into himself. Consider the irony.
Would Jesus be thanking the sponsors of unpronounceable health drinks like Uehl that sound as if you’re throwing up, and asking you to like and subscribe? That’s if he even got to the desert in the first place. Zoom backgrounds could fool anyone. Thank goodness He came down when he did.
Have you given up anything for Lent? My wife gives up meat. But me – I give up nothing. Not even moaning.
But we all need our desert place. It might not fall at a convenient time. I couldn’t manage 40 days and wouldn’t think of the Sahara.
But when I do stop, when I give up my temptations, for however little time – just between me and Him – I hear waves lapping on the beach or dream of glimpsing dragonflies over the ponds in Withdean Park. Alistair McNair is Leader of the Conservatives on Brighton & Hove City Council..
