fast

Someone described Lent this year as "A lot more fasting than we bargained for."

But to be honest it doesn't feel like fasting, yet. It's a new routine, yes, but so far I feel safe (as long as nobody has to leave the apartment), and we're keeping busy enough, and we've certainly been eating well.

You know what does feel like fasting, though? Since we've been sheltering-in-place, I haven't been taking my phone with me when I go out (so I don't have to worry about sanitizing it when I get back; the one travel pack of Clorox wipes we own was rapidly disappearing). Surely a break from electronics is a good thing, right?

Yesterday we all went out: Daniel and Christopher to play table tennis and look for things in the woods (a school assignment), Caroline to walk with the donkeys, me (after about an hour of working up the courage to do it) for a walk around the city. If I had had my phone I'd now have pictures of

• an apartment building decorated with...aliens with musical instruments?
• an orange cat in a tree
• the posters pasted all over that say "Stay Home. Please. Go out only if you have to buy food, go to the doctor, go to work, or help someone else"
• some of the people out and about who appear to be ignoring this advice

But I have no pictures. Nothing to show the kids later, or to send to a friend, or to look back over at the end of the day, or to post here. And ok, pictures of the streets of Zürich aren't that interesting, but even worse, church field trip season - my very favorite source of interesting images - seems likely to be canceled this year, too: either without field trips at all, or without me. (I've got to call it quits with the church, that's clear enough. I just need to figure out how to write my resignation letter.)

Fasting is an opportunity, of course - to think about the things we're attached to, to examine whether those attachments are helping us or anyone else, to go forward more consciously with or without them. Maybe it's a serious case of electronics addiction, but I hope in this case that the going forward is going to be "with." And what am I attached to here? I think it's the idea that my perspective, little and odd as it is, is worth capturing and sharing. I mean in a bigger sense I'm taken with the idea that everyone's perspective is worth capturing and sharing, but somehow I have to get comfortable with my own before I can move on...put on my own mask before helping others, as it were. Not that anyone is flying these days.

As a reward for reading this, you get a picture Daniel took: it's clean-out-the-stall day and Lino decided to get a ride in the dustpan.

Hello, Lino 😊