The Gifts of Austerity

I’ve had it.  The Canadian Geese finally pushed me over the edge.  That was my tipping point.  I was driving back to the church after running a few errands on my lunch hour, and there they were flying through the sky.  Steadily flying south in packs of ten and four and six.

They were escaping what was feeling more and more like an existential play.  No Exit.  Waiting for Godot.   That sort of thing.  The sort of tale where you never really emerge.  You.  Just.  Wait.

It’s been almost a year now since this whole COVID journey began, which seems both ridiculous and unreal.  There’s no possible way it hasn’t been a full year.  There’s no possible way we haven’t come up on the one-year anniversary of when they shut down the schools and we fumbled our way through our first on-line service. 

There’s a word that captures where we are right now.  It’s not a fun word.  It’s a winter word.  It’s a “get you through the month of February” word. 

Austerity.  As in the second definition of this word.

aus·ter·i·ty

/ôˈsterədē/

noun

1. sternness or severity of manner or attitude.
2. extreme plainness and simplicity of style or appearance.
3. conditions characterized by severity, sternness, or asceticism.

Because winter and COVID are laying upon us a double dose of austerity, a plainness of life that makes you curse the geese flying overhead.

I’ve got to wonder if there aren’t some lessons to learn in this time of austerity.  There's got to be some wisdom to harvest even in this barren time, something profound.

…

At night, we've have been watching this show “Alone” on Netflix.  We jumped into season 6, the part where they send a dozen folks or so up into the Arctic Circle in those portions of the Canadian map you don’t really have the foggiest idea about.  They take them up there one-by-one in a helicopter and drop them off somewhere near the shore of a bay or on sliver of land or on a ridge.  And they leave each one of them there with a handful of items and their gear and some cameras.  That’s it.  That’s all.  Just themselves, alone, in the great expanse of wilderness:  to struggle, to hunt, to build, to bide their time.  The last one out there in the brutal austerity wins.  $550,000. 

Early on, the immensity of the challenge demands their full engagement physically, mentally, and emotionally.  Build the shelter.  Scavenge for food.  Make and set the traps.  Fish the waters.  Hunt the game.  

There’s no threat in the first part of the competition besides the dangers of falling in an awkward manner or eating the wrong thing.  There’s plenty to keep the mind occupied. 

About a month in, though, you can see the shift.  The problems become more existential.  They arrived in September, and though its cold to begin with, it’s nothing close to what it becomes by late October. 

As Halloween nears, they’ve done largely what they’ve needed to do.  They’ve stored away the fat and calories and nourishment they will need to endure.  They’ve limited the work they’ll need to do now that winter has come because now it’s a war of attrition.

Who will lose the most weight each day?

Who can keep from burning the most calories?

Who can bide their time in the stillness and inactivity?  In the austerity?

The former Air Force survivalist was one of the first to go. 

The dude was my pick to win it all.  His shelter, his provisions, his skills at survival:  excellent in every regard.  But here’s the thing.  He didn’t really need the money, and his wife and beautiful family were just a long trip home.  Here he was with all sorts of skills to wait out the winter, but the one thing that he couldn’t foresee was just how hard it would be to be … well … lonely. 

Faced with who knows how long to wait, he just couldn’t take it.  He tapped out before it really got going.

…

Barry is still in the game.  He’s still on the show as far as we, the Kendall’s, know.  But Barry’s not in a good spot right now.  He too has done what he’s needed to do to survive the austerity.  Not as well as others, but fair enough all the same. 

The loneliness and austerity are gnawing at him.  Barry has broken down crying twice now.  The first time came when they did the periodic medical check-up on him.  He was certain his wife might come along with the team, to embolden his spirit, to give him that comfort, to break his monastic ascetism with those tantalizing gifts of love and support and refreshment.

She didn’t come. 

Just the emptiness.

Just the stillness as Barry’s bay froze over in one harsh late October night.

Just the long march out to the end of the ice where some fresh water lay for his consumption.

There was Barry taking his first drink of that fresh water.  There he was crying, weeping on his hands and knees that second time like a tormented man.  Bawling, you might say.

Austerity will do that.  Austerity will leave us looking desperate on the ground with our crushed spirits, our uncertain future, our … well, ourselves.  Fragile and lonely.

…

In Alcoholics Anonymous, the first two steps in the 12-step program force us to face the reality of our austerity.

#1 – I am helpless in the face of alcohol and my addiction to it.

#2 – There is a higher power who can help me in my weakness.

The austerity of our condition shows us we are attached not necessarily to alcohol, but to any number of things that fill the void of our littleness, even our nothingness.

That’s the maddening truth popping up all over the place now as we get towards the end of season 6 of “Alone”.  Hell isn’t just other people as Sarte would argue.  It’s also the “aloneness” of having nothing else around but ourselves.

Left out there in the wide expanse of a beautifully frigid world, each of the few remaining contestants are now fighting the same battle:  how do they overcome their extreme sense of loneliness when there is nothing to fix it? 

Not that they don’t try.

One guy carved 52 cards out of tree bark and designated each one with its needed number and suit, embodying his solitary experience down to the game itself.

We all try.

That’s what we’re doing right now in this COVID winter.

Trying.

Seeking that next thing to push us beyond the austerity.

Putting that next thing on the calendar to look forward to.

Addicted as we are to “doing” and “achieving,” we’re not quite ready to admit that we are in fact powerless to the reality of this difficult pandemic.  It will conquer us one way or another like the Arctic winter.

Which brings us back to the lessons we can learn here.

Which brings us back to why we need to give up on the Canadian goose option.

Which brings us back to step #2 in AA.

There is a higher power who can help us in our weakness, in our austerity.

…

The church’s calendar recently put Psalm 104 on the docket for us to read.  It's what we need:  an austerity psalm.

Genesis 1-3 makes us the center of creation right behind God.  Human beings are the crowning achievement of God’s handiwork, and a great deal of focus goes towards our agency, our doing.

Psalm 104, though, practically could care less for us as human beings.

Psalm 104 is the epitome of the Arctic Circle experience on the show “Alone.”  It’s a wide, beautiful, diverse, intimidating world out there – full of flowing streams and pushing ice-blocks and wolverines that prowl around the structures of humans at night. 

Meanwhile, we “go out” into the world to do our work and recede each night, a passing thought in the grand scheme of things.

Our frailty and our dependence, though, bring forth the best realizations of all:  the true fruit of this COVID winter. 

God cares for us in our littleness, even in our “nothingness.”

Empty as we are, traveling through this season like crazy survivalist on the edge of the harshest winter, down on our knees spiritually and emotionally weeping and moaning for someone to see us, we receive this news:  God does.  God can.  God will.

But it has to be on God’s time.  Not ours.

That’s the hard part.

That’s the challenge.

The Canadian geese will make their escape. 

And we’ll go hunting for the distractions and the amusements to bide our time in this insufferable landscape of austerity.

But all the while God is doing this one, long work of refinement. 

Chiseling down our exteriors of perfection.

Carving away our excesses of pride.

Winnowing down our existence of performance.

And teaching us little by little that we are just this:  human.  Dependent.  Needy.

Needy for the most important of things.  For someone to come and be with us.  For someone to let us know that we are not alone.  For the face of God to turn to us and to feel the warmth of God’s presence again. 

Which is precisely what happens.

It’s why the austerity of the spiritual winter in the psalmist’s voice bends and moves towards a full rush of hope and joy by the end of it all:  “Bless the Lord, O my soul.  Praise the Lord!” (104:35).

Let austerity have its good effect.  Let it bend us down to our knees as we wait to be seen and to burst into song.

Amen.