The Russian carnival ends - Shrovetide, during which the effigy of winter is burned, and spring does not come. Nature seems to freeze even more and does not even fight for heat or for thaw. This is the time of Great Lent.
In expensive restaurants there are fasting menus, and in cheap chain supermarkets - price tags on products marked “Can be in the post”. Witty buyers move these price tags to the products of the department with alcohol, take pictures and post on social networks. Really funny.
The television shows stories about how a special food factory has been preparing special dishes for the period of fasting for dining rooms in ministries, chambers of parliament and government administrations for 20 years. In total, we are told, more than 80 items, the cost of each will not exceed 130 rubles. Soothed, pleased. And then we were worried, suddenly what kind of deputy minister would be expensive to fast.
In the late nineties, in the then fashionable magazine, I read an interview with the writer Vladimir Sorokin, who explained in detail that you can drink modern vodka in the post. Here before, before the revolution, vodka was cleaned with beef bones, and now with coal filters. Therefore, no contact with the meat - lean product.
Often I hear disputes that if you can eat fish on a fast day, when it falls on the twelve feasts, according to the monastery charter, you can eat both crabs and oysters. And oysters without chablis do not climb into the throat - so do not torture yourself! It is necessary and open the bottle.
And yet it is believed that if you are traveling, then generally you can not fast. And who is not traveling now? Free country, sat down and went.
This popularity of the post, its open and wide discussion, causes a naturally ironic reaction among skeptics. They can still be called militant atheists. But what are they militant? And "atheist" is generally a definition from the reverse, explaining nothing. Let there be skeptics.
And here skeptics strive to post a photo of a fat priest with a comment like “Exhausted with fasting” or pin up a religious acquaintance: “Something you, brother, prayed a little today!” And they have a certain right to that.
A widespread sacred ritual inevitably leads to its desacralization.
Say, fasting in the 1980s was a feat, and even one that you’ll tell a few. Products and so little, but here you still need to choose, so as not to settle down. If the loved ones serve the desired sausages, and you turn up your nose - try to explain.
Fasting is now a kind of fashionable diet, flirty self-deprecation, which is more than pride, the desire to be in the mainstream.
But what is behind this? Behind this stands the people for simple religiosity. Not to the forced casuistic theology, not to provocative disputes with opponents, not to the endless clarification of who is right and how right. And to simple faith: if you follow the rule of the body, the soul will be pulled too.
Because of this simple folk religiosity, both history, culture, and centuries of nature observation are peeping.
Fasting is historically appropriate when winter stocks run out, and still far from summer.
In the cultural sense, fasting is necessary as a process of preparing for the main event of the year for every Christian - Easter.
Nature, with its disturbing last winter sinking, also echoes the fasting.
Everything calms down before dawn. And the man calms down.
Why do I need a post? And why you should not laugh at the fasting?
Every person needs self-restraint. And every religion confirms this. As soon as a closed belief system is formed, which is any religion, then restrictions appear in it. Do not eat this, do not drink this, on such and such a day do not dare to work, and you - yes, yes, here you are! - Never boil a kid in his mother's milk.
And the more civilized voluntary and conscious restrictions, the higher its culture.
The school, which is all built on limitations, gives the technique of painting and the symphonic structure of music. Self-restraint keeps the sport. Restrictions built into a single code, gave the world justice. Self-control keeps the world from self-destruction.
And if someone is able to start with himself, then this person should rather be thanked for his contribution to the global balance of money. It is the periodic voluntary limitation of oneself in one’s desires and needs that distinguishes man from animals.
An animal eats when it wants and when it can. A person can not afford to eat, even if hungry.
Is it possible to red fish? Is it possible to powder mayonnaise? And sweet lemonade? And cigarettes?
In the underpass to my metro station several times a week an old woman appears with what is called a shopping trolley bag. The bag is covered on top with a cardboard box and the word “Cabbage” is written on the cardboard. If an old woman sees a policeman, she lowers the carton with the inscription down, covers the bag. Trading in the transition is prohibited.
A kilogram of cabbage costs 100 rubles. The old woman says: “Hello, my good, and I’m waiting for you. There was only sour. Let me wrap in three bags so as not to leak. Well, come on Thursday, I will wait. ”
She has a pension of 17 thousand rubles (and she believes that this is not bad), and now such an illegal business is selling sauerkraut in transition.
I read disputes about fasting, look at ironic pictures or serious arguments and think: what kind of fasting can this old woman be? After all, her whole life is an eternal fast. And our post next to her life - the usual coquetry.
Because the post is like a cross, everyone has their own.
And what is there to laugh at? What is there not to respect?
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.