{"id":18919,"date":"2017-03-04T10:05:23","date_gmt":"2017-03-04T15:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/?p=18919"},"modified":"2017-03-04T10:18:01","modified_gmt":"2017-03-04T15:18:01","slug":"after-the-mardi-gras","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/2017\/03\/04\/after-the-mardi-gras\/","title":{"rendered":"After the Mardi Gras"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_18920\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/files\/2017\/03\/mardigrastrash.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-18920\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-18920 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/files\/2017\/03\/mardigrastrash-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"After Mardi Gras. Photo: Nick Solari, Creative Commons, some rights reserved\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/files\/2017\/03\/mardigrastrash-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/files\/2017\/03\/mardigrastrash-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/files\/2017\/03\/mardigrastrash.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-18920\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">After Mardi Gras. Photo: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/nicksolari\/16552483571\/\">Nick Solari<\/a>, Creative Commons, some rights reserved<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Like many church-goers these days, even at age 63 I find myself on the younger end of the pew in my congregation. The season of Lent began on Wednesday and I have to confess that the practice of giving up something like chocolate for 40 days never made a lot of sense to me, a merely pious exercise.<\/p>\n<p>But observing my elders in the sanctuary, the matter-of-fact way they cope with infirmity, disability and pain, has led me to think differently about appetite\u00a0and about sacrifice.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>After the Mardi Gras<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">When the pizza box opens, my\u00a0eye falls first on<br \/>\nthe marginally larger piece, the one with the extra<br \/>\npepperoni. There is something in the mind that is like<br \/>\na tent caterpillar nest, waiting to burst open and consume<br \/>\nevery leaf down to the limb. There will always be another tree.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Appetite is writ large on a moonscape of tar sands,<br \/>\non the big gulps of mountaintop removal. Monster trucks<br \/>\nin the parking lot of the Mall of America. Our claw marks<br \/>\non every shiny that got away. The money doesn&#8217;t spend itself.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">And so these forty days after the Mardi Gras, to practice<br \/>\nletting go, to learn what we&#8217;ll need to know when the big fire sale<br \/>\ncomes, when what we offer up is ability to see, or walk, or breathe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like many church-goers these days, even at age 63 I find myself on the younger [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[6128,14],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18919"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18919"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18923,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18919\/revisions\/18923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}