Last week, I promised to talk a little more about the traditional eating restrictions of Lent.

During the Middle Ages, the faithful abstained from meat (described as all flesh), milk, eggs, butter, and cheese. These restrictions weren't just a religious-tinged diet plan. Keeping these restrictions required care, attention, and discipline, hallmarks of the Lenten observance. But they did even more.

These restrictions helped people to live in harmony with their neighbors and with nature.

By the middle of the winter when Lent begins, food was beginning to grow scarce in traditional agrarian societies. When the fields were harvested in the fall, as much food as possible was stored in root cellars and barns (no refrigerators or even canning at that time). Many fruits and vegetables keep well when stored in a cool dry place: potatoes, onions, turnips, winter squashes, parsnips, apples, pears. Legumes and grains store well too: lentils, flour, dried beans, oats. Add to that nuts harvested as winter fell that keep quite well in their shells.

Traditionally, animals were slaughtered in late fall to avoid having to feed them all winter when pasture was scarce and animals had to be fed with stored hay. Meat not eaten fresh was salted, dried or smoked to last longer.

Much of the stored food would have been consumed in the feasts during the twelve days of Christmas. Add to that shortage, the fact that hens lay fewer eggs in less daylight and the fact that cows drop their calves around this time so they need milk for their young.

So, the Lenten food restrictions helped stretch the available food until early spring crops (peas, greens, etc.) were available and made sure that animals could care for their young, helping people live in nature's rhythm. At the same time, reducing the amount that each person ate meant that more people could have enough to survive. Rather than some people gorging and others starving, everyone could have some.

Now, most faithful today do not observe such strict dietary requirements in Lent, but we can keep the spirit of these restrictions. We can attend more closely to the environmental impact of the food you eat, eating seasonally and locally, food that is harvested ethically and sold by companies that treat their employees with justice. We can plan our meals very carefully to reduce food waste, composting whatever possible. We can also consider those who have less than we do. But limiting what we consume (food and other things), we live more lightly on the earth and we can save money. We can use that money to help those in need.

While we may not celebrate a medieval Lent, we can keep our focus on the principles that underlie this practice.