As the winter solstice approaches, animals and the rest of nature turn towards slowing down and saving, rather than, spending energy. This was echoed in the understanding of Advent as a time for simplification. This is somewhat removed from the excesses which are promoted as being necessary for happiness in the modern celebration of the Season.
We have known for a long time that poverty can destroy the body and render the soul deaf and insensitive. What has yet to be learned is that overabundance of things and enjoyments also devours the soul. An appropriate relation to things, one that does not overwhelm the senses, cannot grow when things are ever present for our consumption. Overabundance destroys the intensity of people and their capacity to enjoy and to be related.
In cultures where asceticism developed and was practiced, people knew that one can suffocate when every option is a readily available one. Without self-limitation, without fixed boundaries - like those given in creation between day and night, summer and winter, being young and growing old - life loses its humanness. Asceticism means to renounce at least for periods of time the options that present themselves. In bygone cultures of poverty there were times for fasting, waking, withdrawing, and keeping silence. Perhaps people believed that life itself could be saved by giving up parts of it.
Dorothee Soelle, The Silent Cry : Mysticism and Resistance
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