“Ew ew ew ew ew ew,” I chanted like a toddler staring down a plate of steamed broccoli as I reached into the church dumpster and gingerly grabbed a stack of dirty plastic soup containers. The kind you find at Chinese restaurants and grocery stores.
“Ewwwwwww,” I whimpered on a long, sustained note as I withdrew my prize from the sea of trash bags, the scent of four-day dumpster-fermented Hungarian mushroom soup trailing along behind. The gritty feel of the used coffee grounds stuck to the plastic containers added a sense-tastic dimension to my disgust.
This is all Lent’s fault.
I didn’t mean to make a big deal out of giving something up for Lent this year. I was so busy trying to make sure we had actually planned for Ash Wednesday that I kinda forgot to personally prepare for Ash Wednesday. So Ash Wednesday got here and I was like, “Oh, that’s Lent. What am I doing for Lent again? Besides Lent?”
Because for pastors and deacons, Lent is its own special whirlwind of barely-contained chaos whose main purpose seems to be to prime us for Holy Week, where the chaos explodes in Brownian liturgical motion whose energy somehow propels us through Easter, whereupon we collapse in on ourselves and become a human black holes that attracts dog snuggles and ice cream for at least a week.
Or maybe that’s just me?
Anyway, it was Ash Wednesday, and I’d been so busy making sure that everyone else was ready that I totally forgot to prayerfully meditate upon what God was calling me to give up or add on for Lent, which is, you know, totally what I encourage my people to do.
But on Facebook a couple of folks were hopping on the giving-up-single-use-plastic train, and that seemed pretty good to me since last Lent I had already tried that so I already had the metal straws but also keep forgetting that I have the metal straws and also to tell the waitstaff at restaurants to hold the straws, so clearly I needed more practice anyway.
The time elapsed between deciding to give up single-use plastic for Lent and next using single-use plastic was about 35 minutes. On the morning of Ash Wednesday I went to the craft store and got a whole bunch of liturgical supplies, and because those liturgical supplies included rocks (YUP) now I’m the proud new owner of eight plastic bags that are still sitting in my church office because I’m too guilty to acknowledge their presence. Did I have re-usable bags in my car? Yes, of course I did. Did I forget them? UH-HUH.
Given this auspicious beginning, let me present an argument for the transformative power of God’s grace, for surely no other factor can account for the fact that I somehow ended up here, on the fourth Sunday of Lent, dumpster-diving in the church parking lot because NOW I HAVE TO SAVE THE PLASTIC SOUP CONTAINERS.
It was such a slippery slope:
As part of my renewed commitment to my half-assed Lenten kibosh on single-use plastic—and because the plastic bags in my office were staring at me accusingly—I also resolved not to take any car trips that are under a mile, and to walk to work as often as I could reasonably manage. (The dog was delighted.)
But then the Lenten soup suppers started, and one Wednesday we ran into a paucity of soup sign-ups, which drove our sexton to the nearby grocery store to buy four quarts of back-up soup. Enter the soup containers of dumpster fame.
After the Wednesday when we went through two quarts of the back-up soup, I washed the soup containers and took them home. I discovered that, filled with homemade potato soup and securely rubber-banded, they fit perfectly into the backpack that I wear while walking to and from work. This was perfect, because my take-out container options include heavy Pyrex and old yogurt containers that do not fasten securely or enjoy having hot soup poured into them.
IT ALL SOUNDS SO REASONABLE SO FAR.
But then. That Wednesday, we went through not only my potato soup and the other two soups that people brought, but ALSO THE REST OF OUR BACK-UP SOUP. THERE WAS NO MORE SOUP.
This is a Lenten church crisis.
So I told myself that I would find the plastic containers and wash them out and take them home and fill them with more soup and EVERYTHING WOULD BE FINE…but then I couldn’t find the containers.
Until this morning.
I went to throw something away in the church dumpster, and there they were, sitting atop that sea of smelly black trash bags like the one Ring sat atop the melting rocks in the heart of Mount Doom. The four soup containers.
I waited until after church. I waited until everyone else had gone home and no one could see the pastor digging through the church dumpster. And then I did it, guys. I got those damn soup containers, in all their type-5 polypropylene suitable-for-hot-liquids glory, and I wrapped them in a cloth napkin and I took them home and I washed the CRAP out of them.
And that’s when I realized.
There are four quart containers. But I only saved one lid.
.
.
.
I spent hours this afternoon thinking about going back to church and looking for them, but 1) it’s raining and 2) I would have to walk because LENT.
And also because it would be a little bit too much.
Right?
…Wouldn’t it?
LUTHERAN MOXIE 