Tuesday August 24, 2004

Glutton for Punishment

I had dinner last night at one of my very favorite resturants, Evvia Estiatorio. Had the "Arnisia Paidakia - rib-cut, mesquite-grilled lamb chops", which were absolutely brilliant. So rich and well-seasoned, in fact, that I woke up with a bad case of what I do not fondly call "Pascha Belly", that very specific form of early morning dyspepsia you get after eating lots of rich food on Pascha (the Greek/Orthodox word for Easter) after having fasted from meat for some 50 days prior. Spectacular at first, weapon of mass destruction shortly thereafter. Anyway, I haven't been fasting from meat, but my lamb chops were outrageous enough to provoke the same response.

So imagine my surprise this morning, on the exercise bike (a sort of physical means of repentance), when Screwtape writes:

My dear Wormwood,

The contemptuous way in which you spoke of gluttony as a means of catching souls, in your last letter, only shows your ignorance. One of the great achievements of the last hundred years has been to deaden the human conscience on that subject, so that by now you will hardly find a sermon preached or a conscience troubled about it in the whole length and breadth of Europe.

Letter 17

Great. Nailed. By a guy who passed away when I was three.

Fortunately, there was some good news for me further down in the letter. Apparently, delicacy -- fussiness over what you eat, however much or little -- is a much bigger deal than the pigging out itself. In fact, Screwtape tells his nephew, "Mere excess in food is much less valuable [to the demons] than delicacy."

Phew.

"Its chief use is as a kind of artillery preparation for attacks on chastity."

Oh crikey...

Watercress salad for me tonight then, for sure.

Or maybe tomorrow. Tonight, I'm off to Kabul, quite possibly for whatever they call lamb chops in Afghanistan. Maybe I just need a Zantac before I go to bed!

(2004-08-24 19:03:17.0) Permalink