A Polo Shirt

Sara and I are engaging in the Lenten discipline of sacrifice (better known as "giving something up for Lent"). In keeping with a program that four local churches have put together for this season, we are "sacrificing with a purpose": we give up so that we can give away. That is, we are departing a bit from the pietistic tradition of Lenten discipline ("I'm giving this up as a sign of my devotion to God") and moving into the prophetic tradition ("When I give this up, it will allow me to bless someone else").

Sara found a discipline for Lent called "40 bags for 40 days." Every day of Lent (from Ash Wednesday to Resurrection Sunday), we will discipline ourselves to fill a bag, at least the size of a plastic grocery bag, full of items to give away to someone or an organization that needs the stuff more than we do.

Today I rifled through my closet and drawer space to get a bag's worth of clothes to give away.

"Discipline" is defined as something done in order to achieve an end that can't be achieved by direct effort. We cannot just lose weight; we need to engage the disciplines of diet and exercise in order to help our bodies to shed pounds. We cannot make ourselves fluent in a foreign language. We need to engage the disciplines of vocabulary flash cards and verbal repetition in order to get the language to sink in. So the discipline of giving up and giving away can help us become more generous and less needy of stuff.

Disciplines have side-effects, often in the form of surprise lessons.

I have a polo shirt that has been hanging in my closet(s) for years. I happened upon it today, and thought that I should give it away. When that thought occurred to me, however, a countering sensation jumped into my mind: you need that shirt.

Here's the thing: I don't need that shirt.

I have not worn the shirt in over three years. I don't like the color. And here's the kicker: it hasn't fit since the day I bought it. The neck is too big; when it's fully buttoned, the collar slides to one side or the other of my shoulders, making me look rather silly. The cuffs on the short sleeves double up on themselves in my armpits. And I swim in the body of the thing. It's probably the biggest long-term waste-of-space to occupy my closet, ever.

But something told me that I needed that shirt. Why? The sensation that urged me to put it back on the hanger began as an amorphous intuition, one to which I have kow-towed for too many years. But this year, because of this Lenten discipline, I looked it right in the eye. There I saw fear.

Maybe fear that by giving it away I was admitting that I had made a poor choice in buying it in the first place. (I don't remember where or for how much I bought it. It might have been at a second-hand store.) Fear that some unnamed Accuser would point a finger at me and say, "See! You really are wasteful! And you have poor taste in clothes, to boot!" As if by wearing it I could make it stylish? Fear that maybe next month I'd gain the forty pounds necessary to fill it out and miss it when it's gone. (Like that's gonna happen. My dad had a stick frame until his dying day.) Fear that getting rid of even the most heinous pieces of wardrobe means losing a part of who I am.

Fear. Irrational, animal fear is what I saw in the eye of that beast. And in that fear was power. Power to force me to hold on to that shirt, to cater to its hanger-stealing needs. Power to make me feel guilty about even thinking of getting rid of it, though I never wear it. Power to make me choose useless possession over generosity. Power to weasel its way into my self-definition. Fear gave this object power over me.

But it's Lent, and I'm helping Sara to fill bags. So I folded up that mint-condition polo shirt and sent it to a place where it will bring someone joy instead of fear and warmth instead of clutter. Just for the discipline of it.

And now that it's done, the fear feels silly and as wasteful as keeping the polo shirt in my closet all these years. I want to walk over to my "That Was Easy" button and press it a few times. I almost want to step outside and yell, "I am an individual!" but it's cold out there and I'm not really. After all, the shirt will go to someone else to whom I am connected. But I do recognize that the fear doesn't have real power after all. And if there's a good side-effect of Lenten discipline, it's learning that there's something more powerful than fear.

So much for the polo shirt. Next beast to stare down: books. Giving away books? Now that's terrifying.

~emrys