Good Friday Electricity Fast

The Wilcox household experimented last week with a new (to us) way of observing Good Friday. Well, Good Friday afternoon to dawn on Easter Day actually. We kept an 'Electricity Fast'.

We owe the idea to a childhood friend of mine, Dave Bookless. Dave is National Director of Arocha UK -- a Christian nature conservation organisation. Forty years ago he and I were sandpit playmates in Bangalore, South India (where our fathers were colleagues on the staff of an Anglican Theological College). We haven't been in regular contact over the years, but last month he kindly agreed to deliver one of a series of Lent Lunchtime Lectures we had arranged at Lichfield Cathedral. It was a memorable occasion (in fact all five lectures were excellent). In the course of his presentation he happened to mention that he and his family had for some years now found the practice of an annual electricity fast something challenging and rewarding. It was one of those moments for me: as soon as he'd said it, I knew I'd want to try it.

Cathy didn't take much persuading. Maybe she's used to my mad schemes. The boys were less enthusiastic; but they are astonishingly loyal to their Dad and patient with me, and in the end both entered into the experiment pretty whole-heartedly. Broadly, the plan was to mark the hours in which Jesus was dead (ie, 3pm on Friday to dawn on Easter Day) by doing without electricity. The idea was not only that the subdued atmosphere in the home and longer hours of darkness would fit the time of the Christian year, but that in the process we would make a small gesture of protest at our consumer society and its heedless use of the world's resources. The two things felt like a good fit.

We didn't prepare carefully -- Holy Week was pretty hectic and Good Friday came up on us in a bit of a rush in the end. In advance we did agree not to cut off the power from the fridge or the freezer, but that we would do without computers, lighting, dishwasher, washing machine, microwave and kettle etc. Once we were underway, it became clear that we hadn't thought through the question of battery power. We hadn't gone round removing batteries from clocks and I decided not to remove my watch. That might be a useful experiment in itself some time, but it felt like the sort of thing which would take some thinking through and couldn't easily be tackled spontaneously. We didn't unplug the landline telephone -- but we did agree that we would make no outgoing calls except in an emergency. We would still answer incoming calls however. Not wanting to impose my own spiritual disciplines on the boys, I also suggested that the front room might be an amnesty area, where (with the door closed etc) they could retreat to watch tele, boot up a laptop etc. The mobile phone was a tough one. Again, we decided no texts or outgoing calls and no recharging either!

As the weekend unfolded, we did cut ourselves a bit of slack. Our shower is electrically operated and while it would have been possible to do without (our bath water is gas heated after all even if the thermostat which controls it is electric), we decided to make an exception of it. And I confess to using my mobile phone to keep in touch with the football results on Saturday afternoon... (I hadn't worked out in advance that our 'fast' hours included a period in which it was possible that my beloved Newcastle United might clinch promotion to the Premier League -- and in the end I couldn't bear not to follow progress. Shallow, I know.)

What was the impact? Well, our evening meals on Friday and Saturday were wonderful: candlelit and special somehow. I missed the kettle -- though boiling up water for tea and coffee was easy enough on our gas cooker. Six times during the fast I inadvertently flicked a light switch and had at once to turn it off again. I didn't realise how much of a reflex this is. I enter a dark room and reach out for the switch. It's even a reflex to turn 'off' a light you've remembered not to turn on. Twice I did this leaving the bathroom. Even though the room was dark and I was carrying a candle, I pullled the the light cord as I went out and filled the room with light. I missed the electric blanket. We live in a big house and the bedroom is hard to heat. Getting into a cold bed was probably the biggest hardship. And I was quite sobered to discover how much time I spend at my computer, especially dealing with emails. It has become instinctive to me, whenever I return home, to head into my study and check the state of my inbox. It was good to interrupt that pattern long enough to take note of it. To their credit, the boys disciplined themselves considerably: they didn't use their computers (as far as I'm aware) or their keyboards and electric guitars. The tele did get some use, but only after 6pm. That was a refinement introduced by the TV user himself, not by his parents!

And of course, on Easter morning it was wonderfully to be able to use the kettle and to switch on the lights -- and a CD player. Recorded music was the other thing we hadn't used for 36 hours and the combination of the CD player and the lights felt like a fitting celebration of Jesus' resurrection.