First Fast

In the midst

I think that if John Wesley had the job of planning a menu, grocery shopping, preparing meals and then cleaning up after them, and if, during the rest of the day he was taking care of a preschooler and being repeatedly asked to play rabbits or to provide snacks, he might have found fasting less of a prayerful activity.  At least, that’s how I find it. 

Perhaps I am just a wimp.  I ate breakfast only seven hours ago.  I had a cup of chai with soy milk mid-morning.  I’ll eat a later-than-usual dinner with my family.  I’ll get in maybe ten hours at most.  I’m not even doing a full grown-up fast, but my head feels funny already, and I am very hungry.  That sounds silly to say while fasting, but there it is.  I am aware, though, that the reason my body feels so very hungry is that it is used to being fed constantly.  If I did this more often, or if I was actually, out of need, starving, seven hours since my last meal would not be such a big deal.  I am spoiled and soft and self-centered.  A wimp.

But I am not a wimp.  Four days ago I ran a marathon.  More to the point, I ran those last six miles when every cell in my body was asking to please please please stop.  I did not run them quickly, but I was still running when I crossed the finish line.  Perhaps I should have run them more prayerfully.  And surely I ought to be fasting more prayerfully as well. 

It just doesn’t feel holy.  Or maybe it just doesn’t feel holy yet.  It feels hard.  I am in the habit of eating rather constantly.  It was hard not to grab handful of almonds as I was preparing lunch or putting away groceries or cleaning dishes.  When a dribble of applesauce stood on the lip of the jar, my instinct was to scoop it up with a finger and eat it.  Packing (and unpacking) carrots for Adam’s lunch, my hand could almost not help picking one up and popping it in my mouth.  And a little voice in my head kept telling me that those little crumbs of food wouldn’t count.  I would still be fasting.  And it’s at least true that I would still have been hungry.  But just being hungry isn’t the point.

My woozy head, then, is asking, “Well, what is the point?”  Why am I doing this?

The wrong (but also true) answers are that I am fasting because it is part of my religious tradition, because I have never done it, and because I am afraid of it.  Isaiah writes about fasting (that you shouldn’t just do it because of tradition.)  Jesus fasts (for forty days!!)  Jesus tells his disciples how to go about fasting (not in public—so should I not post this?)  Saints are infamous for fasting.  John Wesley fasted.  We talk about fasting in my covenant group and, oh yeah, it’s in our covenant.  We talked about it at the retreat I helped plan.  Apparently, fasting is a way to draw closer to God.  But aside from the time about a year ago when I had to fast for the 12 hours prior to my surgery, I have never tried to fast.  I’ve given up chocolate.  I’ve given up dessert altogether.  But I’ve never given up food.  I am wildly dependent on food.  I’ve seen me without food (for, oh, a couple of hours at times,) and it’s a frightening thing.  My mind refuses to focus, and my memories of these times are like memories of dreams.  Lights are too harsh and my perception of distance is skewed.  My speech slows down and my movements falter a bit.  I stumble rather than flit.  The world and my place in it become so heavy and desperate: no way I can possibly endure another minute of whatever benign activity is annoying me.  And then my husband says to me, “You need to eat.”  I will continue, with slow and slurred speech, to insist that whatever situation I am bemoaning is the real cause of my misery.  My husband will not respond with anything other than, “I think you need to eat.”  Generally about half an hour after I’ve had a good meal, everything is better.  Magic.  Food.  I am afraid of intentionally getting really really hungry if accidental hunger can have those effects.  A part of me wants to try to fast just to face down the fear, to show myself that I do not need to be afraid, which is perhaps to some a noble reason, but it’s not a Godly one, I don’t think.

I should be fasting as prayer.  I might be fasting in solidarity.  I should be fasting as a reminder of what I have and from whom all blessings flow.  I am fasting as self-discipline.

Honestly, when it comes to appreciating my blessings, I think I’m above average.  Above average is not the goal, of course.  Complete and utter humility and constant gratitude are the goal.  Without God, I would have nothing and be nothing, and this is a taste (pardon the pun) of that.  So I guess this is supposed to be teaching me my complete reliance on God. Is it?  Maybe.  We’ll see where I am in a couple of hours. 

I’m not all that bad at self-discipline either.  I regularly get up well before dawn to run interval or hill repeats.  I sometimes get in nine miles before breakfast.  I run when I don’t feel like running, sometimes even when it hurts.  I like meat but haven’t eaten any in over a year, even right after a marathon when we were in a little blue-collar town with only meat-based restaurants.

I’m not sure I’m getting the prayer thing.  But then, I’m a novice pray-er.  I was sort of hoping that fasting would make prayer easy, like music does for me, but I suspect that fasting as a form of prayer is an advanced technique.  If anything, the hunger and the discipline, the not putting the handful of food in my mouth, is a reminder that is a day set apart for something different.  If I am not constantly communing with God, at least I am behaving in a way that makes me remember some aspect of God.  How many people in my church have brought up that the true order of faith is “behave, belong, believe.”  So I behave.  Well, in this small thing I do.

The solidarity thing makes sense to me.  It reverberates within and sets to singing my decision not to eat meat.  I abstain from meat because if everyone ate meat, there would not be enough earth to feed earth’s people.  Already, there is not food to feed earth’s people.  I cannot solve that problem, but I want to acknowledge it constantly.  I want not to contribute to it.  I want to stand as witness to the fact that we can live another way.  Heck, we can run marathons another way!  Of course, I still eat plenty.  I might even eat too much on a regular basis.  The fact that I am, with a lifestyle choice, acknowledging the issue of hunger is, to me, a matter of holiness, but how much more holy to actually be hungry as well once in a while.  Ah, now there we are starting to pluck some of my heartstrings, to get my soul into the song.  Perhaps is it just my brand of faith that I would rather do something for other humans than for God?  Perhaps Jesus and Isaiah would be OK with that sort of religiosity?

Day after: Reflection

The afternoon and evening went well.  I took Adam to his basketball practice, and while I was interacting with some other moms there, people I have come to consider friends, the hunger didn’t bother me.  It was still there, of course, but it was just there.  It wasn’t eating at me.  It was just sitting there with me.  I didn’t mind.  I even, in a way, liked it.  I liked that on the outside I looked normal (I hope) but had something different going on inside, a little secret between me and God.  Interesting that Jesus admonishes his followers not to fast in public.  I understand his point.  I would not want my fasting to become a topic of conversation in that setting.  I’m certain it would have made the fasting about me: how religious I am (I have nothing against being religious, but that label always feels false to me,) how hungry I must be, how hard it would be, etc.  Ick.  That certainly would have made the hunger less holy and more disturbing. 

We had left-overs for dinner, and although I had intended all along to break my fast at dinnertime, and I did, I felt like somehow staying in the spirit of the fast.  So I served everyone else first, and I ate the half-serving of sweet potato chili that was left.  I had some broccoli and a few crackers.  It was a meal, but it wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy my hunger.  It wasn’t even as much as I would ordinarily eat after eating all day.  I did not have my usual post-meal piece of chocolate.  I went to choir still hungry.  I went to bed still hungry, something I rarely do.

I am very aware of the fact that as fasts go, mine was very small, but it was a beginning.  It was an attempt.  In looking back at why I did it, and thinking back about what I got out of it, I think it is an exercising worth repeating. 

I believe it did make me more aware of the plenty around me.  It made me conscious of how easy it is to pop something healthy and sustaining in my mouth without thought.   Yes, we say grace before meals, but I do I say grace while I am making my son’s lunch and sample the sunbutter?  Do I give thanks for the left-over popcorn I munch while I’m cleaning up the kitchen?  Do I remember that every mid-day handful of almonds is a great bounty of nutrients and therefore a blessing?  No.  Today I will, I hope.

It was also, I think, a sort of prayer.  It wasn’t always an uplifting prayer.  It wasn’t a prayer with words or a clear direction.  But it was a way of reminding myself that I am trying to be with God, and I am pretty sure that God gives partial credit for effort.  Paul tells us, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words” (Romans 8:26). Hopefully the Spirit did something with the fast, small though it was.

The most profound affect it had on me, however, was one that I originally thought was not a holy one: I faced down a fear.  When I wrote that yesterday, it seemed a very secular reason to do something.  It is true that a person not seeking God might undertake some adventure simply to face down a fear.  But, as I realized yesterday, the process of releasing a fear is also a holy one.  For me, it was the most holy result of my fast. 

I realized with a start last night that fear is a thing that ties us to this world.  This time last week I was afraid of the marathon.  I was afraid of disappointment.  I was afraid of pain.  I was afraid of despair.  And yes, this time yesterday, I was afraid of hunger.  I was afraid of what these things would do to me and what I, in turn, would do.  But in the last week I have been in pain.  I have been tired to the point of tears.  I have felt despair at ever finishing the last three miles of a marathon.  I have been hungry.  And I have come out the other side.  These things are not exactly pleasant, but there is great value in knowing for certain that if they are demanded of me, I can do them.  I need not turn down a call, should one come, because I am a slave to fear.  The Bible says that perfect love casts out fear, but I suspect that, to some extent, fear also prevents perfect love.  If I am afraid of discomfort, I am living for myself.  If I am living in fear, I am tied to my security.  I am tethered to food.  I am tethered to pride.  I must think first of avoiding my fears rather than thinking first of living fully.  If I am about food, I am not about the life that food enables.  I do not believe that God wants me to be hungry, but I also do not think that God wants my life to be about not being hungry.  As for pain, humiliation, and despair, Psalms 51:17 says, “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”  God is not looking for perfection and complete competence.  God is looking for us to be willing to walk into whatever lies ahead of us and not think first about whether or not we have packed enough snacks.