Part III
Fasting
Generally speaking, there are two types of religious fasts: one involves giving up something that is good or pleasurable— food, drink, conversation, sex, travel— for a more ultimate good— self-restraint, deepening of awareness, appreciation, and yearning, realization of a more fulfilling and preeminent pleasure, gratefulness, and/or spiritual communion.
For Christians, the practice of fasting involves embracing in miniature the self-emptying and loving movement (Greek. kenosis) of the incarnation (Philippians 2: 3-8). For example, we give up certain foods or limit our number of meals in order to become aware: aware of the food that we put into our bodies; aware of how we take food for granted as well the sun, soil, and water as well as those animals, plants, and farmers who make our nourishment possible; aware of how we misuse food to feed unconscious hungers; aware of others who regularly go without food, some to the point of starvation and death in a world of plenty; and aware of our deepest hunger for that soul food many people call God.
People with heart problems abstain from mouth-watering fatty-foods in order to care for their health. Olympic athletes forego late nights with friends to rise early to train and to insure their best effort as do opera singers in order to preserve their voices and guarantee a peak performance. Carthusian monks abstain from speaking in order to descend into the cave of their heart to listen to the Divine. Orthodox Christian couples abstain from sex on appointed days of fast to draw their minds to God and their hearts to prayer. Theravada Buddhist monks avoid travel for three months during Vassa and devote themselves to intensive meditation and study. Said to be traced to the Buddha himself, this practice is a good example of showing restraint for a higher cause since one of its purposes was to avoid damaging crops and small living beings by traveling during the rainy season. When practiced freely and well, abstaining from the good for the better is intended to be formational and transformational, not punitive or Manichean.
All this is a tough sell today especially in cultures where, on the one hand, instant-gratification, spoiled egotism, and entitlement reign and, on the other hand, where even the slightest inconvenience or boundary is resented and resisted, to say nothing of the avoidance of pain and suffering. Many years ago when I taught high school in the Pacific Northwest, there was a joke that circulated right before spring break each year at the expense of affluent students from a certain private prep school I will call Blueblood High. It went something like this:
“What’s the favorite wine at Blueblood High?”
“I don’t know – Chardonnay?”
“No, it’s– ‘Hawaii again?!”
But closer to home there is another side as well. If we are honest, it is important and fair to say, that much of the push back and resentment of renunciative practices is due to the purveyors and presiders of the religions themselves. The great danger of all spiritual disciplines is that they variously become legalistic, robotic, superstitious, or resented. This is largely due to the fact that the logic and purpose of these observances and practices were not, and in some cases still are not, adequately or convincingly explained. Again, for Christians, the purpose of Lent is Easter. If the practices don’t enhance life, if they don’t increase love, if they don’t increase self-awareness and compassion for others, if they don’t draw us toward God, they are either being poorly explained, poorly practiced or both.
What’s more, as the spirit of uber-individualism is encouraged in Western society, and as faith communities, neighborhoods, towns, and cities become more diffuse, there are too few wisdom communities intimate and supportive enough to sustain these observances and to insure they are understood and practiced in enlivening and healthy ways.
In addition to observances that are reduced to people merely going through the motions or observed for superstitious reasons, there are two additional dangers. One is that in some circles where such disciplines are observed, a spirit of self-righteousness and judgment can set in that ironically nullifies the practice. Any time there is an aura of I/we have “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” I would suggest, that members of that community fervently pray – “so help me God.”
A second, and equally if not greater and more toxic danger, is that the poor explanations of these practices can result in reducing God to a killjoy, a prudish terrorist displeased with any and all carnal pleasures. The God of our forebears is the Divine Poet who spoke the cosmos into being and who at the end of each creative action sang like Bobbie McFerren or Aretha Franklin a refrain of sheer, unapologetic delight, “Ahh! Yes! Yes! It is so good. So very very good” (RMV–Revised Miller Version)!
When spiritual disciplines like fasting and abstinence are divorced from the tender spaciousness, the extravagant love, and the jubilant nature of God, the tragic result is often that participants confuse the proverbial pointing finger for the moon. And in this sense, the moon is the ridiculous largesse of the Divine heart and the effulgence of God’s love.
pax ~ dan