On Fasting

If there is a spiritual discipline that causes more silence and downcast stares in a room full of church folk than fasting, then I’m clearly forgetting it.

This was never more apparent than some years ago when I had been invited to be in a leadership class at the church I was attending. As we read through Richard Foster’s “Celebration of Discipline”, there was a decent conversation around most of the disciplines that Foster highlighted in his excellent book. When we arrived at fasting? Well, we moved past that section pretty quickly.

Beyond having an ill-developed concept of why fasting matters, the disdain for going hungry and without goodies and tasty grub all day seems hard for most to get past.

Include me into one of those “most”.

So when Advent came around, as I engaged with Tish Harrison Warren’s fantastic book on the season, fasting smacked me right in the face. Surprisingly, by God’s work and The Spirit’s uncanny ability to seize the moment, I opted right then and there to fast for the next couple of weeks coming up to Christmas.

There was just one problem: I stink at fasting. 

I, like others, hate going hungry all day. I loathe seeing something in a cupboard or the fridge that I would love to taste but can’t. I abhor trying to get to sleep on an empty stomach that is making a passionate argument. And to top it off, I had learned some things about health and muscle-mass over the years that give me some anxiety about cutting out protein for even just a day, let alone a stretch of days.

Thankfully, I knew that NOT fasting was not an option - The Lord already saw my willingness and was pretty excited, so what could I do?

I could stick to it while understanding that it might need to go a certain way this time, and that in the future going the full mile needed to be formed up in me to its eventual fruition.

All said, I’m glad that I fasted for Advent, because it bore a lot of good fruit:

It taught me to be flexible but stay dedicated

Going into this season of embracing fasting, I knew there were a couple of things that I had to keep in mind:

1. Some solid food in the morning was necessary - a granola bar or a small breakfast snack with my morning coffee was allowed. This helped me to not fall off on my fasting by being too hungry too quickly, and kept my stomach from getting agitated by my morning medicines and my gastrointestinal issues.

2. Being someone who cares about keeping my (neglected) muscle mass that I worked hard to get, keeping a certain amount of protein in my diet was necessary. So, using milk and whey protein powder, I allowed myself to only consume liquids after my small breakfast.

3. The weekend had no fasting restrictions - I was allowed to feast for two days before picking right back up on Monday.

4. There would be times that it would make some sense to break my fast - a friend coming over to share a pint and our souls, my wife bringing home something special to share, the need to use our leftovers before they spoiled, etc.

While the first of those three allowances came right off the bat, the fourth one came about a week in. As a friend was about to come by, I realized that I always have a beer with this person. It was akin to us breaking (liquid) bread the one time a month we got together. The thought of saying “sorry, just can’t, but won’t you?” came to mind, but I opted for a different course: feasting. I remembered Jesus’s words in the Gospel of Mark:

Jesus said to them, “The wedding attendants cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast.

Mark 2:19 NSRVUE

And while my friend coming over wasn’t our messiah, I thought the point was apt: being with a friend who is good for the soul is a fair time to feast as opposed to fast.

It taught me that “fasting” and “feasting” are inseparable.

What I discovered through this time of fasting is that, without holding the concept of feasting next to it, fasting loses a degree of meaning.

And what I will say as not to lose it for myself or others is that, for some in our world, that separation is inevitable - some go hungry and rarely, if ever, get to experience a feast of good food. To them, even the choice and ability to do so is a feast in and of itself. While I’ll expound a bit more on solidarity with the poor and hungry, I’ll say outright that it should never be divorced from the topic of fasting. Going to sleep hungry and having my sleep derailed and interrupted by hunger drove that point home aptly.

As for feasting…

In advent, fasting has a few different meanings, but one of them is that concept of “waiting” that is integral to the season. In this time and place before Christ comes back, we are, in some sense, not able to feast on the fullness of God and God’s intention for us and all things. We are in a period of waiting for the feast that is to come, where we can fully receive God, as well as all created things in their unbroken state as we’ve never fully experienced before. Moments can feel like a granola bar for breakfast when we’re really craving a plate of breakfast hash. Or, liquids that sustain us when we really want a heaping plate of hot wings. 

(You’ll have to insert your food preferences there for full effect - breakfast hash and wings are my personal peek into the feast that is to come)

This to say, I came upon an aspect of fasting that I hadn’t fully embraced…

It linked me to different stories in Scripture

Solidarity with the saints, both living and sleeping, is a great basis for the disciplines, fasting being one of them. Admittedly, I embraced this more by happenstance than intention from the outset.

This really sprang on me when, minutes after chugging a protein shake a couple of days into fasting, I still felt hungry. It was a different type of hungry, one where I could tell something was in my stomach, but it wasn’t filling me. The Spirit pointed my mind’s eye straight to The Exodus, in which the Israelites fed on mana to get by. The story seems to convey that it tasted good enough, it nourished them, and gave them some degree of fullness, but “moments” later, they were grumbling for meat (per my prior reference to hot wings, my solidarity was… solid). Getting past the lack of satisfaction and grumbling, I tried to receive the goodness of God in the moment - that I receive “mana” from God in many different times and ways in my life here in this frame of eternity. It wasn’t fully what I wanted, as it never is, but it’s enough for the moment, it keeps me alive and going, and it proves God’s love and dedication to me.

And then there are the more obvious bits - Jesus fasting in the wilderness, prophets fasting for uber-prophety reasons, etc. If anything, my feeling as though they are obvious is a reason to pause: I’m likely skipping over those passages with mental assent instead of stopping to reflect on the why and the what.

And, again, the feast that is to come when our time of waiting for restoration comes to a close. If there is something in scripture that would consistently bring me back to this practice, it’s holding the eschatological hope that runs through scripture.

Hopefully there will be more “aha” moments like I had with The Isralites in the story of The Exodus, but I also hope that I can pause over more familiar passages to ask myself “What should I do with that?”

It helped me understand how to embrace “upstream” practices

Fasting is not my forte.

Granted, I imagine few out there would claim that anyways.

There have been a couple of times in my life where I had the dawning realization that fasting was appropriate for the moment I was in. One of them in particular sticks out boldly, a moment where I had just received some disappointing news. For whatever reason, at the intersection of The Spirit and my spirit, the first thing that came to mind was:

I need to fast.

It ended up being a good decision. That night, I had a good scream at God that I needed to get out over the situation and how it related to old wounds. Perhaps the lack of food added to my emotional disposition. Ultimately, it was both a moment of release and an unlocking of the truth: I could scream at God and still be loved just the same. God could hold my anger with compassion, not contempt.

While the reasoning and the result were good there, I have fasted other times and really got nothing out of it. The “getting nothing out of it” part is on me (albeit, I think sometimes we need to “get nothing” out of a discipline or practice to help us trust more what God will do with such things), but the point is this: difficulty + low (perceived) sense of return = probably not something that makes me wake up and say, “Man, I think it’s a fasting day.”

That said, fasting during Advent helped me to see that “upstream” (against the flow) practices - practices that I have a hard time engaging with, versus “downstream” (with the flow) which are easy for me to slip right into - are something that I should do along with those following the Church calendar. The reasons I think this works for me because:

1. It locks the practice down to a known timeframe. I can brace myself for it’s coming, I can know that I’m doing it at certain points of the year, and that I’m not avoiding that practice because it’s “programmed” in. There’s also a knowledge that it will only be for a time - again, mirroring the coming redemption.

2. I can know that I’m joining into a practice that others in The Church are embracing. There is a beauty and attraction to doing things with the collection of the saints here on Earth (even if I don’t fully have a grasp on just why that is).

3. It helps me to draw further into the season. Because the fasting corresponds to something symbolic connected to the season in question, it brings out the fullness of what is to be received around the time and event.

Ultimately, I realize that being in a spot formationally where I fast regularly out of discipline or recognizing the timing as right is where I would like to end up, but for now, this will do.

(and credit to AJ Sherrill and his book “The Enneagram for Spiritual Formation” on the term “Upstream/Downstream practices” - not sure if it was original to his work, but that’s where I encountered it nonetheless)

It allowed me to come face-to-face with my disordered desires

While this is the “no-brainer” of fasting in general, fasting forced me to face unhealed aspects of ego that still run rampant in my soul.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in WHY I desire to eat: I want to taste something good. 

Insert the irony of trying to teach my toddler that wanting something tasty and actually being hungry are two different things.

Granted, I can see it pointing to an issue higher up my personal ego chain: I desire abundance in order to be comfortable. If I want something just for how it tastes, the right question is: is it the right time for that, and if not, what’s going on? Am I anxious? Sad? Avoiding my limits or my responsibilities? Most of the time something like this becomes obvious, and I’m faced with a reality that I think someone else said better:

Like a city breached, without walls,

    is one who lacks self-control.

Proverbs 25:28 NSRVUE

My soul still has exposed wounds that the bacteria of brokenness are all too glad to creep into. While playing up the problem too much can lead to shame and anxiety, playing it down is to miss a point I’ve come to see more and more over time: we can’t underestimate how brokenness, even if it seems minor, can erode the soul. Granted, this takes wisdom - some things require full abstinence, and others just need to have a limit or a cognizance of how and when they’ll become an issue, but regardless, brokenness is always pressing in against us, and ignorance is a potent fertilizer for the weeds of brokenness that pop up in the soul’s garden. 

Add to this that I have gastrointestinal issues that make eating whatever I want whenever I want a detriment to my health and my sanity, and I’m faced with just why disciplines are good for us: they help restore us to what we were created to have. Granted, maybe I was created to be able to gorge on goodies a bit (I’m banking on it for that sweet, sweet heavenly feast), but to be and feel my best in the skin I was given, I need self-control.

Admittedly, I’ve had quite a few moments where it’s apparent I didn’t learn my lesson, but thankfully, I’ve had less of them. It shows me that while I need some urgency to curb my brokenness, I can also depend on the practice of fasting to heal that wound over time.

It opened me up to the suffering of the poor and hungry

I’m going to admit right off the bat that this bit of reality did not fall as hard on me as it ought to have.

In moments of deep and unfulfilled hunger, remembering those without adequate food access was easy to surface. And when that thought arose, I definitely had to push off the feeling like I had hit the piety jackpot because that feels gross and was as far from the point as it gets, but after I got over that, the point did sink.

However, since then, I’ve rarely had the thought in mind. The occasional moments of pause realizing that, in the face of satisfaction that I still forget to hold better gratitude for my full belly, as well as a sober reminder that too many in this world don’t have that blessing, leave me feeling sad and frustrated. Granted, I think that’s part of the process - one of my least favorite P words next to its blood-brother “patience”. Over time, seasons and soul pangs, the concept sinks in and shifts how we relate to things in the life and reality we find ourselves in.

The time that I couldn’t miss the point was always when I went to bed hungry. It wasn’t just going to bed hungry - it was waking up at 3am starving and unable to get back to sleep quickly. I was only experiencing that discomfort by bringing myself into proximity with the reality that that IS some people’s regular reality. 

All to say, it brought about an unpleasantness that requires attention and contemplation. I’m still trying to stick with that, and I can imagine that as I engage more and more with fasting, that the lessons will set in and stick. By God’s grace and work I think they will.

- - - - -

In closing, I don’t want to imply anything on you about fasting.

Maybe you do fast and you can relate - maybe you can even give me some epiphanies and tips that can encourage and help me.

Maybe fasting is a topic that keeps coming around and you don’t know what to do with it - maybe for good reasons, maybe for reasons less so.

Maybe, if you’re anything like me, you just read a writeup like this and, having been exposed to it, realize you need to do something with it.

Regardless of which of these categories and the ones beyond it you find yourself in, I hope that God reveals something good to you concerning a tough but fruitful spiritual discipline.

May you feel the love of The One who holds your story and your soul with deep affection as you say “Yes” to this life.