Last month, I participated in a 10-day fast with my church to pray and seek God’s will for the year ahead. I’ve never really fasted before, apart from one or two other times, fasting for 24 hours, so I wasn’t sure what to expect from an extended fast. I chose to fast from lunch for 10 days, so I ate breakfast (with my morning cup of coffee) and did not eat until dinner. When possible, I broke my day’s fast with others.
I’ll be honest, it mostly felt terrible physically. The hunger was fine and I didn’t find myself only thinking about food as I thought, but the fatigue was the worst part for me. I wasn’t as mentally sharp, and it also meant I had to give up time in the gym because I didn’t have the fuel to sustain the intense workouts I normally love. It messed with my normal digestion, and I had a hard time listening to my body to figure out what it needs when I could eat, something I don’t usually struggle to do. I have a good relationship with food and love cooking, so it was odd to feel so out of sync with my body for so long.
As for the spiritual side, I didn’t sense any obvious change or shift. I wasn’t very disciplined to use the time I would normally prepare and eat lunch to pray, and instead just carried on working. I didn’t have any great revelation or encounter with God, other than to be thankful that we are not called to fast forever. Even so, I was comforted by the fact that fasting is a prayer of the body, and spiritual disciplines take practice. Life following Jesus is more often conversations walking on a dusty road than transfigurations on mountain tops.
Anyway, I wrote a poem about it. The word ‘fast’ is rich etymologically, so I enjoyed bringing in some of that richness and depth. There’s also plenty of Lewis and Tolkien allusions (is anyone surprised), as I was particularly inspired by a book I just read, Tolkien’s Faith: A Spiritual Biography by Holly Ordway, and even a sneaky allusion to McCarthy’s The Road.
Delighted Denial
When the world is at my fingertips,
Why deprive?
In steadfastly holding out
Grace teaches me to hold on and hold fast,
Fastened to the constant anchor
Not dominated by the will to survive
In the flesh
But by one much greater and better
And this grace finally gives permission
To notice
What rises to the surface
When easy fast filling
Can’t keep it stuffed and buried.
Then like dried grass
It blows away
In a warm, gentle breath,
Released from its prison.
So let my body’s prayer
Correct incurvatus in se
No longer bent inward
As a fetus to its cord
Now grown strong and straight
As the mighty oak and sprawling aspen
Roots drinking deeply from the waters of life
I bend only a knee
To cup water from this stream
As the lion says,
There is no other,
You must drink here.
And quenched, I take by word-of-mouth
Waybread for the journey
Shared with my fellow pilgrim,
The one great thing to love on earth
We carry on to the golden halls,
Our invitation to the feast
Burning in our breast pockets
Feeling the groaning in our stomachs
Press us on, with the Presence
To follow the flame
Into the wilderness
And somehow this emptiness
Fuels a song from deep within
Because we will not be outdone by
These stones that would not become bread
Soon the bridegroom will move
To embrace his bride
Finally shining and real as diamonds
And we will laugh and dance and cry
At the sudden turn where
All things come together
The sting of hunger
Once tunneling our vision
Now unremembered
But until then,
My waiting is a prayer
My denial is a remembrance
My longing is my hope
His steadfast love, my food.
*just to note, Tolkien was devoutly Catholic and believed in the Real Presence of the Eucharist, or the doctrine of transubstantiation. I don’t hold to this, but I wanted to allude to part of the etymology of ‘fast’ that means close by or near (I was thinking of the traditional lyrics to Away in a Manger are: “fast by me forever/And love me I pray” but I can’t actually find any lyrics that say ‘fast by’ instead of ‘close by’ so maybe I’m making that up)
Hopeful Wanderer 