Food and Fasting

I´ve read a couple of books recently that have made me think about food, that it should be connected a lot closer to religion, our worldview, and our life than we tend to think of it. What are a few things that occupy the most time in our day? Working, probably. Hopefully spending time with loved ones. Buying, preparing, and eating food. Now compare this to the time we spend doing devotions, praying, or joining in fellowship with brothers and sisters in Christ.

It made me realize how big of a deal food is compared with what should be taking a big part of our lives. What we turn eating into with our hurried meals and food out of a can is an experience in consumption. Our interactions with our food, planting, watering, and harvesting plants, raising and butchering animals, then cooking and eating our food can and should be a spiritual experience. Food has the potential to connect us very closely to God´s creation, God´s providence and the people around us. A Central African word, Ubuntu comes to mind, meaning ´I am only human to the extent of my interactions with my environment´.

I´ve read some books recently that have advocated fasting as a way to fight consumerism and get us thinking about what we actually need and sharing with each other. I also have thought recently as I´ve felt like all I do is eat some days that I really don´t appreciate the food that I´m given. I mean, I love the way it tastes, but the biggest thought in my head when I get a big plate of food that I´m in no way hungry for is ok, how can I manage to eat this food to convey to the people who gave it to me that I really do like it a lot and appreciate their hospitality? Its good to make sure people know you appreciate what they´re doing for you, but I realized that I don´t think of food as sustenance, as something that is a wonderful gift from God.

I read another book that recommended fasting to think about how much we use that we actually need and what we can do with our excess if we lived with less. It said maybe we could fast for one day a week and give the saved money (or food) to people who could use it and would appreciate it greatly. This book also advocated volutary poverty as a way to connect with people who are hungry, homeless, or otherwise. In a word, solidarity.

I did a kinda-not-really fast at EMU in early ´07. I say kinda-not-really because we ate two meals a day of rice and beans in which portions were unlimited and the food was very nicely spiced=absoloutly delicious. It was still really hard to go to bed late at night feeling a little hungry and looking at the food I had on my dresser. It made me think how difficult that must be to go to sleep hungry and not having assurance that you will have food to eat the next day. Even though the experience was far shy of the real thing, it helped me to think about how it must be to actually be hungry.

Today I´m fasting for the first time ever. Not a kinda-not-really fast, I considered it making one but then it would feel wrong. So all I´m doing is drinking water. I´m going to make it something I do once a week for all of the reasons above plus as a way to practice self-control which, I´m finding, I have very little of. My mind keeps drifting and I keep thinking about how I should probably walk across the street and buy a Chocobanana or maybe a couple of muffins from the bakery at my house until I remember that I´m fasting today and I cannot live by bread alone.