Day 28: The Difference Between Fasting and Feasting, a thin line
Sometimes I think I would enjoy life more if I were an ascetic.
I know that sentence doesn’t seem to equate. Enjoying life more would generally put the emphasis on the “more”—more quantity, more volume, more indulging, more More. I would seem the perfect candidate for the BOGO buy one, get one scheme. The problem is, I am.
I like a bargain, I like value, I like More, and I’d like to have more of what I like. A good experience begs a repeat experience, another partaking to match or even exceed the first. Pleasurable feelings, whether sight, sound, smell, taste, texture, or emotional have an addictive quality. How many people go to garage sales, thrift shops, Ross Dress for Less, One Day Sales for the mere thrill of the hunt?!
At the same time, however, I don’t need more, and sometimes I discover I don’t want more.
I often feel worse off for having more. Eating too much makes my body feel out of sorts. I physically turn away from tasting some foods because of their excessively richness. I can find a bag full of bargains at store; but when I get home, though I like all my treasures, my delight meter falters.
When More should be sending me off the seismic sensory scale, inside the needle sometimes flutters before falling flat. Rather than filling me, More can deflate me. Can you have too much of a good thing. Apparently, yes.
Without being lifestyle anorexic, I feel better when I eat less. I travel better when I pack less. I write better when I say less. I find uneasy dissatisfaction when I see my closet getting too full. I become irritable when my day is too packed. Large department stores decrease my desire to shop. Crowds send me packing home. Long books are just long books.
Mine is an ongoing personal struggle of discovering life to its fullest on a thin line.
Have I always been like this? Are ascetics born or made? I don’t know, and I don’t think I quite qualify as an ascetic. I’m not a hermit…yet. But I do know that when I fast I get much more out of it than when I feast.
Recently I had one of those necessary medical procedures where I had to completely empty out my digestive track. Nada was left inside. When I returned to eating, I couldn’t enjoy a normal diet. After a few bites of meat, I felt like I had eaten a whole side of prime rib, several lobsters, and polished it off with an entire dessert table. It took a week for me to recover and eat a regular meal
Fasting not just from food but fasting of a spiritual nature does that to me, too. When I fast as a spiritual discipline, whether it be from magazine reading, gossip, unnecessary purchases, computer games, sarcasm—I become more acutely aware of what I do not need. The purpose of a spiritual fast is to release toxic intrusions so that we can make more room for experiencing a Holy God in a deeper, more intimate, more powerful, more real way.
There’s that More word again —and the paradox of fasting. How can less bring us more? Or, what is the difference between fasting and feasting? Maybe we can take our cue from that little letter “e.” E for eating, ego, engineering, escapism, escalation, everything excess.
I would like to suggest that fasting is feasting when we are holding out for the best things in life. Not just the cream but the crème de la crème. Not just the fat but the fatted calf that God, “the waiting father” roasts on our return (see the Prodigal Son). We don’t need dessert when desert experiences show us oases to hide from the scorching sun, and when darkest night brings out the brightest stars.
The feast is in holding fast to Jesus, seeking Him to show us the way back to ourselves when we have become glutted and gorged. The feast is in letting go of everything, sending it out so that Jesus can show us in the residue that we with Him are enough. The feast is in finding the Essential E’s: El-Shaddai, The God Who is Sufficient for the Needs of His People. Emmanuel, God with Us.
When we do, we are better able to live on thin lines, to meet people where they feel empty and lacking, to love others when they feel small, to embrace those who feel invisible but whom God calls precious.
Thin lines help us survive lean times without giving up the best. It’s how Etty Hillesum lived in the Holocaust. (See Day 25.)
Celtic Christians talked about the thin place, saying that heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in the thin places that distance is even smaller. “A thin place is where the veil that separates heaven and earth is lifted and one is able to receive a glimpse of the glory of God.”
May we all hold fast to thin lines.
I know that sentence doesn’t seem to equate. Enjoying life more would generally put the emphasis on the “more”—more quantity, more volume, more indulging, more More. I would seem the perfect candidate for the BOGO buy one, get one scheme. The problem is, I am.
I like a bargain, I like value, I like More, and I’d like to have more of what I like. A good experience begs a repeat experience, another partaking to match or even exceed the first. Pleasurable feelings, whether sight, sound, smell, taste, texture, or emotional have an addictive quality. How many people go to garage sales, thrift shops, Ross Dress for Less, One Day Sales for the mere thrill of the hunt?!
At the same time, however, I don’t need more, and sometimes I discover I don’t want more.
I often feel worse off for having more. Eating too much makes my body feel out of sorts. I physically turn away from tasting some foods because of their excessively richness. I can find a bag full of bargains at store; but when I get home, though I like all my treasures, my delight meter falters.
When More should be sending me off the seismic sensory scale, inside the needle sometimes flutters before falling flat. Rather than filling me, More can deflate me. Can you have too much of a good thing. Apparently, yes.
Without being lifestyle anorexic, I feel better when I eat less. I travel better when I pack less. I write better when I say less. I find uneasy dissatisfaction when I see my closet getting too full. I become irritable when my day is too packed. Large department stores decrease my desire to shop. Crowds send me packing home. Long books are just long books.
Mine is an ongoing personal struggle of discovering life to its fullest on a thin line.
Have I always been like this? Are ascetics born or made? I don’t know, and I don’t think I quite qualify as an ascetic. I’m not a hermit…yet. But I do know that when I fast I get much more out of it than when I feast.
Recently I had one of those necessary medical procedures where I had to completely empty out my digestive track. Nada was left inside. When I returned to eating, I couldn’t enjoy a normal diet. After a few bites of meat, I felt like I had eaten a whole side of prime rib, several lobsters, and polished it off with an entire dessert table. It took a week for me to recover and eat a regular meal
Fasting not just from food but fasting of a spiritual nature does that to me, too. When I fast as a spiritual discipline, whether it be from magazine reading, gossip, unnecessary purchases, computer games, sarcasm—I become more acutely aware of what I do not need. The purpose of a spiritual fast is to release toxic intrusions so that we can make more room for experiencing a Holy God in a deeper, more intimate, more powerful, more real way.
There’s that More word again —and the paradox of fasting. How can less bring us more? Or, what is the difference between fasting and feasting? Maybe we can take our cue from that little letter “e.” E for eating, ego, engineering, escapism, escalation, everything excess.
I would like to suggest that fasting is feasting when we are holding out for the best things in life. Not just the cream but the crème de la crème. Not just the fat but the fatted calf that God, “the waiting father” roasts on our return (see the Prodigal Son). We don’t need dessert when desert experiences show us oases to hide from the scorching sun, and when darkest night brings out the brightest stars.
The feast is in holding fast to Jesus, seeking Him to show us the way back to ourselves when we have become glutted and gorged. The feast is in letting go of everything, sending it out so that Jesus can show us in the residue that we with Him are enough. The feast is in finding the Essential E’s: El-Shaddai, The God Who is Sufficient for the Needs of His People. Emmanuel, God with Us.
When we do, we are better able to live on thin lines, to meet people where they feel empty and lacking, to love others when they feel small, to embrace those who feel invisible but whom God calls precious.
Thin lines help us survive lean times without giving up the best. It’s how Etty Hillesum lived in the Holocaust. (See Day 25.)
Celtic Christians talked about the thin place, saying that heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in the thin places that distance is even smaller. “A thin place is where the veil that separates heaven and earth is lifted and one is able to receive a glimpse of the glory of God.”
May we all hold fast to thin lines.
posted by Pam Chun at 2:27 AM
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