What are you giving up?  This is a familiar question that many of us share at this time of year, as we transition from Carnival to Lent.  The practice of fasting is nothing new and has been practiced in cultures and religions for hundreds even thousands of years.  At a primordial level, It is even a natural tendency for all living creatures to seek rest, balance and conservation of energy.  So what does it mean to fast within the context of the Christian message?  This is the question that today’s scripture poses.

 When I was young, candy was one of the preferred items chosen by me to “give up” during Lent.   The award for creativity, though, in choosing what to give up for Lent would have to go to my brother, who when asked once what he would give up for Lent, said without pause, “Circuses!” I have often reflected on this clever answer and chuckled over it more than once.  Despite the cleverness of his answer, I guess it’s fair to say that at least at some level, giving up circuses does perhaps miss the point of fasting.  So, what could be the point?

 The Hebrew prophet, Isaiah (IS 58: 1-9A), today describes God’s distaste for fasting in a quite caustic manner:

 “Lo, on your fast day you carry out your own pursuits, and drive all your laborers.
  Yes, your fast ends in quarreling and fighting, striking with wicked claw…
   Is this the manner of fasting I wish, of keeping a day of penance:
   That a man bow his head like a reed and lie in sackcloth and ashes?
   Do you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?”

 In my life, I am learning that moving away from something by itself, is not quite the same thing as moving towards something else. In other words, if I want to “get rid” of something in my life that perhaps I consider a bad habit, and I expend all my energy, efforts and prayer to resist this particular thing, I end up not only failing at what I intend to give up, but even more self-focused than ever in the end, with resentment at times.  This attempt to, as Isaiah says, “carry out my own pursuits,” results in a loud and annoying “backfire” in my spiritual life.  It doesn’t seem as if I have moved at all.

 There is also the movement away from something that involves fasting from things that are not considered “bad,” but perhaps are neutral activities/things that may bring us pleasure, but may distract us in the patterns of familiarity created by them (not circuses here)!  Here again, my experience has been that when my focus is sharply directed toward that which I am “giving up,” I can fall easily into a “me and God” scenario where there is a measure of success or failure that oftentimes is absent of any relationship aspect at all.

 Without discounting the idea of fasting as “giving up,” I am speaking of an aspect of fasting that involves engagement.  This is a positive idea of fasting as a way of paying attention to something else – opening ourselves up to new and sometimes jarring possibilities by simply directing our attention to something already in our lives, but something we haven’t allowed ourselves to notice much before.  And this engagement can flow very complementarily with the “giving up” aspect.  But I daresay that when we isolate and compartmentalize our experiences of Lenten repentance and fasting we run the risk of depriving ourselves of real transformation. 

 In short, I am suggesting that fasting as engagement, ultimately must be engagement with others.  We must fast in communion with one another.  I have never transformed myself by myself and, although I may think I can at times, it will never happen!  I need God, as I receive God in others, to give me the gift of Transformation.  And the gift of transformation comes from places and people that we may not expect it from:

 “This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly,
   untying the thongs of the yoke; Setting free the oppressed,
   breaking every yoke; Sharing your bread with the hungry,
   sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; Clothing the naked when you see them,
   and not turning your back on your own.” 

 When I reach out to others in their need, when I engage and relate to others maybe by simply listening to them, I am allowing myself and the others to enter into the possibility for transformation – a transformation that is offered in the encounter itself. This is a way of “fasting” as engagement, paying attention to others and at least trying to let them into my sometimes closed world.  I must say I have found that if I practice this fasting enough, the paradoxical blessing occurs that we hear in Isaiah,”

                  “Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed;”

 We give and we receive healing by touching each other.  If we allow it to happen or engage this way on a regular basis, it can become a transformative “pace” in our life.  Those things that we want to “give up,” that distracted us, now seem to fall away from our lives and lose their meaning and importance.

 I remember when I ran my first marathon, my goal like many others was to simply complete the marathon.  I found as I ran the 26.2 miles that I was aware of everything and everyone around me.  I remember consciously praying for others who I ran next to, not knowing what was going through their minds and hearts, but knowing that we were on the same journey.  My running pace was not fast in speed, but it was a “fast” pace, fully engaging and even transformative. 

 May you have a “fast” pace this Lent!

 Peace,

 Thomas