Two years ago, my Lent was dominated by the experience of fostering the most traumatized, damaged, and downright violent child I have ever known (and that is, regrettably, saying something). So I pretty much slacked off on the headline Lent observances as I made my way through that particular stretch of desert. Read Tony for more about this, he wrote a good thing on it. It occurs to me, two years on, that I still haven’t really been able to write about that season and that child, for whom I pray every day. But, well, I’m doing ok at fasting again. Just the basics: no meat (unless someone serves it to me, or there’s leftovers, or it’s already in the fridge fixing to go bad if it doesn’t get cooked) and no sweets, plus a little extra prayer and giving. This sort of thing used to be easy for me, then it got hard, but at least I can pretty well do it now because no one is ever biting me, trying to open my car door while I drive on the expressway, or hitting one of my children with the seatbelt latch.
So that means I can pay attention to the effects that a small but consistent change in dietary practice can have. A few things I’ve noticed:
It’s easy to eat too little, overall, when you’re eating food you don’t especially enjoy.
That said, it’s not especially unpleasant or even inconvenient. There’s just a small cognitive tax that you have to pay to do it.
That is, after the first few days, when I thought about food I wasn’t eating all the time.
It’s commonplace in my church circles to deprecate fasting as a way to elevate charity, advocacy, or works of mercy. Even Pope Francis is reputed to have gotten in on this (though I don’t vouch for the accuracy of the quote in the memes).
However, actually doing charity, advocacy, and works of mercy is unsatisfying, and even when not unpleasant or inconvenient (and it usually is both), it imposes at least a small cognitive tax. There’s a reason we aren’t great, as a species, at these things.
The part of myself that is exercised by fasting–by the patience and tolerance for mild displeasure–is also the part I need to use for being good to annoying, unsympathetic, or simply inconvenient humans who need something I have.
Getting back to #1, in Dallas the options aren’t always great when you forget to pack a lunch. Comes down to a “virgin Crisp Greens Lent lunch (ten minutes of discussing toppings for the Korean tofu bowl, $15) vs. chad Filet O Fish Lent lunch (no interaction, ready in 45 seconds, $8)” dynamic.
Look, the Filet O Fish is not actually bad. By the third bite, all four elements have the same consistency and texture which is weird, but it’s not per se bad. Still, I’ve never been tempted to order the double version.
Getting back to #2, it really is easy to lose sight of how ridiculously hedonic one’s daily food consumption can be until you choose to impose a weird, fundamentally arbitrary discipline on it.
Everyone online who knows sort of chortles at the Catholic Ash Wednesday rule (one regular meal plus two small meals that add up to less than one regular meal), which I think of as the “1.9 meals” principle. But like a lot of Catholic things, it works pretty well in practice despite sounding kind of silly when you write it down.
I am still not feeling any more pious or godly than I normally do, but I have genuinely been looking forward to vespers on Wednesdays and I’ve been writing a pretty earnest and edifying drama for the kids to do. That’s something.
Plus, the universe just dropped this on me this week so maybe I’m doing something right:
Given how easy it still is to eat in general, and to eat pretty pleasant food with a tiny bit of effort, I don’t think this is a great way to cultivate solidarity with people who are actually hungry.
Fasting is pretty deeply weird when you think about it–one of those uniquely human hypertrophies of consciousness that just makes no earthly sense–but then again eating “normally” in a highly developed capitalist society is pretty deeply weird so maybe you need one kind of weirdness to correct another.
I don’t know if it’s related, but this is the season I’ve finally accepted and internalized that our time as foster parents is over. From a certain point of view, that’s ironic (see #6 above, and/or the post I wrote two years ago). That just means that whatever muscles I’m building in this particular offseason will have to be used in some other way. So it goes.
If you’re fasting, I hope it’s going well and you are being conformed by your practice to the image of Christ for the world. I’ll be back in Easter.