Breaking Down the Walls

I started fasting the first time I went to Honduras. For the Christian Miskito population fasting was a way to become closer with God and to combat the “darkness” exemplified by the practitioners of voodoo and Wicca. The respect that I felt for Norvelle a Miskito physician as she completed her rounds, ran a prayer group, and visited elderly shut-ins all while consuming nothing but water had a profound effect on me. Whenever a concern would arise regarding the safety of the clinic or the health of a patient she would augment her top notch care with fasts and prayer. When I returned to the States I began fasting on my own, no more than a few days at a time, and always with a clear purpose in mind. I followed the admonishments of scripture not to make my fasts anything but what they should be something between myself and my Lord.

Food is such a central part of our lives that the decision to give it up represents a spiritual as well as a physical decision. It has long been an established and honored practice in societies and religions. It has been used as a way to remember, to atone, and to protest. Now increasingly in upscale “fasting spas” it is becoming the newest trend in dieting. This to me is an insult to everything fasting has stood for. Without taking into account the religious and social significance that the act caries with it, we have deemed it fit to put it to our own shallow purposes. Stripped to its bare essentials and repackaged as a weight loss skin care system all wrapped up with vaguely spiritual flair. Fasting is the new Feng Shui.

Judith Thurman recounts her experimentation with fasting in the Sept 3 edition of the New Yorker. And although she pays tribute to the historical figures of fasting from Christ to Gandhi she is more than willing to go about her business at a place that offers “ultra-lavish” fasting. (I mean really!) Sure you lose weight fasting, (Hey why not take it all the way and make luxury refugee camps. We could imitate starving children and really shed the pounds?) but unlike good old fashioned diet and exercise you are not building a basis for sustainable weight loss. You might be able to starve yourself into that new dress but while the pounds will come back, you have forever cheapened a time honored tradition.