Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

fast

Fasting Makes Space for God

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When I was a kid it was my family’s tradition to give up something for Lent. This 40-day sacrifice, I learned in my weekly catechism class, was a gesture intended to emulate the 40-day fast Jesus endured and the temptations he overcame during his time in the wilderness.

I had complicated feelings about this Lenten practice of giving something up. On one hand, the overachiever in me eagerly embraced the challenge, optimistic at the start of each Lent that this would surely be the year I triumphed over temptation.

On the other hand, I typically awoke on Ash Wednesday morning with a pit in my stomach, knowing that in addition to surviving my mother’s desiccated scrod for supper on six consecutive Fridays, I was also staring down six long weeks without chocolate. Aside from the one wildly ambitious year I vowed to give up desserts altogether, chocolate was my annual Lenten sacrifice.

Despite my good intentions, I never completed the full 40 days without cheating. Some years I stayed strong for two or three weeks with nary a nibble. Other years my resolve crumbled within days like a stale Oreo, the lingering taste of chocolate in my mouth a palpable reminder of my weakness.

Finally one year, disappointed and frustrated by my persistent inability to resist the siren songs of Hershey, Tollhouse and Breyers, I abandoned my Lenten efforts entirely. Giving up chocolate for the six weeks of Lent was silly, I determined – a meaningless, fruitless practice.

Turns out I’d missed something important during all those years of zealously trying to prove my worthiness to God by resisting temptation. Fasting, I’ve since come to understand, is more about addition than subtraction. In other words, giving something up – particularly something that occupies a lot of mental or emotional space in our lives – can help us make more space for God.

Last Wednesday, my forehead marked with an ashy cross, I began a six-week fast from my temptation of choice these days: social media.

The truth is, I spend a lot of my free time on social media.

My index finger swipes image after image on Instagram as I wait, my car engine idling, for the middle school dismissal bell.

I scroll Facebook and Twitter in the check-out line at the grocery store, while I wait for the dental hygienist to call my name, as I linger at the stove for the pasta water to boil.

Often I find myself only half listening to my kids or my husband, murmuring “Hmmm,” and “Huh” in response to their statements or questions, my eyes fixed on the small screen in my palm.

Even more than my time, though, social media also occupies a lot of my mental and emotional space. I craft clever retorts in my mind in response to snarky Facebook commenters. I dwell on the number of followers this or that author has on Instagram. Spending time on social media often leaves me feeling envious, empty and anxious.

It was time, I knew, for some space.

In some ways, returning to the practice of giving up something for Lent has brought me full-circle from the chocolate fasts of my childhood. Now, though, I understand that abstention is a valuable discipline, not because it proves my worth to God, but because I know God will meet me with grace and love in the space that opens.

The practice of fasting, it turns out, is not only about what we turn away from, it’s also about who we turn toward.

The Hole in Our Gospel: Hunger is Not a Luxury

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I’ve never tried a fast as a spiritual discipline. I think part of me is afraid I’ll fail. As a “grazer,” I can’t imagine not eating every couple of hours or so.

Nonetheless, what strikes me about the spiritual discipline of fasting is that we in America have the luxury to try it if we so wish. We can choose to go without food in order to strengthen our faith or deepen our relationship with God.

But for 854 million people across the globe, “fasting” isn’t a choice at all but a brutal daily existence. For these people who cannot choose whether to eat or not, “fasting” is simply starvation – and it’s not a luxury, or a spiritual discipline, but a matter of life and death.

If I were to fast, I suspect I’d feel pretty good about myself. I suspect I’d consider my one-day fast a significant sacrifice. I might even pat myself on the back when my fast was done and thank God for the opportunity to grow closer to him. What I might not realize, though, is that my self-imposed hunger is barely a glimpse of what millions of people endure every day, week after week, month after month.

How terribly ironic: what I might choose to impose temporarily on myself is an unavoidable fact for so many.

Lord, help me broaden my approach to the spiritual discipline of fasting. Help me focus my gaze away from my own sacrifice and toward the millions who suffer from hunger, not by their own choice but because of unavoidable circumstances. Help me understand that for many, hunger is not a luxury.

Have you ever fasted? What was the experience like for you?

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This post is part of the ongoing series on The Hole in Our Gospel, by Richard Stearns. Six other writers and I are writing a post a day for six weeks as part of my church’s small group study. Want to read other reflections? Click here. I post my reflections here on Tuesdays.

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Drowning in the Shallows

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I’ve always been a voracious reader. When my best friend Andrea and I were kids, we’d settle into the cushioned aluminum rocking chairs on my parents’ screen porch and read the afternoon away. That’s what we did for entertainment: we read together.

I still love to read. It’s my favorite past time – I love it more than writing and photography and even eating. But something is bothering me lately related to my reading habits. I find I am distracted when I read; I skim a lot; my attention wanders. I read two or three paragraphs and realize I don’t know what I’ve read at all. Or I finish a book and a week later I can’t recall what it was about. This disturbs me.

Just recently I read The Shallows, by Nicholas Carr, and I realized that I may not be crazy after all. It turns out, the disintegration of my reading skills may in fact be a product of my technology use.

Carr’s theory is based on the scientific concept known as neuroplasticity, which posits that repeated actions, whether physical or mental, can alter our neural circuitry. According to Carr, not only does prolonged and frequent use of technology – primarily Internet use, with all its myriad hyperlinks and sensory experiences – change the way our brain processes information, it also has the potential to change our brain circuitry permanently.

“Sometime in 2007 a serpent of doubt slithered into my info-paradise,” observes Carr. “The very way my brain worked seemed to be changing…I began worrying about my inability to pay attention to one thing for more than a couple of minutes. At first I figured that the problem was a symptom of middle-age brain rot. But my brain, I realized, wasn’t just drifting. It was hungry. It was demanding to be fed the way the Net fed it.”

Sound familiar? It sure does to me.

I admit, I spend hours and hours on the computer every week, mostly reading blogs, but also tweeting, posting on facebook and commenting. I click from blog to blog to blog, sometimes reading (skimming) 10 posts in one sitting.

I also read snippets of news online at msnbc, search for movie reviews, read book reviews on Amazon, shop, post photos, stream video on YouTube, download podcasts and, of course, send emails.

Not counting the time I spend online for my actual paying job, I’m probably on the computer 15 or more hours each week during my personal time (also not counting the time I spend actually writing my own blog content).

This intensive Internet use, Carr suggests, is changing the way my brain processes information. Perhaps permanently.

Furthermore, he observes, the more time we spend online, the less time we spend simply thinking, simply being. We fill our minutes and hours and days with mental detritus, leaving no room or time for the creativity, fulfillment and rejuvenation that comes with open space.

Toward the end of The Shallows, Carr writes this:

“In the 1950s, Martin Heidegger observed that the looming ‘tide of technological revolution’ could so ‘captivate, bewitch, dazzle, and beguile man that calculative thinking may someday come to be accepted and practiced as the only way of thinking.’ Our ability to engage in ‘meditative thinking,’ which he saw as the very essence of our humanity, might become a victim of headlong progress. The tumultuous advance of technology could, like the arrival of the locomotive…drown out the refined perceptions, thoughts and emotions that arise only through contemplation and reflection. This ‘frenzied-ness of technology,’ Heidegger wrote, threatens to ‘entrench itself everywhere.’”

“It may be that we are not entering the final stage of that entrenchment,” continues Carr in the last chapter. “We are welcoming the frenziedness into our souls.”

I don’t know about you, but the possibility that I may be changing the way my brain is wired really freaks me out. So I’ve decided to take some action.

Come back on Friday to read more about my plan!

How much time do you spend online and on technology every week? Do you find it might be having an impact on how you think or read or process information? Have you read The Shallows?