Fasting

Today, I fasted.  I had a baked potato without the barbecue beef that keeps it from tasting uncomfortably of just butter and processed cheese slush.  And I lucked out that the Indian place trying to close down as I arrived had one food item left that was potato based.  It was excellent.

The first reading is the most blunt today.  I suspect the Old Testament is often like that.  Jesus's words on fasting today are that the time will come when He is no longer here and then fasting is appropriate.  Fasting is inappropriate in times of joy.

Being a party-pooper is not serving the Lord.

Every day, I make my students recite a phrase inspired by the Marianne Williamson quote:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Make ourselves ostentatiously smaller does not make us more holy.

Joy comes in its season. Grief comes in its season.  Repentance comes in its season.  That is Jesus's message today.

Sometimes I wonder about the Liturgical Calendar, but then: perhaps we need to force the issue of repentance now and again.

The Old Testament is about what that repentance should look like, and it is unequivocal.

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

Do active good.  No exceptions.

You want forgiveness for the harm you've done?  The victim isn't willing to accept your apology?  Won't answer your 1,001st call to say you're sorry?

Go help strangers.  Go help people for no personal gain.  Go and do good in the world instead.  Fix our broken world so that fewer people have things to repent.  Go make forgiveness more common.