Food for the Soul: Controlling Our Tongues

"If we cannot control our appetites and hold to a simple fast, how can we eventually overcome the temptation to judge and condemn others and succeed at the formidable task of controlling our tongues"

-Bishop Chrysostomos

The Gift of Goodbye

Often when one even thinks about the idea of fasting, apprehension descends like autumn nightfall. Many of us have spent so much time cultivating an intimate or oppositional relationship with food, that the idea of letting go, even for a day, is too terrifying to contemplate.

Below is a poem that I first heard while on a seven-day silent meditation retreat. It spoke to those contracted places inside of myself where I hold on, often for dear life, to things, attitudes and positions that I know are no longer serving me. Hearing this poem gave me courage and wings.

Adios

It is a good word, rolling off the tongue
no matter what language you were born with,
Use it. Learn where it begins,
the small alphabet of departure,
how long it takes to think of it,
then say, then be heard.

Marry it. More than any golden ring,
it shines, it shines.
Wear it on every finger
till your hands dance,
touching everything easily,
letting everything, easily, go.

Strap it to your back like wings.
Or a kite-tail. The stream of air behind a jet.
If you are known for anything,
let it be the way you rise out of sight
when your work is finished.

Think of things that linger: leaves,
cartons and napkins, the damp smell of mold.

Think of things that disappear.

Think of what you love best,
what brings tears into your eyes.

Something that said adios to you
before you knew what it meant
or how long it was for.

Explain little, the word explains itself.
Later perhaps. Lessons following lessons,
like silence following sound.


~Naomi Shihab Nye
from Words Under the Words

Being fed by more than food

"Fasting reminds us that we are sustained 'by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God' (Matthew 4:4) Food does not sustain us; God sustains us."  -Richard J. Foster

Some Words of Encouragement.....

"Everyone has a doctor in him or her; we just have to help it in its work. A wise person should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings." --Hippocrates, 400 years before Christ; famed Greek physician and Father of Western Medicine

"Fasting is the greatest remedy--the physician within!"--Philippus Paracelsus, nearly 500 years ago; famed Swiss physician and alchemical genius of the Middle Ages, considered one of three fathers of Western Medicine, along with Greece's Hippocrates and Galen

"Fasting is a valid experience. It can benefit any otherwise healthy person whose calories now have the upper hand in his or her life."--The New England Journal of Medicine

No healing technique on Earth enjoys greater testimonials. . .from veteran fasters such as Buddha, Moses, Mohammed and Christ (40 days); from the three great fathers of Western Medicine; from the ancient Arab philosopher and physician, Avicenna, who prescribed fasting for ailments; from the great Greeks from whom the West received its math and logic--Socrates, Plato (who often wrote he fasted for "greater mental and physical efficiency"), Aristotle and Pythagoras (who wouldn't even reveal his higher tenets to advanced students until they'd done 40-day fasts); right on down through St. Francis (who did 40-day "epiphany" fasts every year prior to Lent), Gandhi, and all the equally great and noble women, historically, whose fasts and accomplishments went unrecognized and unrecorded by the patriarchal societies they suffered in.

Artists, as well as humanity's greatest doctors, scientists and spiritual teachers, have fasted from time immemorial in every nation under the sun. Writers from Russian Leo Tolstoy and Frenchman Francois Voltaire, to American Upton Sinclair and the Austrian Czech Franz Kafka, have long rhapsodized about fasting's marvelous, self-improvement capabilities. Said Sinclair: "I have found a perfect health, a new state of existence, a feeling of purity and happiness, something unknown to humans." Enthused Tolstoy: "To refuse food and drink is more than a pleasure; it is the joy of the soul!"

Is it possible that all these extraordinary human beings have discovered an age-old secret for enhancing their birthright of human potential that you haven't. . .as yet?