So, that Thursday, about 4 days in, I walked out of my office to my car to get something I’d forgotten.  It was midday, beautiful and blue and sunny. As soon as I opened the door, I could smell the sun on the wood deck, the heat warming and drying the damp planks.  It seemed could smell each disparate part: the woodsy, slightly mildewy boards, the earth beneath, the actual heat of the sun hitting the air around me.

The light was bright and clear, the sky shining cornflower blue.  As I walked, I could feel the sun on my skin: shoulders, arms, fingertips, eyelids, nose.

I slowed down, breathing deeply.  The mimosa tree beside me was richly green, each tiny leaf separate and distinct.  I sat down on the bumper of my car, leaned back, rested.  The sun laid its hand on my forehead, bent to kiss my closed eyes.

And I thought - this is why I do this.

Somewhere in the midst of being hungry and foggy headed, clarity appears.  This is the gift that (any kind of) fasting gives me: that in the holding back, the standing aside, the leaving off, something else comes in.  A clearness.  A noticing. Of the beauty around me, of some thing in my head or heart or soul that needs to be faced, of a prayer that wants to be spoken.  Some thing - any thing - that is hanging out around the edges that somehow keeps getting silenced with food, or whatever else I use to distract myself.  I never know exactly when it’s coming, but it usually does.  It reminds me of this -

“Contemplative practices, then, are means by which we become prepared for grace to surprise us.  They are ways of opening our hands so that we can receive the gifts God wants to give us.”

- Brian McClaren, Finding Our Way Again

There is a deep connection between what happens in my body and my spirit, my stomach and my soul.  Deepening one side stretches the other and opens a space, clears away the film of the everyday, so that I can see.

this time last year: unreasonable and indispensable (09. 10. 2007)