I’m redoubling my effort at fasting, starting tomorrow. I’d like to give it a bit more juice before Great Lent really kicks off next month. Previously I’ve chosen to abstain from all food from breakfast until supper, eating whatever was served at supper. That was nice in some ways but wrong, I think. I was operating under the notion that fasting was about suffering, which, it isn’t not about suffering, but I’m not sure it’s about suffering that I identify myself. 

I’ve written before about the debate we got into about the calendar. My opinion, in short, is that we are practicing a spirituality that was revealed to us, not crafted. These are not rational choices or behaviors we are participating in. So who are we to say that this or that calendar is better or worse or more right? We are called to behave, because we’re not very smart. 

Of course smarter men than I have decided that the calendar should be changed and I’m sure they argued about it an awful lot, so I defer to them, and I’m happy to. 

How this applies to fasting is that, I think I was wrong to invent my own half-fast. There are reasons I cannot understand justifying the “full fast.” The full fast is abstention from foods that contain or touch blood. Meat, fish, dairy products, oil and wine. Oil and wine were traditionally stored in animal skins.

It seems incongruous to abstain from those things for the purpose of deepening spiritual life, while enjoying vegan substitutes of those things. It feels incongruous enough that I don’t intend to use “substitutes.” but, similarly it feels inauthentic to pursue things like protein from beans or other sources while fasting. Isn’t the point to suffer? That seems fair, that seems clear. 

But really, I don’t know hardly anything. I am a fool and I ought to accept this fast as a thing that is good to do. Eating the way they did in The Garden should be good enough, it’d be prideful for me to think the monastics and the saints weren’t doing it good enough. 

So I’ll soak some beans.