My practice of fasting is pretty fresh, real fresh. Fresh as you like. Apart from specific fasting seasons an Orthodox person is meant to fast from meat, fish, dairy products, oil, and wine on Wednesday, Fridays and on Sundays until communion. Aparently most people do not do this. I also find the idea of fasting from meat but eating substitutes and having non-dairy creamer or something, to be mega-lame, super, ultra-lame. If a person’s gonna fast, it oughta hurt, at least a bit.

So when I fast I don’t eat until sundown. 

It’s tiring and painful and if I ain’t do very much on that day, it’s not so bad. 

One thing about fasting that I’ve been fascinated by is that it’s required for certain forms of religious art. Most icons are made while the artist is fasting. I feel like that would make the owrk fantastically difficult, which might be the point. 

In anycase I intend to make a few wooden crosses for Roby’s baptism and Abby’s Christmation, and mine, too. Little crosses, small as my golden necklace but from Ebony. I made a test piece today, the joint could be tighter, but as Jack put it, when’s that not the case?

I should make a few. One for me, one for Abby, Roby, Jack, Father Mark...heck, it’d be nice to make one for each of my fellow catechumen, a gang I really came to quite like. The idea of building as much and as passionately while fasting feels a bit funny. It reminds me of crafts in video games where you ought to do as much as you can while under the influence of some or other buff. 

maybe it’s exactly like that.