Word Made Flesh

I am learning to appreciate the physical and spiritual discipline of fasting. I started what is known as Intermittent Fasting as a means to address inflammation and slow down the march of degenerative arthritis. I also employed an osteopath and a Pilates instructor to guide me. A year ago I was nearly debilitated with chronic pain in my lower back and in my hip. It was unrelenting. I was loosing sleep. I was loosing hope. Conventional allopathic medicine was able to diagnosis my condition and offer some pain relief with medication. While I was given some degree of reprieve and was able to sleep and work, I did not like the pattern I saw unfolding. A regimen of medication, and eventually surgical interventions. I took a deeper dive and wondered if there was another way. Thankfully, there was.

Since August of 2023 I have dedicated myself to a flexible regimen of intermittent fasting following the guidance of Megan Ramos and Dr. Jason Fung. (www.thefastingmethod.com). While this has been a game changer for my physical health, and has eliminated the need for pain medication, I am delighted and surprised that I have found improved mental clarity and increasing spiritual well being. Our ancients ones have often turned to fasting to focus attention and connect with deeper or higher meanings. Many religious cycles include a period of fasting. I have participated in ceremonial fasts over the course of my lifetime and each time I returned from the experience better for having known thirst and hunger and abstinence. But, this intermittent fasting is different. At least for me.

I think the biggest difference is the learning to tune into myself as an embodied being. Fully. Paying attention to my energy levels, my intentions, my hunger, my moods, and my self discipline over the long haul, has re-calibrated my sense of indwelling. I am rediscovering myself as an indwelling being. It has taken six and a half decades for me to get this message. It is pretty easy to steel oneself for 3 days or 4 days on a Ceremonial Fast, but quite another to weave fasting and feeding into ones lifestyle. I have managed and I am better for it. I am getting stronger, leaner, and the clarity around what I can and can’t do, what I am willing to and not willing to do, is becoming startling. For too long, I think food and drink for me have been a distraction, a hobby, an opiate of sorts. A way to stay somewhat unconscious. This has been a lesser coniunctio. A provisional communion.

I have lived a good deal of my life outside of the “boat of skin and bone”, as Dr. Martin Shaw might call it. I have too easily given free rein to my imagination and my intellect at the expense of my body. She has carried me into my elder-hood without complaining too much. This is changing. As a body, I am opening unflinchingly to what and who I love. Unabashedly. In the present moment. I am assessing as consciously as I can, what life asks of me. I guess an old dog can learn new tricks. As I round the final moon cycle toward my 65th year, mentally, physically, and spiritually, I can say I rarely recall feeling so utterly content. Rarely so at peace. Without the time and energy spent thinking about food and drink, posting my food porn, or planning my meals, I have abundant space and time. I have written more honestly, loved more deeply, prayed more fervently, and rested more fully than I can recall. And when I feed, each taste, each texture is holy.

It has been nine months since I turned toward conscious fasting and feeding. Nine months is long enough to give birth. Maybe this is what I am leaning into. A rebirth. A reincarnation of my ideas, my creativity, and my intellect into becoming an indwelling human being. What does this look like? It looks like an offering that both receives and gives. Feeling the delicious ache of my muscles after a Pilates workout or a walk in the awakening woods. This is not pain. This is presence. Smelling the wet moss of the forest, or the fecund soil of the garden. Taking and having the time to encounter all of it. All five senses fully alive. Feasting on this. Hearing the spring peeper’s chorus, or the trumpet of the returning swans. Savouring the fragrances and colours of a meal I make for my loves even while I am fasting. Sitting with an empty plate and a full heart. There is something spiritual in all of this. A willing sacrifice? A willing offering up? A willing emptying to make space for something to enter?

I started this journey into fasting for selfish reason. I was suffering and I wanted relief. I wanted something more conscious and within my control than what the allopathic route was offering. What I have found has been quiet and soft, and unbelievably gentle. Unexpected. And somehow, deeply familiar. As known to me as my own fingerprint. What I have found has been the Self. Embodied. Indwelling. A lifetime of words, and books, and ideas, and lessons, finally made flesh. My flesh. A confluence of spirit in matter. His spirit and my matter. This is a most holy communion. My body, my blood, my bones, my flesh are made new again. I guess I needed to make space for this. Fasting has opened spaces in me to be filled up in ways I could not imagine.