No, really?
Yes, I'm afraid so. I, who took pride in having long, simple hair (silly the things we ponder in absence of real thought, isn't it?), have cut off my hair and gotten it layered. My primary purpose is medical. Maybe if my head is lighter, I won't have as many headaches. My poor neck will get a break. My hair hasn't been this short since I had a hormonal moment when I was pregnant with Boogaloo and hacked all my hair off at the shoulder.
This haircut is much nicer. I like it a lot. Moreover, Seth keeps looking at me and saying, "I do like your new haircut." That settles it. It's no mean thing to cut off four years of growth in one fell swoop, but now that I've done it, I think I'll keep it this way. As I get older, I find that layers aren't the hazards to style that I once thought they were. In fact, they can be quite elegant if my technique is right. My neck is happier already, showers are shorter, and it's fun to flip my hair out of my face without getting my fingers caught in the tangles.
At the same time, Boogaloo got a new haircut, but hers was for a different reason. Once again, my little explorer found a pair of scissors and gave herself a makeover. The results this time were so drastic that the only way to compensate was an extreme pixie cut. She cut her bangs so short that even the stylist was flummoxed. Said stylist commented that in like circumstances, she'd just shave the kid bald and let them deal with it. These are the memories that I'm going to rehash in the presence of her first boyfriend. (evil snicker)
***
On a more serious note, I'm going to be thinking a bit about fasting for the next few weeks. After all, Lent begins next week. Carnival, as my local newspaper advertisements are happy to tell me, is in full swing. After Carnival, the festival of the flesh, comes Lent, the season of mortifying the flesh and focusing on higher things, but the advertisers aren't so keen on that one. There isn't much money to be made in self-discipline.
Do we fast? Not just as an exercize but as an actual means of humbling ourselves before God? I know that some Catholics fast regularly and some Pentacostal churches encourage fasting as a means to reach spiritual ends, but I don't see a lot of it in Reformed or mainstream traditions. Marylin Hickey, author of The Power of Prayer and Fasting, says that in her experience, many Christians have never been taught about the connection between prayer and fasting or its purposes. They simply assume that fasting is something the church doesn't do anymore. As one godly woman asked her in all sincerity, "Prayer and fasting. Didn't those go out of style decades ago?"
More like centuries. John Calvin encountered a similar attitude when he was trying to bring the church back to godly habits in the 16th Century. Some critics even suggested to him that the time for fasting had passed with the Old Testament Church, to which Calvin replied, “The sackcloth and ashes, indeed, were perhaps more suitable for those times, but the assembly, and weeping and fasting, and the like, undoubtedly belong, in an equal degree, to our age, whenever the condition of our affairs so requires." (Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.12.17) Israel did it; Nineveh did it. Jesus never did away with it; he just told his disciples to wait until he was gone. Therefore, Calvin asserts, “In the present day, it is an admirable help to believers, as it always was, and a useful admonition to arouse them, lest by too great security and sloth they provoke the Lord more and more when they are chastened by his rod.” (ibid., 4.12.17)
Now when was the last time, Rick Perry not withstanding, that you heard of the church calling for fasting and prayer? And yet, show me one Christian who is perfectly satisfied with the direction of our country, the activity of the Church, or the state of the world right now? Is it possible that we're missing something? Perhaps we'd rather get snarky about whose fault it is than turn to the Lord and ask him to fix it.
I never was much into fasting until I got involved in 40 Days for Life. I regarded it as something extra that Christians could do but that smacked of superficiality in most people. After all, it requires quite a bit of emotion to drive someone to spontaneously give up food. Most of the people in my acquaintance, being the strong, silent Reformed types, don't show that kind of emotion willingly. Ergo, I thought, fasting was simply part of a formula, and we all know that God doesn't respond to formulaic faiths. After all, he's neither a vending machine nor a tame lion.
As I got more involved, and as I actually tried fasting and found out how difficult it is, I began to revise my opinion. Certainly, fasting can be reduced to a formula, but really and sincerely humbling, depriving, and mortifying oneself is tough. Self doesn't like self-mortification. Self would prefer to think that everything is fine. Fasting gets self where it hurts: it shows self how weak and self-centered it really is.
I have far too many reflections to put into one blog, but I thought it would be appropriate to spend Lent thinking about fasting. So for the next five weeks, I'm going to focus on some aspect of this spiritual discipline: Purpose, Practice, Pitfalls, Payoff, and Post-fasting changes to one's life. It won't be boring, and I would love to hear about your own experiences with fasting.
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