Wow, now that's something new.

The Boo was up last night with an awful cold, so naturally, I was up half the night with her. My thoroughly fantastic husband took the second half, but I'm not used to going back to sleep when my daughter is ill, so I was up much longer than I should have been. I thought I was doing pretty well this morning, but after lunch, as the Boo and I laid down on the couch to watch a movie, I noticed that the computer monitor (on which we watch movies) was slowly and continually falling through the glass surface of our computer desk. Then it realigned itself and kept falling, all without actually moving in proximity to the window behind it.
I don't know that I've ever been that tired before. It was the strangest feeling, made all the more strange because while it was happening, I kept having this nagging feeling that it reminded me of a Greek myth. Naturally, I can't remember which myth, but how like me to make literary allusions while my brain disconnects. I wonder if that is what the poets from the 70s felt like.

All that goes to say that whatever I write today should be taken with a grain of salt. I have finished the next four chapters of Fasting by Scot McKnight, and I'd like to do a little reflecting on them, but my audience should be prepared for a slightly streaky mirror.

In chapters 4-7 of Fasting, McKnight enumerates several different kinds or circumstances of fasting, referring each back to his sacred moment > fasting >possible results pattern. The first kind of fasting is repentant fasting or fasting in grief over sin, which he calls body turning. This type of fasting, he notes, happens frequently in the Bible, whether on one of God's appointed ceremonies like the Day of Atonement, or when the individual or community needed to acknowledge that they had done something wrong and cut themselves off from the Lord.

The second type of fasting is what he calls body discipline. This is the fasting that was practiced by Christians in the Early Church and Middle Ages. This type of fasting is not specifically mentioned in Scripture, but we do have reason to believe that this is the kind of fasting that the Pharisees and John's disciples practiced when they asked Jesus why his disciples didn't fast. The Jewish authorities fasted on Mondays and Thursdays, and the early church fasted on Wednesdays and Fridays, in addition to special days dictated by their respective holy calendars.

This later developed into Lenten fasting and certain monastic practices that were used to heighten one's awareness of God and subdue the lusts of the flesh, which McKnight calls body battle.  Body battle is not a good thing.  It can very rapidly descend into dualism and despising the body as evil or irrelevant. It also developed into extreme and dangerous forms of asceticism in which people began to despise the legitimate needs of the body and means of enjoyment that God has given us.

The further I get into this book, the more disconnected I feel from the true practice of fasting as McKnight describes it. I have a hard time feeling a sacred moment long enough and consistently enough to make a fast sincere through the whole day. Call me insensitive, but I've never been brought to my knees for more than fifteen or twenty minutes at a time before something else intrudes. When I related this concern to my husband, he laughed and said, "Poor Jennifer. She's actually human."

On the other hand, I did find myself indentifying with the ascetics that he disparages in chapters 6 and 7. McKnight is adamant that as soon as we come to the point that we fail to appreciate the good gifts that we have in food, sex, and pleasure, we have taken fasting and discipline in the wrong direction.  Asceticism is a dangerous state of mind that is never certain of the good that it has.  It, like every other impulse of the soul, has to be restrained.  And that's another reason the church traditionally has had fasting days and feasting days.

So far, my only complaint about this book is that the author leads me to water, but then doesn't tell me if it's safe to drink.  There have been several times when I felt like he was hovering over a serious and necessary conclusion, only to jump to another topic.  Perhaps he thought the conclusion was firmly drawn.  Perhaps he learned his writing style from St. Augustine.  Perhaps the conclusions I'm looking for come later.  Anyway, back to the book.