Refinement of Taste

Fasting offers a full array of unique opportunities for people that they may not normally have.  I utilized 3 of my 4 blogs to ask folks to fast for the Gulf Oil Mayhem and Disaster.  I reiterate that today and ask you to fast and pray during one meal a day until this madness is stopped.

Today, I want to get back on track for the blogs and look at fasting from food at Father Tom's Cafe.  Fasting from food has a tendency, over time, to help us refine our sense of taste.  Almost with the same intensity that stopping smoking can have on the olfactory and gustatory senses.  A heighten sense of taste is a byproduct of abstaining from food for just one meal; or, even a whole days' worth of meals.

There is a sharpness added to the mind if you do not fast too long - over too many days.  Folks often notice feeling more cognitively flexible and supple of mind.

There are the spiritual benefits that come from fasting, particularly if you replace meal time with prayer time.  It gives you time to focus on inner matters or social matters in prayer with the Father of All Nourishment.  It also gives you some time to sit in silence before the Father - a Sabbath of the heart if you will.

Finally, there is also the feeling of being hungry.  Very seldom do we tubby Americans ever feel at a loss for anything.  Feeling hungry on a regular basis may plug us in to the sense of need that most of the planet experiences on a frequent basis.  Like the prophets of the desert, being hungry will make us more socially aware and Divinely called.  Hungering and thirsting tends to build our passion about people who are going without.

Give fasting a try.  Here is a wonderful reference to fasting from Saint John Chrysostom - http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles4/ChrysostomFasting.php

Next post...Back to FOOD.

Ciao!

TJM+

Fast from a Meal until the Oil Outrage is ended

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote of the responsibility of all men in a free society (Heschel insisted that in a free society where some are guilty, all are responsible) in "The Moral Outrage of Vietnam".

"It is weird to wake up one morning and find that we have been placed in an insane asylum while asleep at night. It is even more weird to wake up and find that we have been involved in slaughter and destruction without knowing it."

The words may be about Vietnam, but there is a taste of crude oil in it when I hear it. There is a truth to the weight I feel when I wake up and remember that my need for fuel and energies of fuel has been responsible for the fuel leaking into the Gulf right now. I am the one responsible. We are all responsible.

People of faith - particularly the religious leaders - should be making more noise about this tragedy. Can't we see that the "waters are turning to blood" again. We have seen this before, this type of destruction and greed. We have allowed too much "fast technology" to tread in areas they obviously have no business treading. 

There should have been a few - if not more - viable options on standby for such a hideous occurrence. Have we learned nothing from the Exxon Valdez incident.  This oil leak is not a spill, this is a horror. The religious leaders should be down on the Gulf calling people to fast and pray, begging for an answer and challenging people to put on sackcloth and ashes and call on God. There should be no silence.

Fast from one meal a day and call on God for an answer and a repairer of the rig. Pray the arterial surgeons would share how they stop arterial leaks with these oil hounds. Pray that people would be able to clean up the horrible affects of oil and for the countless people whose lives will be altered beyond recognition.

Fast and Pray because of this moral outrage - and don't sit still.  Get others involved.

Ciao!

TJM +