The 40-day fast

Today begins a 40-day fast. Since I am back on Saipan, I shall use the metaphor of a majority of island residents. Forty is a whole number to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It is a number of completion, one generation in biblical reckoning. Forty years in the wilderness, and 40 days in the desert are examples.

The fast points to the other side of feast in life’s reality. As we celebrate birthdays annually, some folks stop counting at 39. That’s because the ascent ceases and the descent begins, in the pyramidal language of social stratification that fits nicely our hierarchical sense of nature.

This is different in other cultures where being creative means standing at the cutting edge of movemental reality. Creation, change, innovation are the language of our island context shared with us by Spain, Germany, Japan, and the United States. I include Japan in there because the militaristic Japan that attempted a co-prosperity scheme when they occupied the Marianas was patterned after England by the Meiji restoration, thereby hierarchical with Nippon on top.

An older ethos from China has this saying: Life is a circle so what’s the hurry. It is standing in the middle that is the goal of life, not at the edge. Stillness lingering like a downcast hovering over a terrain is more valued than the speed of moving forward. Fast is the standing still in space as the winds of change roams over the landscape of time. Accomplishment is not achieving the impossible; it is attaining the tranquil and serene quietude. The Great Wall kept the invaders at bay, and when they did march through the breach, they did not conquer but were assimilated like the Mongols and the Manchus. And when Zhang He the adventurous admiral spread its armada’s sails all the way to the shores of Africa, the Ming emperor turned on the elegy of the river and went the opposite direction of cleaning the house and the inner yard so that peace may abide.

While both the feast and the fast are nothing but different sides of the same reality, the mind often requires reminders like rites and rituals to embrace its limits and not just its possibilities. That’s why I fast.

Admittedly, the practice also addresses the two extra inches of belt space in our current girth that was not there when we started slurping the chow mein (noodles) and wolfing the jiao zi (dumplings) in our current residence in Dong Bei. But it is exactly bumping into the limits that we live on the reality of what is given.

We keep harping that ours is a journey that may have parts, phases, and counted years, but is essentially one, in our case, 86 years. In the scheme of things, from before my time and after, I am a minuscule part of reality. I am nothing. But within the 86 years, with all its intrigues and surprises, its speed bumps and the foot on the pedal, with every morsel of its awake hours subject to the molding of choice, I am somebody. What applies to me also applies to everyone.

We are the feast and the fast of our existence.

In the Christian story, excusing for the moment its historical bigotries and addiction to the archaic, fast is observed for 40 days until a glorious moment when death in its stillness is transformed into a glorious resurrection. Let me put a little twist on the traditional story. The Jesus whose story is paradigmatic of the Christian rite, gleaned from my theological clarity of the barefoot Jesus of Nazareth, simply means that we had been saved from our sinful dependence on a busybody G-O-D. “Are you waiting for a Messiah,” is the cry from the cross. The answer in the early morn of the empty tomb was, “You need not wait any longer.” We can pick up our lives and head for the Galilee of our vocation! We fast so that we understand the gift of the feast.

Heresy, heresy, the guardians of the cathedral gates and the holy book will say. Not so. Read your Church history again. Read your Bible again and listen to the reality it is pointing to, not the belief and dogmas we inherited from those who used their metaphors in their time. The infallibility of the mother church and the papal office is conferred, built on the trust that the truth is being told in a manner that illumines our life realities. When it no longer did in the nascent selfhood of Germany, a Luther was born. He posted his thesis on a cathedral door to invite the princes of the realm to repent and fast from their illusions.

Fast is not about abstaining from meat but in knowing that life allows one to easily drown in the gentle current at Micro Beach. Fast is not about keeping the male and female separate during the day, and quietly modest at night. Rather, it is knowing that the genetics of union might carry incomplete chromosomes and incompatible genes, that the generous portion on our plates may also contain added artificial chemicals to prolong shelf life for commerce. It is feeling in our bones the emptiness of achieved knowledge and attained certitude. Reality defies easy categorization of the mind.

Come down to the pala-pala today. We can fast together!