Fasting: Spiritual Freedom Beyond Our Appetites. Lynne Baab. IVP Books, 2006. 148 pp.

Lent begins on Wednesday, Feb. 21, so now is a good time to explore what you’d like to learn during this year’s pilgrimage. Our tradition doesn’t require us to do anything. But the seasons of our lives offer special gifts only if we attune ourselves and offer our attention to God in a new way.

Lynne Baab’s book, Fasting, is a good place to learn how “to step back from our culture and cross the doorway into God’s presence,” and to enter “a reflective place where we can listen to God and pray wholeheartedly for things that really matter.”

Not many Baptists would pick up this small volume, but I recommend it. The author, whom I know, is quick to explain that fasting includes not only abstaining from food, “but also from news media, entertainment, information, shopping, email and the Internet….” And she notes that fasting is about freedom, not self punishment.

Our culture urges relentless self-indulgence. Consumption is the cure for everything from low self-esteem to job loss. Fasting invites us to step back from our excess in order to pray. And since fasting is for short periods of time, not forever, it helps us enter into the rhythms of our lives anew: plenty, want; freedom, self-discipline.

Baab reviews the history of the use of fasting in spiritual practice. She notes the many biblical characters who fasted for specific purposes: David, Esther, Daniel, Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. Fasts were undertaken for the purposes of mourning, repentance, and preparing oneself for new duties or a special calling. Fasting was a regular discipline in the ancient church.

Her point, that fasting, at its core, is not a discipline of withholding; it is a discipline of making space for God, is brought home when she moves away from the topic of food and addresses our many other habitual distractions.

Fasts from the morning news, for example, helped some of her contemporaries realize how anxious and cynical the news made them. When they became more intentional about how to access news, they were able to lower their level of fear about what was happening in the world. Baab, herself, chose to leave the car stereo off on her long, routine commutes. Instead of speeding mindlessly down the freeway accompanied by loud music, she discovered a deeper appreciation for the landscape which drew her to prayer. She doesn’t do this all the time, but eagerly fasts from the car stereo when she especially needs to listen to God.

“When we fast, we step outside our normal habits.” As we do so, we discover how to take greater control of our life, to choose when to be mindless, and when—and how—to be mindful.

Fasting doesn’t have to be undertaken alone. Choosing to fast for a specific time for a specific reason can be shared with one or two others. Partners enhance the discipline, by sharing their learnings before, during, and after the fast. Indeed, some churches schedule fasts every season, specifying the intentions for which everyone should pray. Such a focus strengthens congregations and the clarity with which they discern God.

Fasting is something we can do when there is nothing to be done. We cannot fix everything. We are not in charge; God is. Stopping our futile busyness enables us to feel deeper compassion and companionship with others; it fosters solidarity with a cause, such as protesting the war, or ending homelessness. If a dear friend is very ill, it isn’t necessarily helpful to surf the net or to eat and drink to escape the pain. Wouldn’t it be more helpful to read Kathleen Norris or Sue Monk Kidd? Or work quietly in the garden, listening only to bird song?

The goal of life isn’t to eliminate pain in our lives or to find ever new ways of distracting ourselves from it. It is to be able to endure it with wisdom and gentleness, to realize all of us are vulnerable to loss and grief, and to help one another bear these burdens.

Baab concludes:

When we fast, we are free—briefly—from our needs for food or recreation. We are free to embrace discomfort for a short season. We are free from our need to be strong all the time, our need to control everything and our need to understand everything. Fasting strips away things that are extraneous in order to focus for a season on the thing that really matters, prayer and our relationship with God.