Fasting, Pacifiers, and the Voices in Your Head

While I came late to the seasons of the Church calendar, still I’ve followed their rhythm for over 35 years. Especially as a minister, preacher, and worship leader, I’m challenged year after year to find new ways to think about Advent . . . or to envision Lent . . . or to celebrate Resurrection. There are only so many ways to twist the prism, only so many times I can lean into my reliable, stand-by descriptions of the seasons.

So I’ve been enlivened in recent days by Barbara Brown Taylor’s short essay on Lenten disciplines. I’ve followed her writing and preaching for several years. She is compelling and stretching, writing with honesty about the spiritual journey by offering fresh images for envisioning life connected deeply to God. I’ve read a number of her books . . . both Leaving Church and An Altar in the World have impacted me in huge ways. But for some reason, I had missed her essay on Lent until recently. Today, she is my teacher.

She writes with Luke 4:1-13 in the background, the account of Jesus fasting in the wilderness for 40 days before being tempted. Then she likens Lenten practices to being left in the wilderness by yourself for 24 hours, a common practice among men’s rite-of-passage groups and some wilderness adventure expeditions. The aim in that kind of boundary experience is to place you at the edges of what you know, to push you to see your own life differently, and to come to some deeper sense of what is beneath all the machinations and projections that are part of our daily life.

The Lenten name we would give to this kind of stripped-down experience is fasting. As Brown Taylor says,

That is when you find out who you are. That is when you find out what you really miss and what you really fear. Some people dream about their favorite food. Some long for a safe room with a door to lock and others just wish they had a pillow; but they all find out what their pacifiers are – the habits, substances, or surroundings they use to comfort themselves, to block out the pain and fear that are normal parts of being human.


I’ve long recognized that each of us have personalized patterns for dealing with life when we feel things are out of control. We are aware that when Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired, we are especially vulnerable. Usually in those states, we’ll reach for something that brings comfort – that’s why we call some foods “comfort foods” – in order to escape the more difficult realities that rise up from within us. We’ll do most anything to not face our own selves.

I have my default habits, behaviors, and addictions, just as you do. Brown Taylor says she is convinced that 99% of us are addicted to something. I think the percentage is even higher . . . taking the form of eating, drinking, shopping, blaming, substances, entertainment, busyness.

Brown Taylor calls these things pacifiers. I think it’s a marvelous image.

That hollowness we sometimes feel is not a sign of something gone wrong. It is the holy of holies inside of us, the uncluttered throne room of the Lord our God. Nothing on earth can fill it, but that does not stop us from trying. Whenever we start feeling too empty inside, we stick pacifiers into our mouths and suck for all we are worth. They do not nourish us, but at least they plug the hole.


When you are dropped by the adventure group into the middle of the wilderness, you have left all these pacifiers behind. No more mac and cheese to soothe your anxiety . . . no glass of wine after work to take off the edge . . . no comfortable bed for an escaping nap . . . no strip-center down the street to look for the blouse that would take away your blues . . . no movie theater in which to lose your life in someone else’s story. It’s just you in that place, stripped down and vulnerable, the real self hungry-angry-lonely-tired.

This is Lent, forty days of this stripping down, forty days of saying “No!” to that one thing which pretends to make everything better . . . but which actually just pushes all the ugly inner stuff beneath the surface yet again.

Nothing is too small to give up. Even a chocolate bar will do. For forty days, simply pay attention to how often your mind travels in that direction. Ask yourself why it happens when it happens. What is going on when you start craving a Mars bar? Are you hungry? Well, what is wrong with being hungry? Are you lonely? What is so bad about being alone? Try sitting with the feeling instead of fixing it and see what you find out.


There is nothing magical about Lenten practices. Giving up chocolate for Lent is a worthwhile gesture for several reasons, but a.) if chocolate is not a pacifier for you, and b.) if you are not reflective about what it feels like to resist reaching for the candy bar when you feel stressed, then you might as well spend your time in some other productive pursuits for Lent.

On the other hand, if chocolate (or whatever happens to be your addiction of choice) IS your pacifier, and if you ARE reflective about what it feels like to go without that thing, then asking yourself the questions Barbara Brown Taylor suggests above is a good place to begin.

Of course, our inner voices chatter away, counseling moderation, urging us to back off such asceticism, reminding us of our commitment to never look as if we’re holier-than-thou. This is how she ends her Lenten essay.

Chances are you will hear a voice in your head that keeps warning you what will happen if you give up your pacifier. “You’ll starve. You’ll go nuts. You won’t be you anymore.” If that does not work, the voice will move to level two: “That’s not a pacifier. That’s a power tool. Can’t you tell the difference?” If you do not fall for that one, there is always level three: “If God really loves you, you can do whatever you want. Why waste your time on this dumb exercise?”

If you do not know who that voice belongs to, read Luke’s story again. Then tell the devil to get lost and decide what you will do for Lent. Better yet, decide whose you will be. Worship the Lord your God and serve no one else. Expect great things, from God and from yourself. Believe that everything is possible. Why should any of us settle for less?

[All quotes from Barbara Brown Taylor, “Lenten Discipline,” Home by Another Way (Lanham, Maryland: Cowley Publications, 1999), pp. 65-68.]

Lenten Thoughts about Comfort and Happiness

Through Lent – and even for weeks before – I’ve been immersed in scripture and story that speak to the spiritual journey through the wilderness. Most of us don’t choose spiritual wilderness as much as spiritual wilderness chooses us. In the run of life, we find ourselves in places that feel unexpected, untamed, and uncomfortable.

Last week, I spent several days with fellow pilgrims in a wilderness setting at the Benedictine monastery in Pecos, New Mexico. The setting is not primitive, but it is rustic in a sense. The place is not dangerous – the bears, mountain lions, and feral dogs that dwell in the surrounding mountains notwithstanding – but wilderness tends to put us in a place where we are out of control . . . where we are not entirely comfortable.

The stories of the Desert Fathers and Mothers of the 3rd – 5th centuries are set in the wilderness of Egypt and the Middle East. The lives of these faithful Christians testify to how life can be harsh and demanding; yet, in that harshness their lives were transformed. In many respects, the very harshness of the surroundings brought to the surface their own darkness. They dealt with their inner darkness in order to be more fully the persons God created them to be.

Some of the Christian mystics have called the harsh and difficult settings of our lives our “furnace of transformation.” In other words, the discomforts of life become the fire that purifies us. The aspects of life that are beyond our control become the things that bring to light the illusions we carry. Wilderness itself, while not necessarily comfortable, is a place in which we learn to lean more fully into God and into the interior resources that God has placed within each one of us.

Frankly, this flies in the face of what contemporary religion, especially Christianity, has come to embrace. Christianity is offered as a path to happiness, a road to personal fulfillment, the way to make a good life even better.

Jesus, we are told, does not want us to be unsuccessful, but rather wants us to have health, wealth, and only good and pleasant experiences. Those who experience lack, disease, or discomfort must be lacking proper belief, or be poor in prayer, or be unfaithful to this Jesus.

[Apparently, there is another “Jesus” on the loose who did not experience being run out of town by local authorities, who was not cursed by the religious crowd, who was not betrayed by his closest friends, and who did not end up crucified on a cross between criminals.]

Preachers posit all light and no darkness, all comfort and no discomfort, all abundance and no emptiness, all happiness and no sorrow.

For a few days now, I’ve had in mind these words of C. S. Lewis, sent to me by a long-time friend. I ponder them in light of Lent and in light of my own expectations of the spiritual life. Try them on for yourself.

“I didn’t go to religion to make me happy.
I always knew a bottle of Port would do that.
If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable,
I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.” (C. S. Lewis)

These seem to me to be important words as we journey through Lenten wilderness with Jesus, toward death and the cross, and onward to the empty tomb.

Monday, February 16, 2015 – A Pre-Lenten Reading
Introduction to “The Wisdom of the Wilderness”
by Jerry Webber

During Lent, I’ll provide daily meditations based on the stories and sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers (3rd – 5th centuries) on my Lenten blog (www.dailylent.blogspot.com). I've posted this introductory material on that site . . . it is intended to give some basic background and context to the Desert Christians: Who were these men and women? How did they get to the desert? What did they do there?

In the years after Christ, followers of Jesus faced a number of challenges. For many decades, Christians were persecuted by a hostile Roman Empire, which viewed Christian faith as atheistic (Christians did not worship the gods of the Roman Empire, nor the Emperor as deity). Christians were imprisoned, tortured, or put to death, often for sport in the Roman Empire.

Another challenge arose about three centuries after Christ, when Constantine became Emperor of the once-hostile Roman Empire. The new Emperor declared that Christianity would be the official religion of the Empire. Suddenly, the hostile Romans became the Christian Romans. Everyone in the Empire was called a Christian.

From these two very diverse scenarios, a movement within Christianity arose in the wilderness areas of Egypt and the Middle East. Christians who were serious about deepening their life in God fled from the cities into the desert in order to seek a life of spiritual discipline, hoping to grow in their love for God (heart, mind, soul, strength) and others. These Christians, living mostly in wilderness communities, were the first monks (from, “monos”, meaning “one”).

The movement into the wilderness actually began around A.D. 269, when an eighteen-year-old Egyptian named Antony heard scripture read in the church. He listened to the Gospel story of the rich, young ruler with his heart, and when he heard Jesus tell the rich ruler, “Go, sell your possessions, give the money to the poor, then come and follow me” (Mt. 19:21), Antony felt those words were spoken directly to him. He sold his property and gave away the proceeds, holding back only enough to care for his sister (the parents of Antony and his sister had died in an accident previously). He moved outside the city gates, befriending the religious men who sought lives of holiness by living outside the city walls. As he listened still more in the coming days, he was led further into the wilderness to take up the life of a Christian hermit.

Antony intended that he would live alone, allowing a life prayer, fasting, silence, and solitude in the wilderness to be the setting for his own purification. Over many years, he lived in complete solitude and endured terrible trials. When Antony emerged from his solitude, people recognized him as an authentically “healthy” person who had dealt with his own inner darkness in a whole and life-giving way.
Others began coming to him, urging him to help them come to a deeper sense of their own most authentic self. They sought healing from him, and wise counsel. Groups of disciples gathered around him, for whom Antony was a spiritual guide. Antony also made frequent forays back into the cities of Egypt, into the churches of the area, and before the bishops in Alexandria.

After Antony, a slow trickle of men and women entered the Egyptian desert in order to follow Christ more closely. These desert Christians found freedom to express their love for God through spiritual practice, both in solitude and in communities of seekers that sprung up in the wilderness. The first rule for these Desert Fathers and Mothers was charity toward all. Love and charity, for these Christians, seasoned every ascetic practice of the desert.

The wisdom of the wilderness actually grew up around these men and women who were seeking God and who, through their own spiritual practice, were attentive to their own interior shadows. They literally lived in the Egyptian desert. But metaphorically, they also lived in a spiritual desert, sensing that within their cultural milieu, they existed in an arid wilderness in which they needed to be spiritually lean and fit in order to survive. The desert was their place of their fitness, learning, and becoming . . . learning about God, self, others, and the created world (the four contexts of any wholistic spirituality) as they became the persons God created them to be.

It is important to know that the Desert Abbas and Ammas (Fathers and Mothers) were not ascetics for the sake of being ascetics. They did not strictly adhere to a code of spiritual discipline simply for the sake of being disciplined. They sought to be aware of their own internal darkness, to bring that darkness under the love of God, and then share their wisdom with others who would endeavor a similar spiritual journey.

For some today, their harsh asceticism seems outdated and irrelevant. They engaged in practices that seem extreme. Whether fasting food, sleep, sexual gratification, conversation, or the company of others, they could go to extremes. But always, asceticism was the means, not the goal. Their spiritual disciplines always pointed to a purpose beyond the practice. The spiritual practices were shaping them to be the kind of person who knew their own self and who knew what tripped up the self, in order that such a person could love God, self, and others more completely.

These Desert Fathers and Mothers – as they have come to be known – were shaped by love, but also by a desire for purity of heart, the purification of actions and motivations, in order not to drown in the world’s excesses. They chose to do this as best they could by living apart from the constant tugs and pulls of society. And paradoxically, by withdrawing from society, they were able to engage society and culture in an entirely different way, both through their prayer and with their wisdom.

Finally, a short word about how this wisdom was generally passed on. Usually, groups of disciples would gather around a certain Abba or Amma, living in close community with him or her in the Egyptian desert (generally in huts or caves, called “cells”). The mentoring would take the form of apprenticeship, in which the novice disciple would learn from the life, words, and actions of the Abba or Amma. Thus, there are a number of stories told about things the spiritual Fathers and Mothers did in interacting with others.

There are stories, too, that simply communicate the pithy sayings of these wisdom figures, told often as koans or paradoxical word riddles. Usually these wisdom sayings would be initiated by the disciple, who would approach the spiritual Father for instance, and say, “Father, give me a word.” The Father would offer a sentence that, then, the apprentice was invited to chew on for its meaning in his/her life.

The wisdom of the wilderness, then, is contained both in stories from the lives of these Desert Christians and in their sayings. We’ll explore their wisdom through the coming days of Lent. The daily posts will be available at www.dailylent.blogspot.com.

– Jerry Webber

Survival in a Spiritual Wilderness

I was asked to give a talk last weekend on surviving in a spiritual wilderness. While I was able to lean into a couple of biblical stories related to wilderness, much of what I had to say came out of my own experience of God in the wilderness.

It may be appropriate to lean into the post-Exodus wandering of Moses and the children of Israel through the wilderness . . . a wandering that included God's provision of manna and quail, water from a rock, and the Ten Words (Decalogue or Ten Commandments) . . . but a wandering that also included complaining and grumbling (literally, "murmuring") to God about their situation in the desert. This wilderness period of the children of Israel lasted 40 years before they entered the Promised Land.

Also, it may be appropriate to lean into Jesus' 40 days in the wilderness immediately after his baptism, those days of fasting and prayer and going through the refining of wilderness. Note that Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness (find it in Luke 4:1 - 13), so this was not some evil machination that was contrary to God's design for him. Wilderness is a time to engage God and to find resources for life, and it was in the wilderness that Jesus experienced the depths of his identity in God as the beloved of God, the delight of God's heart.

Spiritual wilderness is a fact of life for those who undertake the spiritual journey. In fact, journey can be a helpful metaphor for the spiritual life, as it suggests movement and change. And that movement will lead us -- most often unwillingly -- into wilderness. There are some things that happen to us in the wilderness that we keep at arms length the rest of the time.

The idea of wilderness may seem foreign to you, but if we used some other words for it, you might more easily find your connection . . . dry, arid, lost, lack of resources, scarcity, sparse . . . you see what I mean. Who among us has not described their spiritual state as "dry" or "arid"? If you have never used those words, at some point you will.

We need, then, to demystify the wilderness and to consider how we might survive -- and thrive -- in it. Last weekend I offered five touchpoints for discovering the wisdom offered in spiritual wilderness.


1. The goal in a spiritual wilderness is not to escape the wilderness, but to be faithful in it.

"Escape" is the first thing that comes to most of us. We experience dryness or the feeling of being disoriented. The spiritual practices that at one time brought good feelings and consolations no longer produce those same feelings. We sense that we are in a desert, and we want to be fruitful again. We want out of the wilderness.

But God did not let Moses and the children of Israel out of the wilderness until they were ready for the Promised Land.

Jesus in the wilderness did not try to escape from his 40-day experience. In fact, that he was led into this experience by the Spirit suggests that there was a larger, divine plan in it.

In the wilderness, the songs that used to move you no longer move you.

You worship and feel nothing.

Sermons are stale and dry.

Your prayer is monotonous.

The things you've done in the past are no longer "working".

Your "felt experience of God" has shriveled up.

The first impulse is to escape, to return things to the way they used to be. Instead, the wilderness invites us to engage God where we are, to stay connected to God in a way that helps us stay open to whatever God is doing within us in the wilderness.


2. Our honest speech about the wilderness is the groundwork of prayer.

The beginning place of prayer is dialogue with God about how life really is with us, not how it should be or how we think it is with someone else. We tell God how we really feel.

"This is where I am, God," and, "This is how I feel about it."

Prayer begins in honesty. "God, I'm dry right now." "God, I don't feel a thing." "God, I don't know where I am right now." "God, I don't want to be here."

Remember, the goal is not to change the situation, but to stay engaged with God in the midst of the situation. To be sure, the way we feel is not necessarily reality, but the beginning of prayer is honesty about what we feel.


3. To survive in the wilderness, you have to be willing to let go of extra baggage you are carrying.

In a literal desert, you can't pack heavy and survive. You cannot carry enough in your backpack to cover every contingency. If you do pack heavy, you'll have to jettison some things to survive.

If that is truth in the literal wilderness, it is also true in the spiritual wilderness. It's why Jesus' time in the wilderness was a time for fasting. Fasting is literally a time for letting go of some things we've carried into the wilderness.

In fact, one of the gifts of spiritual wilderness is that you see there are some things that do you no good there. You learn to hold onto what is necessary, to what is essential, and to let go of the rest.

For example, in a literal wilderness your checkbook does you no good. It doesn't matter how many accolades you've received, or how much education you have . . . how much stock you have or what your retirement account looks like . . . how much you've achieved or what other people think about you. None of that will help you survive the stark conditions of wilderness.

In my own experience of spiritual wilderness, I've found that some of the things I've believed about myself don't really work. Some of the things I've believed about God don't help me survive. Some of my assumptions about life and what it takes to be happy really aren't relevant.

The wilderness is a time to see what is essential and let go of what is not.


4. There is no such thing as "lost" in the wilderness.

You may not know where you are, and you may not be comfortable not knowing where you are, and you may not be able to find yourself on a map, but wherever you are is a place, too. Wilderness does not give in to your "need-to-know."

My poetry from times of personal wilderness reflects this. During one time of wilderness dryness and lostness a few years ago, I wrote these lines:

lost is a place, too
the place from which
you take the next risky steps
into your life

From that same period of my life, I wrote this in another poem:

sometimes you have to get off the map
to find your way
through cloud and darkness


We may not be where we planned to be, or where we would like to be, but what feels like "lost" to us is actually working something much larger and significant in us. It may feel terrible, but we are learning that we are somewhere, and that where we are right now is the only place in which we can encounter God.


5. Most of what you need to survive in the wilderness is already inside you.

This, I believe, is the essence of what happened with Jesus when he went into the wilderness directly from his baptism. In baptism his identity was confirmed by God, the heavens opened and he experienced the coming together of his vocation with everything around him. The world and his calling all merged in his identity. Then he went directly into the wilderness, where the fasting and temptations were the contexts in which he began to live out of and into his own deepest truth and reality. This is who he was in God, who God had created him to be.

Wherever you are, at a soul-level you are already connected deeply to God. No matter what life feels like around you, you are tethered to God. At crucial times in the wilderness, the wisdom is: “You already know what to do.” You simply have to learn to uncover and listen to the wisdom that God’s Spirit speaks within you.

We might call this the work of God's Spirit within us. Quaker spirituality calls it the Inner Voice, Inner Light, Inner Wisdom, or Inner Truth . . . all ways Quakers speak of the Holy Spirit mingling with our souls. In the Quaker's language, then, our challenge in the wilderness is learning to “listen to our life” or to “let our life speak.”

As we learn to listen for this wisdom and to trust it, we will allow God to use the spiritual wilderness to shape us.

The wilderness is essential to experience the fullness of who God created us to be.