‘The best chef is an empty stomach.’  Believe me, if you want to enjoy my cooking, you’d best come to the table hungry. 

There are several versions of this aphorism.  Cervantes has one in Don Quixote: “Hunger is the best sauce in the world.”  Cicero recalls Socrates on this topic: “I hear Socrates saying that the best seasoning for food is hunger; for drink, thirst.”

Even the book of Proverbs (27:7) has a version that makes the same point from the other side of the coin: “The sated appetite spurns honey, but to a ravenous appetite even the bitter is sweet.”

Let’s stick with the first part of the verse from Proverbs for a while: “the sated appetite spurns honey.”

If you’ve seen me, you know that I do not suffer from a fussy appetite, but even I have groaned with regret when the dessert cart is proffered and I can’t bring myself to take another bite.  My eyes tell me that the assorted desserts would be delicious, but I no longer have any desire.  I forfeit dessert because my gluttony and poor planning has conspired to make me too full for dessert.

If you, dear reader, have opened your email on the day it arrived, you will be reading this on Mardi Gras – Fat Tuesday, the day of feast and excess that precedes the fasting of Lent.

Fat Tuesday feasts of pancakes and goodies have their roots in the Medieval Church.  They took the Lenten fast seriously: no meat, eggs, milk, sugar, butter, etc.  On the day before the fast was to begin they went through the larder and found all the forbidden items and cooked them up and had a feast.  Better that they be consumed than thrown away.

If you want a thumbnail guide to fasting as a spiritual exercise, keep that first half of the verse from Proverbs in mind.  We fast to cleanse our palates.  We fast to awaken our hunger.  We fast so that we might regain a taste for that which is honey.

We are over-full of many things, not just rich foods.  We are full of noise all around us.  We are full of visual stimulation.  We are full of material abundance.  We are full of the expectation of being pampered and provided for. 

We are so full we can’t appreciate honey.

A truly Christian fast is not a rejection of the goodness of food or drink or bodily pleasure of any kind.  We don’t fast to escape our materiality.  After all, God created materiality and loved it so much that God became flesh!

We fast so that we can feast.

We withdraw so that we can re-enter with renewed appreciation for the gift of our life, for the gift of our senses, for the pleasures of taste, and sight, and sound, and touch, for the pleasure of skin on skin and so much more.

If you wonder what you might fast from, think about the things that have lost their taste because you are too full to enjoy them.

Prayer: Save me from my sated state.  The deer pants for water; I order groceries with my phone.  Give me the gift of emptiness once more so I might experience fullness.  Amen.