In a time of no pulls or beckonings in any direction, I sink lusciously into the "in-between" still time

enjoying my dad's remarkable recovery and entering into a brief fast that my body-being seems hungry for.

As April ends in the Ojai Valley, the scent of orange blossom finally fades. Now the air around my cottage is alive with the sweet magic of honeysuckle flagrantly in bloom on the fences around my hot tub and outside my desk window. In the mountains new layers of wildflowers–button and black sages, clovers, larkspur and endless others whose names I do not know radiate lush yellows, purples and fuchsia.

We’ve had a very late and most unusual “winter storm” this first week in May. Steady, soaking hard rains that filled the dry creeks and made the still-running ones delightfully more rambunctious. The nights are filled with frog and cricket choruses, getting louder week by week.

It’s being a cooler than normal spring here. A great blessing to actually have the sense of a season between winter and “hot!” A chance for some few last, cozy evening fires before retiring the wood stove for the duration.

The intense involvement with my family (through the time of my dad’s medical crisis) has calmed. My dad’s been home in great spirits and doing wonderfully well in recovering his mobility with regular physical therapy. He and my Step-mom have been plugging back into their regular social groove of bridge games and bowling and movies.

I seem to be adrift in an in-between space just now. Nothing presses or pulls or beckons me. Life is simply about keeping up with ordinary chores around the house and garden, walking in the mountains, napping, reading lots of delightful fiction. I feel slowed down even from my normally slow life rhythm. I’ve learned over the years of my journeying to welcome these still times, to sink lusciously into them, to revel in them while they’re here.

Always in them there are moments of curiosity, passing and vague wonderings about what’s to come. I know not to “go looking” for something with which to engage. I know this is a waiting, gathering inward time. A time from which, if I don’t interfere, I will emerge organically into the “next place” when the moment is ripe.

At the start of this quiet, non-work, unscheduled but not fully unplugged week, I had a very compelling impulse to do a fast. Years ago, I’d do 3 to 7 day juice and broth fasts fairly frequently. Often I’d fast while on retreat. It would feel so good to take a real break from putting or letting anything more in from the outside, be it food, ideas, words or others’ energies. More recently, I’ve been considering fasting on my unplugged times each month. Usually it seems as though it would feel like deprivation to be without food. So I don’t do it. I never fast if it feels depriving, only when I have a deep sense of rightness, an internal “Yes!”

I had that internal “Yes!” this Sunday. Actually, I woke from a dead sleep feeling utterly compelled to go empty the fridge of all the perishables so I that I could take a rest from everything around food and eating. I fixed a huge chef salad using up all the fresh garden veggies and grilled chicken in the fridge. Then I called around to find which of my local friends were available for the delivery of a “Meal on Wheels.”  Ripening avocados (ground fall from the property) cooked artichokes from my vegetable patch and fresh homemade yogurt dressing went along. I felt such enormous freedom and relief after passing all that on and freezing some special pastries for a later time!

Of course, being the “who” that I am, I’m never interested in a “formal” or seriously structured fast. Rather I seem to find my way into what feels right to me at the moment. (Much the way I do “retreats” in my own idiosyncratic style.) When I begin a fast, I always have my permission to end it at any time it starts to feel like deprivation or if I don’t feel into it anymore. I never set a number of days as a goal. Always it’s a “let’s see how it goes,” day by day kind of venture.

This time around it’s been almost 5 full days of water, mint tea, green tea chai, diluted fresh squeezed tangelo/lime and grapefruit/blood orange juice, mild yellow miso broth with peas in it and occasional nibbles of red grapes (everything organic or from our own trees). I take my usual complement of supplements and vitamins. As I listen to my body, some days it’s more, some days less of the juices or the grapes. Always it’s lots of warmed water and teas and my morning and evening lactose-free milk chai (for my bones).

Sometimes, when I fast, I feel really tired and have very little energy for doing anything but lying about. This week my energy’s been pretty normal, so hiking and walking has been a part of every day. I love the feeling of lightness, the headiness, the very deep pervading calm of the fast. No hunger, no sense of missing food.  And, so much more open time when I’m not shopping, picking, preparing, eating and cleaning up after eating!

I know that according to “recognized principles of fasting,” I’m going about this all wrong. That I clearly don’t have the discipline that I “should” about the process. (Imagine, stopping because I’m feeling deprived or just because I don’t feel up to it anymore!) But, you know what? It really works beautifully for me. And I’m sure just radically reducing/shifting my intake is still doing at least some cleansing of my digestive system.

I’m even going to be “breaking” the fast “all wrong.”  It’s my dear friend’s 65th birthday and I’m taking her out for a rather elegant dinner at the end of my 5th day. Of course, I’ll eat lightly and be gentle with my choices, but It’s certainly not the way one “ought” to come off a fast.

There’s a strong, empowered part of my being that inevitably resists what feels to me to be the tyranny of “appropriate” or “proper” forms, ways-to-do this or that and “acceptable” standards of behavior.  Whenever I’ve forced my self to do “what’s right” instead of what’s felt right to me, the discomfort I’ve felt seemed always to lead to me feeling that there was something “wrong” with me (the person of me). Whenever I feel something’s wrong with the person of me, I typically feel lost, disoriented, off-center–out of synch with my own self.

When I choose do what’s right for me, regardless of whether it’s “wrong” according to the “standards,” I rarely feel “wrong,” lost, disoriented, off-center.  At most, I feel out of synch with the world around me. When I feel centered in myself, feeling out of synch with the rest of the world doesn’t seem particularly bothersome.

Sometimes it seems as though my strong resistance to doing things “the way they should be done” comes from a bratty, “no one’s going to tell me what to do or how to do anything” place in me. Even when that seems to be the case, it still makes sense to me to let myself do things however I need to do them. If my way doesn’t turn out to work for me, I’m usually much more willing to be receptive to other ways of looking at or doing whatever it is!

Originally published May 2003