Yesterday was the 4th Tuesday I have gone on a bread and water (and coffee) fast. My friend, Robin, started the fast and matching Facebook group, "Starving For Justice! Human Rights for Immigrants in the USA!" https://www.facebook.com/groups/Starving4Justice/ with some acquaintances of hers.
At first her request of me to join made me feel hesitant. Did I really want to FAST for this cause? I roomed with Robin my sophomore year in high school for a semester, at the boarding school we went to. So we knew each other pretty well. She used to complain about my keeping the light on to read the Bible every night. I talked her into breaking most of her record collection because Rock and Roll was evil. Somehow by the time we got back in touch years later, she had forgiven me for that. In a change of life circumstances in the nearly 30 years we had not communicated, she became the pious one of the two of us. She is a P.A. working at a veterans hospital. She has no children, so diverts her energies into her dogs, and into helping the homeless. I didn't really want to read all those links to articles that she posted on Facebook, but I felt drawn to them. Prisons making profits for housing illegal aliens, and lobbying to pass immigrant laws to up their census? Was it real? Link after link, organization after organization, I read accounts of illegal immigrants being tortured and abused, and used for profit right here in our country for nothing more than crossing our borders. Most of them have no criminal record. They have no rights to legal council. If and when they get out, they tell of horrendous stories of people dying in these prisons.
One day around the time of Robin's request, another cause I have subscribed to news on, "Free the Hikers," for the 2 guys who found themselves imprisoned in Iran, was posting stories of an upcoming hearing that they were afraid would be canceled yet again. There were fasts and vigils; none of which I had ever taken part in. This time I wanted to fast with them. Were they not in a prison in a foreign country like all the immigrants here?
I have a list of favorite songs. One I like to sing often is "How Can I Keep From Singing?" It is about imprisonment, but it speaks to anyone who has felt persecuted for their beliefs. I played the guitar and sang this song among many others to my children as they were growing up. It has been cited most of my life as a traditional Quaker hymn, but a Wikipedia post credits it to Robert Wadsworth Lowry, an American Baptist minister, first published in 1869.
Today I am enjoying food more than I think I have enjoyed it for a very long time. I have a cup or two of coffee on my fasting days because I can't seem to give it up the rest of the week enough to not have a headache on the fasting day. The first week the headache was severe. I have tried different kinds of bread. I would like to someday do a complete fast, but I currently have too many responsibilities to suffer through the dizziness and shakiness that causes me. Though I permit myself a couple of cups of coffee, I do not permit myself lemon in my water. I did put a little vinegar in my water the first week when the thought of any more bread and water made me nauseated, and the vinegar helped a little. My mother had done a week long vinegar water fast when I was a preteen.
Following my first week of fasting, the hikers finally had their hearing after it being put off several times over 2 years. I felt like this was the right thing to do. I have posted about it on Facebook. Few coworkers or friends have commented about it to me. It doesn't feel like a great big showy thing to do. But it is a sacrifice. It takes commitment and concern. I believe it makes people think twice about their strong opposing opinions, that I would give up conventional food for one day per week for people I don't even know. However, it is my country that is torturing them, and I pay the taxes that support this. Fasting is a powerful witness, even if it is a very quiet, mindful, suffering one.
It is also a spiritual journey of a kind I have never been on.
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