Day 17 part 1

Sorry I didn't blog yesterday, got caught up with life. The cars brake lights went out for some reason (mind you, every other light works in back, including the brake light on the hatch) but after replacing the brake lights, they still didn't work. That means money on auto repair which is always depressing.

Ang and I also spent a lot of time cleaning. She did a masterful job on the kitchen and guest bathroom. I did a mediocre job on the car and the garage. This morning, more cleaning. Hopefully it will be at a point where it's 'guest visitable' tonight.

I feel like I've fallen into a routine with the fast. Part of the routine is kind of strange though. It's not a craving for food so much as it's my mind thinking about food fairly constantly. I've taken to reading food blogs, I read a book called Julie/Julia that's all about one woman, in the year leading up to her 30th birthday, who decides to cook through Julia Childs' Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I started reading that one in the early days of the fast. I'm not sure what that says about me.

These are the books I'm working through, meditating on, at the moment...

I stumbled on Eugene Peterson's Eat this Book the other day while I was grabbing a copy of the Message. I haven't had a chance to dive into it yet, but I'm hoping that there's a lot I'll get out of it. I'm continuing to really enjoy working my through that translation.

I'm about mid-way through Morgan Spurlock's book. It's not that there's anything I don't know in his book. It's stuff that's been pretty well covered in a variety of places. That said, it's not bad reading on a fast. It certainly makes me want to continue the fast food sabbatical I started well before the fast after this fast ends. There's just so much good and nutritious food for people out there. Why rely on chemical injected franken-meat. Like I said, the book acts as an appetite suppressant.

I've mentioned Messy Spirituality earlier this week, but it is a pretty great book. It's mostly composed of stories from around Michael Yaconelli's church. Here's a selection of writings put out just after he died in 2003. I was first exposed to Yaconelli through the publication he used to write for, The Wittenburg Door (looking at The Door's website, I thought this was funny and pretty representative of The Door). My friend Lance used to read it, and he was maybe one of the biggest molding influences on me in Junior High School. Lance is the one that introduced me to alternative Christian music. The one that played bands like Adam Again, Daniel Amos, The 77s and The Choir for me... and introduced me to the Door.

I haven't started on The War of Art yet, but I added it to my reading list after Stu Maschwitz, one of the partners at special effects company The Orphanage, raved about it at his blog.

In 1999 I made the most difficult decision of my life: Quiting my dream job at Industrial Light & Magic to help two friends start a little company called The Orphanage. At the core of the DV Rebel code is the impetus to do what you love, against all odds. Whenever I need a kick in the Rebel pants, I read a bit of The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. A better book on the creative process you will not find. Warning: ProLost is not responsible if you quit your job after reading this book! Well, maybe a little.

Weight this morning was 230. Whoop de doo. I mean, I think it's great, but at this point, I'm mostly interested as some sort of scientific experiment.

If I get a chance a little later I'll try to run through my 2008 fitness goals. I've been thinking about them quite a bit the past few days.

More later.

Day 15 part 1

I feel good this morning. I'm quite happy that last nights stress passed over. Getting through the day today should be easy, then I'll have the weekend and that's surprisingly easy and we'll be at seventeen days. I know I can do that. 

More later.

Day 14 wrap up

crisis averted. I had a nice glass of pineapple juice and quite a bit of water. heh. I tipped well, mostly because I felt a little guilty. My friend Dave mentioned something that he's been experiencing during his fast though. He feels like God has really been impressing on him to put 'Him First'. So as he was feeling a little guilty as well on his way over, he came back to this thought about God being first... and how even if he was uncomfortable and felt bad that he wouldn't be ordering something and annoying the waitress with a 'cheap table', that that was what he had to sacrifice to put God first. I guess I can relate to that. 

Thanks to Nate for encouraging me to 'sleep on it' with regards to breaking the fast. Those were the key words to kind of get me over the hump. 

26 days to go. I need to take them one at a time. Just like in the Ironman, you can't focus on the end goal, you have to focus on finishing the first task in front of you. Maybe I needed to learn that lesson again. 

More tomorrow. 

Day 14 evening

have to head to Real Men Of Genius in a few minutes. For some reason I've really been struggling with continuing tonight. I'm not sure where it's coming from. I'm not particularly hungry. I think part of it is that the group meets at Applebee's. Ugh. I mean, the two guys in my small group are on the fast too, so maybe it won't be so bad, but the cravings right now are pretty strong. 

Is that a sign to stop or is it a sign that I'm being tempted?

who knows. 

January 8 - Our Pilot Our Guide
The following passage is taken from a seminary commencement address

Christ is our employer as surely as the general contractor is the carpenter's employer, only the chances are that this side of Paradise we will never see his face except mirrored darkly in dreams and shadows, if we're lucky, and in each other's faces. He is our general, but the chances are that this side of Paradise we will never hear his voice except in the depth of our own inner silence and in each other's voices. He is our shepherd, but the chances are we will never feel his touch except as we are touched by the joy and pain and holiness of our own life and each other's lives. He is our pilot, our guide, our true, fast, final friend and judge, but often when we need him most, he seems farthest away because he will always have gone on ahead, leaving only the faint print of his feet on the path to follow. And the world blows leaves across the path. And branches fall. And darkness falls. We are, all of us, Mary Magdalene, who reached out to him at the end only to embrace empty air. We are the ones who stopped for a bit to eat that evening at Emmaus and , as soon as they saw who it was that was sitting there at the table with them, found him vanished from their sight. Abraham, Moses, Gideon, Rahab, Sarah are our brothers and sisters because, like them, we all must live in faith, as the great chapter put it with a staggering honesty that should be a lesson to us all, "not having received what was promised, but having seen it and greeted it from afar," and only from afar. And yet the country we seek and do not truly find, at least not here, not now, the heavenly country and homeland, is there somewhere as surely as our yearning for it is there; and I think that our yearning for it is itself as much a part of the truth of it as our yearning for love or beauty or peace is a part of those truths. And Christ is there with us on our way as surely as the way itself is there that has brought us to this place. It has brought us. We are here. He is with us - that is our faith - but only in unseen ways, as subtle and pervasive as air.

~Frederick Buechner

I love Buechner, he says things in a way that sums up what I have to say in a way much more eloquent than I could ever say it. I wasn't particularly good at reading my copy of The Message yesterday (I accidentally left it in my car), but it's sitting next to me here in my office today and I'm going to continue working my way through Ecclesiastes.

This morning I'm at 232. Strangely, looking in the mirror this morning I noticed that when I sucked in my gut, I could see the bottom of my rib cage jutting out under a layer of fat. It was kind of strange.

Angela has decided that she needs to do a week to two weeks along with me to deal with some crap that she wants to deal with. She was talking last night about how she hasn't been tempted by the biscotti that she sells at her store or anything like that, she's been tempted more-so by images on the TV. Emeril cooking this salmon dish on his program, a Papa John's ad for cheese bread (that I will fully admit I looked at wantonly the other day while on the treadmill).

I spent some good time on Sunday talking with two fairly new friends from the young marrieds group Angela and I are a part of. They've been reading the posts on Facebook and it was really good to just sit down and talk through what I've experienced so far. I thought it was really cool that they were genuinely interested.

Lately it seems like people are mostly freaked our or amazed about this fast, like it's some sort of thing that they could never do. I don't think I'm particularly special. I know that I have a mixture of talents that have allowed me to excel at my job, but I have all kinds of fallibilities that keep me from being any different from anyone else. So when someone tells me that they don't think they could handle something like this, or a century bike ride, or the Ironman I have to go, "You can! You really can! There's nothing that I'm doing or that I've done that you couldn't do!"

I think if you're willing to extend the effort, God will fill in the cracks. When I did my first double century, a 200 mile ride out of the Twin Cities and up and around a gigantic lake called Lake Mille Lacs . There were quite a few times I wondered if I could make it. By the time I finished I had been pedaling for over 14 hours. That's a lot of loneliness... while it's not 40 days, the sensation you go through as you're pedaling in silence (these are country roads and while there's an occasional dog bark, there're no iPods or anything like that) is I'm finding, quite similar. Time slows down, especially when you fall out of the zone. There would be periods where it almost felt like time stopped as I felt my body pedal and barely perceived any movement in the grassland all around me.

My mind raced throughout the day, thinking about how if I just pedaled one mile an hour faster I'd cut this much time off and I'd be done at time x:xx. Then, after slowing down, my brain would let me know, "Hey! Guess what! Now you're not going to finish until time z:zz!" To get through that, I had to still myself and meditate. Find the place in me where I COULD meditate. Athletes might call it the zone, and I think that's apropo, but I also think that it's not totally out there to acknowledge that it was a time where I was meditating with God. Often when I'm riding I'll find bits of worship songs or other lyrics floating in my head. I find myself singing out loud or just remarking to myself or my riding partner about the beauty of God's creation. I'm finding just a little bit of that in this fast.

Fasting as an endurance race. I guess I wouldn't have initially thought about it like that, but I think there's something to be said for it. I'm sure I was drawn to it because I'm drawn to stupidly large sized things. I mean, I do think that everyone is capable of an ironman, or a century, or a marathon, or a forty day fast. We just have a habit of falling into what my friend Commodore likes to call Common Man Syndrome. Maybe the reason that I've done these things is that I have a propensity to want to break through that. Like I said, it doesn't make me anything special, just different.

Have to get to work, this is a bit of a mess, but hopefully it makes some sense. Maybe I can expound on it later.