Mark 2:20

But the days will come, when the groom will be taken away from them, and they will fast then – when that day comes.”


disciples are party animals
braying about their advancement

they cram and forget to no end
there is no pop quiz or final

it is so very easy to bring a water bottle
and fill it with a very serviceable wine

easier and easier it is to live off the ladies
and pick up baskets of bread and fish

it’s important to pick your teacher
as well as your parents

we eat well and see the world
far better than locusts and scriptorium

it would be a real disappointment
to start fasting — might as well die


As with the end of verse 19, this verse has been considered a late add on by the Christian community.

It will be important to identify what aspect of fasting is being suggested here.

If fasting is some form of repentance, is a fast a form of excusing ourselves from attending to the movement of belovedness through creation and clinging to our various levels of status?

Are we being nostalgic for a past that never was when Jesus could be counted on to get us out of one storm after another? If so our fast is about our lack of engagement and running away when danger and death was being faced.

Even if it were for a renewal of vision and energy to live out the gifts and graces we have been endowed with, there is a tendency to turn this into individual fasting. It must be questioned whether or not the fasting of the friends is done one-by-one or if there is a corporate element to fasting.

Given that fasting rules protect the faster from harming themselves through lack of food, what besides food would friends band together to fast from?

Are we left with fasts that protest the wilderness set loose in our midst with such ancient practices as slavery and its current trafficking face? Fasts to protest discriminations and deaths of LGBTQ persons or be in solidarity with Native People protecting water and other corporatized resources? A community-wide fast to welcome immigrants?

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