I noticed it first in the classroom as a child, the way we took on assigned roles. I’m sure an expert in group dynamics would have a data set and peer-reviewed analysis. But just based on non-scientific observation as a student and teacher, it seemed that - no matter who ended up in a classroom, and even if half the class was away - there was always a clown, always a goody two shoes, always someone deeply compliant, always a rebel. There was always a couple of kids who were the top of the social tree, and always a couple who were excluded. We took on the roles that were convenient, or were assigned to us, or were forced upon us.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we became adults and all that immaturity disappeared? But of course it continued. We might take on the assigned role of our work – ‘I’m a plumber’, ‘I’m a Mother’, ‘I’m a student’, ‘I’m a social worker’. Or it might be the assigned role we play in the family or community system. ‘I’m the happy one’, ‘I’m the grumpy one’, ‘I’m the bashful one’ as if, like the seven dwarfs, we are single-issue organisms.
Sometimes these roles and activities become rusted on, and we feel as though we cannot escape them. We settle into repeated patterns of language and behaviour, which make us feel safe, but which also imprison us. We see our lives as though there is a single, predictable path laid out ahead, from which we can not deviate.
So God gives us the gift of fasting to mix things up a bit. If we are the kind of person who is just not human without a cup of coffee, God invites us to discover just what kind of human we are without that hot, black stimulant several times a day. If we are the kind of person who just ‘says it like it is’, (which is often code for unrepentant rudeness) God invites us to see ourselves as we ‘is’ by our amending our behaviour. If we are the kind of person who relies always on our own wisdom and resourcefulness, God invites us to read or pray or listen or be still, and to rely on something beyond ourselves for a change.
When we come to understand that we are rarely our authentic selves, and that the ‘you’ you hide is almost always different to the ‘you’ you reveal, we come to see fasting, and the season of Lent, as a precious gift. The colour is sombre, the decorations are sparse and the menu is simple, not because we are sad or downcast, but because we are seeking to strip away the many concealments and expose deep truths.
The Lord Be With You