Fasting and Eating Disorders

with Lent approaching I've been thinking about what disciplines I might engage with... and I've been really challenged about fasting for some time, so I piped up in a hOME meeting that I'd like to make a commitment to fasting with other people - as I've been so rubbish at it in the past... not only woosing out, but also getting my knickers in a twist as to why I'm doing it. This provoked a really interesting conversation with another member of hOME about fasting and eating disorders - and how not to provoke the latter by engaging in the spiritual discipline of fasting - this is a discussion we've had before in the girl's discipleship group I've been part of in hOME... it's fascinating to me that very little is written about this - it's not really mentioned to my knowledge in classics about spiritual disciplines (like Celebration of Discipline or The Spirit of the Disciplines) perhaps this is because they are written by men, older men at that?
the only useful thing I found on the web was this article, which to be fair is pretty good (less spelling mistakes!;) - I especially liked his point that 'Christian fasting does not set abstinence as the goal, but rather abstains from some things in order to feast on God'...

trip to Scotland last week...

the weekend before last I had a last holiday before the final push on work (last exams first week in May... 20,000 words in essays need to be done before then)

So my friend Claire, who lives in Edinburgh hosted me and took me to the smallest distillery in Scotland and also to Dunkeld where she can be seen as near to birds as she's ever likely to get...

it rained a lot... but the countryside still peeked out looking beautiful!

belated announcement....

so most of you know about this already but I keep discovering the odd person who doesn't (I was waiting on things official to make it completely public) ... I'm going to be the curate at St Giles, Northampton when I leave Wycliffe (resting on the assumption that I will have got all my work done and haven't done anything heinous in the meantime) ... ordination is on Sunday 2nd July at Peterborough Cathedral (Northampton is in Peterborough Diocese).

how do I feel? well, truth be told the initial excitement about all the things that the job description includes (especially exploring and releasing more 'fresh expressions' of church within and/or outside St Giles) has rather been overtaken by feeling very scared that doing this job, possibly living by myself, working for the church for the rest of my life will flatten me... I don't do 'alone' very well

on the up side I really feel like I've reconnected with God in a much deeper way than I have for a long time... so I'm aware that I'm walking a tightrope over the abyss but God is holding my hand (floating alongside me in the way that God can...!!) which means I'm still scared, but know that I'm more in touch with the spiritual reality of saying 'yes' to God than when I'm smugly self assured... which is comforting?!