A note on the sweet tooth

(butternut squash)

(licorice assortments)

Hello sugar crash--

I know I'm supposed to be sitting with my desires. But I guess that's why they call for "practice, practice, and never-ending practice." Cause tonight I went just a little overboard... And I'm regretting it.

Imagine the Joy in one delicious spoonful of my creamy butternut squash. Imagine how long that warmth, that sweetness would last me.

But a bowl full, then a handful of licorice, and then, I admit, some of Bill's leftover cocoa b-day cake with chocolate morsels and strawberries on top.

After all of that, I'm feeling empty again, my gears screeched to a halt, and overflowing.

But--

With just this breath I begin again (over and over and over again).

Opening my lips to this glass of water, or to this cup of hot tea, like baptismal waters, their cleansing waters flow. And I know now --not Joy, not yet-- but emptiness. I know emptiness and I know hunger, sitting here, my desires washing (wave upon wave upon wave) through me.

Fasting

I'm thinking of fasting today, of sitting with my desire, of giving it space to move through me, to wash me out and to undo me.

I'm thinking of what it means to live and love with a broken heart, raw, wide open, and exposed. I'm thinking about what it might mean to be, as I am, in the world, unattached to the labels I have been given, to the deep shame of being told how I've been broken.

into fragments.

that can't be pieced back together again.

I'm wondering what it would mean to unravel these broken pieces while standing strong, breath steady and deep.

Fasting: the practice of peeling back those layers built to divide and to hold apart, to protect us from being human.

I pray to be broken open.
...Over and over and over again.