Recently the honors program engaged in different variants of fasting. The fasting lasted the duration of 1 day and each student had their own individual reason to engage in the fast with most of the reasons falling in the category of developing awareness for the poor and marginalized.
The connection this fasting event had to the poor and marginalized had to do with the general idea that abstaining from certain materials in this case food can bring a heightened awareness of and or respect for the poor and marginalized. Several ideas as to why fasting should occur were presented. Some viewed fasting as a way of creating momentary pain to better understand the suffering of the poor. Other people viewed fasting as a way to rid themselves of desire and focus more on god thereby perhaps becoming closer to god while learning what priorities are most important in life and thereby better understand the poor who must always have their priorities in order to survive. Lastly fasting could simply be a way to try hard to abstain from activities which are irresponsible and could possibly hurt someone else or the environment which is another way that fasting can apply to the topic of the marginalized.
When considering what I learned from this project I must admit that going into the project I did not really place trust in the idea that I might learn something from it. Prior to this assignment I had always viewed fasting in a negative light. I simply did not like the idea of people causing themselves pain. As such I still hold the idea that causing oneself pain in order to understand those who experience pain is wrong and is always going to be a failed attempt. No matter how long someone fasts they will still live in an environment with an abundance of food and they will be inflicting hunger upon themselves. The poor and marginalized on the other hand are hungry because of outside circumstances that are often out of their control and therefore true empathy through such means is unachievable. Aside from this theory I opposed what I thought included all other forms of fasting based on the same context that it is wrong to cause oneself pain. I must say however that after analyzing this assignment, though I am still against people inflicting pain upon themselves and all the forms of fasting that do this, I realized that fasting does not have to involve a form of deprivation. Fasting can be a way of abstaining from the kind of malicious form of materialism that hurts others. This role of fasting does not hurt the fasting person and it helps others. For instance a man can refuse to by a shirt made through child labor. In refusing to buy that shirt no sacrifice or pain is involved on either side for three reasons 1. No one can sacrifice what they do not own, so no object has been sacrificed and 2. Abstaining from engaging in an act that can potentially cause another pain is never sacrificial as nothing is given up and it is never detrimental to one’s heath nor does it cause pain as there are always responsible alternative ways to engage in activities that are not at the expense of others. Because of this kind of fasting which can be applied in many different situations I began to have a very positive view of fasting in this context. As result I can say that I gained a positive perspective on a smart form of fasting which hurts no one and has potential to effectively help the world we live in.
February 2007 Archives
For my project on Sunday I visited St. Stephanus Lutheran Church in frogtown. The congregation was warm and inviting and the sermon was of great interest. The sermon had to do with how the word of Jesus was well received in Corinth but not in Athens which had been a surprise given Corinth’s reputation as a place of sexual promiscuity among other things. The latter part of the sermon considered the plight of the poor, in some ways, in the early Christian church. Pastor Jim had referred to the fact that in the feasts of the old church, the poor often had nothing to eat because feasts were held in the form of potlucks where everyone brought their own food and since the poor had no food they ate no food. He also elaborated on how the old church favored the rich because of the fact that the rich brought in all the money for the expansion of the church and provided a steady stream of faithful to the parish given that they could afford to have many kids.
This sermon was important to our unit, which is concerned with the lives of the impoverished, for many reasons. Firstly the church service took place in a poor part of St. Paul which is a direct correlation to our unit as it shows how important it is for Christians and for this unit to worship with the poor and get to know some of their trials and realize that we are all brothers and sisters under god. Second the sermon, which showed concern with the way the early church treated the poor, provided an example of how the Christian church is not to act in the 21st century if it wants to follow Jesus’ example and provide help to those who need it.
The main thing I learned from this unit was the information about the early Christian church and their appalling mistreatment of the poor and the marginalized. Such an example made me even more adamant to see the church provide aid to those in need providing the type of moral example that Jesus Christ provided on earth in regards to those who needed help.
Today’s presentation was given by the people of second harvest. It engaged the students in a physical activity regarding a day in the life of an impoverished person who is dependent on various social services. The steps included withdrawing a limited amount of money (false of course) from the bank, shopping for groceries with that money, and then filling out the 16 page application form for food stamps. The purpose was to give people a heightened understanding of the lives of the impoverished and perhaps some empathy for them as well.
This topic is quite directly related to our unit on the lives of the impoverished. The reason being because it represented, fairly accurately, what processes the poor in this country have to go through to get social assistance and what they are able to do with that assistance. In addition by putting the class in the shoes of impoverished people (to some extent) second harvest created a realization in some of what it is like to be poor and in need of social assistance. It was also helpful that they gave us statistics of what problems draw people into needing social assistance so that we could be educated as to what reforms might bring peoples’ dependency on food shelves down. In short this kind of education on the impoverished is necessary for anyone that wants to help them.
I learned many things regarding the lives of the impoverished from this presentation. I learned about the application process needed for receiving food stamps. I realized what kinds of foods were most important to purchase when there is little money to spend. And most importantly I learned some of the major causes of peoples’ dependency on these social programs among those being something which I had suspected for a long time; that a lack of healthcare coverage combined with an ever increasing cost of healthcare is one of the biggest reasons, if not the biggest reason why many poor are so dependent on programs such as food stamps. Information such as this is vital if students want to take an active role alleviating the burdens of the impoverished.
