Wednesday, January 31, 2018

The Daniel Fast and Lenten Plans



(Note to readers: After publishing this post, I did more research to learn the origins of this "fast" and looked more closely at the Bible readings associated with it. Please see the next post, Rethinking the "Daniel Fast" and Refocusing on Lent.)

Have you ever wanted to change your life entirely, all at once? I've had fleeting moments of inspiration in which I say to myself, Self, this is the day I'm going to change everything! Beginning with giving up coffee. Then later, say, two hours maybe, I can't stand it, and I grab a cup of java. Waste time on the Internet. Never take that walk that was going to be my first walk to begin a habit of walking every single day. The life I picture seems so close, and yet so far...

Enter the Daniel Fast. I just heard about this a couple of weeks ago. I was talking to a friend on the phone, and I asked her if she'd seen that horrible story about the Turpin family and their 13 abused and starving children in California. She said she had only glimpsed a headline of the story but hadn't followed it, because she was taking a media break during the Daniel Fast. 

Upon hearing "Daniel Fast," my mind suddenly latched on, and I had to know all about it. Evidently this is an annual practice based upon the fasting of the Old Testament figure, Daniel. Churches around the country participate. The official, three week period of the fast has ended, but I am gearing up to do it for Lent. Whether I do it only for three weeks or for the entire 40 days of Lent remains to be seen. 

Basically, I will be purging everything that I've been wanting to cut out of my life in terms of food--caffeine, sugar, dairy, and processed foods. If you are a meat eater, that goes too. And alcohol. I'd been considering going vegan but wasn't sure if I could take the plunge. The Daniel Fast is my chance to go cold turkey in a major way and finally make all of the changes I dream of. 

In The Ultimate Guide to the Daniel Fast by Kristen Feola, you will find over 100 recipes and 21 daily devotions. The pictures of the food look very appetizing, and the recipes seem pretty simple. Feola includes shopping guides and weekly meal plans. The hardest part might be being limited to unleavened bread (whole grain bread without yeast, sugar, or preservatives). I'm going to learn to cook and eat in a whole new way! 

Am I scared? No. I'm terrified. The thing to keep in mind is that this is ultimately a spiritual practice. Lent is a time to cut out distractions and draw closer to the Lord. It's a time of sacrifice, charity, and penance. It's an imitation of Jesus' 40 days in the desert. Needless to say, I expect to be tempted. 

One benefit that I think will keep me going is the guarantee of weight loss. My friend lost 10 pounds in 21 days, and that was without incorporating exercise. I plan to walk and stretch daily. And if I do the fast for the whole 40 days, a loss of 20 pounds seems reasonable. 

I'm going to do a partial Internet fast during Lent as well. I receive at least one email per week from our homeschool co-op, so my plan is to only check my email the day before co-op meets. I want to blog about this process, so I'll probably be posting weekly. I will only use Facebook to share the blog posts. I will do my best not to look at the Yahoo News headlines, which unfortunately pop up when I close my email. Absolutely no Internet surfing!!

The last part of the equation is to finish my home decluttering and deep cleaning project. My mother-in-law is coming to visit early in May, so that gives me incentive to do this thing once and for all. 

Have any of you done a Daniel Fast? Please share your experience!


Sunday, January 14, 2018

Technology and the Lost Art of Listening



This morning at church Father Dave made an astute observation. The technology of texting and online social media has made communication fast and easy; but it has almost completely destroyed the art of listening. I sat in my pew amazed, because just yesterday I had a very nasty experience on Facebook. And only a few days before that, my daughter had her heart broken by a "friend" who betrayed her on a social media site called Hangouts. 

My daughter's tablet is taking a long vacation. And it's not just to avoid the problem of mean girls. I've seen that being on her tablet is addictive. Research has shown that internet activity stifles creativity and actually, physiologically rewires the brain, scattering our attention like nothing else and rendering us increasingly helpless against our impulses. This truth negates the belief that technology is morally neutral, that a person's heart is the problem, not the technology itself. Do we really have the control that we think we do over our use of the internet and devices like smartphones? As with any addiction, denial is rampant. 

Consider the observations of Rod Dreher, author of The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation:

   "We think our many technologies give us more control over our destinies. In fact, they have come to control us. And this opens the door to the more fundamental point about technology: it is an ideology that conditions how we humans understand reality. To use technology is to participate in a cultural liturgy that, if we aren't mindful, trains us to accept the core claim of modernity: that the only meaning there is in the world is what we choose to assign it in our endless quest to master nature...
   If we can use technology any way we like as long as the outcome results in our own happiness, then all reality is 'virtual reality,' open to construal in any way we like. There are no natural limits, only those that we do not yet have the technological capability to overcome. This point of view is ubiquitous in modernity but profoundly antithetical to orthodox Christianity." (emphasis mine)

Technology has become a worldview (the medium is the message) which trains us to privilege what is new and innovative over what is old, traditional, and familiar. Like listening. We've lost the ability to comprehend whether we should or should not accept a particular technological development. I've seen smartphones in the hands of babies. We need to wake up before it's too late! Society's addiction to television is bad enough, but when devices with internet access are appendages to our bodies, we have a serious problem. 

And what about me? I've given up Facebook before, largely due to cyber-bullying, and only set up a new account when my grandma died, and I wanted to keep in touch with fellow grieving family members. Now having my own mean girl experience, would it be letting evil win to throw in the Facebook towel again?

I think most of us are at least peripherally aware that our data is not kept private by Facebook (but we shove this knowledge into our denial folder). I was particularly perturbed yesterday because I was unable to remove unwanted, harrassing comments from a birthday fundraiser that I have set up on Facebook. And the "report a problem" option was not functioning! The offender could not be removed from the event. Facebook's guidelines on their page for reporting a problem were to do it at the initial site of the problem. I'm amazed that I didn't tear my hair out. 

There is also the issue of general dependency on the internet for financial reasons. My husband and I have a home-based business largely operated online, and Facebook is one of our avenues for generating income. FB has sometimes removed my husband's posts, and then they were negligent in communicating with him, leaving the issue unresolved. My husband also relies on Twitter to support our business. 

Is being a FB member not only often a monumental waste of my time and potentially damaging to my brain in a real, physiological sense, but is it also being complicit with a company which is negligent, does not guard my privacy--is, in other words, morally questionable? That is something I'm still discerning. 

I'm not saying that internet technology doesn't have many positive uses. For example, one reason I've stayed on Facebook is to respond to people's prayer requests. The internet is an enormous help to my homeschooling vocation (though, due to information overload, it's also a huge distraction and can result in much confusion.) The use of internet technology is not necessarily immoral in and of itself, but it very often presents what is called a near occasion of sin, which you can read more about here: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11196a.htm. Christians are obligated to avoid occasions of sin. The problem is, again, denial. Do we have the humility and self-awareness to admit that we are deeply addicted to smartphones, social media, and internet surfing? 

I now know the ugliness of a cousin's heart who I thought was very sweet, thanks to her posts in my charity fundraiser. I would rather not have known. Social media has an undeniable tendency to bring out the worst impulses in people and is notorious for the ruination of relationships. As science has confirmed, technology is not neutral. 

There is much more to be said on this topic, but for now I'll conclude with a few suggestions. 

1.  Just today I downloaded Chrome to my laptop and added their Facebook Newsfeed Eradicator feature. I now receive inspirational quotes instead of a newsfeed! This frees you up from distractions which impede your work productivity and concentration on managing your groups. I'm sure Facebook is mad as h*ll about this, because you don't see their advertisements anymore. You can also find many good suggestions for controlling your smartphone use online, which I can't personally advise you on, because I have a flip phone! Consider replacing your smartphone with a flip phone. I dare you. Double dog. Bet you can't do it, you addict, you. 

2.  Very few people have my cell phone number, and the message box is not set up. I do not text. Consider actually dialing up a number and talking on the phone. (Consider, even, having a landline with a cord! Bet you can't sit still for 5 minutes.) I can think of no circumstance in which texting would be necessary. And when you are on the phone, do not multi-task. First of all, multi-tasking is an illusion. The scientific reality is that we can't give adequate attention to more than one activity at a time which requires concentration. Don't surf the internet or watch TV while on the phone with a friend. Do not put people on speaker phone so you can do something else at the same time. I can always tell I'm on speaker phone. Turn off your phone when you are visiting in person. This is all a matter of basic manners, but we need to be reminded, because we are no longer a polite society.

3.  Our children, including teenagers, should not have smartphones, period. Get your kid a flip phone. Babies should not have smartphones in their hands. These, I believe, are unquestionably moral considerations. 

4.  Recover the art of listening. You can't listen when texting. You can't listen when using social media. This means you can't have deep relationships with people. Think about it. Do you usually send a text or FB message because you really don't want to bother calling someone, because it's more more convenient for you? Even if it's your mom, daughter, best friend, or sibling? The truth is, many of us don't really want to talk to people unless we have to. I am arguing here that we have to. If you aren't in the habit of listening, you lose the ability, and you aren't really in intimate relationship with other people. We are literally losing our humanity.

5.  Set a timer when you get on the internet and give yourself strict limits. Avoid falling into the black hole where you lose all sense of time--and with it, reality. Social media is not real life. It's a place where people create fantasy selves. Rarely do people present a realistic portrait of their lives. 

6.  So many people document their status on social media all day long. And what's worse, their children have no choice but to have their lives plastered all over social media too. This is dangerous. And it is a serious violation of your child's privacy. I actually got a bunch of flack when my teenage daughter did not want me to post her picture on FB, and I respected her wishes. People, you're just not getting it. Limit your children's pictures, your own posts, and the time you spend on social media, your smartphone, and the internet. Let's get back to Life. 



stepbystep.com


Compare this picture to the one at the beginning and seriously contemplate--which do you want to be the picture of your life?

Wednesday, January 3, 2018

Winter Deep Clean 2018



Happy New Year, everyone! I'd like to invite you to join me for a deep cleaning of our homes this winter. Typically you might think of spring as being the season for a thorough house cleaning, but I can't wait that long. Sure, some tasks, like washing windows and painting, will need to wait until warmer weather. But as it is so very cold right now, and you are not likely to be spending much time outdoors, why not clean the cabin and perhaps avoid cabin fever in the process? We'll be too busy purging and scrubbing to notice how cooped up we are, and we will be loving our homes again!

I spent Christmas and my birthday sick and in bed, so I had a lot of time to plan. I watched way too many youtube videos, but some of them did inspire me and helped me discern the tools I will need for this project. It seems that the minimalist challenge groups for this year are focusing on spending 15 minutes per day on a particular zone. A zone might be a room or set of rooms, or just part of a room. I decided to start with my upstairs bathroom. 

I gathered my supplies and set a timer for 15 minutes (see grimy vintage timer in pic at top!), planning to work on the medicine cabinet only. I figured it would take more than 15 minutes, but the idea is that once you get going, you build momentum. 

The first thing you want to do is throw away (or set aside to give away) whatever items need to go. I tossed expired medicines, products I wasn't using, and old nail polish. Unfortunately one of the bottles broke in the waste basket, creating a strong smell and making a mess. Dealing with this added extra time to the project, which leads me to the next point. Plan for your project to take longer than expected. 

Just the medicine cabinet took 55 minutes, and later I realized that I had forgotten to wash the outside of it, so it was really a full hour. I took everything out, discarded certain items, cleaned all the shelves and woodwork, and put the remaining things back inside, in an organized fashion. This is a built-in cabinet and has quite a bit of storage space. There is room to put some additional items in it, which may end up meaning that I need less storage space in other areas of the bathroom. 

 


Bring paper and a pen into the zone you are working on so you can take notes of anything you need to replace (like those expired medicines you threw away) and any additional supplies you may need to finish the job. I did the medicine cabinet on Jan. 1, then took my list to the store the next day. One thing I really needed was rubber gloves for cleaning. Yesterday's job, hanging a curtain on a new rod, cleaning the window frame, and cleaning the pedestal sink, also took longer than expected. 

Once you get started, you may feel more overwhelmed that you did initially, realizing how much work you actually have ahead of you. So just set that timer for 15 minutes. Do what you can in that time. Choose only a small zone to work on. When the buzzer goes off, set the timer for another 15 minutes if you still haven't finished the job. I'm not going to work past one hour each day, because I don't want to injure my back. 

Here's a recap of the steps:

1. Choose what zone you will begin with (think small).
2. Gather the supplies you will need, including your paper and pen for note taking.
3. Set your timer for 15 minutes (reset as needed).
4. Purge first. Pare down duplicates, throw away expired items, give/throw away products you don't use/don't like. Be relentless!
5. Thoroughly clean the area. 
6. Organize your remaining items.
7. Reward yourself with a break!

So who's going to join me? What zone will you begin with first? Imagine having your home decluttered and shiny clean by spring!!