Episode 32: Contemplative Fasting

In this episode, Christopher and Riley discuss the contemplative practice of fasting. Beginning with the usual notion of fasting as abstaining from food and drink, they expand it to include abstaining from any appetite with the potential to be taken to excess or to become an unhealthy coping mechanism or even an addiction for lack of communion with God. Riley and Christopher describe indulgence in excess as a way we try to fill the emptiness in us resulting from a lack of communion with God, with food, sex, or the compulsive consumption of products or media, and draw upon examples and teachings from the Buddha, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, Jesus, and al-Ghazali, to expand the scope of fasting as a way of becoming more aware of ourselves, our family, our neighbors, and our wider world.