Community Practice
A 30 Day Fasting / Abstaining Experience
Resources
Rules / Guides for cultivating a growth mindset
Sister Corita Kent’s Art Department Rules
Podcasts
Fasting
Rule of Life (by Practicing the Way) 4 episodes on fasting
Abstaining
Rich Roll interview of Anna Lembke MD on addiction, dopamine, and sobriety
Books
Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke, MD
Click here for an illustrated guide to the essential ideas shared in the book (YouTube).
Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the 12 Steps by Richard Rohr
Practice
As you fast and/or abstain, brief and regular journaling can be a remarkably powerful and insightful way of capturing data that will help you learn and grow. The point is to be an observer of yourself. Ask yourself, what am I noticing? And, very simply, take notes. Ask for illumination and guidance from the Spirit of God. Try to remain non-judgmental about what you are noticing. For now, just notice. Simply seek to take brief and honest notes about what you are noticing about yourself as a result of this process.
Quotes
“Fasting from any nourishment, activity, involvement or pursuit—for any season—sets the stage for God to appear. Fasting is not a tool to pry wisdom out of God's hands or to force needed insight about a decision. Fasting is not a tool for gaining discipline or developing piety (whatever that might be). Instead, fasting is the bulimic act of ridding ourselves of our fullness to attune our senses to the mysteries that swirl in and around us."
—Dan B. Allender, PhD
“Persons with severe addictions are among those contemporary prophets that we ignore to our own demise, for they show us who we truly are.”
—Kent Dunnington
Daily Meditations
Center for Action and Contemplation, meditations on powerlessness