Frida Berrigan
Reflection on Fasting
December 13, 2005

What does humanity look like when our only tool for persuasion, for power, for being heard, are our own bodies? When I think about why I came here, I remember hearing about the hunger striking men in Guantanamo, and coming to an awareness that this act of deprivation and suffering was their only way to be heard. All they could do was offer up their bodies. It was an act of extreme desperation, but also an act of extreme hope-- that someone would answer.

As I have struggled to bend my cravings for food into cravings for justice, I am in dialogue with my body. Being dependent on the body is such an unamerican predictament. Americans write letters to congress and the editor, we write checks. we hire lobbyists and pr firms, we employ people and utilize services. we do everything to keep from using our bodies to make a difference.

For me, this whole journey has been about exploring what it means to have and use a body.

"This is my body, broken for you. Take it and eat of it," we say in our liturgies. Walking, fasting, sharing. it is all about bringing body in closer relationship to spirit.

it is not the only reason we are here, but it occurs to me that this journey is about- in some part- purging ourselves of privilege, stripping away some of what stands between us and our bodies, us and the body of Christ, us and the body of humanity.

when we arrived at the fence dividing military and civilian territory here at La Glorieta on Sunday evening, Jackie Allen read an account of how the prisoners in Guantanamo started their hunger strike. I thought about the profound-ness and seriousness of the decision to die if one is not seen and heard. This is what we are responding to- that is the call we heard.

We are only fasting for a few days, but as cravings turn to hunger, and hunger to a peculiar light-headness and clarity, I begin to appreciate the power of having a body that isa tool, that speaks and acts and responds and is working (in modest and broken ways) in the interest of justice, mercy and a humanity in which all bodies are sacred and whole.