Now on Liquids
Last evening, after 14 days and 14 nights of water-only, I switched onto juices, broths and liquid soups. It was good to consume something that had some taste. Drinking water, as important as it is, can be a real chore on a water-only fast.
I changed the nature of my fast with mixed feelings.
I've been on two long water-only fasts, one when I was 22 years old, in 1972, against the war in Vietnam, and the other 20 years later, in 1992, as a way to say that "we need to go another way" during the time of official government celebrations in the USA of Christopher Columbus' "discovery" of the Americas. The 1972 one was for 40 days, the 1992 one was for 42 days.
Although my heart pulls me toward doing another one this year, my head tells me it's not possible, for two main reasons. The first is my job which, though it's a job working on the issue of climate change, and even though I'm supported by my boss and my co-workers in this action, does require me to be putting out energy every work day, and I doubt if I'd be able to do it adequately, based on past experiences water-fasting, for too much longer.
The other reason is that I'm finishing writing my second book, and that also takes energy. It's about the issues of this fast. The title is "Love Refuses to Quit: Climate Change and Social Change in the 21st Century." I should have it done and up at my website, www.tedglick.com, sometime in December, God willing.
But there's also another reason. This is my third long fast in two years. I did a long, combined water-only and liquids fast of 107 days in the fall of 2007, and another one of 32 days this spring, both about the climate issue. Those fasts were hard on my family, particularly my wife and my father. That is also a concern, though not the primary one.
So I'm now on liquids, for 17 days, until the climate conference starts in Copenhagen. I'll then go back to water-only for the duration of that conference.
I will continue to do all I can to spread the word about this fast and to support those who are staying on water and doing so at least through Copenhagen. Their witness, especially the presence of several of them inside the climate conference, is absolutely right on time.
A quote from Frederick Douglass, the great African American anti-slavery leader of the 19th century, is appropriate for what we are doing. He said this in a speech in Canandaigua, N.Y. in 1857:
"This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North, and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages, and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others."
Amen.
