Who Am I?

Not the Fast I’ve Chosen – Part 8

Posted: May 15th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Celiac, Fasting | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Not the Fast I’ve Chosen – Part 8

If God is not any of those images of God from my last post in this series, then what sort of God is he? Why does it matter that he is not a God who sends illness and disease? The answer to both of those questions is the same: Jesus of Nazareth.

It seems to me that many in the modern era, whether they profess belief in the Christian God or not, profoundly misunderstand the so-called “miracles” of Jesus. I hear the miracles believed (and disbelieved) as these interventions into the natural order that Jesus did in order to prove that he was divine. The secular division between things that are natural or normal or mundane and things that are of God and holy is accepted almost universally except by those who believe the second category entirely unnecessary. The first category seems everywhere assumed.

The Incarnation itself gives the lie to these ideas. It is less an external intervention into creation than the ultimate coming alongside or joining of the creator and his created. God reveals himself within his creation not as its powerful sustainer on whom it is all contingent from moment to moment (though God is certainly that), but as one with his eikon, man. He joins his nature with ours. He shares in all we are. He participates with us in the most intimate manner possible.

The miracles are never about Jesus proving anything. God had nothing to prove. He was giving up his natural honor and becoming the servant of all. The things we call miracles, excepting the special and unique nature of the Resurrection, always are presented as what happens when God joins his nature to ours, when creation begins to be healed.

Jesus commands the elements. Man was created to rule creation and reflect God into it. We were meant to be the steward of all and lovingly order and care for creation. Of course, the storm bows before the true and faithful man.

Jesus feeds the people. This is what God has always done. From the garden to the desert, God provided food for his eikon. Now, in Jesus, he has come that we might consume God himself and receive life. Of course Jesus fed the people. Where else would we find life?

The demons and invisible powers bow before him and flee his presence. They have long ruled mankind through deceit and the power of death. But their tools are useless against the undeceived man, against the God-man who has come to break the power of death over us all. They have no power over Jesus and they see him as he truly is. I would suggest they see him as he was glimpsed by his followers during the transfiguration. Of course they flee the uncreated light of his glory. His simple presence must have burned them with the knowledge of what they had made themselves to be.

And Jesus healed. What are disease and sickness but the fruit of death at work in our bodies? Our bodies sicken and die because we, collectively as mankind, choose non-existence over life. We make that choice every time we turn from God and in some timeless manner we make creation what it is. There is no singular fall of mankind, some distant past event in which I share no responsibility or culpability. I don’t get to blame some faceless, distant ancestor. Every time I face the void and choose that which is not God, I share in the fall of man, I participate in the ruin of creation. In the Incarnation, God wed his nature to ours in order to enter death and break its power over us. This is the mystery of the Resurrection. Death swallowed a man on the Cross and found it had swallowed God instead. How can disease and illness and death, simultaneously the physical symptom and cause of sin (they are so inextricably intertwined) not flee from the very fount of life itself? Jesus heals sin and heals disease, often together and at the same time. This is part and parcel of the renewal of creation and a foretaste of the ultimate defeat of death.

Now, that is not to say that we get sick because we sin. It’s bigger than that, less individually focused. It is true that we can certainly damage our bodies through our thoughts and actions. But most illness and disease are simply part and parcel of a disordered creation. Did Jesus get sick in the Incarnation when he fully assumed the human nature? It seems likely to me that he did. We know he so fully assumed our nature that he was able to die. And could he have experienced all that we experience, could he have been tempted in every way we are tempted if he was never tempted to blame God for an illness? It’s one of the oldest temptations. I recall what Job’s wife said to Job when he was sitting in dung covered with boils. “Curse God and die!” Would a Jesus never so tempted ever even understand, much less have been faithful through, so basic a human temptation?

No, God did not give me celiac disease. That would be an almost blasphemous claim. But perhaps he did work to prepare me for this disease. Let’s explore that idea next in this series.


Not the Fast I’ve Chosen – Part 7

Posted: May 14th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Celiac, Fasting | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Not the Fast I’ve Chosen – Part 7

But it is the fast that I’ve been given.

As I’ve written the posts traveling the thread of my own experience and personal journey, it’s dawned on me that some, perhaps even many, might read that statement from my earlier posts as some form of fatalism or even is if I’m blaming God for this disease. Neither is even close to the truth, as I’m sure anyone who knows me well would recognize, but I should spend some time to explain why that’s so.

It’s extremely common in our culture for people to have an image of God as a figure who stands apart from us, guiding and intervening in our lives. There are a variety of different images of this sort of God. I want to take a moment to explore a few of the more common ones.

Sadly, some people have internalized an image of an angry God smiting those who cross him and punishing those who screw up in some way. It might be all people with whom this God is angry or only certain ones. It seems to vary. This is also one of the more common images of the God whom those who have abandoned God have rejected.  Personally, I don’t blame them. If I believed that God was anything like this particular God, I wouldn’t worship him either. This God is a God unworthy of worship and certainly unworthy of love. Worthy of fear, maybe, in the same way you would fear a rabid wolf, but not worthy of love at all. So no, I don’t believe that God is ticked at me for not adopting and practicing the “right” rule of fasting and prayer and celiac is his way of punishing me for my failure.

Others hold a milder version of this same God. It’s not a God who is necessarily angry with us, though perhaps he does get disappointed. This is a God who is, perhaps, more like the stern parent who will sometimes reward you and sometimes punish you in order to train you properly. I don’t believe in this God either. Yes, God teaches us. The Dark Night of the Soul shows us one way that he sometimes teaches us and moves us on to deeper and more solid practice of our faith and lives. He never actually leaves, of course, but for a time he lets the strong sense of his presence fade so we trust him and not that emotional experience. He also teaches us through the consequences of our actions, through illumination and revelation of Holy Scriptures, through other people, through the saints, and in a host of ways. He is the one truly good Father. But as such, he does not “teach” us by doing evil to us. Never. So no, I do not believe God gave me celiac disease so I would be able to move past the point where I have been waiting these past couple of years.

Still others imagine God controlling the minutiae of all that is. Of course, God does sustain and create all that is, but that is a different concept than the concept of control. Still, there are a small minority of ‘Christians’ who perceive a universe without any freedom whatsoever. God manages everything down to the smallest of subatomic actions and absolutely nothing ever happens at any level that is not precisely and exactly as God intended it to happen. There are varying degrees of this perspective and I will point out that I’ve never seen anyone who actually lives moment to moment as if they truly believed this were so. This God is perhaps the worst God of all of these. This is the God of scientific determinism. This is a personal, active God who originates all evil as well as all good. In such a scheme, there isn’t really any such thing as evil or good in any sense we would recognize. Every permutation and manifestation of this God that people paint makes me absolutely shudder. No, I do not believe that God foreordained I would have and manifest celiac disease and is putting me through my paces for his own narcissistic self-glorification and honor.

Indeed this is the fast that I’ve been given, but God didn’t give it to me. More on this in the next post.


One Month Gluten Free

Posted: May 11th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Celiac | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on One Month Gluten Free

It’s been more or less one month since my EGD and since I began working to be gluten free. With the help of my wonderful wife, I think I’ve been mostly successful at it. It’s been quite the crash course learning curve. I thought I would pause for a moment to compare the state of my physical health, or at least the things I’ve noticed so far.

Like many of those with celiac, I did not have major digestive symptoms or any intestinal pain. My intestines and nutrient deficiencies will take more than a month to heal, so nothing major on that front. I do think now that some of the things with my digestion that I had considered normal may have been related. I’m certainly adapting to a radically changed diet! Time will tell the rest here.

The place of biggest surprise, though, are in the improvements I have felt in a host of other areas unrelated to digestion. Celiac is an autoimmune disease, so its impact and symptoms are not limited to the digestive tract. I’ve been gradually learning some of these other symptoms and its in these areas that I’ve seen dramatic change.

My hands and feet no longer go numb and tingly frequently and easily. I just thought they went to sleep easily, but it turns out this is a neurological symptom. And its mostly stopped for me. I can lean on my arm or elbow without my hand ‘going to sleep’. Same with my feet when sitting crosslegged or in a chair with one leg curled up. It might seem very minor, but it’s so nice.

I’ve almost stopped having sharp, shooting muscle pains. I didn’t realize how bad these had gotten until I went skating with my daughter again. Right before my diagnosis, it had gotten so bad that when she went as fast as we go in the rink, my back and side and leg hurt enough that I couldn’t even come close to keeping up. A week ago? I was going as fast as she was and had no pain at all. No limping. No sudden back pain. I guess I thought I was out of shape or getting old or something similar. They didn’t cripple me. They just hurt enough to slow me down. And they are almost gone.

I used to almost constantly have canker sores inside my mouth. After the ones I had at the time of my EGD healed, I’ve had only one.

My mind has been noticeably less ‘foggy’. And my overall mood has been greatly improved. I simply have more energy. I’ve been recovering little things I thought lost forever. This past week, for instance, I’ve started waking up again many days a few minutes before the alarm goes off. I used to do that all the time and haven’t in a very long time.

It’s only been a month and already the change has been greater than I ever expected. This autoimmune stuff is nasty.


Not the Fast I’ve Chosen – Part 2

Posted: May 9th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Celiac, Fasting | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Not the Fast I’ve Chosen – Part 2

Before I continue in the direction I pointed at the end of my first post in this series, I want to spend a little more time on the intertwined, interlocking, and interpenetrating nature of our body, mind, and spirit. I know it is often a foreign idea to those shaped within our American culture, but the concept is central not only to this series, but to the formative thoughts behind this entire blog. I think the common attitude of our culture is captured by a statement like this:

Celiac is an autoimmune disease. It’s a medical condition and the medical prescription is a gluten free diet. It’s purely physical (or some might say secular or natural). What does a disease or medical condition have to do with anything spiritual?

Such is the nature of our age. Even if we’ve never read Plato and never studied philosophy, we have absorbed from the cultural air we breathe and within which we live something of his deep dualism between the material and the spiritual. We see the two as separate categories. And thus we talk about a person’s body or a person’s spirit as though they were separate things and had little to do with each other. But that does not describe reality. Change the chemistry of my brain and you will change my personality. Much of the life of my spirit, for good or ill, is played out in the field of my body. I am not a spirit contained in a body nor am I wholly defined by the matter which forms my body. As a human being I am the union of the spiritual and the material. I am the dust of the earth imbued with the breath of God. I am a living soul – the union (and often disunion) of body, mind, and spirit. You cannot alter or remove any of the three without changing who I am in essential ways, without changing my very being.

So yes, celiac is a medical condition, an autoimmune disease. The treatment is a strict diet that requires me to fast from anything containing gluten – an entire category of food. And a fast is always spiritual as well, for good or ill, whether or not we acknowledge it as such. As the faithfulness of my adherence to this fast will heal or harm my body and my mind, so the spiritual impact of the fast will propel me along the way of life or along the way of death (as the Didache describes the two ways).

If I ignored the spiritual dimensions of this fast, I would effectively be fasting without prayer. And the Fathers of Christian faith have many warnings about such fasts. Fasting without prayer is the ‘fast of the demons’, they say, for the demons do not eat at all because of their incorporeal nature but they also never pray. So I see already that this fast must be intertwined with and shaped by a strong rule of prayer if it is not to shrink my spirit. Interestingly, we also find that fasting without love is another fast of the demons. St. Basil the Great writes:

What is the use of our abstinence if instead of eating meat we devour our brother or sister through cruel gossip?

I do not believe it is at all wise to be careful in the physical aspects of this or any fast and ignore the spiritual dimensions. I also do not believe our actions or inactions in such things are morally neutral by default. If I do indeed follow Jesus of Nazareth, then I am saying something definite about both God and man by doing so. And I must act and live accordingly.

In the next post in this series, I’ll continue in the direction I had originally planned for the series.


Not the Fast I’ve Chosen – Part 1

Posted: May 8th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Celiac, Fasting | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Faith, of any sort, necessarily colors the way we perceive, interpret, process, and interact with the world around us. While many of my thoughts are still half-formed, I can tell already that there are more threads than can be contained within a single post. As such, I’m declaring this my first series. That didn’t take long, did it? Those who know me already know that I’m not by nature a man of few words when I write.

The title of this series is actually a phrase that popped into my head when it began to be clear that I likely did have celiac disease. On one level it seems straightforward, but I find as I’ve reflected on it, that it is deep and rich in meaning. Let’s begin to unpack the thought.

What is a fast? That question is central to this discussion and will likely be central to many questions I will explore on this blog. On one level it seems like such a straightforward question, but in truth the core meaning of a fast has been virtually lost today in the Western world. Fasting has come to mean almost any form of abstention. Thus people say they are fasting from TV or they are fasting from facebook or they are fasting from their iPod when they actually mean that they are abstaining from those activities for a period of time. There is nothing wrong with abstaining from various things for a time for spiritual reasons. But that is not what it has traditionally meant to fast.

If you truly fast it means that you abstain from some or all food and drink for a period of time. While I expect to primarily speak from and through the lens of Christianity, my spiritual journey has been far too wide-ranging for me not to note that that is what fasting means across a broad spectrum of spiritualities. This definition is not and has never been uniquely Christian, though why we fast will vary greatly from one spiritual perspective to another. I think we have broadened the definition in the Christian and post-Christian West today to cover all forms of abstention because we largely do not fast anymore in any meaningful or communal sense. Even our Lenten preparation, for those traditions who still observe it at all, has become a highly individual activity. We each separately decide what we will “give up” rather than fasting together as a community.

The diagnosis of celiac demands a fast. It is a strict fast. It is a difficult fast. And it is a lifelong fast. If you break the fast, you will damage your body. It is uncompromising. No, I did not choose it and I do not want it. This is not the fast I’ve chosen. But it is the fast I’ve been given.

I could try to act as though this was a merely medical condition. I could try to live as if there were some sort of division or distinction between my physical, my mental, and my spiritual being. Many shaped within the context of the West, including many Christians, would have me draw such a distinction. But I’ve never been able to find that dividing line. The things I do or which happen to my body affect my mind and my spiritual condition. It’s clear to me now that I experienced and endured a period of serious depression because of the chemical changes in my body wrought by a combination of sleep apnea and celiac.

The manner in which we think and the condition of our spirits always affect our bodies, for good or ill. We know that and acknowledge it every time we talk about the physical damage stress causes. And yet we still try to draw lines between the two as though they could be separated.

And while this is not the fast I’ve chosen, I must confess that I might never have chosen a fast at all. But I’ll explore that in my next post.


Celiac at Chuy’s

Posted: May 8th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Restaurant Reviews | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Celiac at Chuy’s

If you’ve never been to Austin, then you may not have experienced the unique TexMex heaven called Chuy’s. It’s long been one of our favorite places and we were thrilled when a new one opened in Round Rock a few years ago. When my father-in-law wanted to take us out for my birthday a few weeks after my diagnosis, it’s one of the first places I thought of going.

My wife called them and spoke with the manager. I believe her name was Sandy and she was extremely helpful. She knew what celiac was and said they set aside some of their chicken each day specifically to use for people who can’t eat gluten. (Their normal meat preparation apparently includes some type of beer-based marinade.) When we arrived, our waitress recognized celiac and immediately warned us they couldn’t absolutely guarantee there wouldn’t be any cross-contamination. She didn’t know the details, but spoke with the manager to find out exactly what I could have. She came back with the list of sauces I could have. Most of their sauces are thickened with corn starch, so were on the available list. I chose my personal favorite, their hatch green chili sauce for my chicken enchiladas. The rice and beans were also safe. The manager came by to check on us and see that everything was OK.

I knew when I was diagnosed that Austin, being the sort of place is it is, would be an easier place to live with this disease than many other places. And my first experience with a home-grown restaurant bore that out. They knew about celiac, were prepared for it, and were as helpful as they could be. Obviously, the risk of cross-contamination in any restaurant is such that I don’t eat out much anymore and I wouldn’t risk it as a regular event. And my menu choices at Chuy’s were seriously limited (which I knew would be the case). But it was an encouraging encounter. And it’s great to know that I’m not forever barred from Chuy’s. 😉


Welcome to Faith & Food

Posted: May 7th, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Personal | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Welcome to Faith & Food

If you’re reading this, welcome to my initial post. Although I will not restrict or limit my choice of topics for my writing here, it was my diagnosis of celiac disease which finally prompted me to start my own blog. I’ve supported and helped people over nearly two decades establish their own blogs, email lists, forums, and other such tools for communication. But this is only the second time I’ve set up one as a venue primarily for my voice. The other was a technically oriented email list sharing resources and expressing my own views to others interested within my place of employment, so it was more my public voice on technical matters rather than a truly personal voice. This blog, by contrast, is entirely personal.

I tend to process things best through my writing. That has been true my entire life. As such, even though I do not intend to restrict my topics, I do expect that much of what I write will revolve around my experience with celiac and with matters of faith. It’s an odd feeling to be diagnosed with a serious disease that they really can’t do anything about medically. I am grateful that it’s something that can be entirely managed through diet, even if removing gluten from your life is definitely not the easiest thing to accomplish. Nevertheless, there is some sense that my own body has in a way betrayed me. Even now I have several half-formed trains of thoughts swirling around my head that I’m sure I’ll clarify and solidify through writing when I have the time to sit and focus at the keyboard.

If you’re looking for or expecting any glitz, you’ve come to the wrong place. I read most blogs without adornment in a feed reader. When reading, I prefer text without unnecessary distraction. I tend to prefer visually subdued displays for anything I will be staring at for any length of time except games (and even then there are limits). I basically live my life in front of computer displays and my tolerance for visual noise is low. I deliberately chose a visually unexciting theme that was readily customizable. I’m not fond of the bright white background, so will probably tone it down at some point. But otherwise, don’t expect any major change or for it to become more visually stimulating in the future.

That’s all for now. I did want to get an introductory post published to officially get this blog started. This is it. Now on with the content. I have wanted to write about my experience with Chuy’s post-diagnosis. So I’ll probably write that next.