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Sunday
Ramadan, the month of fasting and prayer, begins tomorrow or Tuesday (depending on the sighting of the new moon). George Washington University’s Seyyed Hossein Nasr, the Iranian philosopher and theologian, explains what Muslims achieve by prayerfully fasting from dawn to dusk for a month:
A person who fasts with complete faith becomes aware very rapidly that he is a pilgrim in this world and that he is a creature destined for a goal beyond this material existence. The world about him loses some of its materiality and gains an aspect of “vacuity” and transparence which in the case of the contemplative Muslim leads directly to a contemplation of God in His creation.
The ethereal and “empty” nature of things is, moreover, compensated by the appearance of those very things as Divine gifts. Food and drink which are taken for granted throughout the year reveal themselves during the period of fasting more than ever as gifts of heaven (ni’mah) and gain a spiritual significance of a sacramental nature.
Rumi, poet and Sufi mystic, has many poems about the power of emptying oneself out. Here’s one of them:
There’s hidden sweetness in the stomach’s emptiness.
We are lutes, no more, no less.
When the sound box is filled, no music comes forth.
When the brain and the belly burn from fasting,
every moment a new song rises out of the fire.
The mists clear, and a new vitality makes you
spring up the steps before you.
Be empty and cry as a reed instrument.Be empty and write secrets with a reed pen.
When satiated by food and drink,
an unsightly metal statue is seated
where your spirit should be.
When you fast, good habits gather
like friends who want to help.
Fasting is Solomon’s ring.Don’t give in to illusion and lose your power.
But even when will and control have been lost,
they will return when you fast,
like soldiers appearing out of the ground,
or pennants flying in the breeze.A table descends to your tents, Jesus’ table.
Expect to see it, when you fast,
this table spread with other food,
better than the broth of cabbages.