A source of light- Part II

Published : 24 August 2011, 04:07 PM
Updated : 24 August 2011, 04:07 PM

Ramadan – it's a holiday I never thought I would celebrate. And I certainly didn't know what I was getting into when a Muslim friend of mine challenged me: "Try fasting for a month. See what happens."

My friend told me that even if I succeeded, I would never truly experience the season of Ramadan because I did not have a community with which to fast, and that sense of communal deprivation created an esprit de corps that I, as a lone non-Muslim could never truly appreciate.

Still, I decided to accept his challenge, and on August 1, I began my fast. Now, I know that Ramadan is about more than just the fast, but I'm vague on the details. I know it's about prayers and alms and good deeds. So, to the best of my ability, I incorporated those aspects into my friend's challenge to see what it would be like to spend the month like so many of you are doing.

I thought it was going to be easy.

I mean, after all, I'm from a family who has never met a fast it didn't like. I still actively look forward to Lent and the three day fast that we traditionally subject ourselves to each year before the big meal on Easter.

The Ramadan fast was not what I expected. The Muslim rules are stricter: Not allowing anything to cross your lips, even water, even biting your nails for thirteen and a half hours of daylight – that was a challenge. For the first week, my head throbbed. Usually, I never get headaches. My energy disappeared. I so looked forward to sunset each night that I often made "I can't wait until sunset!" my Facebook status.

My research revealed that I wasn't the only one to suffer mild headaches during the first week of Ramadan. I asked my friend what to do about them. He shrugged. "I suppose you do the same thing you do when you feel hungry. You pray."

On a recent visit to Rutgers University, I approached the locally famous "grease trucks" that sell excellent food in abundance. Nearly all the vendors are from Saudi Arabia, and other parts of the Middle East. I approached one of the vendors, and asked him how he could abide spending his days surrounded by food and never be tempted to eat or drink, even when the temperature inside those cramped vehicles with their hot ovens must reach 54 degrees Celsius, more than halfway to boiling!

"I've been observing the fast for 30 years. I'm used to it. I usually smoke, but I don't even feel the urge when I'm fasting…" He mentioned that his wife, an American, was a recent convert to Islam, and at first she also experienced a hardship of the fast. "You do everything else for yourself, you fast for God," he explained, "and I think that makes it easier."

He also explained to me that the Arabic word for prayer meant "relationship". I found that very interesting. The English word for prayer comes from the Latin, pregare, which means to ask earnestly, or to beg for. Somehow the difference between the two words implied a very different dynamic between God and man. To "relate" presupposed a capacity, on the part of man, to take care of his own problems. When you relate, you assume that you have something inherent your personality to offer, and that you will be appreciated as an individual. Asking or begging for things, creates the presumption that one is powerless to do for oneself.

In any case, my relationship to all of creation has changed during these last 22 days. I have never been so aware of the sun the march of that adversarial orb across the sky. After the first week, my headaches went away and I began to realise that my relationship with food itself – a simple apple, a piece of cheese and some potato bread at sunset, held such pleasure that the mere act of eating became a spiritual experience.

I go to my garden at sunset and harvest some parsley, some red peppers and oregano. I walk through the forest as the stars appear in the sky, and I gather the edible leaves of the sassafras tree. In these days of Ramadan, my friend's challenge has taught me to relate to the passage of time and season. Despite everything we do as human beings, the sun inevitably sets, the seasons turn, and we must be prepared.

My relationship to water also changed as a result of the season. Drinking a sweet, cold cup of water before dawn makes me pause to ponder how much we take this commodity for granted. I remember the words of an old Cree saying, "only when the last tree has died, the last fish been caught and the last river poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money."

I have also come to realise you can't drink gold.

As I sit here writing on this sunny morning, the mere thought of water, which would have set off an awful craving two weeks ago, has automatically shifted me into that prayerful relationship. I feel so grateful for the knowledge that, at the end of the day, a clean glass of water awaits me. This is not true for many people, and several weeks ago, I shared the story of a young girl and what turned out to be her final birthday wish. A month before her tragic death at age 9, she had posted a request on a website to receive no gifts for herself, but asked everyone to contribute to providing clean drinking water for the world. Today, a month after the accident which killed her, her charity has raised $1,200,000, enough money to provide clean water to 60,000 children in developing countries, allowing many of these children to taste clean water for the first time.

During the week, Nokero, the company featured in part one of this article, sent me a pair of their miraculous light bulbs. I got the bulbs two hours before sunset and set them outside, with their tiny adjustable solar collectors facing West. The sun was hiding behind summer storm clouds. I charged them until torrential rains made the exact hour of sunset a guessing game.

When I went out to the spot where the lights were hanging in my backyard, hailstones were falling. I flicked a small switch, and each of those two solar bulbs lit the darkness. I was amazed. Beyond amazed, I was awed (I was also soaking wet). The flicking of those switches felt a little like a religious ceremony. I didn't know what words to use to pray, I was unsure how to express what I was feeling. I felt like I was part of a great Whole.

I was connected. I was in relationship with some good entrepreneurs in Colorado, the life-giving sun behind the storm clouds, the factory workers in China, those 1.6 billion people who have no electricity, and all those people throughout the region and throughout the world who fasted and waited for the sun to set. I was connected to the clean, cool rain, and those who'd built the roof that (eventually) sheltered me from it. I appreciated that near-perfect synchronicity of all things. I felt grateful that God allows us to take responsibility, even if we are nine-year-old Christian girls, or businessmen, or that Muslim friend of mine who had suggested the challenge.

I felt I had received a special blessing, and if this feeling was so strong in me, I wish that Ramadan would never end. It made me think, if it were always Ramadan, imagine all the good deeds, and prayers of relationship. Imagine a world of people that did take food or water for granted. Imagine what a wonderful world we would live in!

I remember the tragic times of my life. In those dark hours, I would look at my hands, and say, "Your will, these hands." and it would inspire me to work hard to light a candle rather than to curse the darkness. When I succeeded, I felt as happy as a primitive man returning successfully from the hunt. My prayers of gratitude were so much more empowering than my power prayers of petition.

"Your will, these hands…"

Someday, the fast will be over for those 1.6 billion destitute people on this planet. Night will finally come for the impoverished, spending their wages to light their homes with kerosene, children who must walk for hours to draw buckets of water from contaminated streams. Though we cannot hasten the sunset even by a single second, our good works today can bring an end to the involuntary fasting of someone, somewhere in the world. By God's will and our hands, we can do it.

My friend did warn me that my fast would not be a true Ramadan fasting experience because Ramadan was about fasting is a community, and I was alone. Well, maybe he's right. Beside that man on the grease truck, I haven't met anyone who's fasted. Not even my Muslim friend who challenged me ended up fasting.

But as the days go by, I feel that all humanity is fasting in one way or another, and doing the good deeds, and relating to God, and as a human being, I can at least claim membership in this community. You and I are not alone. We all fast as part of humanity until the darkness comes, the light switch is thrown, and we all sit down to eat, happy to know that our deprivations are at an end. In the meantime, as my friend says, when the aches born from suffering of any kind beset you, I suppose you do the same thing you do when you feel hungry. You pray.

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Frank Domenico Cipriani writes a weekly column in the Riverside Signal called "You Think What You Think And I'll Think What I Know." He is also the founder and CEO of The Gatherer Institute — a not-for-profit public charity dedicated to promoting respect for the promoting respect for the environment and empowering individuals to become self-taught and self-sufficient. His most recent book, "Learning Little Hawk's Way of Storytelling", teaches the native art of oral tradition storytelling.