ramadan

On September 11, 2001, I was in Johannesburg, South Africa, nearing the end of a three-week trip to the country. I'd started in Cape Town, attending the 100th anniversary service of St. George's Cathedral -- the site of many anti-apartheid vigils and a sanctuary space for anti-apartheid activists during those traumatic years. Then I traveled to Durban to attend the World Conference Against Racism, joining an amazing gathering of thousands of people representing governments, NGOs, and people's movements from across the world. Unfortunately, the U.S. government boycotted the conference, so it was left to activists like me to "represent" the U.S. voice there.

Following up on yesterday's meeting between President Ahmadinejad and peace activists, organized by FOR, tonight an interfaith group led by the American Friends Service Committee and the Mennonite Central Committee will break bread with the Iranian head of state marking the traditional iftar.

In New York on Thursday, several international political and religious leaders will meet for an iftar dinner, which marks the end of each day’s fasting during Ramadan.  After dinner, speakers from Muslim, Christian, and Jewish traditions will discuss the role of religious faith in responding to major challenges, such as poverty, injustice, global warming, and war.  A major purpose is to continue dialogue with the Iranian people and their president.

“Eid Mubarak!” The greeting for the end of the holy month, Islam’s global spiritual retreat, the great commemoration of God’s care for humanity. It’s a door now closing behind us. Most who have fasted feel at this moment both relief and loss. Farewell, rare beauty, rare opportunity! Hello again, dear morning coffee, ordinary life. “Eid Mubarak” means blessed return. May our return be blessed.

During the past few weeks, we have witnessed a powerful period of fasting. The holy Muslim month of Ramadan came to a close this weekend, and it embraced the Jewish period of Yom Kippur as well as last week's Interfaith Fast to End the War in Iraq. I was privileged to host a breaking of the fast gathering in my home last Monday as part of the Interfaith Fast, and that evening, I learned from a Roman Catholic nun named Sister Clare about another justice-centered fast that has been taking place.

You have to wait much longer these nights before you can see the light in the sky. And there is less and less of the rich silver that showered upon us at the peak of the month, just a few days ago. It puts a person in mind of that wisest of ancient sayings, "All things must pass." Perseverance in hard times depends on this solid truth. So do moderation and justice when life grows lush. Ephemerality underlies morality.

There are lessons all around us if we bother to look. In Ramadan, with the slight hallucinogenic aura that fasting imparts, events take on the clarity of the surreal. Bush/Ahmedinejad, a single character in two instances (which one is the evil twin?) show us something kind of creepy about the Glorious Ideal, the reason we carry on.

Fasting again, have been for several days, making that slow, deep descent. There are metaphors that accompany these observances for me. The special evening prayer of Ramadan, the tarawih, is like building an arch. But the month itself is descending a staircase. Gravely, day by day, step by step. Getting to the bottom of things.

"I don't get it," said my non-Muslim friend in Hackensack, far from home. "In Lent, if people give something up, they give it up. How is it you can pick and choose?"

Yes, it's true. It can be Ramadan, and you can be observant, but not fasting. It feels strange, but it's legitimate, and wise. There are old, established categories of exceptions to the rule.

Mine, today, is travel. Travelers have an option: to fast or not to fast, it's your call. Fasting is meant to be a kind of workout, not a form of tyranny, and only the traveler herself can judge how much hardship would be imposed by toughing it out on the road.

Five-thirty in the morning and I am tossing and turning. "Oh God! I forgot to take the aspirin!"

I stopped eating for the day at 5:04. Some of us like to leave a little safe zone before the moment when we calculate that first light arrives and fasting begins. (What would happen, I wonder, if I actually went outside and looked? Does the cosmic watch really have a minute hand?)