I've just finished the third day of fasting. According to the Islamic calendar, it's the fourth day of Ramadan at the moment, since sunset marks the start of a new day. In NZ, Ramadan started on Friday night - that was when the new moon was sighted for the month. That night we went to the mosque for taraweh prayers (the long night prayers unique to this holy month), and woke up for suhoor (pre-dawn breakfast) on Saturday morning.
Because the Islamic calendar goes by the lunar calendar, this means that Ramadan is at a slightly different time each year (the lunar calendar is slightly shorter than the solar calendar). It's the middle of winter here, so we are only fasting from about 6.30am until 5.25pm. That's a really short fast, and for me it's really easy. In the Northern hemisphere they're fasting much longer days since it's summer.
Superficially Ramadan is understood as a month where Muslims around the world abstain from eating, drinking, & sexual intercourse during daylight hours. But Ramadan is so much more than that.
Everything in Islam has an outward and inward reality. Outwardly there are actions (fasting, 5 daily prayers, giving money in charity, the pilgrimage to Mecca, etc), and all these actions have an accompanying inner reality. This is where it gets harder - its easy to fast, its easy to pray 5 times a day - but to really really fast, pray, and do any other rituals involves a lot of work. It's a life-time journery, one of purifying the heart and soul so that they become manifest and beautify our outward actions.
Ramadan is a month of training and striving for purifying ourselves and our hearts. One of my friends has called it "Spiritual Bootcamp", which I would agree with! This is my fifth Ramadan, and each year I feel like I'm peeling back new layers of understanding, delving deeper into the spiritual realm of Ramadan and it's really exciting for me.
I'll leave it here for tonight - it's just after midnight and I want to get up for Suhoor!
P.S. Mable rocks my socks.
