I find it delicious when I change my mind.
Because to change your mind means to be open to the possibilities of the infinite paths.
True that fasting is an internal process, but it can come to fruition amongst others as well.
For example, the month of Ramzan in 1998 when I was living at home with my parents and I woke every day with my mother to eat, fasted with her throughout the month.
Last night I invited the students from the Muslim Student Association for iftar. Seven students came and there were eight others, faculty and staff from the college, plus the people I live with.
It was a joy to break my fast with others but also to provide food for everyone, food I myself had prepared without having tasted it.
Each Friday I will hold a fast-breaking dinner and because of their experiences participating in the dinner last night, two people, a friend and one of the people I live with, both decided that on Friday they would fast for the day so at night at the fast-breaking meal they also would be able to break their fasts.
My housemate will wake up tomorrow morning with me to fast with me, so for the first time since the month began I will be fasting with another.
Tonight also we had dinner with friends, shared food, and conversation. They were interested in my experiences fasting, what it was like, what the point and purpose of it is.
It isn’t about “atonement,” I explained to them. It is more for the purpose of focusing the mind on spiritual practices rather than the less subtle requirements of the body.
Though it does seem that all the metaphors for spiritual enlightenment or for mental advances are metaphors of the body.
Earlier in the day our neighbors came over and we went into what I now call “the practice room” and we all four of us did yoga together.
It occurred to me during the meal that this what we all want–a sense of fellowship and community with like-minded people.
We choose our community because they help us and support us, not always in ways we expect.
I call that room on the third floor of our house “the practice room” because various spiritual practices occur there, including yoga, zen meditation, and for the first time on Friday, salaat, or Muslim prayer.
Three of the students who came for iftar asked me if there was a place they could pray. I did not hesitate to lead them up there to the room where meditation and yoga took place, my immediate action revealing to me what I had paid lip service to all along–that yoga was for me a form of prayer.
When we went up there I immediately crossed to the makeshift altar and removed the small figures of Ganesh and Buddha. “We also do meditation and yoga here; that’s why you see Ganesh and Buddha,” I told the students.
I wonder why I felt the responsibility to explain myself, I who was fasting, who was offering iftar to the students, providing a place for them to pray and prayer rugs as well. The icons on the altar are not objects of worship at all, rather they are arrows pointing in a certain direction.
And I am a man with many arrows inside me, each pointing in a different direction.
I suppose I may need help pulling them out, but I am not sure that bearing them all isn’t part of what’s happening to me in this life.
I could count my unspeakable blessings, but the guests have gone and it is time to wash the dishes.