Ramadan, but no fast?
on
Monday, September 17, 2007, 1:45pm
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.
Once I regularly indulged myself in religious macho. "I can handle this," I used to think, "and I'm not letting my miserable inclination to laziness get the upper hand over my commitment to God!" But my one attempt at the drive between New York and Philadelphia with the light head that comes of an empty stomach sobered me up pretty fast. Yow. It could only be divine grace that kept me from running myself or somebody else off the road, or into some obstacle that appeared out of nowhere. The reflexes and reactions of a fasting person are just a little bit wierd, and no amount of commitment is going to get you around that fact. It's called Human Limitation, children. So now I consider myself to have been effectively warned about avoiding danger to myself and others...and the greatest danger of all may be spiritual pride.
Of course, I do have to make these fasts up eventually. The commitment holds. But later, when it's sane. And unheroic.
This principle generalizes, if you think about it, to any number of efforts we undertake in the name of God...or in any of the subsidiary divine names, such as The Common Good. Have I grasped my own limitations in undertaking this work? Might I get the job done more safely and effectively by being a little less grandiose?
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.
Once I regularly indulged myself in religious macho. "I can handle this," I used to think, "and I'm not letting my miserable inclination to laziness get the upper hand over my commitment to God!" But my one attempt at the drive between New York and Philadelphia with the light head that comes of an empty stomach sobered me up pretty fast. Yow. It could only be divine grace that kept me from running myself or somebody else off the road, or into some obstacle that appeared out of nowhere. The reflexes and reactions of a fasting person are just a little bit wierd, and no amount of commitment is going to get you around that fact. It's called Human Limitation, children. So now I consider myself to have been effectively warned about avoiding danger to myself and others...and the greatest danger of all may be spiritual pride.
Of course, I do have to make these fasts up eventually. The commitment holds. But later, when it's sane. And unheroic.
This principle generalizes, if you think about it, to any number of efforts we undertake in the name of God...or in any of the subsidiary divine names, such as The Common Good. Have I grasped my own limitations in undertaking this work? Might I get the job done more safely and effectively by being a little less grandiose?
