I’ve got less than three hours to go on the fourth fast of Ramadan and my stomach hasn’t even grumbled yet.
It’s really amazing how quickly the body gets used to the fasting.
Yes, there’s a general feeling of tiredness during the day, but life has already adjusted and there’s a certain sense of rhythm to the days.
I get up at 3:45 and finish eating and drinking a big cup of tea by about 4:24 am.
Pray Fajr and then I do my writing and anything that’s mentally strenuous. For example I just finished a teacher guide for my new presentation Get the Bully off Your Back. That was hard, but it’s done.
You’d think that productivity would suffer in Ramadan and I don’t actually find that.
I often get a LOT of work done because the window of time that I work is so confined so it means you hop to it and don’t waste any time.
Then I go back to sleep at around 6 a.m. and wake up at about noon. The rest of the day is taken up with chores around the house and then by now I start getting ready to make dinner.
The day is filled with peace.
And the night is filled with prayers.
The hardest thing about fasting, I find, is actually the feeling of being full! After you break your fast, you feel SO stuffed! And yet you’re eating less than what you’d normally eat!
And the second hardest thing is the lack of sleep.
We’re told in the Quran that God prescribed fasting to us like it was prescribed to the people before us.
The Globe & Mail, Canada’s national newspaper had an article about it and I happen to read the reader comments on it.
I wonder if that was a mistake.
Is it good to know the type of vicious bigotry that exists out there against anything Muslim?
Thoughts that people would never ever say to your face. They’d only think them in the recesses of their minds.
I kind of think it is a good idea to know what people say behind the anonymous fascade of a computer screen. It’s good to know what they think so you can guard against it.
Take everything with a grain of salt.
Knowledge is power, isn’t it?
But deep down I think it just bothers these bigots that the media is starting to pay attention to this segment of Canadian society. To realize that hey a goodly portion of their readers might be Muslim, why not deal with things they can relate to too?
We’re ‘significant’ I guess.
At least I don’t feel in any way in danger.
I live in a country, in fact in a continent, where I have more religious freedom to live my life in the manner I choose than I would in many a Muslim country!
And there is peace!
How precious is peace!!!!
And so I wish peace to you all!