Hail and welcome! Thank you for reading the Word Emporium! Thank you for inspiring our writing that passed it’ s amazing centennial posting last week!
This week I have actually begun three times this weekly article! Two of which, I guess, will bubble away on the cauldron of my imagination over the coming weeks and will come to fruition another time.
For this week my thoughts have been challenged, directed, perhaps clarified by conversations I have had and the voice of my inner soul speaking to me as well withal. As you all know by now I do not have a television. I abandoned listening to a regular radio station later. So now my world of commentary, journalism, thought is largely provided in the often called “new media”.
I have often wondered why I have replaced the mainstream media, almost organically, not as a prescribed programme on my part. I think podcasts in particular offer extended conversations. You see I like talking. As those of a personal acquaintance can no less wearily testify.
Listening to skilfully managed discussion to elicit knowledge in the audience is a skill I appreciate. That is not a skill I seem to possess. Perhaps I could learn to host a conversation? So listening to conversations in my apartment when I get home fulfils many things for me. Information for sure. Also, and I do not underestimate this, it is company. That is why I have, by a process of elimination also a fair dose of trial and error, arrived at a regular rotation.
Of course in person conversation is best! There is nothing, nothing so good as being with friends and talking through the issues of life in all the technicolour coat arrays it presents. I think we all are like Joseph in our own ways!
So it was that this past week I was asked: ‘ why I am using the Islamic month of Ramadan to also fast? Am I a muslim? Do I intend to convert to Islam?’ One of my Year 10 students also passed similar remark to me saying, “ Sir, just convert!” that was said in a friendly manner as we discussed fasting that had just begun and they ( 5 Year 10 History IGCSE students ) were adjusting too. It is hard for the first days. Then once the rhythm has begun, it gradually becomes easier. A useful thing to learn in your teens.
My reply raised no eyebrows. No one was offended.
I said in response “ I love my Goddess far too much”. Simple. Direct and coming from my spirit. Which of course for a Pagan Druid (with as a friend said to me last year) ‘ “soft polytheistic” ’ tendencies, you would expect such.
The question remains then. Why do I also fast in Ramadan the way my hosts do?
Firstly then it is true that I do love my Arabic host nation Bahrain and its people. I like living here. I enjoy my work (well mostly, after all, I'm with teens most of the day and that is…. at times…. a pain in the posterior!) I am free to do and live within the laws of this jurisdiction as in the UK. The frameworks of that jurisprudence are different from UK it is true. Yet in all practical ways, my life is no different day to day from UK. Nor is my life impinged day to day in the ways that I choose to be.
Except I do miss a pub of course! But you know that going without is a good thing as it makes the partaking, when it happens, more meaningful and hopefully, enjoyable! Which conversely is one of the reasons that people across all the religious and cultural spectrum have used fasting for thousands of years. Going without for some greater benefit (physical, emotional, spiritual) is a tried and tested principle.
So fasting when everyone else is doing it as well, is a real bonus. It makes it easier for me to achieve my goals alongside my Muslim colleagues who have theirs for the Ramadan month. Fasting and then breaking fast with an Iftar meal at the same time as everyone else is for me a way of being a part of the greater whole. A part of a community outside of myself. I need community.
Secondly it reflects my practice of intermittent fasting. I have been trying to do intermittent fasting for two years now. With sometimes high points of success and at other time low points of less than perfect eating times! Nevertheless it is something I like doing. Ramadan is a good time to re-establish a high point and practice for any lapsed cycles I may have gotten into.
I was overweight (14 stone) and unwell when I first arrived back in Darlington in that disastrous Covid Year. I knew I had to do something for myself. I chose intermittent fasting and regular exercise as my solutions for a long term goal of moving myself out of the obese category for my health and wellbeing. It is ongoing. If Ramadan is a convenient tool for me to use, I will do it! So, I have.
So goals are important to have if you decide to fast. Be that for a religious ritual or a personal health goal. Both goals exist for me.
Thirdly. Self control. I am a European who has imbibed the folly of the Twentieth Century that stated in effect; do as you feel! Do as you please! Self control is itself unnatural. Natural is something more to do with being in the moment directed by needs, impulses, desires.
Now it could be said here that what I am about to say is merely with the benefit of hindsight. For I have lived a profligate life along those lines of impulse and desire and needs. Only now am I stating that self control is in fact, a most natural principle for a healthy human being. One I've done my best over 50 years to ignore it seems! We have choices to make and impulses and desires are not the only considerations to weigh in the scales.
Yet fair comment. Granted, I am a hypocrite it seems. I own it. I can actually agree with that.
Yet it doesn't change my conviction borne from experience that exercising, practising and choosing self control is a far better and happier lifestyle than the prevailing and permissive Western stream of thought. I still fail but now have a standard to achieve. I can see the benefits and sometimes it is immediate. It is sweeter to me.
Fasting helps me to do this on a daily basis. Ramadan with its from sun up to sun down paradigm of fasting and abstinence from water as well, is another way for me to practice those things I lack. Like self control. Self control is not just about saying no, or denying myself. It is also crucially about when to say yes and engage.
My Goddess right from the start has been about the Deity and I meeting in the crucible of relationship seen in the hearth and home. To make a hearth and a home takes discipline. For She has taught me that a clean hearth and a clean home are honourable. It wont clean itself. Don't rely on a wife. Or a maid or a house elf. Do it yourself! Yes men in particular, you do it.
I have to do it. Am I good at this? Shall I say in response: Im mediocre but far better than I was! This month of Ramadan and the self discipline angle helps me to focus spiritually as a Druid as well then.
Lastly, I am not really doing Ramadan. It is true from the hours specified I am going without food and water. What is happening though is this: I am breaking my fast at about 6pm here in Bahrain this March with the rest of the folk at Iftar. However my next fast starts two hours later at 8pm. I am in effect doing a 22 hour fast that has within it, Ramadan.
It is not to be virtuous. It is not focussed on being better than anyone else. If it were, it would stop as it would not be on sound foundations. This is happening because I know I can do it. Because I know it meets my goals about being self ware. That it helps me achieve body weight and focus of my mind. That for me now in 2024 this is were I am at, in my focus on self discipline and finding the truth between no and yes.
Perhaps we all should be thinking about our lifestyles and spiritual pathways more. Whilst Im here I will use the resources and the Spirit de Corp of Bahrain including Ramadan.
So let’s have a conversation about it!
Have a Blessed Week everyone!