This practice of detachment is present in every religion—because surely, if we are spiritual beings living in a material world, complications will arise from that intersection from time to time.
It’s such a simple act—not eating or drinking for a little while. But the discipline creates a mindfulness not present when preparation isn’t required to make it through the day. This time of year, life slows down. It sits by the window and looks out at the sea; it stretches to accommodate our prayers and hopes without relentless and insistent distractions. It has a rhythm, steady and sure, and rooted in something greater than us.
The fast is meant to be period of spiritual rejuvenation. “Fasting is the cause of awakening man. The heart becomes tender and the spirituality of man increases,” says ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the son of Bahá’u’lláh, the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith.
This is the time to fill your heart with light. The time to express gratitude. The time for sunbeam souls.
Bahá’ís believe we lead a dual existence, both spiritual and material. Our souls belong to the world of God, but our bodies to the physical world. We can’t survive if we don’t eat or sleep, ignoring the needs of our corporeal lives. However, taking any of our material needs beyond moderation will trap our spiritual selves. Fasting is about purpose and purification.
***
Bahá’ís are enjoined to observe the fast beginning at age fifteen, the age of maturity in the Bahá’í Faith. In tenth grade and in Alaska is where I first learned what it meant to slow down. That slowing down sometimes means coming to a full stop entirely. That it’s in the pauses when you realize how singularly focused your movement has become: always forward, but in what direction?
As far north as Anchorage, you gain nearly three hours of sunlight between the beginning and the end of March, so like the other extremes of hemisphere, we measure our fast by our watches or the microwave clock or our phones, rather than the east-facing windows.
Fasting in Alaska is as solid as the mountains I grew up next to. It’s sun shining blindingly on the snow. It’s wrapping yourself in a thousand layers (not eating for twelve hours makes you colder than the already cold still-winter weather makes you). It’s counting the rapidly increasing minutes of sunlight, as well as the minutes until dinner—both summer and sustenance fast approaching, although it always felt like not fast enough. It’s a rhythm, measuring your fast by the clock, each day growing in increments.
But sunrise and sunset give the day a pattern that checking a watch doesn’t. I learned this in Jordan, a few years later when I moved there to study. That spring, I began and ended my fast each day with the call to prayer. That part of the world cries tears that taste like God, and I did my fair share of crying for things I did not understand then.
The West seems full of so much certainty. Our leaders speak so loudly, our advertisements state opinions as facts, our newspapers record it all. But we lack certitude. So apparently absent at home is our sense of faith.
But how do we nourish our own certitude? I’ve always wondered where my edges are. Where my own convictions ended and beliefs begin? Where I fit when most people around me are half-hearted about something that defines me?
I was nineteen when I went to Amman, and that March, I woke up before sunrise to bring my tea and bread to the roof each day. I prayed facing West this time. I was fasting, alone still, but everyone understood. It was just a different time of the year. I was offered tips: eggs stay with you longer in the mornings, drink something warm before you eat in the evenings, think of God when your stomach grumbles. That is why you’re fasting, remember that.
***
‘Abdu’l-Bahá says, “Some people lay stress on fasting. They affirm that in augmenting the weakness of the body they develop a spiritual sensibility and thus they think to approach God. Weakening one’s self physically does not necessarily contribute to spiritual progress. Humility, kindness, resignation, and all these spiritual attributes emanating from great physical strength are acceptable to God…. If a man be just, kind, humble and merciful and his qualities are acquired through the will-power — this is Godlike.”
The fast is a marathon. It requires perseverance and a long-term vision. It gives a clear direction, even if the path is not so easy.
At the end of these nineteen days is Naw-Rúz, the Bahá’í new year. And every year I feel refreshed and prepared to take on whatever comes by the end of the fast and the beginning of the new year. Plus, ask anyone—a new year never was so sweet as one that follows the fast.
