The human truth of Ramadan

Susan Carland and Saara Sabbagh ... How can we train ourselves to long for what truly satisfies?

Ramadan, the month-long time for fasting, meditation, reflection, and prayer, has begun. What a treasury of wisdom concerning the human condition it delivers to a God-deficient and confused world!

Two Australians have undertaken to diary their experiences and insights as they observe the customary practices relating to worship, study of the Quran, eating habits, and time for prayer. 

Susan Carland, who is Research Fellow in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University, and Saara Sabbagh, who is the Founder of Benevolence Australia, say Mohammad inspired the tradition by his own practice devoting time to "trying to distil the mysteries of the universe, compassion, and the knowledge of God".

Every Ramadan, adult Muslims are to abstain from all eating, drinking, and sex during daylight hours. This intense discipline is supposed to align us more closely to God. By controlling our most basic desires and thus be more fully in submission, we can be more in touch with the divine will. 

By emptying ourselves out — physically of food and spiritually of our attachment to anything that takes us away from God — we create the necessary space for the holy. Just as you cannot add to a full vessel, a soul full of itself has no room for God. A gap must be created.

The fasting may feel too hard, the inner labour too intense. It might leave us feeling as though we are gasping for air. But [...] it is precisely in those moments of lack of belief in ourselves that the emptying out is most required. When we say, “I can’t do it, God!” we are showing we are still placing too much stock in our own selves. We need to be emptied out to make room for more of the divine. True submission and the ego-self cannot exist in the same vessel.

Each Ramadan is different, and every Muslim experiences the month differently. But the struggle is the same: How can we orient our lives toward that which matters most? How can we train ourselves to long for what truly satisfies? How can we allow God to eclipse our egos?  

Participants of all the world's key religions will recognise the truth of those words. At this time also, Christians are observing Lent, the 40 days of fasting and self-denial undertaken as we prepare to celebrate God's gift of his divine son in death so that humanity might be restored to good standing with the loving Father. 

Such religious practices are increasingly in stark contrast with the way of the world, where the ego-drama reigns supreme and the pursuit of pleasure makes a mockery of the highest goals of freedom. 

As French novelist Leon Bloy (died 1917) so perceptively observed: 

The only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.

The human truth of Ramadan and Lent is that we must clean out our inner clutter to leave space for God in our lives.  

Ω Leave a comment and, if you like this blog, read the same posts at my Peace and Truth newsletter on Substack, where you can subscribe for free and be notified when a new post is published.