The holy fasting month for the Moslems is coming. It’s Ramadan 1430 H. After a year of common life, today they have to retreat from lusty way of life into holiness, framed with fasting, and filled with prayers, listening to /reading Qurans, good deed and charity.
I just want to give respect to this special time with a brief insight, taken from my garden. I found a caterpillar, swinging on a banyan leaf. It just hung on with a tiny fiber from its spittle. The creature started to wrap its whole body with salivary fiber coming out from the mouth. A new stage of life began, a crucial one of metamorphose: to be a chrysalis - a silent chrysalis. It ceased eating leaves and everything, and spent the time by fasting. That’s a beautiful period for such creature to change its character: from being a greedy animal to be a beautiful and helpful one – from being an ugly caterpillar to be a fabulous butterfly.
So, chrysalis has become a spiritual symbol of fasting time for inner change of life.
However, all is begun with a little movement of the caterpillar: to let itself ‘drop down’ to be ‘hanging on’ a leaf! What does it mean? This is my spiritual insight: fasting should be based on humbleness. To be mature in faith, ones have to trust their lives humbly to God, not to their selves! Then, fasting is a process of letting this self go, and letting God come into the deepest heart and drive all the purity of human dignity.
The perfection of fasting does not depend on how strong ones can keep out from eating and drinking, but it depends on how ‘keeping out from eating and drinking’ has led them into the purity of being human before God! [skd]
Happy fasting, Ramadan 1430 H
my beloved Brothers & Sisters!
