I almost wished that it was harder. When I took a day off from Ramadan to play in my college’s alumni soccer game, I knew that I would have to make up that day before the end of the year. Even though the season of Ramadan is an entire month, the rhythm of the fasting and the solidarity of a billion others fasting makes the struggle a bit easier.

Now that the rest Ramadan fast is a few months behind me, I look back on some of those struggles with real fondness. I really learned a lot about Muslim culture during that month (and a lot about myself as well). I sometimes wonder if it will remain one of the most meaningful experiences of my life.

While my fast was to intended for me learn more about what this Muslim experience is like, and to show some solidarity with my Muslim friends, I did not end up converting to Islam. I’m sure that some of my Muslim and non-Muslim friends thought that this was possible based on my interest in the religion, but alas, it did not happen.

After a life lived in the realm of Christianity, I found myself wanting to get outside of the box. It’s too bad that there isn’t a new phrase that has replaced “outside of the box”. Remember when that term was en vogue? Remember when “en vogue” was… en vogue? You do? Alright! Now we’ve achieved synergy!

Sorry for that digression, but I actually do appreciate that metaphor of a box. The container of my Christian faith gave me a great deal of comfort. In my particular sect of Christianity, we believed that God’s only inspired words were contained within the leather casing of the Bible. Right there, from Genesis to Revelation, that was it.

It wasn’t exactly a small box, but it was a clearly delineated record of inspiration. I through myself headlong into studying and memorizing it. I even went to college to get a degree in the Bible. It was a 774,746 word (give or take) field to be mastered. Heck, I even started to learn how to translate from the ancient Greek.

But when my horizons were expanded to the billions of people who have never known the Bible and it’s Jesus, I found that I could not accept my Church’s teachings of their role in God’s grand narrative.

What was I to do about the Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. of the world?

A God who would send the ignorant to hell didn’t appeal to me, and if He did allow some sort of grace to the ignorant, then evangelism seemed like a risky proposition, with the eternal destiny of souls on the line.

Perhaps you have heard of the metaphor of the blind men and the elephant?

These six blind men happen upon an elephant, but each can only perceive the creature through their hands. They take turns describing the different parts of the animal that they can feel, and argue over who is actually in touch with the its true nature. Of course, there is the artist, with eyes to behold the entire scene, and with this, the ultimate knowledge. Everyone thinks that they can perceive the whole of the God… er uh, elephant, right? How can one make such a claim and still be respectful to those which he calls blind?

As I wrestled with my own cognitive dissonances, I stumbled upon Samir Selmanovic and his book. Suddenly, I had an example of a Christian minister with a faith that actually honored the beliefs and traditions of other religions. Samir approaches those of a different faith with the curiosity and respect of a foreign exchange student, eager to learn from his surroundings.

I also found encouragement through the Interfaith Amigos, a trio of clergymen from the three Abrahamic faiths. Again, instead of seeking to convert each other, they seek conversations that allow them to learn from each other. How they make this all work, where others have found enmity, I sometimes wonder.

Most recently, I have discovered the discussions fostered by Chris Stedman. Chris is the Interfaith and Community Service Fellow for the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University. Even as a humanist, he believes that there should be a place at the Interfaith table for those who do not believe in a god. He’s got some great ideas about how this can all work, and I’ll be writing more about him soon. But for now, just trust me that he is a really bright guy who doesn’t give you that icky, repulsive feeling that many atheists can do when they talk about religion.

That’s really where I’ve gotten stuck in my faith journey. I don’t really want to leave one box for another, but I often find myself suffocating in the vacuum of nothingness that I’m floating in right now.

Being in a box of religion may be limiting and claustrophobic at times, but at least there is some firm footing to rest on when weary.

I’ve almost forgot to mention the good people that often make up a faith community. I attended a bar mitzvah for the first time last week, and found myself encouraged and envious of the support offered to this boy and his family in his transition to manhood.

And finally let me return back to Ramadan. While I don’t want to embrace all of the beliefs, rituals, and dogma of Islam, I very much value and appreciate the structure of the Ramadan fast.

There is a beginning… and an end.

The sun comes up… and the sun goes down.

I focus my mind during the day… then I sit in thanksgiving for my food and water at night.

As far as boxes go, it’s been one that I have been happy to step into for the first time this year. Instead of continuing to float in a sea of not-knowing (agnosticism), will I be able to find peace of mind and community support in the Interfaith world.? Is this the box that contains the whole of the elephant? Or just another body part for me to grasp for in my own blindness?

Regardless, I’m proud to have celebrated Ramadan with my Muslim brothers and sisters this year. Will I be back for more next year in the blazing summer? I would say that it is pretty likely. Would anyone like to join me?

This is despite everything that I know about managing change and everything that I believe about the utility of failure.

As often happens, the various media content and ideas that I have been picking up on lately have been helping to give me a better idea of why I might have failed in this new approach to disciplining myself.

A friend of my from my undergraduate school is currently in college again to become a counselor. Being that we are both interested in psychology, he often shares interesting links and videos with me that he thinks I might get into.

He’s usually right.

One article he sent me was especially salient and thought provoking. I could hardly believe how well this author was able to translate some complex and difficult psychological research studies into coherent, clever, and captivating prose, filled with vivid metaphors and juicy pop-culture references. It was not exactly Malcolm Gladwell, but somehow still in that same vein. His schtick seems to be pointing out how we don’t really know ourselves as well as we think we do, and that we often prescribe intuitive solutions for ourselves that turn out to be counterproductive. (Ding, ding, ding! You now have my full attention.)

I clicked around on this guy’s site, more and more impressed with each article that I read. Then, I noticed a little image linking to the official trailer for his book. Yes, he created his own video trailer for the book that he is about to release. Although he has a unique way of pronouncing the word “want”, I found myself nodding along with his insights and theories on procrastination and motivation. Check it out:

Click here to view the embedded video.

So, I’ve got yet another book to add to my growing list, but I can’t see myself not reading this guy’s inaugural opus.

In addition to that site, I also happened upon an amazing slice of the internet known simply as PSYBLOG. Ok, it’s not exactly the greatest name ever, and it kind of sounds like you are saying “cyborg” if you try to pronounce it. However… IT IS FREAKING AWESOME!

Apparently, good ol’ TPOS found the sight recently as well. She seems have quite impeccable taste.

The first post that caught my eye was regarding the suggestion to keep one’s goals secret. The title? Why You Should Keep Your Goals Secret. Pretty straightforward, right?

While I didn’t really agree with the certainty that the author offered for the wisdom of not sharing one’s goals, I appreciated having to think about the risks of sharing goals with others. While this may have something to do with my failing to reach my “early to rise” goal, I feel like the opposite took place during Ramadan. Without telling everyone about it and blogging about it each day, I honestly don’t believe that I would have been able to complete it. I give a ton of credit to the others that I shared that experience with.

Maybe that’s the difference. Maybe I need to form an “Early Risers” religion.

Um….. well, maybe a club would have to suffice.

I also happened upon an article from Fast Company entitled: 5 Things To Do Every Day For Success. Guess what the no. 1 item on the list was?

Correct.

Be early to rise.

And guess what? A bunch of people argued with the author about it! It became an all-out war between night-owls and morning larks. The author even had to publish a follow-up article explaining what she really meant in the first article. All very interesting to me. I’m not sure where I fall in all of this.

Finally, I listened to an intriguing podcast while mowing the lawn a couple of weeks ago. I have two regular podcasts that I subscribe to: Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, and Freakonomics. This particular Freakonomics podcast started out by saying:

You know the bromide: “a winner never quits, and a quitter never wins.”

To which Freakonomics Radio says … Are you sure? Sometimes quitting is strategic, and sometimes it can be your best possible plan.

I’m not much of an “always/never” kind of guy anyway, so my ears were finely attuned to the argument that followed. That and the fact that I had a lot of lawn left to mow.

I won’t rehash all of the points that were made, but I’ll admit that it left me with the feeling that we all quit a lot more than we realize, and it often leads to better opportunities in the future.

So while I didn’t think that I’d be giving up on my Father Abraham approach to discipline so soon, that’s exactly what I’m doing now.

I’ve got some ideas of what might work better, and I’ve already put some into practice. So far, it’s looking fairly promising. But maybe I should keep things like this to myself for a while.

Hmmmmm……

Just a random Abraham tombstone from the internet.

Well, I think that I managed that for about three or four days. Then I had an extended out of state trip for five days, and I haven’t gotten back into that discipline since. I could blame the trip for disturbing my circadian rhythms, but I can’t explain why I haven’t been able to pick the discipline up again since I’ve been back. It’s been quite disappointing to have my Father Abraham style fall apart so quickly.

However, I have a theory or two.

First, why would I expect that adding a new discipline would be as simple as just committing to do it? Changing one’s life is much more difficult than that. Actually, difficult is the wrong word. But certainly I should have had more respect for rising early than I began with. After all, many people (myself included) have made a commitment to exercise more, only to watch our default sedentary behavior settle back in after a short time.

Habits

Habits take some time to groove into life.

I’m imagining that my life is a rotating disc, sort of like a record player. Let’s say that I want to groove a new pattern into the sphere. I would have to apply enough pressure to the disc to make sure that the correct pattern was imprinted. This isn’t about just taking my hand all the way around the circle and calling it a day. In order to have a uniform groove, I actually need to hold my position and allow the rest of the circle to come to me.

This seems contrary to a self-efficacious, internal locus of control type of philosophy. However, life doesn’t just take place in the perfect present tense. In fact, something more like the continuous present tense is more appropriate for affecting real behavior change.

Before this gets into a full-on grammar or syntax lesson, let’s just settle on the importance of continuous, conscious focus. Even tying our shoes was crazy hard for a few weeks before we dropped that task into the subconscious somewhere. Most habits work this way as well. It’s rarely “one and done”.

Mood and motivation

Another monkey wrench in this process of adding a new discipline or habit is the widely varying moods that we find ourselves in throughout the day. There are days when I wake up with a clenched fist, ready to take on the day with the fire of a man possessed. These are usually quite productive mornings. Depending on my diet, the weather, the people that I meet with, the tasks on my plate, and a number of other factors, my mood  can often change dramatically by the afternoon. Suddenly, I don’t have quite the same amount of energy and motivation to face the world as what I woke up with.

Most of our decisions to change our lives come from moods of feeling highly self-efficacious. We are ready to fight hell with a bucket of water, and we would try it even without the bucket. Or water. And when the flames come (as they always do), we often decide that the moment is bigger than we are, and we bail.

On a rational level, this doesn’t make a lot of sense. Using the example of dieting, we know that cheeseburgers tend to end up on our hips, and don’t any favors for our arteries either. In the moment of beginning a diet, this all makes sense. The facts are clear. The moment of pleasure on our tongue is clearly outweighed by the long-term effects of fat and cholesterol, at least in terms of time that our body deals with them. So we make the commitment.. and scratch our heads when we fail.

The trick is getting past our conscious level mood, back to our original, rational motivation for the change.

The sad part about all of this is that I know all of this information, and yet still attempted it on willpower alone. It’s now time for a bit of a plan B.

I’m going to add the discipline of being early to rise again, but with a lot more of the emotion and value of doing it infused within. Instead of just telling myself to do it, I’ll be visualizing myself waking up early, and including the emotional details of why it is valuable for me to do so.

I want to begin my day with some momentum and energy. I want to be in the right mindset to wake up my kids, feed them breakfast, and see them off to school. I want to begin my work with a clear understanding of why it is important to complete it.

I want to write some more about this, but it’s time to start visualizing. I’ll check back with you later…

I’ve been affiliated with The Pacific Institute for almost three years now. I’ve been an Arizona Diamondbacks fan since their inception in 1998. But for some inexplicable reason, I have been completely ignorant of Arizona manager Kirk Gibson’s history with TPI.

I was back in Seattle last weekend, for the final “Weekend with Lou” event of the year. I had a couple of clients who wanted to experience the curriculum in person before deciding on bringing it back to their organization in Indiana. It was a fantastic trip, far exceeding my expectations. I got to reconnect with some old faces, and show them my old face as well.

As a sports fan, I wanted to catch up with some of the people involved with using TPI’s curriculum with athletes. The University of Alabama, Arizona State University, and the University of Oklahoma have all implemented programs with their football teams in recent years. Team USA swimming also took the majority of it’s swimmers through TPI’s youth oriented program, PX2.

Presently, most athletes experience the curriculum on a team, or within a group. But, there was a time back in the day where athletes would come and work with Lou Tice individually. Just yesterday, I stumbled upon a fascinating article about the man by Les Carpenter from the Yahoo! Sports blog: The Post Game. The article mostly focuses on Gibson’s maturing into the likely NL Manager of the Year in 2011. It jumps back and forth between rough patches and high points during this season, spring training, and even the winter meetings that the team conducted before the start of the season.

Sprinkled right in the middle, is a little anecdote about a talk Gibson gave to his players regarding the idea of a scotoma. Scotoma is a Greek word, and means “blindness” or “blind spot”. It’s an important concept to embrace because it highlights our own lack of perfect perception. As a leader, this acknowledgement not only says “I’m not perfect”, but also “I need your help to see my blind spots”. It’s not an admission of a personal weakness, it’s just an aspect of the human condition.

When I read the term “scotoma”, my mind immediately flashed to Lou Tice and his popularization of the term. I quickly searched the internet to find any sort of connection between Kirk Gibson and The Pacific Institute. I found out that he was referred to Lou Tice and TPI in the early eighties, to help deal with something of an anger management problem. While he was a talented baseball player, he seemed to let his emotions get the best of him in his desire to be the best.

Of course, following his time at TPI, Gibson the player would go on to hit one of the most memorable home runs in baseball history. In the video of that link, notice how Gibson describes the visualization process as “dreaming”. He visualized or “dreamed” that home run, just moments before it happened.

This is the same visualization process that he was introduced to at TPI. In fact (as I recently discovered), Lou has used Kirk Gibson’s story to illustrate the power of visualizing the ideal future. However, it’s not the story of the petulant baseball player who found his swing just in time to win the World Series. Rather, it’s a lesson of even broader impact of helping others to visualize themselves:

Click here to view the embedded video.

That’s probably what’s most exciting about Gibson’s current role as manager of the Diamondbacks. Instead of just being able to reach and inspire others with his own individual efforts, he now has the listening ears of entire baseball team, and a growing fan base that has been sharing the love for “Gibby” for quite some time now.

If you’ve been following the D-Backs this year, you’ll know that their calling card has been mental toughness, grinding out close games, and managing to come from behind to win many of them late. Gibson has been credited with coaching and mentoring these men to visualize success so vividly, that any “reality” that might argue with that “dream” begins to just fade away.

Finding out that my favorite manager on my favorite baseball team is a TPI guy has blown me away. Although I shouldn’t be surprised.

As of this writing, the Diamondbacks are just a couple of wins away from clinching a spot in the playoffs. Soon enough, we’ll find out if Gibson has any magic left on the baseball diamond. But we should know by now, it’s not really magic at all. He has a process for success, and he works it diligently.

If things don’t pan out for Kirk Gibson the manager, maybe there’s more work waiting for him in the advertising world.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Let’s hope that baseball always has room for Gibby. I have have a feeling that it will.

The REAL reason that kids like me got so jazzed about Father Abraham had everything to do with the accompanying actions associated with it. Curiously, the actions have no real connection to the song’s lyrics at all.

For example:

Father Abraham, had many sons.

Many sons had Father Abraham.

I am one of them.

And so are you.

So let’s all praise the Lord!

Right arm!

(Repeat from the beginning)

It’s pretty easy to follow along with until the “right arm” bit comes in. This line is designed to illustrate what we should be doing with our body whilst singing. My teachers always seemed to mime a train conductor with this move. Fist loosely clenched, it’s time to blow that horn.

After repeating the first section of the lyrics again, the “left arm” is appended to the end, with a simultaneous left-handed train conductor move to boot. If you ever worried about not appearing cool in social situations, songs like this tended to put everyone on equally goofy ground.

The song would continue, with your other appendages added in turn. Right leg, left leg, and nod your head.

And just when you think that you have nothing left to move in time with the beat (presumably provided by a tambourine or an egg shaker), the grand finale comes in, where you are to continue all of the motions, simultaneously, and… (wait for it)

…turn your entire body around! Neato, huh?

Apparently, the song is still getting some play in churches around the world. Check out this video with a robot leading the chorus for a bunch of kids:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Pretty life-like robot, right? But don’t be fooled. That perfectly shaped wedge haircut is a dead giveaway. Nice try, robots. Also, the lack of the train-conductor move is something that no human would allow. So there.

Never mind the fact that as kids, we didn’t understand how all of this was connected. The motions to this song kept building on each other, and we were all amazed that our brains and bodies could handle it all.

I’ve been trying add more of a structured process to my own life as of late, and I’m going to try the Father Abraham approach to do it.

I’m going to add a particular discipline to my life, get it habituated, and then add another along with it. I’ll likely be doing this until I am literally able to rock the Father Abraham motions in my sleep.

Seriously, I’m not sure that this will be an effective strategy, but I’m going to give it a go. I’ll keep blogging here about my progress, and highlight when I add a new discipline.

First up:

• Be early to rise.

During my Ramadan Fast, I remember one particular morning where I happened to be looking out my back window. It was just after dawn, and I had already begun the fast, but had not yet meditated for the day. Right under one of our oak trees, I saw a little bird, hopping along, pecking around all over the ground. While I didn’t immediately understand what was happening, I soon realized that I was actually witnessing an early bird trying to get the worm.

Sure enough, that little guy ended up with a plump little worm in his beak, and he flew off to enjoy the fruits of his labor.

Without adding any more cheese to the already cheesy post, I’ll just say that I can see the value in being like that bird.

For the past couple of days, I have been the first to rise in my house. This gives me some quiet time to be still, get my lotus position on, and meditate.

The contents of my meditations have been a bit scattered, and I imagine that I’ll be more disciplined in this shortly.

But for now, I’m singing my song, and I’m pumping my right arm. Soon enough, I’ll be ready to add something new. See you then.

It’s been over a week since I wrapped up my fast for the month of Ramadan. Perhaps the sudden onset of autumn weather has something to do with it, but I’ve been regularly pondering the fact that I might be experiencing some post-Ramadan blues. I’m not waking up before dawn, I’m not meditating as much, and I’m not being especially mindful of anything.

Actually, that’s not really true. Lately, I’ve been quite mindful of my own negativity and sullenness. I wouldn’t argue a diagnosis of depression right now. It’s just been a difficult transition back to “normal” life. It turns out that “normal” is not good enough anymore.

This really shouldn’t surprise me, this whole process of changing my mindset towards not eating and drinking during sunlight hours occurred much as I would have expected it to, based on the TPI curriculum that I train others on. All of the early rising, meditating, abstaining, focusing, and learning really became habitualized in my life.

Once the goal of Ramadan was finished, I didn’t replace it with a new one.

I knew that I was really enjoying and appreciating the fast, but I didn’t realize how potently I had been affected by it all. While the past week or so hasn’t been a complete bust, let’s just say that I’ve spent more time that I would like to admit in full sweats, with my hoodie firmly in the “on” position. It’s the uniform of the mildly depressed, and I’ve been wearing it at home quite a bit this week.

My wife and I were discussing my fast recently, and we agreed that it was the most dedicated that I have ever been to a daily discipline in my entire life. At 31 years old, with 3 kids, that’s sort of embarrassing.

Discipline has always been a sort of four-letter word for me. Dictionary.com assures me that there are indeed more than four letters, and provides the following definitions, to boot:

2) To bring to a state of order and obedience by training and control.

Typically, I associate discipline with the 3rd definition. It has a strong correlation with punishment and penalty for me. At various points in my life, I have tried to shed any and all disciplines, due to a fear that they were preventing me from being truly “free”.

Some of this perspective towards discipline was from my own experience, while a great deal of it was from watching others languish and suffer for the sake of some sort of discipline. It all seemed very foolish to me; to enslave yourself to something, without any options for changing or casting it aside once it was no longer useful.

I’m now rethinking and reexamining all of this. During my fast, my commitment to not drinking is what gave me the strength to overcome my urges to drink each day. This commitment did not weaken me or reduce my “freedom”. It simply reminded me of what I had already decided what was most valuable.

In the days since the fast ended, I’ve just been allowing myself to be driven by my base cravings and desires. I’m pretty sure that the discipline of these desires is what separates us from the animal kingdom, so why is it so difficult for me to put a new discipline into place?

Well, I’m trying to find an answer to that. I’ve got some ideas in my head for developing a new process for adding disciplines to my life. As they become habits, I’ll need to include a way to examine all of them as well, but I’ll just focus on disciplines for now.

More on all of this later. Thanks for reading.

In the meantime, I’ll be continue to jam to this weird-ass video from some dude named Nathan Barnatt:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Seriously. If the end of the discipline of fasting has brought me down, that video has buoyed me as much as anything else over the past week (especially the reverse low 10 at the 3:17 mark). I hope that it makes you happy too.

One month ago, I was contemplating whether or not I should try to fast with my Muslim friends for the month of Ramadan. I was reticent because I wasn’t sure that my body could make it through. It’s not that I expected to die or anything. I just figured that not eating and drinking during daylight hours would have a negative effect on my overall health, and that I would become too weak to finish it. I imagined myself staggering around each evening, just a bag of bones, begging for water with my last bit of energy.

It turned out that my fears were more than a little exaggerated. My body was actually quite capable during the fast. I was even pleasantly surprised by the stamina that I experienced. If anything, my overall health seemed to improve in a number of ways over the last 29 days.

The irony is that I feel truly lousy right now. I think that I have some sort of summer cold, and it just happened to coincide with my return to daytime eating and drinking. I’ve had a cough, runny nose, headaches, and fatigue. If not eating and drinking will restore my health, then sign me up for another month.

Without further ado, here are 6 things that I learned while fasting for Ramadan as a non-Muslim:

1) The human body is quite capable of going without water for 15+ hours without suffering any physiological damage.

This totally surprised me. As I mentioned on Day 22, I had expected to be suffering from mild to moderate dehydration at the end of each day. You know, parched throat, pounding headache, amber-colored urine, and the like. It turns out that none of those really afflicted me (apart from the occasional parched throat). In some magical way, the human body is able to adapt to such a fast. Some nights, I even went further into the evening without “needing” to eat or drink right at sunset. Aces.

2) Fasting is much easier to do with others than just trying to go it alone.

I guess this shouldn’t really have surprised me, but I am now firmly convinced of it being true. The most interesting aspect of this was the fact that the majority of my fast was spent in physical isolation from other Muslims, but rather in virtual, digital community with them. Through this website, I was able to connect with and interact with fellow Ramadan fasters from around the world, with many of them checking in with me each day. Their thoughtful and encouraging responses to my blog gave me a number of personal points of accountability that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

In previous food fasts as a Christian, I had mostly done them alone (with the 40 hour famine in my first post being the one exception). The Gospel of Matthew quotes Jesus as saying: ”Whenever you fast, don’t be gloomy like the hypocrites, because they put on sad faces to show others they are fasting. I tell you with certainty, they have their full reward!” Maybe devoting my website to chronicle the fast is violating this, but I have no regrets.

I must admit that I would tend to end those Christian fasts earlier that my original intention to do so. So a 5 day fast would often turn into a 2 or 3 day fast. But this 30 day fast actually turned into a 29 day fast, and it was totally legit. Thanks lunar cycle!

3) Four weeks really is enough time to form a new habit.

I’d always heard that it takes about 30 days in order to establish a new habit, but I had never really attempted to do anything regularly for that amount of time that didn’t just happen to come naturally or as the result of some sort of social construct (like school or work). For the last several days of this fast, I was waking up before dawn, hopping right out of bed, chugging a few bottles of water, and mentally preparing for my day like it was no big deal. My body’s circadian rhythm started to adjust, and it seemed to take less and less willpower for me to wake up so early.

Maybe I should try something else positive for 30 days…

4) Muslims and Christians are much more alike than different.

Most of my life has been spent in and around the Christian church. I was even a pastor for a number of years. Christianity’s exclusive claims to truth were always couched with an explanation of how different it was from the rest of the world’s religions. Since I’ve started exploring some of these religions in the past few years, I’ve been struck by some remarkable similarities between the two religions. Aside from them both being monotheistic, Abrahamic faiths devoted to sacred texts, each faith seems to approach the rest of the world in a similar way.

Islam seems to have just as exclusive of a claim to truth as Christianity does. The world is divided up into a dichotomy of believers and non-believers. The afterlife is divided into a heaven and a hell. Christians and Muslims are always trying to align their behaviors to the will of God (Allah), praying for his blessings along the way. Maybe the differences only tend to stand out if you are looking for them. Or perhaps they just melt away when you are focused on seeing the similarities.

Maybe my favorite time of this fast was spending an evening at the local mosque, sharing a meal together after the sun came down. Aside from the women’s head coverings, I could have sworn that I was right in the midst of a good old-fashioned Christian potluck. People taking care of people, in the name of God (Allah). There were no animal sacrifices to be found.

5) Fasting for Ramadan is much more of a blessing than a curse.

I had heard this through some internet research that I had done before beginning this fast. Most Muslims celebrate this time of year and what it does for their spiritual focus. For me, especially with my expectation that I would not be able to physically complete the fast, I figured that I would be a miserable mess each day. My focus was almost completely on what it was that I couldn’t do. But after about a week, I began to develop a growing appreciation of what I could do.

Something happens in your mind, while fasting. It’s as if the hunger and thirst pangs begin to strengthen your focus, both physically (my vision) and mentally. As my stomach shrank, my eyes would become wider. Quicker even. I was far more in tune with my surroundings. Thinking of the suffering of others from around the world, I swallowed my saliva and counted my own blessings.

After several weeks of this, I felt as if I was experiencing some sort of purified version of myself. Like a filter had been slowing lifted from my eyes, I was able to examine my own strengths and shortcomings more clearly. While I didn’t always like what I found, I do not discount the value of accurate self-reflection. I’m already missing that feeling of clarity today.

6) Anyone striving for radical empathy could benefit from such an experience.

Unless you have experienced something for yourself, empathy is probably as close as you will be able to feel what another is feeling. Without actually going to the extent of a full conversion or some sort of undercover mission, what better opportunity is there to learn about what it feels like to be a Muslim (at least in a physical sense)? This is the best effort that I could come up with to walk in the shoes of another.

Islam is not a religion filled with terrorists who are hell-bent on implementing Sharia Law all over the world. Many followers of Islam only want to show the love of Allah (God) to a world that seems desperate to need it. From what I can tell, Islam is supportive of any forms of righteousness that make the world  better place. That much is clear to me now more than ever.

I’m both proud of and humbled by this experience. I did not believe that I could complete it, but when I finally did, I realized how much more I am responsible for in my own life. I seem to have far fewer excuses for myself, now that I have a better idea of what I am truly capable of.

So, for the final time in 2011:

Ramadan Mubarak!

I had a wonderful pot-luck style breakfast again, and got to sample a number of exotic (for me) foods. If you walk away from a Muslim festival hungry, then you’re just not that into food. I may have already gained back all ten pounds that I had lost over this fast.

Before the feast, I was able to sit in on the morning prayer and sermon. Try as I might (and we repeated the same prayers about 20 times) I couldn’t quite pick up the cadence and the pitch of the prayers. It wasn’t quite chanting, but it wasn’t singing either (although I would say it was musical). They had an English “cheat sheet” for those of us who do not speak Arabic. I was able to pick out a few “Allahu Akbar”s and “Mohammad”s, and my friend explained to me that these were mostly praise choruses.

I was struck by the sound of all of our voices in a cappella, rising up in unison (mostly), all facing northeast, the direction of Mecca. While I knew that Muslims always prayed toward Mecca, it was much different to be sitting amongst them, visualizing all of the others in the world praying towards the same location on the globe. I felt a part of something much bigger than myself, that room, our community, or the country. It was the feeling of being very small and yet a part of something quite large at the same time.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this experience throughout the day, and I’m still coming to terms with the fact that it is over. Right now, it seems more bitter than sweet. I’ve come quite attached to this fasting and all that has sprung from it.

Before I left the mosque, I was able to connect with a couple of gentlemen who are elders among the faithful. I asked them about their experiences with interfaith groups and what sorts of dialogue they had had with leaders of other faiths in the community. They both replied that interfaith efforts in the past had been positive, but that they had been few and far between lately. I got the feeling that both of them would be interested in renewing those ties and exploring further connection and collaboration within our city and the surrounding areas.

I’m not sure exactly how I would take part in such an endeavor, but I’m more that keen to the idea right now. Perhaps this Ramadan is the start of something much larger for me and my education in the Muslim faith and the Muslim people…

I’m continuing to put down my thoughts about all that I have learned during this fast. I hope to have it completed and online by tomorrow night. Until then, Eid Mubarak!

The fast is over.

Well, I still have one more day to make up, but the official Ramadan holiday season of 2011 is now over.

Tomorrow is Eid ul-Fitr, and I’ll be celebrating at the local mosque tomorrow morning.

I’ve had a lot of mixed feelings and emotions about the ending of this fast. Today was filled with a number of peaceful, serene moments. I did a lot of my work outside on my deck today, watching the wind play with the leaves on the trees. I don’t want this mindfulness and purposefulness to end. The ending of this fast has surely been bittersweet.

I’m still a bit conflicted on how I feel about the whole experience. I really want to process things some more. And after all, I tend to write better in the daytime than in the night. Let’s see how well I can put my thoughts into words tomorrow with a full belly!

Wherever you are, whatever you believe, tonight I wish you the deepest peace.

I’ll be back tomorrow for one more Ramadan post about my Eid experience.