A grateful thought and a thankful heart

I started Ramadan alone, and expected to end it the same way.

For the first 11 days, my morning routine was wake (cursing the hour), listen for my flatmate to come up the stairs after his breakfast (sometimes beginning my meal in my room, if I'd thought ahead enough to have food waiting on my dresser), go down to the kitchen to finish up hurriedly while leaning against the cold kitchen counter, return to my room tired and vaguely grumpy about my inability to return to sleep. The practice of shifting negative thoughts into positive ones (what in my mind I think of as the gratitude project) that I was exercising throughout the rest of the day hadn't yet penetrated the earliest hours.

For the next 11 days (good symmetry there), my morning routine benefited greatly from the shared company of the same flatmate I'd previously been avoiding in the morning. In fact, it was during that period that the mornings really did become routine. The hour still felt awfully early, but somehow not rushing through my food made the whole process of getting up much easier, and knowing I wouldn't be alone in the kitchen was good incentive to stop grumbling to myself and just get on with it. Which opened up space in my mind for other things - like the gratitude project I'd had such good success with later in the day. Instead of thinking 'Seriously? I'm going to get up and go EAT something at this hour???' I'd try to roll out of bed thinking 'Thank you that I have a warm bed to sleep in and something good to eat this morning.'

That was also the period that I learned a lot in the mornings, from conversations with my flatmate. For the rest of the day we wouldn't say too much about Ramadan or how it was unfolding for each of us, but in the morning we would talk about it more. Sharing some of the experience of Ramadan with someone who had done it before was invaluable to my ultimate ability to see the whole month through. For example, instead of trying to eat a more-or-less normal breakfast as I had been doing before, I learned to eat dinner in the morning - no more toast and peanut butter and fruit and boiled egg for me (which left me hungry by early afternoon), instead rice and rich meaty stew and yogurt and a banana (which saw me through most of the day).

We talked about other things too, often laughing together, which makes any day a whole lot better right from the start. Those conversations helped put me in a good frame of mine for the introduction of other things into the morning routine. Instead of coming back to my room and going straight back to bed (a futile exercise to that point in any case), I'd take a few minutes first to actually say out loud all the things I was thankful for (what at that Buddhist meditation retreat I went to they called 'loving kindness meditation'). The first few days I did this, my list was abysmally short and vague. But the longer I practiced it, the longer my list got, and the more specific. I started looking forward to this time. And, probably since it helped calm my mind again, it actually helped me begin to be able to sleep again afterwards (which went miles to improving my general outlook and productivity the rest of the day).

For the last 6 days, I've been on my own in the mornings again. My flatmate's gone to another country, leaving me the only one in the house still observing the fast. My morning routine hasn't changed much, it's just gotten quieter, more introspective. This isn't a bad thing. I had a trigger point massage the other day, the kind where the therapist figures out which spots hurt the most, and then uses a wooden tool to dig in and make them hurt even more...ouch! As she was getting going she explained to me that she likes her clients to be 'wholly present in the moment,' to really experience the sensations as they arise and then to picture each muscle opening up around the pain. Essentially, she wanted me to visualize the relaxation of each muscle around the massage tool, and thus to actually physically cause the muscle to relax. The sooner I could unclench the muscle, the faster the pain went away, allowing her to deal with some of the pesky little knots hiding underneath the clenching, keeping me from moving freely. This was a fair analogy of the fasting part of Ramadan in my mind. The more I came to embrace the physical discomfort as just one necessary part of the total experience, the more I opened myself up to other, deeper aspects that weren't even in my awareness at the beginning of the month. And which do, in different ways, help me to move more freely in the world.

This morning I went down to the dark kitchen at 5am, as usual, repeating my thankfulness mantra somewhat more forcefully than other days. Tired. Missing the shared mornings with my flatmate. Wondering what I would put together to eat. He told me before he left that it would get harder the closer I got to the end, and he was right. Especially considering this is my last day in Dunedin for quite some time, maintaining my commitment to see Ramadan through (rather than, say, going for my favourite french toast brunch with friends), is taking more willpower than I expected. Also, I am getting low on food, having finished up the last of my stews a couple of mornings ago and now just working through the miserable little leftover bits of this and that ingredient that I didn't know what to do with earlier.

But rather than opening the kitchen door to a cold room, I found the space toasty warm. Nice. At first thinking that someone had just forgotten to turn off the heater before bed last night, I opened up the fridge to find a little care package of my favourite meaty Chinese dumplings (laboriously handmade yesterday by another flatmate) waiting for me with an encouraging note attached. They weren't there late last night, which means that sometime between midnight and 5am she came down to the kitchen, turned on the heater for me, and left me freshly steamed buns to eat. Though the others in the house remained tucked up warm in their beds as I had my breakfast, I was nonetheless not alone. And that is the essence of a grateful thought and a thankful heart.

Practically Speaking

3 weeks into Ramadan, and I can officially remove every pair of pants I own without undoing any of their buttons. I don't think I've lost much weight, but apparently just enough to change the way things fit. Hmm. Probably should have anticipated this, but didn't. Which brings me to a few observations on the practical side of fasting.

I just met another international student for the first time, at the request of the international office on campus. She's from the same general section of planet as me (the west part of North America), we have quite a lot in common, she's having a bit of trouble settling into town and the international advisers thought we'd get along. And so we did! Except that throughout a significant potion of our 90 minute conversation, over (her) coffee, I was thinking about how I was having trouble really focusing on what she was saying. And how hungry the smell of her coffee and biscotti were making me. Lesson: it gets progressively harder to think about anything other than feeding myself throughout the day - better to plan meetings early!

A certain level of normal activity is fine, but in addition to becoming a space cadet each afternoon, my body also doesn't have the same get-up-and-go that it's used to. I still walk quite a bit, work, play on the wheel in the pottery studio, go out with friends. But no matter how much I'd like to, swimming + fasting is not a particularly good idea. I only tried it once, which is probably not a fair sample, but...wow. It's easy to forget how much water our bodies lose while exercising in water until trying to do it without the benefit of a handy water bottle (and snacks!) waiting at the pool edge. I tried to time my swim to be as near the end of the day's fasting as possible (the pool isn't open in the evening), but that just meant that the whole getting out, getting dry, getting home, getting fed routine was WAY more effort than is probably healthy for a person. Ditto other strenuous workouts (or too much time on my feet in general). A good part of Ramadan turns out to be learning to balance energy and output, which means prioritizing the things that really need to be done and letting some of the other things wait a month. All in all, not a bad lesson to learn, especially for someone like me who tends towards perpetual (but not always purposeful) motion.

Dehydration/rehydration is another thing. This hasn't been the issue that I expected when I started fasting, ie. feeling parched all the time. It's certainly not an issue here like it must be anywhere not blessed with a steady temperature of about 10C and relatively short days. Imagine fasting in northern Canada right now, where an hour before daylight is something like 2:30am and sundown isn't until after 11pm. Or in Iran, which has long days AND high temperatures. Or in Korea, which has high temperatures AND ridiculous humidity. And yes, I'm pretty sure that there are people faithfully observing Ramadan in all of those places right now. And I am truly humbled by their dedication. For me however, it's not the slightly hollow, achy feeling in my stomach or the slightly bitter tackiness in my mouth that's the problem (I got used to both of those things fairly early on, though have often lamented not being able to swallow a breath freshener during the day!), but rather figuring out how to spread out my liquid intake over the hours available so that I don't have to pee every 15 minutes while trying to get to sleep. Which is really annoying and really disruptive of normal sleeping patterns. Which is next on my list.

Sleeping. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm not all that good at falling asleep again after waking up early for pre-dawn breakfast. Also, being aware that I need to get up earlier than usual often wakes me up during the night...oh no...I've slept through my alarm...reach for watch...hmph, only 2:48am, 54 minutes since the last time I looked...drift back to fitful sleep. And I'm a person who needs sleep. A lot of sleep. I function best on between 8 and 10 hours a night usually. So functioning on 5 or 6 hours of not-that-great sleep has had a much bigger impact than the actual going without food or drink. Though I think that I may actually be getting used to this new schedule now...3 mornings in a row I've managed to get back to dreamland before getting on with my day!

Stomach noises are something else. Also, the timing of cooking so that food is ready to eat at the appropriate hour without requiring too much contact time with it before I can eat it. And I wouldn't recommend baking during the daytime, unless you're awfully confident with your recipe, because it's hard to keep fingers out of bowls to check on the progress of things. I ruined two batches of icing in a row yesterday because I didn't sample it to check out how it was coming along. The cake however, I am pleased to report, turned out just fine!

I have plenty of observations on the less mundane side of the experience as well, but at the moment (45 minutes until sundown, roughly), I'm having trouble focusing on anything at all other than the incremental movement of the sun in the sky, and how eager I am for dinner tonight. Clearly those are observations for a more lucid time of day!

So, So Grateful

Exactly a week ago, I attended a four-hour writing workshop hosted by the university. Copious amounts of food and beverages were served. I sat at a table with three other people who drank and drank and drank throughout all of our activities (each cup of coffee perched so tantalizingly close to my nose on our tiny workspace) and ate and ate and ate throughout all of our (working) breaks. Torture! Inside my head I was railing against the inconsiderateness of all these (unknowing) people, and against my own inability to consume. And then something snapped. Something good. A ferocious little voice inside my head said 'No one is stopping you, go ahead and eat!' At which point, ridiculous as this probably sounds, I finally understood that fasting was MY CHOICE. And that it was important to me.

The next morning, I met my flatmate in the kitchen.

My rationale in not telling anyone here what I was doing was sound at first. I didn't want anyone to feel uncomfortable, or to think that I was trying to take something away from their own experience of Ramadan by essentially tailgating on their holiest month. I'd managed to time my breakfasts throughout the first 11 days of the month so that no one was in the kitchen by the time I got there. But by doing that, a relatively significant part of my experience of Ramadan became about not letting my flatmate know what I was doing each morning. And at the point that it stopped being an experiment for me, starting every day worrying about someone else in that way seemed like a poor use of my brain.

When I told him that the reason he was in the kitchen so early was the same reason I was in the kitchen so early he didn't get it at all. Once it clicked, I watched a succession of emotions play across his face, surprise and bemusement chief among them. These gave way variously over the next 24 hours to ridicule, admiration, hostility, and, eventually, something approaching solidarity. When we sat down to talk about it one afternoon, he told me that even though Ramadan is something so many people do together, it is by nature an individual experience. Of course this is true of everything in life, though perhaps the conditions of Ramadan, the cycles of fasting and prayer, of deprivation and abundance, of introspection and acknowledgement, heighten the paradox. In any case, paradox aside, having someone else to share my early morning meal with each day, as well as other reflections, has infinitely deepened my experience. Gratitude and prayer come a whole lot more easily to me when I'm not busy sneaking around a big house in the dark!

On the second day of the fast I wrote 'I prefer to think of it as an experiment in self-control and empathy, as well as a chance to share, even superficially, a faith experience of a significant portion of the world's population.' What I have learned so far is that it is impossible to share someone else's faith experience first hand. Also, it is impossible to remain at arm's length from your own. At some point (perhaps with the rearing up of that little voice in my head) Ramadan stopped being an experiment for me (which implied something I was outside of, watching from a distance), and started being...something else. Something deeply personal. Something both bigger and smaller than I first imagined. And for that I am so, so grateful.

On Hunger and Gratitude

A week into my Ramadan experience, at 11 o'clock on a working Monday morning, I'm hungry. And thirsty. And tired. But mostly hungry. This has very little to do with Ramadan and very much to do with the 3 days of travel I returned from last night. Travel exempts you from fasting, meaning I ate normally Friday through Sunday. And it's amazing how quickly your body adapts to changes in consumption habits. When I began this experiment last Monday I was HUNGRY all day. Tuesday I was only hungry in the last couple of hours before I could eat again. Wednesday and Thursday I didn't even think about food all day. But here it is Monday again, with 3 days of food under my belt (quite literally, I think, in the case of the enormous plate of battered, deep fried, local muscles I ate for dinner on Stewart Island Saturday), and I'm back to being HUNGRY again. Sigh. They weren't kidding over at the Toronto Islamic Society (where I went for guidance on what to do and not to do this month, via their website) when they said that Ramadan is an exercise in self-control and patience. Must be time to focus on all the things I'm grateful for today, rather than on all the things I'm not eating or drinking...

#1: I didn't lose my wallet this weekend.
#2: I survived 2 bumpy flights in a very small plane, and even almost enjoyed myself in the air.
#3: I managed to drive for hours and hours and hours (in snow and rain no less!) on the opposite side of the road than I'm used to, without once going into the wrong lane.
#4: I visited what has to be one of the most beautiful islands on earth.
#5: I completed 2 substantial hikes, in the mud, without totally killing my back.
#6: I didn't have to walk back to town in a hail storm.
#7: I had a fabulous travelling buddy who made all of the above endlessly more enjoyable!
#8: I have the health and freedom to choose to eat or not eat, whenever I want.
#9: I have family who, upon hearing that I was observing Ramadan this year, never once asked 'why?' and instead offered only encouragement and support.

I'm not going to elaborate on all of these right now...spreading them out a little will give me something to think about later on when it's normally time for lunch. Or afternoon tea. Or...right, back to the gratitude! For now, I think the happy story of #1 deserves to be shared!

I had my wallet all weekend, tramping through the incredible muck of Stewart Island. I had it at the airport terminal, where I paid for parking our rental car over the weekend. I didn't have it 15 minutes later, at the gas station where we stopped on our way out of town. Uh oh. I went through the car. Leanne went through the car. No wallet anywhere. We turned the car around and headed back to the airport. We pulled into the parking lot we'd left half an hour before in the pouring rain, as the sun was setting. No wallet in the parking space we'd vacated, or anywhere around it. We both got out of the car, started walking towards the terminal down different rows. Half way to the terminal I started to seriously panic - my passport (with both my New Zealand visa and my Korean visa inside), all of my ID, my credit cards, bank cards, driver's license, everything is in that wallet. Along with a couple of hundred dollars in cash since we'd been told there were no bank machines on Stewart Island (there weren't, but all the shops took debit cards). Just before crossing the last stretch before the terminal, Leanne let out a happy yelp and started jumping up and down. My very black wallet had landed on the only yellow patch of paint laid down in the entire parking lot, and was still there waiting for us with absolutely everything inside. What's more, even though the outside was soaking wet from the rain, inside, everything was bone dry. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

And on that note, I ought to get back to #10: I have work I love to do, which keeps me more than happily busy. More on #s 2 through 9 sometime soon!

Ramadan, For Beginners

What business does a Christian girl from the Canadian prairies have attempting to observe Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting? Probably none. And yet, here I am in New Zealand, doing just that. From an hour or so before the sun rises to sometime shortly after sundown, for the next 28 days (give or take a few days for travel and menstruation, both of which temporarily exempt me from fasting), I will not be eating or drinking anything. Not even water.

In light of the fact that Ramadan is not only (or even mostly) about deprivation, while I'm at it I'm going to try to be more mindful of other people, and of God, and of myself. Decreased food consumption, increased mindfulness - a kind of package deal. There are myriad lessons that abstaining from food (and other things!) during the month is supposed to teach a person - not the least of which is patience, something which I surely could (always!) use a refresher on. Ditto perseverance. It's supposed to help clear your mind (what PhD student doesn't need that?!), give you greater empathy for the poor (hunger and thirst suck, so let's help those who don't get to change that condition once the sun sets), erase divisions (everyone, regardless of social status, gender, or nationality observes the fast together), and promote sincerity (no one can really tell if you're following your fast or not, so it's all up to you). It's also an acknowledgement of the gifts of Allah in the world, and regardless of whether or not you are a particular believer, it seems to me a good idea to stop every now and again and really be thankful for how bountiful the world we live in is.

To be clear, I'm not converting to Islam (not that there would be anything wrong with that if I did). I prefer to think of it as an experiment in self-control and empathy, as well as a chance to share, even superficially, a faith experience of a significant portion of the world's population. This is not wholly unlike the two weeks I spent in silence at a Buddhist meditation retreat in Thailand a few years ago. Different deprivations, similar aims. I wish I could say that I went to that retreat out of a pure and sincere devotion to spiritual development, but actually I went because a friend bet me that I couldn't keep my mouth shut for so long (he was wrong). Similarly, I wish I could say that I am embarking on this journey with a pure and sincere devotion to spiritual development, but really it's as much curiosity as anything. I'm curious about this foundational experience that so many people around the world share, and also curious about whether or not I can actually get through a whole month without eating or drinking (two things which are very dear to my heart, especially here in hyper-social Dunedin) during daylight hours. Also, to be perfectly honest, I'm a practical sort of person and figured that if I'm ever going to have a serious go at observing an entire month of fasting, it ought to be here in the middle of a New Zealand winter when the temperature throughout the relatively short daylight hours is neither too hot nor too cold. If there were ever going to be ideal conditions for an experiment such as this, these are them.

Now, disclaimer aside, I do think that more will come of this month than the satisfaction of my curiosity. Though I hated pretty much every single minute of my 2-weeks of silence, and swore that I would never do anything so ridiculous (for me - understand that I am not calling the practice itself ridiculous...) again, it turns out in the end that I actually learned an awful lot at that retreat. Things that I still practice, or think about, today. There is no question in my mind now that I actually learned some important lessons sitting there under the palm trees with the monks, such that I look back on the whole experience almost fondly and have even considered going back. I could not have imagined, even in the middle of that experience, what would come of what I learned. Likewise, I have no idea what will come of what I undertake this month. But I firmly believe that when people step out in faith (even in misguided or selfish faith), we do not step out alone. God (whatever god you conceive) meets us. The world meets us. We meet our (better) selves.

And now, with the sun just beginning to dip below the hills that ring my horizon, it is time to start thinking about breaking my fast for the (second) day. One of the best aspects of Ramadan, in my estimation, is the social one of families and friends coming together at the end of the day, to eat together and share in their gratitude and abundance. Not knowing how my (very dear) Muslim friends here would take to someone like me essentially tagging along for the ride during their holiest month, I haven't told anyone what I'm doing. Which makes the whole breaking fast thing somewhat anti-climatic. Instead, I'm telling you. And hoping that whoever you may be, fasting or not, you will take a moment to join with me in gratitude and celebration for the abundance that is the world that we live in. Let's eat!