During the last Year of Faith I learned that fasting has a very strong moral component.  It really lets you connect with people who don’t have the means to be able to eat everyday.  But I’ll get more into that later.  There’s probably a spiritual component to it as well- since you aren’t worrying about food or other carnal things there is a lot of time for reading, prayer, and reflection, but I haven’t really gotten to that point either.

Today I really got to appreciate the physiological side of fasting.  As your body depletes it’s primary means of energy, glucose, it moves on to glycogen reserves in the liver and muscles before moving on to fatty acids.  I’m not quite sure at what point of this process that you begin to get the warm and fuzzies, but I know that at around three or four o’clock I stop feeling hungry and start to feel all full and warm inside.  I assume that this is my body burning up my plentiful reserves of backup fat.  Feel free to replace the word ‘assume’ in that sentence with ‘hope’ because that’s what I did.

Apparently short term every other day fasting can be pretty healthy for you, as can brief longer term fasts.  Anything over a month is bad news, so something like the Nineteen Day Fast is healthy for the soul and the body.

Breaking the fast is fifteen kinds of awesome.  The food tastes amazing and I really did appreciate the first meal of the day.  In addition to this, the meals you do manage to have at the end of the day take on a whole new meaning.  It’s a chance to make dinner into a big deal, a chance to enjoy yourself with friends and family, to celebrate after a difficult experience.  It must be quite fulfilling for Baha’i families, to come together for a meal and have it actually mean something.  Me?  I try to have dinner with my friends, to go out and make a big deal of it, because it is really easy to take something like this for granted, and it deserves celebrating at least once a year for a few days.

I tried and failed to pick up some Baha’i books today, but apparently my local Chapters doesn’t believe in this particular faith market.  But I’ll be damned if I leave a bookstore empty-handed, so I picked up some other titles instead.

Dharma Punx by Noah Levine.  This is something that I’ve been wanting to read for a while now.  It’s the memoir of an ex-punk who did the acid, sex, rock and roll rebellion thing, failed to find any spiritual meaning and found a kind of salvation and direction in Buddhism.  Sounds like a good time, and a great addition to my reading list for May.

Against the Stream by Noah Levine.  Lessons on Buddhism using personal anecdotes and guided meditations.  Levine uses the experiences chronicled in Dharma Punx to teach others how to escape addiction and find freedom from suffering.  Looking forward to this one too.

The Taqwacores by Michael Muhammad Knight.  I have been looking forward to this book ever since I saw the documentary Taqwacore at last year’s Vancouver International Film Festival.  It was one of the best films that I have ever seen, and it covers the small but acute counter-culture mismash that is punk Islam, following a band of queer and Muslim punks as they travel accross the states, playing gigs and finding out what Islam means to the youth of today.  I should keep this tucked away for my month of Islam, but I may indulge for a few chapters.