With the birth of the ninth new moon of the Hijri calendar, we are blessed to enter the month of Ramadan.

May we all experience revelation and transformation that puts us into an unshakeable awareness of our origin and ultimate destiny with God Most High.

The word Ramadan is constructed from the triliteral root r-m-d, the Arabic sense of which is to be consumed with grief and sorrow. The root is also used to describe parched or scorched earth. I am no scholar and only the most unfortunate would take me for a teacher, but I am, like you, free to consider the things that I learn and experience.

Each year I approach this month hungry and thirsty, having burned the crops and poisoned the well planted and dug in the Ramadan prior. Last year I found satiety in deprivation, emancipation in discipline, and inexhaustible reserves of patience and energy even in the absence of consistent rest. Food, drink, and sleep have their place, and Ramadan reminds us that they are not nearly so central as we imagine.

For there is no power and no strength save through God.

Ramadan puts us into a direct experience of this. Romantic notions of a Higher Power become lived reality as we find ourselves animated and thriving despite our empty stomachs and dry mouths. Our ideas about what we need are recalibrated and our apprehensions about poverty are allayed as we reap the harvest and drink the water of trust and faith in God.

Our nourishment comes from being in relationship with the Creator and Sustainer of all things.

Being in relationship with created things leaves us hungry and thirsty for Him, and this is invariably where I find myself upon the sighting of the ninth moon.

My fear is too great, my suspicions too deep, my faith too weak. The lessons of Ramadan are discarded as I allow my desire for created things to overwhelm me in the days and weeks that follow her exit. The satisfaction of my appetites becomes an end in its own right, rather than an opportunity to honor the One who creates both the appetite and the means to its fulfillment.

Nothing good comes from this.

Starved and desiccated, my gratitude at finding myself alive at the onset of Ramadan is tempered with the grief and sorrow at having found myself so desperate yet again.

But we’re here now.

God has decreed that, irrespective of our condition and context, the ninth moon is upon us.

Let us receive this gift.

Blog posts will resume the first week in May, God willing.

---

Leave a comment below for posterity or join us in the D&T Chautaqua Discord to discuss this post with other adventurous spirits from around the world.