day seventeen

‘Remember not your own limitations; the help of God will come to you. Forget yourself. God’s help will surely come!  When you call on the Mercy of God waiting to reinforce you, your strength will be tenfold. Look at me: I am so feeble, yet I have had the strength given me to come amongst you: a poor servant of God, who has been enabled to give you this message! I shall not be with you long! One must never consider one’s own feebleness, it is the strength of the Holy Spirit of Love, which gives the power to teach. The thought of our own weakness could only bring despair. We must look higher than all earthly thoughts; detach ourselves from every material idea, crave for the things of the spirit; fix our eyes on the everlasting bountiful Mercy of the Almighty, who will fill our souls with the gladness of joyful service to His command ‘Love One Another’.”

‘Abdu’l-Bahá

amy: the Fast is one of the main time markers for my internal clock. by it,  i measure how quickly the year has gone by, whether i accomplished all i wanted, or if i fell short of my goals.  it might be simply because of the reflective nature of this time of year, or because all the time i would usually spend obsessing over food can now be redirected to answering questions like “what am i doing with my Life?” – which would seem to be slightly more important to said Life than, say, “cookie or brownie?”.  (for anyone out there that might actually care, probably brownie, but it all depends on who the cookie is).

liam: my understanding of life is that the purpose of this fleeting material existence is to strive with absolute Faith, to the point of exhaustion and collapse, with all that you are and all that you have, to create unity in the world under the standard of Baha’u'llah. i believe that however we choose to undertake the Fast, it teaches us that we can be strong, all of us, together, all of the time. and even though we sometimes all feel challenged, or hurt, or unhappy, or broken, the Fast allows us to draw closer to a love, a strength and a joy that sustains us throughout the darkness.

leila:  i feel like i don’t deserve the friendships i have.  shiva, who has come to visit us (mainly the sprog), from canada, has been talking up a storm with my nine-week old in farsi, eliciting gurgles and a bounty of smiles.  then there’s amy, who, because of her encouragement and daily loving kindnesses, is nurturing me back to a life of beauty and brightness.  i could go on, but my darling babe is sobbing for her sleep, and so, as a matter of fact, am i.