Faith Features

Updated:  Thursday 19 March with Day 14

Followers of the Baha'i faith see fasting as a discipline for the soul, they see abstaining from food as an outer symbol of a spiritual fast. By this they mean the practice of self-restraint in order to distance oneself from all the appetites of the body and so concentrate on oneself as a spiritual being and get closer to God.

Read the fasting diaries of 16 year old Bonnie from West Cornwall as she prays to get through the days ahead:

Day 1:

Today, being the first day of the fast I rolled over in my bed and, forcing the sleep from my eyes, embraced reality, it was 6:30am: time to get up. Downstairs my mum greeted me with offerings of tea and pain au chocolat.

We always get nice breakfasts in the fast!  After breakfast and prayers with mum and dad I had 30 minutes to spare and two choices:

a) Go to my room and pray privately
b) Go back to bed

It was at this point that I had to remember that the Baha’i fast has two parts: the spiritual and the material, Baha’u’llah said that the material fast being the abstinence of food and drink is “of no value by its self” therefore “the soul's refusal or denial of all kinds of evil actions and habits” is as, if not more important. This moved me to engage myself in private prayer leaving me refreshed and ready for the day ahead.

Lunchtime: It may have been a mistake going to my usual café on the college campus, as on entering I was greeted by the glorious smell of jacket potatoes oozing with baked beans, soup with buttery bread and warm white chocolate cookies.

However I reassured myself that the fast is not meant to be easy and resisted the urge to runaway and find a small corner in which to dwell and whimper for the remainder of lunch time.

The rest of the day passed in a haze of Psychology and English and the distant rumbling of my stomach was nothing but a forgotten undertone. All was going well however until, while walking down the corridor clutching my folder, I managed to spill a multitude of photocopies and notes on the floor.

You can pray and fast all you like, but you can’t successfully make it to your next lesson without embarrassing yourself. Well done Bonnie.

When it came to breaking the fast this evening, I counted down the seconds one by one. And I assure you, a cup of tea has never tasted so good!

Day 2:

Today was a difficult day, mainly because I only have two lessons, one at the very beginning of the day and one at the end leaving me with a long expanse of free periods in which to get bored and hungry. Having less to do is much worse than having more to do as you to rely on your own motivation to make good use of your time.

Of the two lessons I did have, one consisted of a timed essay which I had forgotten to revise for. How could I forget that? It’s possible. Welcome to my world.
I was hungry almost all day today. However there is something uniquely empowering about rising above your bodily desires and testing your limits.

Eating isn’t the most extreme form of this but for me it’s the reason that drives your actions that is important. We are abstaining from food not to comply with a fad diet, or simply to exercise our self-control for the sake of it - the reason is none other then our belief in God.

Baha’u’llah said that bodily fasting is an outward symbol of spiritual fasting. In other words it is our spiritual qualities that enable us to resist the temptation of food and drink therefore we are exercising spiritual and physical discipline.

We know that it is important to eat certain foods daily, like fruit and vegetables. Likewise we are told in the Baha’i writings that spiritual nourishment is also essential for the soul. So when we pray to God it is like taking a spiritual vitamin C tablet!

The nicest thing today was returning home from college to the smell of spaghetti bolognaise. Food on the table is something we are guaranteed every evening, however many people in the world aren’t assured of this luxury.

I don’t think the point of the fast is in anyway to make us feel guilty about what we do have, rather to make us realise what we are missing. However it is inevitable that in doing so we notice just how comfortable our lives are. It is only when these given pleasures are taken away that we appreciate how much we rely on God.

Without food and water we would perish at a surprising rate and no Nintendo Wii, Xbox or Mobile can change that. If we wrap ourselves in layers of materialism how are we meant to feel the sun? Even if it shines on us all day long.

Day 8:

In the past few days the fast has got more intense. This is mainly due to the fact that the fast grows in length everyday by a few minutes, the days become longer as we move towards spring and so does the fast.

Something I’ve noticed over these few days is more the tiredness, it gets to the point when you really don’t want to leave the warmth and comfort of your bed to get up and eat food that you’re not hungry for.

The best part of the morning is probably the morning prayers I say by myself. It takes a conscious effort to spend your time praying rather then catching up on sleep but actually I find once I have begun, it’s hard to stop.

There’s something truly beautiful about asking for assistance. One of my favourite prayers features the line “I lay all my affairs in Thy hands” this line, though short, is full of wisdom. It indicates that we are not expected to bare the burden of our problems by ourselves, when we recognize that God is the All-powerful we are also recognizing that He loves us and will protect us.

I have been experiencing anxiety about telling my college friends about fasting, not because I am ashamed but because I doubt my own ability to convey my beliefs.

Reading this line in the prayer is incredibly liberating and it’s as if I can physically feel my worries being lifted when I read it. However I have not transformed into a fearless spiritual super- hero yet, I still have many more prayers to say and many more ways in which to grow.

So although the tiredness and the hunger still lingers I know it’s worth it even if I don’t want to believe it all the time. I don’t want to pretend that every moment of the fast is one I cherish and delight, you would only have to see my face at the breakfast table to be convinced other wise.

But stars shine brightest in the dark, and I really like star gazing.

Day 14:

It’s the 14th day. Two weeks of fasting have passed and as I sit typing this on my laptop, cup of tea comfortingly within reach, I wonder, what have I achieved? Well today in particular I spent four hours cleaning my Nan's house and partaking in some extreme gardening activities.

By extreme I don't mean some kind of crazy juggling act involving petrol-doused gnomes, in fact it really wasn't extreme at all, however I was very impressed at the amount of hard work my Nan and her 96 year old boyfriend put into their garden. I don't mean the poking and prodding of dainty flower beds but rather the brutal cutting down of fairly big trees and the shifting of them to the local skip.

I have to admit, my back hurt, but my grandparents just carried on. But what has this got to do with the fast? Well it got me thinking about what we as humans are capable of. When I explained my fast to a friend at college she promptly replied: "You're crazy, how could you go without food?"

There have been many instances where my sanity has been doubted but here I believe my friend was mistaken. Anyone can go without food for a while. Anyone can do something out of the ordinary, they just have to have a good enough reason. Take Mahatma Gandhi who refused to eat until violence stopped in India. Or the nine British celebrities who scaled the heights of Kilimanjaro to raise money for poor and disadvantaged people.

Furthermore people have died and continue to die for their beliefs world wide. These are just a few examples but they illustrate that we humans are capable of extraordinary things; we just need the right motivation, a decent reason, a worthy cause. For me the worthy cause behind fasting is simply my belief in Baha’u’llah, founder of the Bahá'í Faith.

Abdu'l-Baha, son of Bahá’u’lláh said:

"Where there is love there is always time, and nothing is too much trouble."

This simple statement reflects the spirit in which Baha’is’ observe the fast, it’s not because we feel obliged to, it is out of love and faith in Baha’u’llah.

This ability to suffer for what we love and believe in, is unique to humans, you don’t see monkeys protesting for their rights to a free national health service, or against the poaching of their fellow primates in distant lands. Give them a banana, they’re fine.

But as humans, we thirst for something more, some kind of meaning in our lives. We find this meaning in our children, our friends our family. In our faith.