So instead I'm going to confess to you. These are lesser sins, might just require a bloody mary or two.
I'm hungry. I have been doing well with my fast and today I'm hungry. I'm grateful to another faster, Cher in NJ, who offered me some words of support today. It wasn't even so much what she said as the fact that she is also fasting for Lent and I could tell her I'm hungry and she could say "yeah!" That made me feel better and made me feel like I can do it.
So, I don't think I should be drinking alcohol. I had said that in my initial fasting intention and then of course a beer here (yeah, I like beer now, had you heard?) and then a little celebratory drink at my co-worker's going away party... and I know myself well enough to know that I do not (DO NOT) follow rules, especially if I am the one who makes them for myself. So a strict ban on alcohol is totally unrealistic. But the fact is it makes fasting harder because the next day the low blood sugar makes for hunger pangs. So I just had to put it out there so someone else could witness my thoughts (super! precisely what this blog thing is for) as well as to give myself a little accountability.
And I don't know but when one is fasting should she have three dinners? I mean, doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose? One dinner, Amelia. One.
That's all. Turns out the Baha'i are fasting now too.
The Bahá'í Fast
As has been the case with other revealed religions, the Bahá'í Faith sees great value in the practice of fasting as a discipline for the soul . Bahá'u'lláh designated a nineteen-day period each year when adult Bahá'ís fast from sunrise to sunset each day. This period coincides with the Bahá'í month of Ala (meaning Loftiness), from March 2 to 20, inclusive. This is the month immediately preceding the Bahá'í new year, which occurs the day of the vernal equinox; and the period of fasting is therefore viewed as a time of spiritual preparation and regeneration for a new year's activities. Women who are nursing or pregnant, the aged, the sick, the traveler, those engaged in heavy labor, as well as children under the age of fifteen, are exempt from observance of the Fast."The fasting period, which lasts nineteen days starting as a rule from the second of March every year and ending on the twentieth of the same month, involves complete abstention from food and drink from sunrise till sunset. It is essentially a period of meditation and prayer, of spiritual recuperation, during which the believer must strive to make the necessary readjustments in his inner life, and to refresh and reinvigorate the spiritual forces latent in his soul. Its significance and purpose are, therefore, fundamentally spiritual in character. Fasting is symbolic, and a reminder of abstinence from selfish and carnal desires."1
Fasting is the cause of awakening man. The heart becomes tender and the spirituality of man increases. This is produced by the fact that man's thoughts will be confined to the commemoration of God, and through this awakening and stimulation surely ideal advancements follow... Fasting is of two kinds, material and spiritual. The material fasting is abstaining from food or drink, that is, from the appetites of the body. But spiritual, ideal fasting is this, that man abstain from selfish passions, from negligence and from satanic animal traits. Therefore, material fasting is a token of the spiritual fasting. That is: `O God! As I am fasting from the appetites of the body and not occupied with eating and drinking, even so purify and make holy my heart and my life from aught else save Thy Love, and protect and preserve my soul from self-passions... Thus may the spirit associate with the Fragrances of Holiness and fast from everything else save Thy mention.'2
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