Nineteen Day Grove-able Feasts- Gather ye tastebuds while ye may...

The Bahá'í Fast, which begins tomorrow, was always my favorite time of year growing up Bahá'í and when I was still a believer. It was a time when it was impossible to not reflect on your Bahá'í identity throughout the day not just because you were, frankly, hungry and thirsty, but because of the ways preparing for and enduring the Fast shape your day. Waking up before dawn to pray and drink tea with my mother. The mindfulness and planning (and appreciation) required for every evening meal. And the evening meal with which we ended our Fast each day was more often than not shared in community, not wasted and ingested mindlessly in front of the television. It was savored. I saw my Bahá'í friends and family each night, not for the usual reasons, but to share in the ritual of an ecstatic meal. This was not a bad preparation for existentialism.

At school and at work you were marked while the sun was up as different by this outward observance of Bahá'í-ness. You couldn't go to lunch or share in snacks. You snuck away to pray in private. Or curse in private. But the best part, was the feeling of connectedness to all other Bahá'ís around the world, who were fasting, too. A sense of connectedness to your own family and community.

I still observe that heightened ritual of Community and Life Savoring during this time. I think it is spiritually sound. I do, however, observe it on a full stomach.

When I began this blog in 2008 out of concern for what was and wasn't being said in my community of origin, normal boys and girls were just trying to get honest and daring to speak their minds and found themselves labeled "apostates" from within our own Bahá'í-originated ranks. Apostate, a term that has come with a death-sentence in Iran, and has been the accusation on the lips of the hangman and executioner in all of our recent, shared, communal Bahá'í memory. The irony- the pain and sting of Bahá'ís calling other Bahá'ís apostates to squelch freedom of speech (and thought) may have been lost on my not Bahá'í readers back in 2008, but has probably come into sharper focus now as the Islamic Republic of Iran has escalated it's human rights abuses during the last year. The fear, mudslinging, and violence we grew up isolated within as a community is now written in black and white headlines across the pages of the international press. Time magazine called it a story of the year.

So, back in the maiden voyage year of this blog, I initiated a 19-day long event to coincide with the Fast and culmination of the Bahá'í year, archived here. Ending on Naw-Rúz, (NoRuz) a Bahá'í holy day and Iranian New Year's Day. NoRuz is celebrated by people of all faiths, originating in Iran's Zoroastrian past, though it's celebrations are frowned upon by the Islamic Regime. It's Spring Equinox, when life begins and we celebrate our continuing verdant exploits on this planet. As an adult, as a feminist, and as an organism that is 70% water, I have some objections to the bodily-defamation of fasting- abstaining from food and water for a month to improve your soul. In fact, I think it's a shitty way to honor Life and Spring and Fecundity. They call it Soul Food for a reason, and our bodies are not the Great Satan, in need of punishing and rejection. I say, drink a glass of water with your noonday prayer and thank mother earth for it and your ability to drink it. Be alive. Taste it as it goes down. My readership always spikes during the Fast/LoL FEAST, so I'm going to assume that particular message is appreciated in some quarters. I'll sum it up here once again, in Mary Oliver's poem, Wild Geese:

"You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things."

So, I will continue to come together in existential wonderment of food and water and life and love with my community during this time, believer or not. And I will not go hungry. The power of community is that we are meant to, if it is within our power, not let a single one of us go hungry. Physically or spiritually.

And thus was born my theme for Year 2's Blog FEAST. In our community, in every community, some people are not let in. They are left to fast all year long with no sense of community to come back to at the end of each day. Their prayers before dawn are not listened to by the group, and their voices and needs and wisdom remain outside the circle. I decry the lack of public spaces for Bahá'í women to voice our experiences and insight, safe from attack or judgment. My life is constantly enriched by the tabletalk and midnight phone calls of my Bahá'í and ex-Bahá'í sisters, but that wisdom is still, largely, an oral tradition and inaccessible- and therefore invisible- to the outside world and Bahá'í men. It is mainly unpublished. It is not printed in Ridvan messages or heard in the Seat of the Universal House of Justice. It is barely articulated in ex-Bahá'í forums. When I do hear another voice in the wilderness, I am grateful in a way that I am also grateful for water. It is life-sustaining. It is reality affirming. It mirrors my experience. But, it is far too rare. Speaking out at this historical moment, feels as lonely and brutal as integrating any other public institution- the Discourse. So, last year, I highlighted female voices that nourished the spirit and the mind, Bahá'í or not. It was my prayer before dawn.

Get Ready to Rumble. I'll see you in the A.M. for Year 3. A Moveable Feast.

Enjoy your tea.