Feast last night at one of the Baha’i homes in Welwyn Garden City. Fast began after a pre-sunrise breakfast in Welwyn. This is a very special time of the year for Baha’is the world over. We’ve finished our Ayyam-i-Ha celebrations, observed the Feast of ‘Ala (or loftiness), and are now abstaining from food and drink from sunrise to sunset each day from now until sunset on 20 March.

It’s a good time for prayer, for reconsidering one’s priorities, and for a more intense focus on the spiritual life. it all sounds terribly monkish (no, I didn’t say monkfish - I’m not that obsessed by food, even though my stomach feels distinctly hollow as I write this at just after 2.00pm), but we all need time to build ourselves, to enrich ourselves by considering what we do and why we do it and by choosing a noble goal for ourselves. Only thus can we understand that our being, our reality is more than just our physical body and all its needs and cravings.

We deprive ourselves of physical food and drink during the Fast, we are forced to change our daily habits. We get up earlier than we might otherwise. After breakfast there’s time for one of the special prayers Baha’u'llah revealed for the Tast. No endless cups of coffee at work. No lunch. No tea. But we have to keep going until that magic moment when the sun goes down and we can eat and drink again.

It’s during the Fast that I realize just how much I stuff in my face every day - and just how much everyone else eats and drinks. A latte and danish on the train. Coffee and a kitkat mid-morning. A sandwich or better for lunch. And I find I’m drooling. So I’d better stop writing about food and get back to the spiritual purpose of this time of year in the Baha’i calendar.

A prayer, quick, for the love of God…

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