Phillipe has a nice piece about the Baha’i fast, as well as links to other Baha’i bloggers who have written about this wonderful time of year.

I particularly like this quote on Phillipe’s blog from Howard Thurman, a Christian mystic and prophetic voice whom Phillipe considers a spiritual ancestor:

There is a medley of confusion as to the meaning of personal freedom. For some it means to function without limitations at any point, to be able to do what one wants to do and without hindrance. This is the fantasy of many minds, particularly those that are young. For others, personal freedom is to be let alone, to be protected against any force that may move into the life with a swift and decisive imperative. For still others, it means to be limited in one’s power over others only by one’s own strength, energy, and perseverance.

The meaning of personal freedom is found in none of these. They lack the precious ingredient, the core of discipline and inner structure without which personal freedom is a delusion. At the very center personal freedom is a discipline of the mind and of the emotions.

Thurman has hit the nail right on the head. This passage speaks very strongly to me and, I believe, to the sickness of our time. Our consumer society (”we are what we consume”) preaches a diabolical ethic of “function[ing] without limitations at any point, to be able to do what one wants to do and without hindrance”. This is a dangerous and destructive fantasy, addictive in the extreme, but ultimately nihilistic, eviscerating the spiritual and moral guts of the body of human society, those very elements that keep society cohesive.

This point is always missed in the debates in the UK about social and community cohesion. The focus of these debates is never on the spiritual and moral discipline and responsibility of the individual, and always on what can be “fixed” on the surface to make things look good again.

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