Rebecca's Reviews > FASTING FOR RAMADAN: Notes from a Spiritual Practice
FASTING FOR RAMADAN: Notes from a Spiritual Practice (Tupelo Press Lineage Series)
by
by
Lots of good stuff in here. Some favorites:
pages ix - x This passage from the Preface gives a sense about how the book is going to go: "Why two books belong between the same covers, why two books are really one book? Because on Eid ul-Fitr, the celebration at the end of the fasting month, when traveling to the mosque for special prayers you are supposed to take one route going and another, different route coming home."
pages 25-27 On point for our interfaith book group: " . . . there has always been a lively debate over the real location of the Far Mosque [Al-Aqsa, in Jerusalem], defined in scripture not geographically but solely by that adjective, "far." Rumi put his two cents in when he wrote, "That mosque Sulayman built was not made of bricks and stone. The farthest mosque is the one inside you." . . . interesting that he makes no distinction between the destroyed Temple of Solomon, mourned by countless people, and the mosque that was built in its place. What if every mosque and synagogue were the same place? Worshipped in by different communities with their own litanies and scriptures, at their own appointed times? If only."
page 64 "Fasting isn't about atonement. . . . It is more for the purpose of focusing the mind on spiritual practices rather than the less subtle requirements of the body."
page 65 "Three of the students who came for the iftar asked me if there was a place where they could pray. I did not hesitate to lead them to the room where meditation and yoga take place, my immediate action revealing to me what I had paid lip service to, all along--that yoga was for me a form of prayer."
page 65 "The icons on the altar [Ganesh and Buddha] are not objects of worship, rather they are arrows pointing in a certain direction. And I am a man with many arrows inside me, each pointing in a different direction."
pages ix - x This passage from the Preface gives a sense about how the book is going to go: "Why two books belong between the same covers, why two books are really one book? Because on Eid ul-Fitr, the celebration at the end of the fasting month, when traveling to the mosque for special prayers you are supposed to take one route going and another, different route coming home."
pages 25-27 On point for our interfaith book group: " . . . there has always been a lively debate over the real location of the Far Mosque [Al-Aqsa, in Jerusalem], defined in scripture not geographically but solely by that adjective, "far." Rumi put his two cents in when he wrote, "That mosque Sulayman built was not made of bricks and stone. The farthest mosque is the one inside you." . . . interesting that he makes no distinction between the destroyed Temple of Solomon, mourned by countless people, and the mosque that was built in its place. What if every mosque and synagogue were the same place? Worshipped in by different communities with their own litanies and scriptures, at their own appointed times? If only."
page 64 "Fasting isn't about atonement. . . . It is more for the purpose of focusing the mind on spiritual practices rather than the less subtle requirements of the body."
page 65 "Three of the students who came for the iftar asked me if there was a place where they could pray. I did not hesitate to lead them to the room where meditation and yoga take place, my immediate action revealing to me what I had paid lip service to, all along--that yoga was for me a form of prayer."
page 65 "The icons on the altar [Ganesh and Buddha] are not objects of worship, rather they are arrows pointing in a certain direction. And I am a man with many arrows inside me, each pointing in a different direction."
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Reading Progress
Started Reading
February 25, 2015
–
Finished Reading
March 5, 2015
– Shelved
March 5, 2015
– Shelved as:
womens-interfaith-book-group
March 5, 2015
– Shelved as:
memoir