Food, Glorious Food

5 Ramadhan 1433

So here's a paradox inherent in ascetic experience. The denial of food and drink is designed to foster a kind of contempt for those necessities. We are led to glimpse a level of experience that transcends the material and realise that in some sense we can go without them. They are put into some kind of proportion, no longer being almost automatically the central concerns of our lives.

Yet before the experience of fasting I'd never fully recognised what a glorious gift water is or seen the wonder of a bowl of porridge.