Ramadan, one of the greatest events in the Muslim calendar, began last night.   Thirty days of fasting, culminating in the feast of Eid al Fitr, Ramadan is a time for every Muslim to take time to celebrate and reflect on his or her relationship with Allah and the world.  It's a season of hope, wonder, mourning, and contemplation, a slice of the year in which Muslims, like most people of faith, take time to focus more intensely on why they live as they do.

    You may not agree with the tenets of Islam; you may not like the beliefs most Muslims hold; you may be uncomfortable with Islam in general; you may even be frightened of Islam.

     

    Either way, do use the fact of Ramadan to remind yourself that we live this life as a gift, that we spend our days in the aegis of a personal transcendence.  We live in the umbra of a beautiful (and often exasperating) wave of experience, balancing what we see and what we cannot.  Ramadan tells us that we are not alone. It says to us that we live in a vision, an intensely personal vision in which all things find purpose and meaning, the full truth of what is.

    There's much more to believe than what we see.