The Seventy-Sixth night

Since you left me, home is no longer home,

Nor is the neighbor neighbor, since you went away,

Nor is the friend who kept me company

The friend I knew, nor is the day bright day,

Nor are the sun and moon that shone with light

The same, for they will never shine again.

In desolation you have left the world,

In gloomy darkness, every field and plain.

O, may the crow that at our parting crowed

His feathers lose and without' shelter stand.

My patience fails; my body wastes away

How many veils are torn by death's cruel hand!

I wonder, will our nights come back again,

And will the old home once more hold us twain?

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Spiritual Recuperation

Today marked the first day of the Bahá'í Fast. The last 19 days (one Baha'i month) of the Bahá'í year all the Baha'is around the world undertake a period of fasting, from sunrise to sunset. The Bahá'í Faith sees great value in the practice of fasting as a discipline for the soul. "It is essentially a period of meditation and prayer, of spiritual recuperation, during which the believer must strive to make the necessary readjustments in his inner life, and to refresh and reinvigorate the spiritual forces latent in his soul. Its significance and purpose are, therefore, fundamentally spiritual in character. Fasting is symbolic, and a reminder of abstinence from selfish and carnal desires." (Shoghi Effendi, Directives of the Guardian (New Delhi: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1973), pp. 27-28.)

"Fasting is the cause of awakening man. The heart becomes tender and the spirituality of man increases. This is produced by the fact that man's thoughts will be confined to the commemoration of God, and through this awakening and stimulation surely ideal advancements follow... Fasting is of two kinds, material and spiritual. The material fasting is abstaining from food or drink, that is, from the appetites of the body. But spiritual, ideal fasting is this, that man abstain from selfish passions, from negligence and from satanic animal traits. Therefore, material fasting is a token of the spiritual fasting. That is: `O God! As I am fasting from the appetites of the body and not occupied with eating and drinking, even so purify and make holy my heart and my life from aught else save Thy Love, and protect and preserve my soul from self-passions... Thus may the spirit associate with the Fragrances of Holiness and fast from everything else save Thy mention."

- Abdu'l-Bahá, Star of the West, vol. 3, p. 305.

Enough said :)