VERSION|0.5.1|SUBJECT|Shaikh Abdal Hakim Murad, Muslim Chaplain Cambridge University (the Shaikh formerly known as Tim Winter) |CONTENT|[b]Rating[/b] 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

[url=http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap130808.html][img=images/2013/08/pic130808.jpg popup=false float=right][/url]Happy Eid al-Fitr everyone!

After one month of being much holier than you, where we fasted ever day, the fast is now over and we celebrate the end of the fast, with the feast of the end of the fast. It's ancient festivals like this, the end of the fast feast, that [url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23590938]unite all Muslims[/url] in peace and fellowship around the world.

But the end of the fast feast isn't just the end of our fast. It is a time for gorging to make up for the fasting that is now ended with the end of the fast feast.

This reminds me of time. Not the ordinary, profane, linear, secular time that can be [url=http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Most_accurate_atomic_clock_ever_built_could_redefine_the_second_999.html]measured by scientists[/url]; I'm talking about the more fuzzy, less well defined kind of time that I call "spiritual time." Ordinary time runs past, but spiritual time, being so much better than ordinary time, goes round and round and round in circles.

Even primitive people understood the need for spiritual time. When they were given a deadline by their leader to catch something to eat by sundown or they would all starve, they would reply, "Ah yes, but with the great wisdom of the noble savage, I am able to see beyond the confines of your simple, linear time, to a greater form of time that some great sage of the distant future (linear time) might choose to call 'spiritual time.' I will not be stressed by the arbitrary deadlines of such mundane temporal enslavement." Whereupon he was hit on the head and told to do as he was told.

Thus does the end of the fast feast, accompanied by my mobile phone playing the Nokia tune, invite us all to a great spiritual feast as well a great end of the fast feast.

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