This is a week of fasts and feasts

MICHELE MARR

For Yusuf Gurtas, president of the Tolerance Foundation on Beach

Boulevard near Warner Avenue, and for millions of Muslims around the

world, Monday began the season of Ramadan, a 30-day period of

fasting, prayer and charity intended, according to the Quran, to

teach self-restraint.

The heart of Ramadan is self-sacrifice and fidelity to Allah. For

Gurtas it is a “unique opportunity to turn over a new page for the

rest of the year.”

It is, he said, “a reminder to slow down a bit...for reflecting

more about the balance between the life [now] and [in] the

hereafter.”

Muslims fast from food and water from sunrise to sunset during

Ramadan, rising before sun up for a meal called “suhoor” and breaking

their fast after sun down with a meal called “iftar.” But they fast

not only from food.

They practice fasting, or “sawm,” by also abstaining from all

things immoral or unethical, including lying, gossip, cursing and

backbiting. In charity, or “sakat,” they acknowledge even small human

deceits made in the course of commerce.

When teaching a class on the basics of Islam at the Tolerance

Foundation, Burak Aksoylu explains it like this: “Selling our wares

or our talents we sometimes practice deceit, however small. We

trumpet our tomatoes as the sweetest. We boast our skills are the

best.”

Providing charity to those less fortunate, Aksoylu says, purifies

earnings tainted by those deceptions.

“The way I see it, Ramadan is truly a gift from Allah to break the

monotony of our lives and initiate things that we don’t take the time

to do in the rest of the year,” said Gurtas.

* * *

For the Rev. Karen Wojan and the congregation at St. Wilfrid of

York Episcopal Church, Halloween, or All Saints’ Eve, ushers in the

celebration of one of seven of the church’s most important feasts,

All Saints’ Day, followed by the observance of All Souls’ Day.

“All Saints Day, is a time when you honor those who have died and

gone before, actually for honoring all saints living and dead, in the

sense of small-’s’ saints,” Wojan said. While All Souls Day, on Nov.

2, commemorates the souls of the faithful departed.

St. Wilfrid of York Episcopal Church moves All Saints’ Day,

celebrated by churches in the West on Nov. 1, to the Sunday following. “We call it All Saints’ Sunday,” Wojan explained. “We have

a beautiful altar cloth and we put on it the names of those who have

died in the lives of people in the parish.”

The parish incorporates some of the traditions of Dia de los

Muertos, or the Day of the Day, into their celebration, decorating

the church with gladiolas and marigolds and celebrating Holy

Communion with pan de muerto, or bread of the dead, a special bread

taken to the graves of loved ones in Mexico along with other foods

once favored by the dead.

“At the cemetery [those who celebrate Day of the Dead] have a

picnic,” Wojan said. “We modify that and our fourth- and fifth-grade

[students] bake the bread and we use that for Holy Communion on

Sunday. This year we’re [also] asking people to bring special

mementos or tokens that remind them of the particular person they are

wanting to honor and remember.”

Those mementos will be placed in the parish’s chapel during

Sunday’s worship service, then after the service, the members of the

church’s Sacred Dying Ministry will offer prayers and minister to

parish members who have lost a loved one during the past year.

“We live a culture that is truly death denying and we try to avoid

it as much as possible, so people are afraid of it,” said Wojan.

“What this does is to help remove some of that fear and recognize

that dying is part of living and it’s not the end for those of us who

are Christians; we believe in resurrection and eternal life.”

Wojan refers to the biblical Letter to the Hebrews that speaks of

believers on Earth being surrounded by “a great cloud of witnesses”

in Heaven cheering them on.

“[The saints who have gone before us] live in another dimension.

We think of heaven as up but it’s not up,” Wojan explained. “Just

because [our loved ones] have died, their bodies have died, does not

mean they don’t live on with God and that they don’t still love us

and we love them. Of course we remember them. One day we’ll join

them.”

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at [email protected].