1 post tagged “ramadan”
Every time this year, my birthday rolls around with its requisite thoughts. On a good year (when I don't make poor decisions about my attitude), I get to think about how fortunately placed my birthday is.
It wasn't really supposed to happen when it did. I was born about a month premature (supposed to be a Halloween baby), and as best I've been able to put together, I gave my parents a bit of a worry for the first year or two.
It's worked out rather well... I was born on my Dad's birthday, so I get an easy way to remember when to call Dad with birthday wishes. With my brother Kevin coming on Oct 4th two years after I did, it was pretty easy to keep track of things. (Plus a triple birthday celebration to start off October.)
There's some more general niceties as well.
Being born in early October puts your birthday in an interesting place in the Jewish and Muslim lunar calendars. The way things tend to shake out, my birthday's usually within a month of the Jewish High Holidays (Rosh Hashona and Yom Kippur) and the Muslim fast of Ramadan. Christian folk like myself may tend to save our holiday devotions for our local Thanksgiving or for Christmas, but I'm glad to have been born in the general area of what I consider to be the most holy time of the year (what with two major world religions holding some of their most important celebrations, even though they aren't my own).
So before moving on (and because I'd planned to write about the holidays in their own post and probably won't now), I just want to take a minute to remember Yahweh granting us this new year and time as we begin it to reflect on our sins, make things right, and atone, and begin our year as new souls. Let's also remember Allah granting his word to the prophet, to guide us through the desert of life to salvation.
As if being surrounded by holy days weren't enough, another gift came round. The Berlin wall started falling in late 1989, and Germany became a single, unified country again on October 3, 1990. As a 3rd generation German American who's never been able to speak the language, there are only so many times I feel connected with the land of my forebears. Each year on my birthday I get this one.
