Fasting

When Aatif Sharieff was growing up in a Maryland suburb, none of the other kids in his elementary school knew about Ramadan. Each year, as the Muslim month of fasting came around, Sharieff had to explain to fellow students why he couldn't eat lunch with them or drink from the water fountain. "Everybody would ask," he recalls. "It became like a broken record, 'I'm fasting, I'm spiritual.' " These days, Sharieff finds himself explaining to Muslims and non-Muslims alike why he no longer observes the traditional dawn-to-dusk fast.

A basketball injury sidelined 39-year-old pastor Kerwin Manning in fall 2004. At 210 pounds, he had a less than ideal diet heavy on fatty and fast foods. Instead of packing on more pounds, he decided to take some off, via a 40-day, water-only fast. Although a fast is radical and potentially risky (it should be undertaken only while in a physician's care), the extreme measure was just the impetus Manning needed.

Plagued by gang violence for years, the city of Salinas has taken the standard approaches: beefed-up police patrols, court injunctions, parenting classes, high-minded gatherings of experts. But with more gang-related homicides so far this year than in all of 2007, officials in the agricultural city south of San Jose have started thinking more unconventionally. A few months ago, they sought the help of the city's grandmothers to keep kids out of gangs.

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors spent hours each day searching for food that was only intermittently available. They'd fast, and then they'd feast. These ancient humans developed a "thrifty" genotype that helped them adapt to these cycles of want and plenty.

As the sun slowly descended toward the Pacific, Amin Momand watched it set, and half his teammates watched him watching it. It was an early October team dinner the night before a Palos Verdes High School football game. But Amin, a starting defensive end for the Sea Kings, couldn't eat -- couldn't even grab a sip of water -- until the sun disappeared. When darkness finally came and he took a drink, there was a communal sigh of relief. Some teammates applauded.

Thanks to an unusual overlapping of Western and lunar calendars, Ash Wednesday and Chinese New Year will both be observed today -- the first of two calendar coincidences in 2005. In December, Hanukkah will begin at sundown Christmas Day. The Chinese New Year is a time of celebration, while Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, a period of penitence. Cardinal Roger M.

Nine-year-old Danya Maryam Aleem sat among her classmates at New Horizon School-Los Angeles a few days after the start of the holy month of Ramadan. The third- and fourth-graders had just finished praying, and now they began their lesson in Islamic studies with school Principal Shahida Alikhan. Like 8-year-old classmate Kevin Karidjan, Danya was one of a handful of youngsters who proudly wore stickers on their blue school shirts.

A pastor is calling for divine intervention by asking fellow Christians to fast for 12 hours each day for three weeks and pray to end a surge in homicides. "We need to have some preventive prayer," said Bob Jackson of Acts Full Gospel Church. Jackson said he is asking fellow clergy to tell their communities Sunday to go without solid food for 21 days, beginning Monday, between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m.