an Eco-friendly Month

When I decided to do the 30day challenge, I had in mind always to make it "eco friendly".
So how does fasting, spiritual retreat and healthy eating relate to being eco friendly? Well, everything relates to everything.
What I mean by that is that:

1. by fasting-we are abstaining from food and material things. This is a time to CLEANSE our bodies as well as our mind and our environment. We should take the time to CLEAN our surroundings, donate extra items we no longer need and really look into what we have as we would like to experience a life of SIMPLICITY.

2. by doing a spiritual retreat-we are abstaining from DISTRACTIONS that sometimes take time away and make us use more things which we do not need. We can direct our time and efforts into giving more than receiving and this includes to animals, plants and the environment in general. Making a connection between God's words/instructions and what we can do to improve our life here on earth. Some people realize this connection very quickly and profoundly when their work has to do with nature because Nature is in God's hands. No matter how much you water a plant, God has the ultimate power to make it grow.

3. By eating healthier, we are eating more fruits and vegetables, trying to maybe compost the remains, plant their seeds, support local and organic farms and loosing weight, therefore gaining more energy to accomplish more.

Everything can be related to everything. So this concept helps when we want to accomplish a task but we have certain restrictions (time or money for example).

1. So while you drive, you can listen to a nice informative lecture
2. While you walk around the block, you can do remembrance of God (dhikr)
3. While you cook or clean, listen to some Quran or spiritual uplifting music/lectures

Or try other methods of "combining" so that you can accomplish much more each time you do something and it becomes more meaningful and perhaps you can start a new habit.

The reason why we have a 30day challenge is to encourage us to "try out" things which we thought were not possible to do and if we can maintain those for 30days, they can become part of our life and part of our daily habits.
-not everything is easy and can be maintained but if we push ourselves, we can definitely achieve ANYTHING we want in this life.

Having to do the challenge and remembering to be eco-friendly makes it much more special because we get an extra reward when we look to take care of this planet earth and we think of it as an "amana" or trust and we take the trust very seriously because God has provided us with all this beauty and we need to remember to leave it BETTER than when we first saw it....




Inshallah.