Happy New Year 2010 :)

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

Happy New Year 2010 to all my Brothers and Sister of every faith and race and creed around the world!  May God bless you all this year with health, happiness, wisdom, and love, so that we may better serve God by serving His creation.  I can think of no better resolution for the New Year than to try and live up to these true words:

Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Ya Haqq!

Happy New Year 2009!!

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

Happy New Year to all my Brothers and Sister of every faith and race and creed around the world!  May God bless you all this year with health, happiness, love and wisdom.  I can think of no better resolution for the New Year than to repeat this beautiful prayer.

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.
Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

- Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi
Ya Haqq!

It is Between You and God

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

“People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; be honest and frank anyway. What you spend years building, someone can destroy overnight; build anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, there may be jealousy; be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; give the world the best you’ve got anyway. You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; it was never between you and them anyway.”

- Kent Keith

These ten timeless principles were first articulated by the author when he was a student at Harvard in the nineteen sixties. Since then, they’ve traveled around the world and back again — usually with no attribution at all. They’ve been cited as an anonymous poem on more than eighty websites; appropriated as song lyrics; quoted in books and by business leaders; circulated by organizations from the Boy Scouts to the Special Olympics; and tacked to the wall of Mother Teresa’s children’s home in Calcutta. It is often attributed to her.

It was upon learning about this last appearance that Kent Keith was moved to put his commandments, the philosophy behind them, and the stories that bring them to life into this modern credo for living well, being happy, and doing good anyway.

Ya Haqq!

Grandpa Darvish – WooHoo!!

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

Alhamdulillah!  My son just called and told me I am going to be a grandfather :)  He and my beautiful daughter-in-law just returned from the doctor, who performed an ultrasound.  They will find out the gender in a few more weeks, but of course what matters most is a healthy baby. My wife is ecstatic :)

May God bless mother and father and child to come, with health, happiness, love, wisdom, and iman.

Ameen.

Ya Haqq!

Invoking God in Word and Deed

Salaam and Greetings of Peace:

The Path to Happiness:

There is neither strength nor power save in God Almighty. It is God we implore – and whose answer we await – to watch over you in this world and the next, to shower you with His graces, outwardly and inwardly, and to make you among those who, when blessed, give thanks; when tried, persevere; and when sinful, seek forgiveness. For these three conditions are tokens of the servant’s happiness [sa'adat al-abd], and the signs of his success in this world and the next. No servant is without them, but is always shifting from one to the other.

The first condition is the blessings which come to the servant from God (Most High), one after another. What secures them is gratitude [shukr], based on three supports: inward recognition of the blessing; outward mention and thanks for it; and its use in a way that pleases the One to whom it truly belongs and who truly bestows it. Acting thus, the servant shows his gratitude for the blessing-however brief.

The second is the trials from God (Most High) which test the Servant, whose duty therein is patience [sabr] and forbearance: to restrain himself from anger with what is decreed; to restrain his tongue from complaint; to restrain his limbs from offenses, such as striking one’s face in grief, rending one’s clothes, tearing one’s hair and like acts. Patience, then, rests on these three supports, and if the servant maintains them as he should, affliction will become benefaction, trial will change to bounty and what he disliked will become what he loves. For God (Exalted and Sublime) does not try the servant in order to destroy him. Rather, He tries him to put his patience and devotion (al-ubudiyay) to the test. For the servant owes devotion to God in affliction as in ease. He must have as much devotion in what he hates as in what he loves. And while most people offer devotion in what they love, it is important to do so in the things they hate. It is by this that servants’ ranks are distinguished and their stations determined.

Ablution with cold water in searing heat is devotion. Sexual relations with one’s beautiful and beloved spouse is devotion. Spending money for her, for one’s children and for oneself is devotion. It is devotion no less than ablution with cold water in the bitter cold; giving up vice to which one’s soul is driven without fear of people; and giving charity in hardship. But there is a great difference between the [two kinds] of devotion.

He who is God’s servant in both states, maintaining his duty in both comfort and adversity, is the one to whom His words refer, ‘Is not God sufficient for His servant?’ With complete devotion comes complete sufficiency, and with less comes what is less. Let him who discerns some good give praise to God, but let whoever finds something other than this blame no one but himself.

- Excerpt from Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya ‘s The Invocation of God.

- Originally posted in a longer version on (and with thanks to) the Mad Sufi blog.

Ya Haqq!