It is reported by Abu Hurayrah that the Prophet (peace be upon him) once said,
Islam began as something strange, and will revert to being strange as it began, so give glad tidings to the strangers.
Narrated by Muslim (145)
Greetings Strangers,
I was born in California, but spent much of my childhood traveling with my family. On this tour I was struck by the world’s beauty. Some of it, man made, like the Taj Mahal in India. What I found most breath taking were the wonders of nature. A lightning storm over a primordial dessert in Arabia, the cherry blossom petals sprinkling down on the floating markets in Thailand, or snorkeling the coral reefs of the Maldives. But few places on Earth possess as much natural beauty as California, where the sun setting on the Bay Area always reminds me that God is a better painter than me.
Back home from this journey, I spent my adolescence as a stranger of one kind or another. I am realizing recently though that my sense of separation is not the result of uniqueness, but of a universal similarity. We can only be as alienated from each other as we are separated from our true self, and we can only be as alienated from our self as we are separated from nature.
Every Prophetic figure in human history sought solitude in nature. Siddhartha sat beneath the Bodhi Tree and returned as the Buddha. Muhammad retreated to the Cave of Hira and returned as the Prophet of Allah. Even our Secular figures did this. Thomas Jefferson built Monticello on the summit of the Southwest Mountains in Virginia where he wrote, “Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God.”
Glad tidings to you,
Davi Barker
SF - Muslim Examiner