Praise And Glorification Of God

Reflections and Meditation

While watching on a mountain top the awe-inspiring forms of the pine cedar and juniper trees and the tremendous spectacle they made, a gentle breeze blew. Since it transformed the scene into a magnificent, delightful and noisy display of dancing and a rapturous performance of praise and glorification of God, the enjoyment of watching it changed into watching for instruction and listening for wisdom. I suddenly recalled these lines of:

Blur Close-Up Girl Woman Hands Model Praying

Praise and Glorification of God

Everyone has hastened from all around to gaze at your beauty; they are putting on airs due to your beauty.

In order to express the meanings of the instruction it derived from the scene, my heart wept as follows:

Lord, all living creatures appear from everywhere on the earth which is a work of Your art, to gaze on You.

From above and below they emerge like heralds, and cry out.

In pleasure at the beauty of Your inscriptions, those herald-like trees are dancing.

Filled with delight at the perfection of Your art, they too are joyful and sing sweet melodies.

It is as if the sweetness of their melodies fills them with renewed joy and makes them sway coyly.

At last they have started dancing and are seeking ecstasy.

Through the work of Divine Mercy all living creatures receive instruction in the glorification and prayer particular to each.

After receiving instruction, each of the trees stands on a high rock and raises its head toward the Divine Throne.

Each like Shahbaz-i Kalender,[1] stretches out hundreds of hands to the Divine Court and takes up an imposing position of worship.

They are making their twigs curl like love-locks dancing, and they arouse in those who are watching them fine ardor and exalted pleasures.

As if their feelings were stirred up, they are singing touching love songs at a high pitch.

From it a meaning such as this comes to mind: They recall the weeping caused by the pain of the fading of metaphorical love-human love for the opposite sex-and deeply touching sighs.

They make heard the melancholy songs that lovers sing at the grave of their beloveds.

They seem to have a duty of making the eternal tunes and sorrowful voices heard by the dead who no longer hear worldly voices and words.

The spirit understands from this that things respond with glorification to the manifestation of the Majestic Maker’s Names; they perform a graceful chant.

The heart derives the meaning of Divine Unity from these trees each like an embodied verse from the exalted, miraculous composition. There is so wonderful an order, art, and wisdom in their creation, that if all the ‘natural causes’ in existence had the power and authority to do whatever they wished, and they gathered together in co-operation, they could not imitate them.

The soul on seeing them has the impression that the earth is revolving in a clamorous tumult of separation and seeks an enduring pleasure. It has received the meaning: ‘You will find it in abandoning adoration of the world.’

The mind discerns from such chanting of trees and animals and the cheering of plants and air, a most meaningful order of creation, inscriptions of wisdom, and treasury of secret truths. It concludes that everything glorifies the All-Majestic Maker in various ways.

The desirous soul receives such pleasure from the murmuring air and whispering leaves that, forgetting mundane pleasures, which are the basis of its life, wants to realize self-annihilation in this pleasure of truth.

The imagination beholds the scene as if their appointed angels were embodied in these trees from each of whose branches hang many flutes. It is as though the Eternal Monarch has clothed the angels in the trees for a magnificent parade to the sounds of thousands of flutes. Thus the trees show themselves to be not insentient, unconscious bodies but most conscious and meaningful.

The tunes produced through the flutes are pure and touching as if issuing from an elevated heavenly orchestra. The mind does not hear from them the sorrowful wails of separation that all lovers, including primarily Mawlana Jalal al-Din al-Rumi, hear, but the grateful thanks offered to the Ever-Living, Self-Subsistent One for His Mercy, and praises for His sustaining.

Since the trees have all become bodies, with all their leaves being tongues, at the touch of the breeze, each tree is repeating with its thousands of tongues the recitation of ‘He! He!’ As the glorification and praise of their lives they proclaim their Maker to be Ever-Living and Self-Subsistent.

Not only the trees but all things together form a universal circle to proclaim God’s Unity saying, ‘There is no deity but God,’ and perform their duties.

In the tongue of disposition they frequently declare ‘O God!’ and ask the necessities of their lives from Him, from the treasury of Mercy. And through the tongue of being favored with life, all of them together continuously recite His Name, ‘O Ever-Living One!’

Ever-Living, O Self-Subsistent One! For the sake of Your Names, the Ever-Living and Self-Subsistent, endow this wretched heart (of mine) with life, and show this confused mind the right direction. Amen.

By Bediuzzaman Said Nursi


[1] Shahbaz-i Kalender was a famous hero who through the guidance of ‘Abd al-Qa-dir al-Jilani took refuge at the Divine Court and attained to the degree of sainthood.

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