Days of Ridvan in the Twin Cities

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Recently my friend David Sterling, Coordinator of the Annual Holy Days/Holidays Festival at the Mall of America, told me about a his celebration of the Days of Ridvan.  This is a sacred celebration for Baha’i around the world, a period to reconnect with the spiritual things of life and the holy bonds of family, friendship, and shared humanity.  He shared one of the events with me:

Today is a Baha’i holy day, the 12^th Day of Ridvan, the final day of the 12 Day Festival of Ridvan. On the first of those 12 days Baha’u’llah declared His mission, the holiest of all Baha’i holy days. On the ninth day His family joined Him in the Ridvan Garden in Baghdad and on the twelfth day He and His family left Baghdad being exiled to Constantinople. These three days, the 1^st, 9^th and 12^th Days of Ridvan are all holy days where we are asked to abstain from work and school. Wikipedia has a good description of the Garden of Ridvan. There is a second Ridvan Garden in Acre, Israel, recently restored to the time of Baha’u’llah’s visits there.

Our fund raiser raised over $700 for the National Baha’i Fund. This was only one of several such fund raisers in our Twin Cities metro area and in other Baha’i communities across the nation. Only Baha’is can contribute to any of the Baha’i funds whether they are for local, national, international, for special projects, etc. Any other offers to contribute (from outside the Faith) are politely refused.

For our fund raiser in my home after welcoming our dinner guests I read a fund raising story about the Baha’is in Germany after the end of WWII. I chose this story from among several in a collection of fund stories because I was born during the early months of the U.S. entering WWII, Mary Jo, my wife, was born at the end of that war, she and I are both of German descent and it is the Baha’i promise of world peace (and the plan of how to achieve that peace) that brought me to become a Baha’i. After reading the fund story I told our guests of your art glass project, the fact that your gift of your sculptural depiction of the Wellspring of Peace (As-Salam) had arrived earlier that same day and then I brought it into the room from our front porch placing it in the center of the dinning room table. There was considerable interest in your entire 99 Names of Allah art glass project.

Following is the German fund story I read to our guests that day:

“World War II had just come to an end. The scattered German Baha’is were coming together again in West Germany and trying to organize their affairs. They had been living under great pressure during the Nazi regime; the Faith had been banned, Baha’is were not allowed to meet or speak about their beliefs and Baha’i literature had been confiscated. Now that freedom had been restored, the Baha’is realized that the thing they needed most was Baha’i books and pamphlets. Unfortunately, neither printing paper nor ink was to be found in the country in those days.

“People did not even have enough food, and the Baha’is were in the same situation as everyone else. The pre-war German currency had become worthless overnight, and even those who had the money could buy nothing with it.

“The American believers began sending food parcels to their Baha’i brothers and sisters in Germany, often working overtime at odd jobs themselves to be able to afford the gift. The German Baha’is, however, decided that they would rather sacrifice the precious foodstuff that was sent to them if they could receive printing paper and ink instead. This is how they were able to start bringing out Baha’i literature during those difficult times.

“Another project which the German Baha’is undertook right after the war was building a National Baha’i Centre in Frankfurt. The *Guardian asked them to do this and they were not going to disappoint him, no matter how great the sacrifice they had to make.

“The Baha’is of Stuttgart gathered contributions for the Centre in a special way. They made little black cloth bags and each member of the community always carried one of these in his or her pocket. Every single penny which could be spared went into this bag. Baha’is economized in every way possible to save for the Fund. They walked instead of taking the bus, they collected money returning green stamps they received with certain foodstuffs and by deposits they got for their empty bottles. Penny by penny the filled their bags and emptied them out on each Nineteen Day Feast.

“Of the many thousands of people who have visited the Baha’i Centre in Frankfurt, there are probably very few who realize with what tremendous sacrifice it was built.”

*Shoghi Effendi, great-grandson of Baha’u’llah (1817-1892) [Prophet Founder of the Baha’i Faith] was Guardian of the international Baha’i community at this time.

Gardens are a symbol of the felicity, diversity, beauty, and limitless bounty in heaven, and gardens are an enduring symbol of the Baha’i world view; whatever our faith, this is a symbol we may share.  “The world is our country, and we are all it’s citizens.”

All mankind are flowers in a great garden.  If all the flowers were the same color, it would be dull and boring.  But if there’s diversity, there’s greater beauty.

–Robert Weinberg, Director, Office of Public Information, World Baha’i Center

Building Reliever

Reliever (Al-Basit)

Wherever water flows, life flourishes:

wherever tears fall, Divine mercy is shown.

–Rumi (Mathnawi 1:817-820, tr. Helminski)

In desert environments, water sources are treasures and oases are havens.  I tried imagining the terrifying hopelessness of being lost in an endless wasteland of burning sand, then the utter relief of topping a small rise and discovering a beckoning pool of cool water.  I’m more familiar with the imagery of the woman at the well in the New Testament, offered the Living Water by Christ; the stark contrast between the harsh and unforgiving landscape of hopelessness and the utter relief of a saving oasis gives this metaphor many more layers of depth and meaning.

The woman is looking for truth, and Christ delivers it; all of us are looking for a path to free us from the pains and heartache of day-to-day living and the consequences of our own poor decisions, and Al-Basit delivers.  Rumi’s reflection shows the readiness of our Creator to deliver, “wherever tears fall, Divine mercy is shown.”

What kind of relief is given, how is the mercy shown?  Visiting with Imams and other Muslim friends, there is an undercurrent of an idea informing the Muslim view of adversity which ties directly to an appreciation for God as Opener, Al-Fattah.  Yes, miserable things can happen – we lose a job, a family member passes, we get sick – however, every door that is closed in our life gives opportunity for another door to open.  And this new door opening is exactly what we need at that moment.  This concept enriches our understanding of Al-Basit because it helps us understand that Divine Relief is not just to ease pain and cool the burning, but is actively opening new and positive opportunities of experience and growth.  The relief is an active and energetic healing, as if after an operation the doctor says, “Not only will this fix your old illness, but now you can do all these new things, too.”

For this sculpture I was drawn to medicine cabinets and oases.  The back of the cabinet is etched with a stylized acanthus leaf.  Much of the Western United States was settled by pioneers kicked out of every decent place back East and overseas, so families with all their meager worldly possessions and supplies crossed vast reaches of harsh, unrelenting landscape with no hope in sight.  When a stand of cottonwoods was seen in the distance, it was taken as a sign of Divine Providence because the cottonwoods marked a much-needed water source.  The acanthus leaf is also an ancient symbol associated with Divine Benevolence.  In the Arabian Peninsula where Mohamed was born, no natural open water source remains all year round; the acanthus grows above water sheltered by a layer of sand, so a traveller parched and dying of thirst saw the acanthus as a sign that his Creator was mindful of his dire situation and wanted him to live.

A seven-pointed star is also etched into the back.  This particular star is shared by many faith cultures, and also resonates through the ancient sciences.  For alchemists, the heptagram represented the seven heavenly bodies, the seven metals, the seven energy centers of the human body (many Eastern cultures referred to these as chakras) and other sets describing the functioning of the observable world.  One point I particularly enjoyed learning is while Western alchemists used changing base matter into gold as a metaphor for personal growth and development, Muslim alchemists also saw as the ultimate goal of their work to produce the Panacea, or the perfect medicine to heal all ills.  The vial contains burn ointment, which I made with alchemical techniques using a medieval recipe, and sealed with beeswax.

The date palms on the floor of the cabinet represent a cooling oasis filled with the Living Water, and the doors and sides are covered with stylized floral imagery to remind us of the vibrant growth and bounty in Paradise.  Originating from within a desert environment, this kind of vegetal imagery used in Islamic work even further underscores the rich, endless vitality of Heaven.  The door pulls are brass beads looking like petroglyphs of the sun.  Whenever I think of how to symbolize the true timelessness of Divine things I realize the futility – how to appropriately express that God and His works are before and throughout all time, that time as we appreciate it has no bearing for an Infinite Being?  Seeing petroglyphs around the world fills me with a sense of my own mortality, and makes me aware that however important I think my life may be, it will be less than a mere blink in the history of the universe (and God is still aware of it!) – using the petroglyphs doesn’t do justice to the timeless nature of Divinity, but alludes to it.

Burn ointment and an oasis – what every wandering soul needs to find relief.

Woman at the Well, Carl Bloch (Detail)
Image from Wikimedia Commons

Building Greatest

Greatest (Al-Mutakabbir)

Photography by Hawkinson Photography

How long ago did we humans first begin gazing at the stars?  There are at least 100 hundred thousand million stars in our galaxy alone, and at least the same number of galaxies in the universe.  Each of these stars has life cycles from millions to billions of years.  And all this was created for us to enjoy.

Hubble View of the Milky Way
Image from Wikimedia Commons

These were the thoughts coming into my head as I was reading about and contemplating Al Mutakabbir, The Greatest.  How did my ancestors react when they began to appreciate the heavens and the stars?  A lot of work went into making structures like Stonehenge and Teotihuacan, and building their components to line up and celebrate the cycles of the heavens.  There is a wealth of symbolism and story as the ancients of many cultures recorded their astrological and astronomical observations, cataloged the effects stars and their emanations have on terrestrial existence, and theorized regarding their findings.

The structure used is a dodecahedron, the Platonic solid representing the fundamental medium of existence, aether, or quiddity.  I then layered alchemical and allegorical symbols representing the role the stars, the constellations, and their associated emanations have in our lives and etched them onto the inner surface of each face.  Around the rim of each facet are etched petroglyph-style depictions of the sun, stars, and cycles of the moon.  Pigments of purple and blue to suggest the rich indigo of the night sky were mixed, then painted on each panel after etching the surface and protecting points representing the stars of twelve zodiac constellations as would be seen from the inside of the structure.  As I was etching, painting, and tying the pieces, I tried to imagine and appreciate the wonder people through the ages have felt as they were lost in the night sky.

I found three wonderful quotes from others who had very similar thoughts:

God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.

–Martin Luther

God who is eternally complete, who directs the stars, who is the master of fates, who elevates man from his lowliness to Himself, who speaks from the cosmos to every single human soul, is the most brilliant manifestation of the goal of perfection.

–Alfred Adler

And perhaps my favorite:

Look out into the universe and contemplate the glory of God.  Observe the stars, millions of them, twinkling in the night sky, all with a message of unity, part of the very nature of God.

–Sai Baba

(All quotes found on Brainyquote.com)

Swan Nebula
Image from Wikimedia Commons
This and other images may be found at European Southern Observatory

It is simply impossible to comprehend how ancient and vast the universe is.  It is astounding to contemplate how all this was made for humans, unique among the thinking creatures.  And it is amazing to know God has pinned such marvelous hopes in us, beings made of mere clay.

Building Compeller

Compeller (Al-Jabbar)

Photography by Hawkinson Photography

In the Windows of Dzyan exhibit, I had made a few sculptures reflecting on what I was learning about Islam, but felt a more systematic approach was needed (for an introduction to the 99 Names Project please go here).  After weeks of studying different avenues which could provide a “spine” for the project, I realized I kept coming back to the 99 Most Beautiful Names of Allah.  That would make for a huge number of sculptures, but the intimate scale of each work made it seem more manageable.  I went online and looked at various sources for reference on the 99Names, being careful to find sites written by practicing Muslims and verifying what I was learning through conversations with Muslim friends and clergy.  Director Virginia Gray-Henry of Fons Vitae Publishing recommended one of her titles, The Name and the Named, as well as giving me advice on how to explore other faiths with respect and civility.

In each of a set of four sketchbooks, I wrote 25 Names referencing the list from Sufism.org.  One of the first things I learned is that there are a number of different traditions of 99 Names which overlap greatly, with subtle differences.  I also learned very quickly that the Names are not names like we would think to use in calling to each other, but are eternal, timeless Attributes.  There is also the appreciation that God is and infinite Being, and the 99 Names are only an “index” of the Divine Attributes.  For each “Name”, there is an understanding that God is the Beginning, End, Ideal, and Perfect Example of each Attribute, along with an awareness that in each Name we are only glimpsing a tiny portion of its fullness.

I drew sketches for each Name, read in the Qur’an and other books regarding what Muslims thought about the Names, and found corresponding ideas in Christian scripture and from Christian luminaries.  The point was not to “prove” to Muslims that I “got it”, but rather to find what resonated within me and give that particular frequency a form.  The first sculpture that really started to coalesce was Compeller (Al-Jabbar).

Each of us, I believe, have a specific purpose or point to our creation.  Our “job” is to discover what that purpose is.  This idea echoed around inside my head, alongside other English translations of Al-Jabbar – Restorer, Repairer, Irresistible.  If each of us have a point to our being here the Creator will find a way to lead us to it, unless we are completely unwilling.  And the journey for some of us, it seems, is much longer than for others.

It dawned on me that a perfect example of the mixture of these concepts was the life of the Prophet Jonah.  He was given a mission, to preach to the people of Nineveh:

Now the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.

–Jonah 1:1,2

This was his purpose; but he ran away.  He got into the first boat he could find and took off, trying to go as far as he could.  After realizing his selfishness was jeopardizing the safety of the vessel’s crew, he had them toss him into the sea and he took a trip back to land in a whale’s stomach.  Finally he got to Nineveh, did his duty as he saw it, and waited for the city to be destroyed; through a series of teaching moments, Jonah finally learned his path, accepted it, and the city was saved.  All sorts of things happened to Jonah to help him discover his purpose, and in the end the things that drove him restored his commitment to his faith and made him a complete person.

The sculpture is a reflection on the story of Jonah.  The shape is an Icosahedron, the Platonic solid that symbolizes the element of water – because Jonah’s first thought was to flee across the sea, water in my mind became symbolic of his journey to and that God’s awareness of us is entirely undiminished over time or distance of any sort.  In the center of the shape is an orange and yellow gourd, which reminds me that in the midst of our journeys or attempts to “escape” Divine Will remains the comfort of Divine Love.  Surrounding the gourd are seven antique fish, representing the traditional Seven Seas.

The glass used is GNA or German New Antique, a beautifully pure glass with a slight variation in surface texture reminiscent of the brush strokes which come from a glass worker brushing a freshly blown cylinder of glass flat.  A friend who is a rare book conservator shared with me traditional knots and materials common to medieval bookbinding, so the 20 panels of glass are sewn together using hemp and traditional knots – a reference to the importance of the Qur’an to Muslims.  Each of the holes in the glass panels are drilled with a rotary tool and lined with a scrapbooking eyelet, and the sculpture is built to the height of 11 1/4″.  This height is for three reasons, which remain consistent through the whole project.  First, the process of contextualizing and learning another’s path of faith must by its nature be personal and intimate, and I wanted viewers to participate in my personal journey.  Second, the sculpture height is five eighths of my cubit – the cubit or distance between tip of the longest finger and elbow was the traditional measurement of sacred building in many scriptures, and the five and eight refer to the Five Pillars of Islam and the eight points of the Compassionate Breath star, or the eight angels which will carry God’s throne at the final Judgment (Qur’an 69:17).   And finally, the height is symbolic of the first Qur’an I received and began to read with an understanding heart.

I did a number of color tests to come up with several shades of blue, and I drew several different patterns based on Islamic organic floral patterns from around the world and several time periods; Islam is a universal religion applying to all, and I started generating designs to reflect this cross-cultural and timeless nature of the faith using cosmology of design and mixing cultural indicators rather than copying any specific patterns.  I beveled the triangles on a flat-bed grinding wheel, holding the pieces and praying the angles were right so the structure would hold together and support itself when tied.  Drilling the holes really sucked.  When I started, I was able to get the glass to avoid breaking seven out of eight times; with 24 holes in each of the 20 panels, I ended up making over 35 panels in order to get twenty to survive!  The paint is a mixture of mason stain and finely powdered glass, an entirely unconventional mix for glass workers (because mason stain won’t fuse directly to the glass) which reticulates beautifully and gives a certain water color affect reminiscent of manuscript illuminations.

Something I learned – when working with gourds, make certain they are completely dry before including them in any sort of long-term project.  If not, be warned that the smell is astounding.

The prophets, those amazing men and women of scripture, exemplify to me much of what this Name eludes to.  They were people just like anyone else, but were compelled by the natures of their callings to push beyond their comfort zones and frailties to become astounding figures, earth-bound angels called to perform as agents of the Divine Will for others.  If someone like Jonah can do the job he had, then others can, too, like Mother Teresa, Gandhi, and Fethullah Gulen – and the rest of us.

Interesting note.  While doing research working on the 99 Names Project I learned something else about Divine Names.  When Jesus gave his last mortal prayer, he called God “Eloi” (Mark 15:34).  Speaking with several ancient scripture language experts, I discovered that “Allah” is the Arabic spelling of the Aramaic “Eloi”, the same word for God which Jesus used.  Learning the different Names of Allah have helped me discover different facets of Divinity which echo across all faith paths, and rather than diluting my belief enriches it.

And as a Christian, I figure if it’s good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me.

Jonah at Nineveh, Rembrandt (Detail)
Image from Wikimedia Commons

Pages of the Knower

Cover

Number

Little, Big

The Four Humours

The Alchemical Marriage

The Council of Birds

Writing

Seven Sacred Grains

The Heavenly City

Faith and Reason

Engineering

Cartography

The Stars Above

Pages of the Knower

Photography by Hawkinson Photography

When I started Knower, the thought that kept returning to mind was to make something symbolizing the ability of transmission.  The ageless saying ‘Knowledge is power’ also buzzed between my ears endlessly.  I started thinking about ways to transmit knowledge and those aspects of knowledge which ‘stand’ behind everything – the hidden information, as it were, that governs how things are.

Many cultures have story tellers and teachers who share vital information about the history of the culture, why things happen the way they do, and what governs our sense of reality.  In some cultures this is transmitted orally and in others this is written; since the most important source of this kind of information for Muslims is the Qur’an, the symbol of a book felt appropriate for this sculpture.  Binding it with a traditional medieval knot-tying technique, modified for glass, was also important.  I felt it needed to feel displaced in time, to give a sense that the knowledge being represented is also outside of time, or unbounded by time’s constraints.

The shape was derived from visiting with a couple experts on cross-cultural aesthetics.  It is based on the Golden Section, a 1:1.618 ratio rectangle; Dr. Scott Olsen, an expert on what is called the Phi ratio, said that one of the things eerily consistent across all cultures is the way we gravitate to this ratio in art.  Dr. Lisa DeLong, an expert on Muslim art at The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts in the UK, said the awareness of this ratio governed much of the traditional Muslim aesthetic.  The pages of the book are Golden Section rectangles, and I used my observations of how hand-made copies of the Qur’an are laid out to guide where the elements were placed on each page.

The number of pages was a bit more problematic.  With one page representing an aspect of knowledge and God being the Knower of All, this would lead to an infinite number of pages which in turn would take quite a long time to put together.  I settled on thirteen for a couple reasons.  This is the number of lunar months in the year, a month reflective of the awareness of life, its processes, and its interconnectivity.  Also, thirteen is five plus eight; five is the number of ‘ The Pillars of Faith‘ in Islam (Declaration of Faith, Prayer five times a day, Fasting during Ramadan, the Paying of Tithes, and the once-in-a-lifetime commitment to travel on Hajj to Mecca) and eight represents the bridge between Heaven and Earth of the Qur’an.  In architecture, an octagon is typically used to bridge the cube of the earth-bound structure with the circular, heavens-reaching dome, and the eight-sided figure can be found in both Christian and Muslim art reflecting the awareness of the metaphorical ‘bridge’ between humanity and God (this ‘bridge’ being Jesus for Christians and the Qur’an for Muslims).  In the Qur’an, eight is also the number of angels who will carry God’s throne at the last judgment – a reminder for Muslims of personal responsibility.

About twenty different page ideas were explored.  I thought the Trivium and Quadrivium of traditional schooling would be good, then I thought of all the different paths of knowledge we study, and finally it felt appropriate to narrow the pages down to how we, as humans, observe the construction of the universe.  Not how we  believe the universe was made, but how we perceive the evidences of God’s hand in everything.  So the pages, more or less, tell the metaphysical story of creation and the universe.  Each page has a passage from the Qur’an, and a complementary passage from another book of scripture, etched in the languages they were written.

Cover.  The cover page is from tile patterns at the Alhambra, the elegantly astounding symbol of Moorish Spain.  This society was the most egalitarian Europe had ever seen, with at one point a Jewish doctor being the court-appointed Surgeon General to the Muslim Caliph.  The front is a geometric pattern, and the back uses an interlacing of organic forms; this dichotomy of structure and freedom reflects the Muslim understanding that freedom exists most expansively when seated within Divine law.  One Imam told me this concept is like flying a kite:  The kite (a human soul) will go as high as the sky when the string (the Commandments) is used, but when the string is cut the kite will come crashing down.

The Heavenly City.  The City of Heaven, described by both Paul and John in the New Testament.  An expert on the Taj Mahal told me that it is believed the Mughal (Indian Muslim) emperor who built it based the floor plan on Paul’s vision from a copy of the New Testament the emperor owned.  This diagram has been used by Jewish, Christian, and Muslim artists for centuries as they seek to understand Divine concepts of balance, order, and governance.

Faith and Reason.  Mohamed challenged the spiritual understanding of those who followed scripture like ‘dogs’ (meaning only with the heart) or like ‘monkeys’ (meaning only with the mind).  The Divine gift of reason helps us to function as human beings in society and order our thoughts; the Divine gift of faith draws our hearts closer to the true purpose of existence.  Each without the other is unbalanced, and both are Divine gifts – when used together, reason is tempered with faith and faith is balanced with reason.  God made us with both capacities so we can use them both, and learn through the process.

The Council of Birds.  A Persian poet said that, of all the animals on earth birds are closest to humans; the difference is that our wings are wings of spirit.  Farid ud-Din Attar wrote an epic poem describing the search for enlightenment by a council of all the world’s birds.  Thirty representatives were selected, and they spent many, many years traveling across mystical landscapes in their quest to find enlightenment.  At the end of their journey, they came to the reflective pool of the Simourgh (Persian for phoenix), and seeing themselves transformed the Simourgh appeared.  The center is a Phoenix, done in a Persian style and as a petroglyph, and this is surrounded by thirty birds drawn naturalistically (for the species mentioned on the quest in Farid ud-Din Attar’s poem) and in the style of cave carvings, petroglyphs, and rock art from around the world.

Number.  The red star is made of the even numbers two through twelve, and the star behind it is made of the odd numbers one through thirteen.  As humans we use number to describe, catalog, and correlate what we see, and Westerners owe a large portion of our understanding of numbers to the Muslims who transmitted their appreciation of all things math.  In the book the Wisdom of Solomon, it states that God constructed all things through measure, weight and number, and this view of the universe resonates through every culture giving number a certain reverence and mystical weight.

Little, Big.  An ancient Hindu saying is, ‘The wisdom of all the universe is contained in a single grain of sand.’  All things relate to all, and the Creator is mindful of the smallest particle in the midst of governing the orbits of galaxies.  This is a model of the smallest discovered sub-atomic structure and a map of the milky way, and serves as a reminder that the Creator of All is also intimately aware of our own personal situations.

The Stars Above.  There is an ancient phrase, ‘As Above So Below.’  This is a reminder of our interconnection as elements of Creation, but also is a reference to the idea that stars and the heavens are there to guide us in our activities, and that our souls are designed to reflect the Celestial balance and music of the heavens.  This is what led the Magi to the Christ child, and what drove Johannes Kepler to discover the laws of planetary motion, trying to find that peculiar resonance which links humanity to the heavens.  This is based on the astrolabe – Muslims were masters of astrolabe design and construction, because it was always a priority to find where they were in relation to the stars.

Seven Sacred Grains.  The ability to cultivate food and provide for ourselves is linked to our human identity.  In the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), the first humans were commanded to till the earth, and these seven cultivated grains (amaranth, barley, corn, oats, rice, rye and wheat) are the things that made survival, and civilization, possible all across the world, from the dawn of humankind.

Writing.  One story holds that Adam, seeing bird tracks across wet sand, had the inspiration to begin writing.  This is a calligrapher’s layout grid, with the first and last letters of the alphabet in the center.  The grid is filled in with the most ancient symbols for God, sacredness, and peace, intermixed with the footprints of birds native to the Arabian peninsula.

The Four Humours.  From the most ancient of times, medicine has been a mystical profession.  Imhotep, the famous Egyptian architect and doctor, wrote the oldest treatise on medical treatments – providing a model still in use by doctors today.  Musim health professionals derived treatments for their patients which treated not just the symptoms, but the whole person, often calling for change in diet, environment, and religious habits, designed to make the entire person healthy, happy, and well.

Cartography.  Muslims were masters of map making, it was vital to always know the direction of Mecca.  Mecca held the symbols of God’s concern and love for mankind; by always being aware our current position in relation to these symbol’s of God’s love, in one sense we are always keeping God in the center of our life.

Engineering.  Learning how things fit together is something we identify as being human – when another animal does it, we always see this as a ‘human’ trait.  This is wonderful in building things designed to make life easier and more beneficial, but also helps us in our awareness that all things fit and interlace together, that everything we do ripples across the pond of existence and impacts others in ways we can’t comprehend.

The Alchemical Marriage.  This is the marriage of balance, or yin with yang.  The cold would never be cold without the hot, and the sweet would be impossible to enjoy without awareness of the bitter.  These are not opposites in the sense that they are inimical to each other, but rather are sides of the same page or coin – one cannot be fully realized without the other, and creation happens in the energetic tension between them.  Our unique position as thinking creatures leads us to find the balance, as we walk the path using the gifts of both faith and reason.

19-Knower

19-Knower

Al-’Alim

Al-’Alim from Sufism.org

19-Knower (Al-’Alim)

Etched, painted, and fired glass sewn with hemp

2012

All truth is circumscribed in one great whole.  Regardless of the language of transmission, truth is truth and must be respected–not just because of its inherent value, but because all truth is also a testament of its Source.  Throughout the world’s history, the same metals have been discovered, the same planets have been charted in the heavens, and the same desire to unite with mankind’s Creator have revealed itself in worship, always in the language and to the understanding of the supplicant.  Every path of faith echoes the sentiment:  Ask and it shall be given, knock and it shall be opened.  The earnest and honest prayer of the pure in heart will always be answered truthfully, for the Knower of all Truth is Eternal and Unchanging.  (Panels touch on the perfect City of Heaven, the wedding of reason and inspiration, the mystical Council of Birds, number, the greatest and the least, astronomy, agriculture, writing, medicine, cartography, engineering, and the Eternal balance of all things)

Photography by Hawkinson Photography

Calligraphy by Sufism.org

 

Beginning the 99 Names Project: Introduction (Part 3 of 5)

 

Transparency for Merciful (Ar-Rahim)

99 Names Project Introduction (Part 3)

The rules for construction are governed by three considerations:  geometry, the book arts, and architectural detail.  In Islam there is an awareness that all truth comes from the same Ultimate Source, even if we may not understand the language of transmission or how different truths may mesh together.  In the New Testament, God decrees, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you” (Matthew 7:7)–this leads to the awareness that, regardless of who or where in the world the earnest seeker for truth may be, the Creator will answer heartfelt, honest questions to the best understanding of the seeker.  Math and physical principles are the same regardless of the language of transmission, so geometry became the symbol for this relationship with truth.  The sculptures are designed using principles of hermetic construction, and drawn with a straight-edge and a set of compasses.  Muslims translated many works of ancient scholars and preserved them in their libraries regardless of differences in personal philosophy; Greek and Roman principles of proportion and symmetry, reflected through the use of Platonic and Archimedean solids and the Golden Section in the 99 Names sculptures, have historically informed the tremendous volume of work produced by Muslim artists and designers.

The book arts are an important consideration for the construction of the sculptures in the series because of the vitality of the written word in Islam.  In my own Christian tradition, the Word or Logos of God “was made flesh, and dwelt among us (John 1:14)” in the Divine Body of Christ.  In Muslim theology, the Qur’an is literally the Word of God; Christ for Christians is the bridge between humans and heaven, and in Islam this bridge is the Holy Qur’an.  As in the West all figurative art is respected and on some level is a symbol of the Divine Body of Christ, in Islam all books arts are respected and on some level are a symbol for the Holy Qur’an.  An Imam shared with me that all books should be treated reverently and with respect for two reasons:  first, all books represent intelligent transmission of knowledge, which is in itself a Divine gift; second, all books recall to mind the most sacred of books, the Qur’an.  Being unfamiliar with the high points of calligraphy, the sculptures reflect my experience with book construction and bookbinding from my training by a medieval and rare books conservator.  The physical construction uses book forms and hemp thread, consistent with traditional binding techniques.

The third consideration is an awareness of architectural form.  Each sculpture is built while picturing it in a sacred space, keeping images of shelter constantly in my mind.  The Abrahamic traditions share an undercurrent of the need to physically construct the Kingdom of Heaven–Jews with Zion, Christians with the Community of Christ–and Muslims also have a history of building significant spiritual structures for universal use.  The Dome of the Rock was built for all the Abrahamic traditions to use, and the earliest mosques in Medina were built to be a shared worship structure for Jews, Christians, and Zoastrians alike.  In visiting with many Muslim families, I have been told over and over that a Muslim‘s responsibility is to build in their own lives a reflection of what they think Heaven will be–a happy home life and a positive legacy of lasting constructive impact.  This drive to not passively wait for perfection, but to take a hand in building it is shared among many faiths, with a common refrain being, “be the change you wish to see.”

Initially, the size of the sculptures was going to reflect the personal exploration taking place by being the height of the traditional ideal form–six feet.  Immediately I felt this was impractical at best, so although the consideration remains in the back of my mind while building (I would love to transpose the sculptures into a larger format some day), the height of the works are much more intimate and personal.  In the Old Testament, the Ark of the Covenant is built based on the cubit–a very personal measurement described as the distance between the point of the elbow and the tip of the middle finger.  Among other things, this unique and intimate standard of measure was referenced in the Apostle John’s later use of the word logos, and reflects the deeply personal nature of an individual’s relationship with the Divine.  In Islam the numbers five (the Five Pillars of Islam) and eight (eight angels will carry God’s throne at the Last Judgment) are particularly significant, so I used a measurement of five-eighths of my own cubit for the consistent height of the sculptures in the 99 Names series, which is about eleven and a quarter inches.  This also corresponds closely to the height of my personal copy of the Qur’an, which seemed appropriate.

The pattern of construction has remained fairly consistent.  The Names are divided into four groups of twenty five, using the Mevlevi Sufi list of Names as translated by The Threshold Sufi Society, found at Sufism.org.  This was the first organization that responded to my outreach, and which gave me a blessing for the endeavor.  Many other organizations and individuals have since responded in a similar and very supportive manner, but The Threshold Society was the first.  As I begin, I meditate on the Names, read in the Qur’an and from Muslim scholars regarding what the Names mean, and research parallel examples of the Names in Christian literature.  I invite the Spirit to direct my efforts, and begin sketches of the images that come into my thoughts.  Then I try to do nothing about them for a time, and let my subconscious work on correlating images, shapes, and concepts.  After a time, different for each sculpture, more concrete images and ideas emerge regarding each Name, and as these coalesce, the designs for the sculptures begin to emerge.

This sounds rather prosaic and predictable, but is completely organic.  I use at least four different sketchbooks, with a few pages devoted to each Name.  Sometimes everything will gel together quickly for one Name while it will take months to resolve some of the most basic elements for another; multiple ideas bubble about each other all the time, and as one sculpture is being built it informs and changes dozens of others still being imagined.  Through it all I try to maintain an openness to inspiration, which does not always happen.  Occasionally, hints are “whispered” to my heart which I choose to ignore, and the realization comes only hours and hours of wasted effort later that I should have followed the “still small voice.”  With this frustration comes a determination to listen next time, but my desire is not always reflected in my actions.  (Continued…)

Greatest (Al-Mutakabbir)
Ph. Hawkinson Photography

 

Hearer of All (As-Sami)

As-Sami
From Sufism.org

Thank you–our first milestone in the crowdfunding of the 99 Names Project has just been reached!  Several supporters of the project have helped to fund the materials for the sculpture for Name 26, As-Sami (Hearer of All).  Thank you!

My friend Hafeez Shaikh has made a beautiful painting of The Hearer of All, and Wahidudin’s Web speaks eloquently about the Name here.  Please also take a moment to visit the sites of some good friends of the Project–Cheryl Merz of Enchanted Eye Studio, Ernest, and  Gerry Phibbs of the International Guild of Glass Artists.

With your continuing help we’ll get our goal met–thank you for sharing the site with your friends!

 

The 99 Names project in video

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Here are a couple videos regarding the ongoing 99 Names project:

MSAUU April 2010 Conference:  99 Names of Allah Part I

MSAUU April 2010 Conference:  99 Names of Allah Part II

Reflections of Islam from BYU Magazine

99 Names Sculptures

All of these are from Youtube.com.

 

05-Wellspring of Peace

05-Wellspring of Peace

As-Salam

As-Salam from Sufism.org

05-Wellspring of Peace (As-Salam)

Etched, painted, and fired glass, with alchemically preserved water

The Living Water is the giver of life in the desert of the soul.  When the soul opens to it, welcomes it, and gives it a place to dwell, an interesting truth is revealed.  Earthly wells and springs may eventually dry up, and personal energy will drain away; but when peace comes from the Source of Peace its influence is increased as it is shared, following no earthly laws.

Photography by Hawkinson Photography

Calligraphy by Sufism.org