Poem/Prayer for 3/28/22 - Al-Mu'id - from Divine Names by Rosina-Fawzia Al-Rawi

from Divine Names: The 99 Healing Names of the One Love by Rosina-Fawzia Al-Rawi (trans. Monique Arav)

My dear friends Raana Mumtaz and Faiza Khan gave me a wonderful gift of a book of Arabic calligraphy with 99 names of Allah, along with explanatory essays. I thought I would share excerpts of one of the essays.

Al-Mu'id - The Restorer, the One who brings back, the One who leads back.

[This name derives from a verse from the Koran:]

Sura al-Buruj (The Great Constellations - 85:13)

Behold, it is He who creates [man] in the first instance (mubdi'), and He [it is who] will bring him forth anew (mui'id).

These two Divine Names (mubdi' and mui'id) connect us above all with the movements of nature and the miracles that surround us every day...

People who worry a lot, and fill their heart with constant sadness and pictures of imagined catastrophes, open with this name a space that helps them become free of this burden...

Human beings were made of extremely primitive elements, and they gradually developed into highly complex beings who are not only endowed with a physical body but also with a spirit, with feelings, and with instincts. 

The idea of resurrection exists in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The Sufis understand resurrection symbolically. They see it as the dissolution of the I in His light, the dissolution of the tension of duality between good and evil in which the soul embedded in the world lives, and the experience of Unity, of the creative force through which everything concrete exists...

O Allah, remind us of what we have forgotten,

grant us knowledge of that which we do not know yet,

and let every new day lend more kindness and compassion to our deeds

so that our end may be better than our beginning!