People spoke of him mockingly. They said he behaved strangely, obeyed his wife to the letter. He didn’t hang out with other men after work in the coffee shop. He liked to read, a good-for-nothing sport. He didn’t speak the local accent although he had breathed the air of this town all his life. Presor Dyli didn’t curse or spit on the ground. He was unusually polite and mild, almost like-God forbid-a woman. He was weird, they said. People made fun of his wandering eyes, but that’s too cruel, and I am going to skip it.

I didn’t think of him as weird. He was different yes, but far from weird, if you know what I mean.

When Presor Dyli decided to start the first afterschool club ever in the history of our school, he ensured that he would become the laughingstock of the town for a hundred more years. Nobody knew what the club was about or even what an afterschool club was supposed to be.

Somehow he managed to secure a small room in the municipality building, five old typing machines, and a considerable supply of index cards and pencils.

Presor Dyli asked all his students to enroll in the club. Anything that could be an excuse to get out of the house, away from the never-ending chores, was welcome, so I was happy to oblige.

I remember the first meeting of the club quite clearly. My best friend, Lindita was sitting by my side, and she would giggle every time Presor Dyli looked at us, his wandering eye extremely lapsed in the wrong direction. I became annoyed with her since what Presor Dyli was saying kindled my curiosity. I turned to her sternly and scolded, “Oh, hush for a moment, won’t you?”

She looked at me like I had gone crazy. Little did I care if I had.

His soft voice spoke in unfamiliar words such as noble cause, great service, our language sweeter than honey. I felt like I was transported to a strange new planet.

“My dear children,” Presor Dyli said, “our mother tongue, Albanian, is an old and rich language. Unfortunately, many words used by older generations are about to vanish because they never saw the light of print on the pages of dictionaries. These old words are called archaisms; most of them originate from Ottoman language as a legacy of 500 years of Ottoman rule in Albania.”

“It is our mission to save these words from dying. While listening carefully to adults talking, if you catch a word you have never heard before, write it down on the index cards I will provide for you. At our club meetings we will compare notes, consult the dictionary, and type the words we don’t find in it. Okay? Later, we will mail those words with their meaning and usage to the National Committee for Albanian Language, so that they may be added to the dictionary. I know it sounds complicated but it is easy, you will see. Any questions?”

All twelve of us stood there dumbfounded. My brain felt fuzzy, like a TV which has lost its signal.

Nevertheless, Presor Dyli went on with a new subject–the methodology of our work. After explaining step-by-step the instructions on word hunting, he relaxed our overstretched minds with a story of a smart linguist on an archaism hunt.

“This linguist on an ancient-word hunt went to the farmer’s market. Immediately he spotted his prey-a toothless white-haired lady selling eggs, and he approached her. He asked her how much one egg cost.

She looked at this well-dressed, prospective buyer and smiled. “10 leke,” she said.

Then the linguist did the most unimaginable thing. In a frenzy, he snatched the egg basket and started throwing eggs to the ground, one by one. The old woman, cursing with contempt in her heavy mountainous dialect, fought back with this crazy man. To the surprise of everyone watching, the linguist, delighting in every curse as if receiving blessings from heaven, took out his notebook and excitedly recorded the lingual pearls.

The old woman, making no sense of what had happened, squatted over the broken eggs and cried over the ill fate that had befallen her. Right then, the linguist told her that he would pay for all the eggs he broke, 10 leke each. She did not believe him at first, but when he took out his purse and pulled out the money, she opened up like the sky after a storm. She thanked him effusively and upon hearing that he was willing to pay 15 leke for each, she let flow from her old mouth a string of benedictions. Again, the crazy linguist wrote down whatever she said, as if his own life depended on it.

“Well, children, this is the story of the linguist who dearly loved our language and did everything in hand to preserve it, even wasted eggs and paid for them” Presor Dyli smiled. “Don’t try this yourself though, all right?”

Later he dismissed us with the air of a commander sending his troops on an expedition.

I hugged the pack of index cards he had given me, and on my way home I made a mental list of suspects. I put my grandmother at the top. She was over eighty. She was bound to spill some ancient word from her mouth. Second, came our next-door neighbor, an old lady. “She loves to chat for hours. She gossips a lot too, but if breaking eggs is okay, then I will put up with that.” I decided.

I went to sleep that night, my chest filled with great aspirations for the remarkable service I would render to our mother tongue, which was sweeter than honey.

The next day I lay in ambush for my neighbor on her way to the farmer’s market. She started into her favorite sport-gossip-immediately.

“Did you see how the so and so’s wife was dressed in the so and so’s wedding?” she asked.

I shook my head, but that only invigorated her.

“Her outfit was for hakaret. How could she come in a dress that was so revealing? She should have…”

“Wait, wait a second,” I interrupted. A bulb started blinking in my brain.

“What is hakaret?” I asked, feeling for my pencil and the index card pack in my pocket.

She looked pretty annoyed to deal with words when greater scandals regarding the wife of so and so were involved. She answered anyway, maybe for fear of losing my interest.

“Hakaret means something discreditable, something that people will point their fingers at.

I started scribbling industriously on my index card as she spoke. My neighbor eyed me suspiciously.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking notes.”

“You aren’t going to tell the wife of so and so about what I said, are you?” She looked worried.

“Oh no, no. This is something related to my language club assignment.” I assured her.

Unconvinced, she decided to take no further risks and bade me good-bye, murmuring something about not wanting to miss the fresh eggs in the market.

As I watched her hurry away looking flabbergasted, I wondered if she would tell someone in the market about her neighbor’s so and so daughter doing strange things with a pencil and some what-you-call-them cards.

That evening I listened all ears, pencil in hand to my grandma complain to Mom about one of her grandchildren, my uncle’s only son among three daughters.

“The child is spoiled rotten and if something isn’t done to bring him to his senses, he will bring shame to all of us. It is as clear as that. As they say, you don’t need a kilavuz to the village for what you can see.”

“What is a kilavuz, Grandma?” I asked curiously.

Grandma froze, unprepared for this all-out assault. Soon enough she came to her senses and replied, “Kilavuz is someone who leads the way.”

“A guide?” I said, coming to her assistance.

“Yeah, something of the sort. Now why don’t you go and pick some grapes from the vine, wash them thoroughly, and bring us some to eat.”

I went out, sat on the front steps and wrote down with indescribable delight, kilavuz, my second victory. My heart beat with glory.

At the third club meeting I brought three hard-to-find words. You know the first two already. Why, the third came from a street argument among two drunks shouting at each other at the top of their lungs. I just wrote down the word because, as you can figure out, I couldn’t ask them, drunk as they were, about its meaning. I asked my mom instead. She blushed and threatened to make me bite on red hot pepper if I ever spoke that word again. Just as Professor Dyli asked us to hand him our index cards, I erased the third word. I reasoned that our language might do better with one less bad word.

Week by week, month by month, the about-to-be-lost words accumulated, like little streams in a pond. When we finally correctly typed thirty of them, Presor Dyli put the list in an envelope and mailed it with an accompanying letter, explaining our humble service to the National Committee for Albanian Language.

We continued on our word pursuit the rest of the school year, although we didn’t hear back from the NCFAL. Presor Dyli’s matchless enthusiasm fueled our little engines.

During that year, our country was undergoing great changes, although we, young club-goers, took little notice. On the radio, television, the coffee shop, the street, everyone talked about the big transition from over forty years of communism, to democracy. The land and the factories were being privatized and words such as private property and business were articulated boldly for the first time in many years. We brought them over to club–that’s how I remember. Presor Dyli told us that they were new words, therefore of no use to our mission.

My parents talked over dinner each night of how some of our neighbors or their friends had come up with amazing ideas to start a trade, and how courageous it was to take such a risk in the collapsing economy. Some of them had turned their patios into little shops, selling anything they could lay a hand on and stock in such a little space. My parents wished we were living in the walk-in level apartment, so we could try our luck in business. Why, it was such a convenient thing to work so close to your living quarters. I understood nothing of their talk. Nonetheless I listened carefully, my pencil and cards nearby.

At one of our meetings, which I learned later would sadly be the last, Presor Dyli told us apologetically that he had to quit the language club. He had to dedicate his time to something really important.

“I am sorry, children. I tried to find a substitute to keep the club going but to no avail. You kids did a great job. I am proud of you. I am sorry to quit but I have to,” he said in a sad tone. He did not look at us.

We left in silence, wondering what could be so important and so sorrowful at the same time.

Had he come down with a bad disease and he needed to go for treatments? Was he moving to another city? Had he received a disheartening letter from NCFAL? What could it be?

Weeks went by. Presor Dyli still taught us language arts during regular school hours but as soon as the last bell rang, he would hurry in the direction of his apartment. I had been taught to never pry. That’s why, tempted as I was, I never followed him.

One day, I took another way home after school because I had to take a make-up assignment to a sick classmate. I was entertaining myself with my shadow sliding ahead of me on the pavement, when his voice startled me.

“One kilogram tomatoes, two dozen eggs, one box of matches. Anything else I can get for you, sir?”

Yes, it was him. In his apartment’s patio which had been converted into a shop. I couldn’t believe it! He still had on his morning attire-white shirt and black pants. A black apron hung loosely about him and his shirt sleeves were rolled up. He had tomato stains on his shirt.

“No thanks,” replied the customer as he handed him the money.

As Presor Dyli rummaged in the big front pocket of his apron for change, a passerby who was the age of my father, stopped at the door of the shop and shouted.

“Hey Abdyl, how is it going? You’ve got a pretty good-sized shop here. Hang in there, buddy and before you know it, you will own a big market, just like Naim. He started small like you but look at him now. Has money to cover himself standing. I am happy for you, man.”

He made his point and patted Presor Dyli on the shoulder.

“Finally the cat caught a mouse, eh, Abdyl? “

I was about to cry. This little business was his really important something. What’s worse, he didn’t even mind being compared to the ill-famed Naim, a mafioso who was known to sell anything illegal.

Presor Dyli looked up. He saw me standing on the pavement across the street, like a statue of salt. He tried a genuine smile and waved at me, a bit hesitantly.

I was waking up from the dream.

He had lost his charm. I had lost my aspirations. He wasn’t weird anymore by the town’s standards. He was Abdyl now.

I didn’t wave back. I moved on and let my tears flow.

Let us imagine the earth as a small sphere before us. If we throw an object from the North Pole toward point A on the equator line, the object follows a curved line towards the right side and reaches point B, not point A. Likewise, an object thrown from the South Pole towards the same point A will follow a similar line curved in the opposite direction. These cases have a common point. An object rolling on a rotating ground moves on a curved line. This curved line, instead of a straight one, is explained with reference to the force of acceleration. This force is named after the French engineer, Coriolis who explained it in 1835. If this force-which is generated by the earth rotating around its own axis-did not exist, then air movements and ocean currents, and consequently the climate conditions of our world, would be different than they are. The objects in our example, thrown from the two poles, go in different directions, because the world rotates counter-clockwise when looked from the North Pole, and clockwise from the South Pole.

The air over the equator receives the sun’s rays at a broad angle. It rises up after gaining heat and is replaced by colder air coming from distant latitudes. Air convection begins in connection with these heat changes. So if the world did not rotate, the air on the Poles would get heavier with cold air and come down. Then, it would be replaced by hot air from lower latitudes. The air at the equator would rise up with gaining heat and would move until reaching the Poles where it would come down after losing heat. Then, it would return to the equator, this time very close to the ground. In this case, the world would probably be an uninhabitable place with cold and fierce winds blowing all around. And of course, the side facing the sun would be very hot and the other side would be very cold.

Instead, the Coriolis effect makes these great atmospheric air masses move over our rotating earth. The hot air rising up from the equator moves towards the poles with a curved course thanks to the Coriolis effect (Figure 4). As this air current approaches the latitudes around 30 degrees, it loses heat and descends. A part of the descending air begins to move back toward the equator, but it follows a curved line again owing to the Coriolis effect. So this last curving forms the “trade winds.” In the past, sailing ships traveled from Europe to America for the purpose of trade; thus, these winds were named as trade winds. This air circulation between the equator and the 30-degree meridians is known as Hadley circulation. These air currents cause heavy rainfall in the equatorial region and the consequent formation of rain forests, which are considered as the lungs of our planet, and also they cause the formation of deserts around the region where the dry and hot weather are pure blessings for us. They are a blessing because the airborne dust rising from the desert fertilizes the rainclouds and plays a critical role for rainfall.

The air over the poles becomes cold, and it causes another air current as it becomes heavier and starts to descend. As the lowered air moves toward the equator, it changes course with the Coriolis effect. At the same time it begins to gain heat and ascend. At the latitudes where water ascends by gaining heat, a rain climate prevails. This polar air cycle is seen between latitudes of 60-90 degrees.

Some part of the air current, which descends down around 30 degrees of latitude, moves toward the poles at a low level. Also, some part of the air which comes from the poles and ascends begins to move towards the equator. So a third air cycling begins between the altitudes between 30-60 degrees. The “western winds” are brought forth from this third cycle. During the time of sailing ships, these winds were used to traveling from America to Europe (Figure 4).

In order for these air cycles to happen, the earth’s rotation around its own axis is not sufficient; its speed and atmospheric mass also play an important role. If the earth rotated slower, the Coriolis Effect would be too weak to give way to a triple air cycle. For example, since Venus rotates too slowly, there is only a single air cycle in its atmosphere. Another factor, as we mentioned, is the mass of the atmosphere. Since the atmosphere of Mars is thin and its mass is relatively less, the Coriolis Effect is too weak and there is only a single air cycle.

Coriolis Effect prevents the air current from following a straight course and the isobars form twisters as they proceed. Therefore, hurricanes in the Northern hemisphere move counter-clockwise, and those in the south move clockwise (Figure 5). Naturally, these main atmospheric movements are not the only ones. A region’s climate is dependent on several factors such as landscape, night-day heat differences, and the like. Therefore, the climatic conditions on the earth have a very complex structure. Even when we consider just these few factors discussed here, it is evident that there are countless parameters that make human life possible in our planet, and each one is finely adjusted. Even slight changes in rotation and the mass of the atmosphere would result in a dramatically different planet Earth.

The ocean currents

Movement of air masses affects the water on the ocean surface as well. Thus, wind-generated surface currents are born. These currents are parallel with the relevant winds. It is a well-known fact that these huge bodies of water change the climate of the regions they pass. Therefore, two places at 54 degrees of latitude show a surprising difference: there can be a polar bears’ park in Ontario, whereas palm trees and tropical fruits can grow in Belfast thanks to the Gulf Stream. There are other warm ocean currents that pass from Brazil, and the north and south of the equator. Some of major cold surface currents pass from Labrador, Canada, the Falkland Islands, and Peru. Warm currents soften the climate of the regions they pass, while cold currents provide sea creatures with rich food, and they are important areas of fishing.

The impact of the wind on ocean water normally reaches as deep as 100-200 meters, and even 1,000 meters in some cases. The Coriolis effect has a determining role on the direction of the currents. These currents on the move make a turn when their way is blocked by land. Thus, the succession of ocean currents becomes a cycle, and they form the great current cycles named as “gyre.” They turn clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counter-clockwise in the south.

There are five main ocean circulations on earth and each of them consists of four streams. These currents are at the north and south of the Atlantic Ocean, the north and south of the Pacific Ocean, and one in the Indian Ocean. The North Atlantic circulation is made up of the Northern Equator Current, the Gulf Stream, North Atlantic Current, and the Canary Current.

With the Coriolis effect, a blessing of wondrous scale, food chains are brought to life in the ocean and around coastal regions. The ocean waters are set in motion by the winds generated by the Coriolis effect, but they do not strictly follow the winds that activated them. With a deflection of nearly 45 degrees they move right in the Northern Hemisphere and to left in the Southern Hemisphere.

The effect of the winds weakens in the deeper ocean waters, and then the Coriolis effect becomes dominant. Thus the direction of ocean water carried in the Northern Hemisphere is vertical to the wind direction and towards the right. This condition causes ocean waters to be pushed towards the circulatory center, and the water level there rises about 2 meters.

As rising waters move down with the effect of gravity, the Coriolis effect comes to the stage again to give way to another current in the same direction within that current. The waters that were rising toward the center begin to sink, and they form a new vertical current. For the same reason, the separation of the water current to the right and left directions around the equatorial regions gives way to the waters at the bottom which then come to the surface. At these places, the water level decreases a little. This “upwelling” phenomenon has very important results. Dead organisms sinking down are broken down by bacteria in the deep waters. When this nutrient-rich water returns to the surface, it is a great blessing for so many sea creatures. It is a striking fact that the rotating of the earth is a means for providing many living beings with sustenance. All of these finely adjusted balances on our planet, which we mostly take for granted, provide reflecting minds with food for thought.

Gifted education involves several procedures such as testing, identification and tracking students to challenge their potential to the fullest. Initially, students take several tests including tests of intelligence, creativity, and motivation and must perform well enough to get into a gifted program. Following this testing, they have a label that they and others know quite well, gifted. Frequently, this means grouping them separately from their non-gifted peers. Accordingly, they follow a different curriculum, and attend different programs that are not available to others. Also, some practices that often occur when teaching or interacting with gifted students, such as a teacher’s or parent’s praise, convey direct and hidden messages. These messages, in essence, consistently remind them of how superior they are. Ultimately, they are taught to enjoy their superiority with a minimal or no clue about being virtuous. Most educators pay a great attention to increase their self-esteem while they were indifferent for the possibility of arrogance and conceit. Nevertheless, the “privilege” of being in the top 5 or smaller percent dramatically shapes the identity of the gifted individual from early ages. With the self–esteem enhancement movements in 80’s, the importance of humility as a significant virtue has been ignored among educators. They mostly perceived lack of self-esteem as a big problem whereas lack of humility was rather acceptable. However, potential of the gifted individuals, like any other person, deserves a more gracious treatment that regards them as human beings rather than better human resources for the nation and economy.

Corollary to the deficits in educators’ approaches to the gifted individuals, their emotional and moral development have been omitted. When one searches the studies on the development of positive moral characteristics of the gifted, such as, humility, there is almost no study on those issues. Humility in itself is a crucial virtue for several reasons. First, humility allows gifted individuals to recognize that they cannot control everything in every situation. Their superior abilities compared to their peers become a huge burden because others and their own expectations about themselves are mostly quite high. Failures and unexpected academic performance are less tolerable for the gifted. Crucially, humble gifted individuals can successfully handle challenging situations because their moral development valuing humility functions as a buffer zone and make them more resilient against challenges of life. People can have a more realistic view of themselves as long as they are well aware of their real inadequacies.

Vera and Rodriguez-Lopez (2004) pointed to the positive role of humility on competition in the organizations. They argued that fear of failure impedes people from taking initiative and humility helps people to reduce their fear of failure with the premise that people with no experience of failure are unlikely to try again. Secondly, humility helps gifted individuals to have a better and more realistic understanding about one’s self. Humble gifted people can realize their own weaknesses. This is also important for the gifted because very few people criticize them while many others praise their ability. In such a social climate, a true understanding of oneself is not an easy task. Thirdly, humble people can empathize with others easily. Gifted individuals mostly have concerns for others and have a keen moral sensitivity. However, feeling of superiority can hurt their healthy relationships with others; thus, other people become less likely to enjoy being together with them. Humble people have an increased valuation of others without a decrease in their valuation of themselves (Means & Wilson, 1990), and, thus, the need for humility is even more important for the gifted individuals.

Humility represents a major dilemma of gifted education: Although several procedures, facilities and resources are developed and implemented for the gifted, they inherently trigger a grandiosity effect. As a result of that, usual practices in the gifted education seem to nurture a less realistic view of self which is not less dangerous than the lack of self-esteem. Unfortunately, educators tend to ignore the presence of the dilemma and insist on particular practices without pondering upon the potential damages. What kinds of precautions can be taken to raise humble gifted individuals? What other messages should be given to them? Among many possible methods to overcome this problem, the following recommendations can be taken into consideration in educational and psychological practices.

1. Giftedness as a responsibility

Conceptualization of the giftedness needs fine-tuning. Traditional perspectives that seek the differences between gifted and non-gifted individuals have created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Gifted individuals have been marginalized and alienated. So-called unrealistic perception of giftedness has led to a perception of “superiority” over others. Remarkably, giftedness, as a concept, implies being the one who was awarded with some qualities which other people do not have. The concept also implies the passivity of the gifted because he was given, not necessarily because he deserves it. Corollary to this, gifted individuals should be taught about the responsibilities along with the gifts. Unlike the current practices, educators should emphasize the individual and social responsibilities corresponding to giftedness.

Individual responsibilities of the gifted individuals are related to the importance of realizing their personal strengths and skills and investing for their potential appropriately. In educational context, many gifted students tend to take the classes easy and pay attention to other “more interesting” things. They tend to make no effort beyond what the classes require, and their potential is not challenged. Individual responsibility defined as fulfillment of one’s own potential should replace externally defined responsibilities which are neither challenging nor motivating for the gifted.

Social responsibilities are critical for the gifted individuals because their potential can lead to both positive and negative changes at the societal level. Many scientific innovations facilitating our lives today are the gifted minds’ contributions to human beings. On the other hand, they could have devoted their potential to harmful innovations, too. The gifted individuals, therefore, are those who can build the civilizations with all advanced systems of technology, transportation and communication, and destroy them with mass destruction weapons, such as atom bombs. Employing the strengths and capacities to the benefit of human beings should be set as a basic goal for the gifted individuals.

2. Importance of effort over ability

Overemphasis on abilities and consideration of abilities as fixed traits tend to block gifted individuals. If people think that they possess a superior capacity and this is more or less stable, they may have difficulty in making for their goals. They often compromise their high ability with less effort that may result in underachievement and dropouts. The importance of effort and struggle over ability and performance should be integrated to the educational system.

Valuation of effort can be achieved through differentiating the curriculum for the gifted students. For example, the research indicate that easy learning materials and having a better standing in the class with respect to school achievement lead to ability attributions while mental effort and task commitment induce effort attributions (Dweck, 2006, Nicholls, 1978; Schunk, 1994). That means students tend to attribute the achievements to their abilities in easy tasks while they tend to attribute their performance in hard tasks to their hard work. Preparing the curriculum at an appropriate level of difficulty, by which students can be challenged but still can comprehend the content with some effort, should be a major task for the educators. In this way, the frame of reference for the gifted becomes the degree to which they struggle toward their goals rather than the gifts, capacities and strengths they possess.

3. Learning goals instead of performance goals

Goal setting is a crucial aspect of the education of the gifted people. Goal setting is influenced by the way educators assess student performances. There has been a tendency to evaluate school performance through objective, psychometric measures. Even though those measures are more reliable, the information gained from those measures are restricted, comparing the gifted with their counterparts instead of indicating the level at which the gifted fulfill their potential. Learning goals which can be set through individual projects should be the focus of evaluation rather than performance goals which tend to reduce the evaluation to the numbers. Learning goals also seem to be safer for the gifted since it focuses on the discovery of strategies that lead to desired outcomes whereas performance goals tend to have deleterious effects as people are preoccupied with the end result. Therefore, a third task for the educators is to preserve the gifted students from the detrimental effects of mechanical measurement of the performance. In this way, students have criterion set at their own pace for their success rather than external criteria set by others.

The above suggestions, which can be the basic steps of the fundamental changes in the system, can be further enumerated. The dilemma with the gifted education mentioned above is institutionally induced; therefore, the solutions should be addressed at the institutional level. By virtue of those changes in the educational settings, the programs for gifted education can become more individual-based and less mechanical, ultimately caring more about the critical human virtues such as humility. The political developments helped the gifted education programs to blossom, but it brought some side-effects. Educators must see those gaps and generate solutions that care about the gifted individuals.

References

• Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York: Random House.
• Nicholls, J. G. (1978). The development of the concepts of effort and ability, perception of academic attainment, and the understanding that difficult tasks require more ability. Child Development, 49, 800-814.
• Schunk, D. H. (1994). Self-regulation of self-efficacy and attribution in academic settings. In D. H. Schunk & B. J. Zimmerman (Eds.), Self-regulation of learning and performance: Issues and educational applications (pp. 75-99). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
• Vera, D. & Rodriguez-Lopez, A. 2004. Strategic virtues: Humility as a source of competitive advantage. Organizational Dynamics, 33, 4: 393-408.

The best place to begin this discussion is with the Qur’an. There are numerous verses that mention love, but whenever the word love is used “the quality is always ascribed to God and human beings, and nothing else; and God’s love is always directed at human beings.” Not only does this mean that the relationship between God and human beings is unique, but love defines that unique relationship. In the verses that mention love for God, the Qur’an makes two important points. Firstly, God wants people to love him, and secondly, their love for God follows upon His love for them. The verse of the Qur’an most cited for this is “…whom He loves, and who love Him” (5:54). The inferences that Sufi mystics have drawn from this verse is that love cannot be learned, it is the result of divine grace, and the initiative comes from God. This feeling of God’s desire “to love and to be loved” inspired Rumi to suggest:

Not a single lover would seek union if the beloved were not seeking it.

The message of the Qur’an compelled Muslims to understand their relationship with God as one requiring reciprocated love. Sufi poets then searched for a vocabulary to describe their love for God, including words not found in the Qur’an or Hadiths.

In the early period of Sufism “the majority of teachings on love are contained in poems and brief statements that focus upon the human love for God, wherein there is always a duality between the human lover and the Divine Beloved.” This developed into a trend within Sufi thought in which “all aspects of creation and spiritual aspiration are presented in an imaginal language fired by love.” An important development in this trend was the use of the word for passionate love, ishq, rather than the more accepted vocabulary of the Qur’an. The Qur’anic terms for love are hubb and mahabba that describe the measured affection of God. Ishq came into the lexicon of Sufi poetry to describe “the essential desire for God and the love of God as an essential attribute, which fills the heart of the mystic.” Using the word ishq in a religious context means that:

Love is no longer merely an expression of gratitude for the blessings of God; it is no longer content with rigorous asceticism and meticulous ritual observance. It becomes an absolute necessity, entailing neither enjoyment nor alleviation, but intensifying as the reciprocity of the lover and the loved comes into effect.

By redefining their love for God as ishq, the early Sufi poets extended their vocabulary, and by doing this they could more accurately describe their inner response to the revelation of the Qur’an. The recognition of two types of love is expressed by Rabia in the following quatrain:

Two loves I give thee, love that yearns.
And love because thy due is love.
My yearning, my remembrance turns
To Thee, nor lets it from thee rove.

Here, Rabia identifies the spontaneous love for God she feels within herself – and the dutiful love she is obliged to give to God in the performance of her religious responsibilities. As Chittick wrote, “Love pertains to the experiential dimension of Sufism, not the theoretical; it must be experienced to be understood.” Sufism connects experiential knowledge to the belief that “nothing is dearer to God than that man loves him.” A mystic and poet who lived in Anatolia in the same period as Rumi, Yunus Emre, described the intensifying experience of love for God:

Your love has wrested me away from me
You’re the one I need, you’re the one I crave.
Day and night I burn, gripped by agony,
You’re the one I need, you’re the one I crave.
For Yunus Emre, “love is the most powerful of everything.”

When love for God is described in terms of passion then the language of romantic love is readily accessible to be adapted as the metaphoric language of the spiritual journey. In Sufi poetry there is a convention of the spiritual supplicant being called the lover of God, while God is referred to as the Beloved. Throughout Sufi poetry we read verses that elaborate ideas about the relationship of the lover and the Beloved. A good example of this is seen in this verse by Rumi:

Lovers share a sacred decree –
to seek the Beloved.
They roll head over heels
rushing toward the Beautiful One
like a torrent of water.

Here God has two titles, the Beloved and the Beautiful One, but this poem could easily be read as secular love poetry. In this verse Rumi includes the beliefs that the impetus to love comes from God, as it is a sacred decree, and doing so is as unstoppable as the rush of water.

Another poem of Rumi that can be read as secular love poetry uses less recognizable references to God:

In one sweet moment
She burst from my heart.
There we sat on the floor,
drinking ruby wine.
Trapped by her beauty,
I saw and I touched –
My whole face became eyes,
All my eyes became hands.

Through the use of the conventional poetic symbols of his era, for example, drinking wine as a symbol for spiritual intoxication, the poet again express both secular and spiritual meanings simultaneously. As one of the translators of the above piece comments in his introduction to the selection of Rumi’s poems:

Nothing with Rumi can be taken literally: One must always be aware of the meaning behind the meaning, and the veils behind veils.

The translator Jonathon Star, says that Rumi, like other Sufi poets, at “the deepest level” of his poetry “tells only one story: the soul’s search for the Beloved.”

For Rumi, passionate love, ishq, has two expressions. The first is love in the material world, “like the love between male and female”, and the second is the “real love,” which is the “love felt toward God.” These couplets of Rumi’s explain how the poet signified both aspects of ishq:

Love is the attribute of God, who has no need of anyone. To be in love with other than Him is metaphorical love.
And
Love, be it real or metaphorical,
Ultimately takes humans to God.

These two couplets express two fundamental beliefs of Sufism. In the first couplet we read that love is an attribute of God – as stated in the Qur’an. In the second we see that love “takes humans to God.”

While the Qur’an shows that love is an attribute of God, for many adherents of the Sufi tradition love is God’s most important attribute because for the spiritual journey of the wayfarer, love provides the path that takes them to reunion with God. In Rumi’s “spiritual masterpiece,” the Masnavi, the poet seeks to show that “God is known primarily through love.” The significance given to love in this part of the Islamic tradition has allowed some to suggest simply that “God is Love.” However, it is important to note that love is not the only attribute of God:

…He is Mercy, Knowledge, Life, Power and Will. He possesses all these qualities; His Being is the same as their Being; but we may not say that God is Mercy and nothing else, or that He is Knowledge and nothing else… He possesses all His Attributes absolutely, yet in His Essence He is beyond them all.

More than a generation before Rumi the mystic Farid al-Din Attar (d.1220) wrote a variation of the shahada (testimony of faith) as la ilaha illa ishq – No God but Love. In his Divan Rumi shows that he did not believe God could be defined as such. In fact, this excerpt from the Divan could be commenting on the above phrase of Attar:

Others call Thee Love, but I call Thee the Sultan of Love – oh Thou who are beyond the concept of this or that, do not go without me!

Rumi’s poetry not only shows that God cannot be defined but He can only be described with symbol, metaphor or analogy, which eventually also proves to be inadequate:

All of these are symbols – I mean that the other
world keeps coming into this world.
Like cream hidden in the soul of milk, No place
keeps coming into this place.
Like intellect concealed in blood and skin, the
Traceless keeps entering into traces.
And from beyond the intellect, beautiful Love
comes dragging its skirts, a cup of wine in its hand.
And from beyond Love, that Indescribable One
who can only be called “That” keeps coming.

In this piece of sublime verse Rumi uses analogy to communicate a sense of God. We also see an explanation of the variance of love and intellect, but most importantly, embedded in the poetry, Rumi presents the difference between love as an attribute of God, and “the Indescribable One who can only be called ‘That'” which is God.

As we saw in one of the couplets quoted above, Rumi believed that love, “real or metaphorical, ultimately takes humans to God.” The journey to reunion with God was made by “constant purification and, in exchange, qualification with God’s attributes.” For the Sufi mystic, “the qualities of the Beloved enter in the place of the qualities of the lover.” This is a heightened sense of jihad, when jihad is thought of as “the personal struggle against one’s own shortcomings that is required of all Muslims so that they can perfect their submission.”

For the Sufi mystic, however, the demand of reunion with God was to “qualify yourself with the qualities of God,” which was achieved by constant mental struggle to exchange the base qualities of the mystic for the praiseworthy qualities by which God has described himself in the Qur’anic revelation. The Mevlevi Sufi, Sefik Can, suggests this is achieved when “The goal of the Sufi mystic is to understand and love The One who has created humankind.” The connection of love to reunion with God is explained when Sefik Can says “In the Sufi tradition, love is described as annihilation in the Beloved.” Again, the poetry of Rumi makes a vivid representation of this teaching:

Love came and it made me empty.
Love came and it filled me with the Beloved.
It became the blood in my body
It became my arms and my legs.
It became everything!
Now all I have is a name,
The rest belongs to the Beloved.

The verse describes the progressive, experiential knowledge of love. First came abandonment of the ego. Then, came submission whereby one no longer acts according to the ego, but in submission to the Beloved who now becomes “… his hearing with which he hears, his seeing with which he sees, his hand with which he strikes and his foot with which he walks…” as in the well-known hadith qudsi. The Sufi understanding of the annihilation of the self in the Beloved can be regarded as an expression of the ultimate understanding of tawhid – asserting God’s unity. Annemarie Schimmel suggests that “to declare that God is One is the goal of religious life for the Muslim in general and the Sufi in particular.” An elaboration of this idea leads to the assertion that only God has real existence and hence only God has the right to say “I,” for “God is the only true subject.”

It is the tawhid that underpins the expression of love in Sufi poetry because “the true lover sees everything as pertaining to his beloved.” This is a teaching that Rumi sought to convey in the Masnavi-ye Ma’navi, for he intended

… to coax out of his readers the misapprehension that the world is made up of a multitude of separate selves apart from God and into the knowledge that all reality subsists only in relation to God.

It is a state of mind whereby “the poets recognized God everywhere,” as Annemarie Schimmel said, citing the verse of the Qur’an that inspired this awareness: “Withersoever ye turn, there is the face of God” (Surah 2/109). Two couplets quoted by Schimmel use the above-mentioned symbolism of wine to begin their explanation of tawhid:

The glass is all and the wine is naught,
Or the glass is naught and the wine is all –
but the vocabulary of religion concludes the realization:
That all that is, is He indeed:
Soul and loved one and heart and creed.

Because “love is desire and need,” it is stated that God, at the level of His attributes, created the world because He desired (or “loved”) to be known. Furthermore, God’s love for the Prophet is evident in this saying, “But for thee I would not have made the celestial spheres.” Ultimately, God’s desire to be revealed through the prophets and the saints “was the motivating force in His creation of the universe,” and all the world’s forms, movements and activities result from that original love. On this Rumi wrote:

The creatures are set in motion by Love, Love by Eternity-without-beginning; the wind dances because of the spheres, the trees because of the wind.

When we use the metaphor of the spiritual journey, we know from Sufi poetry that love is the vehicle par excellence for the traveller.

Bibliography

• Can, Sefik. 2005. The Fundamentals of Rumi’s Thought: A Mevlevi Sufi Perspective. Translated by Cuneyt Eroglu and Zeki Saritoprak, New Jersey: The Light Inc.
• Chittick, William C. 1983. The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Lumbard, J.E.B. 2007. “From Hubb to Ishq: The Development of Love in Early Sufism.” Journal of Islamic Studies, 18:3, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Murata, S. and Chittick, W.C. 1994. The Vision of Islam, London: I.B. TAURIS.
• Rumi. 1992. A Garden Beyond Paradise: The Mystical Poetry of Rumi, translated by Jonathon Star and Shahram Shiva, New York: Bantam Books.
• Rumi. 2006. Spiritual Verses: The First Book of the Masnavi-ye Ma’navi, translated by Alan Williams, London: Penguin,.
• Schimmel, A. 1975. Mystical Dimensions of Islam. University of North Carolina Press.
• Schimmel, A. 1982. As Through a Veil, Mystical Poetry in Islam. New York: Columbia University Press.
• von Donzel, E., Lewis, B., and Pellat, C. (eds). 1978. The Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition, Vol. 4, Leidin, Netherlands: E.J. Brill.
• Yunus Emre, trans. Turgut Durduran. http://www.stwing.upenn.edu. Accessed 17/5/08.

M&B: Your area of study is social ethics. In what way your approach to environmental problems is different than an ecologist, environmental scientist, or a purely religious scholar?

Dr. Hadsell: As social ethicists, when we look at the question of the environment we look at other questions in the human social world. So for example questions of peace and conflict, questions of population, questions of rich and poor within countries, questions of rich nations and poor nations, north and south, east and west so forth. In every case the goal is also to get the science right, to get the data right. So if you’re looking at issues of north and south for example what is the north what is the south what are the relationships we’re talking about are those political relationships? Are those economic relationships? How are political relationships related to economic relationships and culture and language and history and so forth? And when we therefore turn our attention to the environment we’re doing the same thing. We’re asking “whose environment?” According to whom what aspects of the environment. We also look at how are the environmental questions are being raised today. We look at issues of global warming and our use of natural resources accelerated use of natural resources and so forth. The social ethicist will say how these environmental issues are related to other issues that we know something about? That is how are they related to political issues, to economic issues to historical cultural interactions and so forth?

While some environmentalists takes the environmental issue as an object in itself and see it from their own perspective, a social ethicist will say as we look at the environment how is that question embedded in all of these other questions? They want to know the data about the environment the scientific data about the use of the consumption of natural resources and the acceleration of global warming and who is using the most resources? They want to know all of those things but they drive that discussion also from the philosophical religious side of things and ask from a religious perspective from a Christian perspective from a Muslim perspective let’s say, what is the human responsibility here? What does scripture tell us about the proper relationship between humans on the one hand nature on the other and God on the other? What is this relationship between these 3 things?

M&B: It seems like many different factors must be taken in to considerations.

Social ethics is really a composition of a number of things including sociology, political science studies of the social world, sometimes cultural anthropology as well as the more philosophical and religious area of ethics. And if you put those all together you have what is really called social ethics. People often work out of traditions, for example one can be an ethicist who’s interested in the social world and political issues in the social world out of a Muslim perspective or out of a Christian perspective or out of a Hindu perspective and so forth. There are also a humanist perspective so there are various approaches and they can be grounded religiously or not. That is religious people using scripture and faith but also then drawing upon as I said political science, history, sociology, cultural anthropology. When you put that together then it really is what in the United States we call the discipline of social ethics.

M&B: What are the challenges in working in such a diverse multicultural setting?

Multicultural settings are challenging be cause the history of human relationship with the environment varies with the cultures and religions. Different cultures approach nature in different ways and have a history with nature that is specific and different from other cultures.

In the United States and in our school Hartford Seminary we have a lot of cultures interacting as well as religions interacting. So you get a wide spectrum of perspectives and a wide spectrum of experiences and each perspective and each experience may assume that its own perspective is the normative one because of course it comes out of their own experience. It’s very important to think and to discuss these questions of the human relationship with nature across cultures and across religions to check the tendency for each perspective to blow its own perspective up and to call it common sense and to assume that its common to everyone.

M&B: Not only there are various religious and cultural settings but also geography seems to be an important factor when we approach to environmental problems.

In the United States for several decades there was an assumption that the environment is an issue that is of concern to white rich people. And that the rest of the American population or maybe the rest of the global population outside of north America and Europe for example don’t have the luxury of thinking about environmental issues. Of course that’s not true. The environmental issues such as global warming are going to affect most directly the very people who, once thought, shouldn’t care about the environment because they have other things to worry about like getting food on the table and so forth.

So these issues are complex and I think in recent years the environmental movement has become more able to think across cultures and across specific social classes for example and nations to think about the environment in more subtle ways. In the United States one of the things we’ve started talking about already 10 years ago is for example the issue of environmental racism. That is African Americans in the United States and inner cities of the United States may think of the environment as being something that people in the suburbs who are worried about who want to protect their trees or their streams or you know the kind of natural environment that they have and the reason that they’ve moved out into the suburbs in the first place. Whereas there are many environmental issues going on right in the inner cities which is often the place where the dirtiest processing plants are located. Many environmental issues are very close to home to a variety of cultures and a variety of income groups. The environment is far too important for global humanity to leave it up to one group as an issue for that particular group. It has to be an issue that is on the agenda for all of us from our own perspectives because we all get hit with these environmental issues. They’re moral issues for all of us and we need to have that conversation across these groups.

M&B: You said that the environmental problems hits the communities who depends on nature first. On the other hand the ones who are doing the pollution actually do not depend on nature so much. Do you think this adds another layer of responsibility or accountability to the problem?

I think it’s very true that the people around the world who are already vulnerable often already poor and often already living very close to nature. I think about people in the Pacific Islands for example. They are the people who are most immediately affected by changes in the environment as we see with the studies about the rising sea level in relationship to global warming. Many the people who will be most immediately affected are people who live as fishermen for example in villages who can’t protect themselves and can’t protect their villages and their livelihoods from the effects of global warming.

So yes, it’s very much the case that the people who are already vulnerable are the people who are poor and don’t have a lot of political participation or representation. The people who don’t have a lot of control over their lives are the people who will be most immediately affected by global warming. The people who live in big cities and lives removed from nature in the sense that they don’t know where their food comes from it’s shipped in from wherever all around the globe. They live in heated buildings and air conditioned buildings and they drive cars and so forth. They may not understand the complexity of the environmental issues and they may think themselves to be less vulnerable to questions like global warming.

I think one of the challenges of social ethics pertaining to the environment is to get the people in the cities who feel separate from nature and from the processes of nature to understand the direct although sometimes hidden links they have with the natural world and how their lifestyle and their consumption of resources effects the natural world and how the depletion of nature will in turn affect them and their lifestyles and even in big cities.

M&B: In what way religious traditions or ethical approaches could motivate them to take a new look at the nature?

I think that the sense of the sacred is a very important concept for the environmental movement. I think that as religious people the worldview of religious people is that everything that is given by God is endowed with a kind of sacred quality. So that all of the resources given by God should be approached with a sense of respect and honor the same kind of sense of respect and honor that we give towards sort of classically sacred moments or objects. It’s very much the case that many people in the environmental movement even if they are secular people, they have an experience with nature, an intuition of something bigger, grander and outside of human control and domination.

Many people, even if they’re secular, they sense in nature a kind of sacredness and it brings them that sense that they have even if they can’t talk about it in religious terms or don’t choose to talk about it in religious terms. I’ve met a number of people for whom direct experience with nature has brought them back into religious exploration in religious traditions because they’ve sensed a presence of the sacred in nature. And it takes them into an exploration in their own traditions or new traditions for them. It’s very clear that nature and the sacred are in many ways connected.

Unfortunately there is also a sense in which the leveling of the human perception and imagination in an extremely secular spirit so that the only measure is the human. To think that there are no measurements, no dimensions outside of the human is an impoverishment of human imagination and leads to a disregard for the intrinsic value of nature. Nature is not simply a reflection of what it does for me or how I can use it but that the things of nature are intrinsically in and of themselves valuable.

M&B: Do you think interfaith dialog is an important step to solve environmental problems?

I do think that when we think about religious plurality there are varieties of ways to structure conversations across different religious groups. And some people really want to spend their time talking about religious doctrine. That’s what they like to do and they really want to spend their time talking about religious doctrine and I think that’s a wonderful occupation, its time very well spent, and those people ought to spend their time doing that.

There’s other people who want to work together inter religiously not so much on the issues directly of religious doctrine, but on other issues. They want to problem solve together and they want to attack together across religions questions that are facing all of us. And it is for those kinds of people that the environmental issues are good possibilities for bringing people together across religious traditions to work together on environmental challenges. That is how Hindus or Buddhists or Christians or Muslims or Jews, each formed by and carrying with them their religious values can come to a common table and think together about environmental challenges and work together on those environmental challenges.

And I think that’s a very interesting way to work and it is a way that in some ways will go farther than either political conversations – specifically political conversations – or specifically doctrinal conversations; this is a different way of working together and I think it can be very positive.

According to the verse, They call upon their Lord, seeking His “Face” (6:52), will is the first station on the path to God and the first harbor from which one sets sail for eternity. Almost everyone who sets sail for the infinite first comes to this harbor, from where an impetus to reach the ultimate destination is gained. Journeying toward this destination is proportional to the traveler’s purity of intention, the degree and quality of his or her relationship with the world and material things, and the power of the driving force derived from this harbor and from the inner desire to undertake this voyage. In proportion to the help of God and the strength of the disciple’s willpower, some traverse the distance between the harbor and the destination at a walking pace, others at the speed of a spaceship or of light, and still others at a speed that cannot be measured. The Ascension of the Prophet, the spiral ascents of a saint, and the journeying of a dervish are good examples of what can be achieved by the will, the willing one, and the willed one when supported by the help of God, the Ultimate Truth.

There is a derivative relation between will and the willing one (disciple). Just as material or natural causes are veils between superficial views and Divine Grandeur and Dignity, so that those who cannot understand the reality behind things and events should not blame God Almighty for what appears to be disagreeable, so too a person’s willpower is only a shadow of the shadow of the Will of the One Who does whatever He wills in whatever way He wills (85:16). Just as a shadow is dependent on the substance, any will created is dependent on the Creator. Similarly, the liveliness and attraction observed in a mirror do not belong to the objects’ reflections, but to the objects themselves. Nevertheless, it is difficult for those who are the beginning of the journey to understand this and distinguish between a shadow and the original.

Until the traveler perceives that one’s personal will is a dim reflection of the Absolute Will (of the All-Willing One) and advances as far as, or rises as high as, the station of being the one willed or desired, one freed from the captivity of the body and thoughts to become a person of pure spirituality and conscience, he or she will always regard his or her will as having a separate, independent existence. Indeed, a traveler is willing at the beginning of the way and willed at the end of it; one is willing while exerting efforts to make servanthood his or her second nature, and one is willed at the point where his or her relation with God is an indispensable dimension of his or her being; one is willing while searching the ways to be loved and desired, and is willed when seeing an imprint of Him on everything and weaving a lacework of spiritual pleasure with the threads of knowledge and love of God.

There are many stations between the beginning of certainty that comes from knowledge and the final point of certainty that comes from experience. Every station is both an end and a beginning; one road begins there, while another one terminates. For example, according to many: My Lord! Expand for me my breast! (20:25) is an end, while it is a beginning compared with: Have We not expanded for you your breast? (94:1). Also, for many: My Lord! Show me Yourself, so that I may gaze upon You (7:143) is a final station, while it is the beginning of the way extending to the station expressed in: His sight swerved not, nor did it go wrong (53:17). Again: Assuredly, my Lord is with me. He will guide me (26:62) means awareness of God’s company, while it is not comparable with the exalted truth or reality mentioned in: Do not be grieved; surely God is with us (9:40).

In the beginning, loyalty, faithfulness, and resolution are of fundamental importance, while solemnity, self-possession, and mannerliness are most important at the end of the journey. Those who have erred at the beginning cannot advance far, while those who have erred at the end are reproved.

One important source from which willpower is fed is the traveler’s care and sensitivity in fulfilling his or her responsibilities and constant supplication to God. Moreover, it is dependent on the traveler’s perseverance in supererogatory acts or duties of worship that God Almighty may become his or her eyes with which to see, ears with which to hear, and hands with which to grasp.

O God! Inspire in me righteousness and protect me from the evil of my evil-commanding, carnal soul. O God! I ask You to enable me to always do good and abandon evils. And bestow blessings and peace on our master Muhammad, the chosen, willed one, and on his Family and Companions, near-stationed to You and godly.

Despite the extraordinary details, my story is quite ordinary. It is a story as quintessentially American as Henry Kissinger’s tale of arriving in New York after fleeing Nazi persecution or Madeleine Albright’s experience of seeking political asylum from the Czechoslovakian Communist Party. I was born in a Chicago hospital in the immediate days after my family fled Communist Vietnam on a 35-foot fishing boat. My mom gave me the nick-name “Nam-My,” literally “Vietnam-America” for being her first-American born child. Thus, I was different from the rest of the kids-simply by virtue of being born here. Unlike my siblings, whose early childhood memories consisted of eating plain rice with salt and hiding in underground shelters during bombings, I watched Rainbow Brite and Transformers before going to school every morning, ate Fruit Loops for breakfast, and had a regular supply of FDA-approved whole milk at my disposal- a luxury from the standpoint of my siblings who fled Vietnam with my parents in the early 1980s. My care-free childhood was like any other American kid – roller-skating madly up and down the two blocks outside of my house that made up my entire universe of a playground, playing Slip n’ Slide in my Latino neighborhood, fluent in Spanish slang phrases I did not know the equivalent to in English or Vietnamese, and catching fireflies at night on my porch. My childhood was bright and sunny and I had no idea at that time how different life would have been if it had not been for the heroic but excruciatingly difficult choice of one man out at sea nearly 30 years before: Captain Bell.

Captain Bell was a U.S. Navy captain aboard the USS Morton DD 948, an anti-submarine weapons destroyer ship deployed during the Vietnam War. His life intersected with mine on a warm day 100 miles into the South China Sea on June 9, 1982- the day he decided to defy the Navy’s orders not to pick up Vietnamese refugees. The orders he received to not pick up Vietnamese boat people made perfect sense: such practices would encourage people to continue risking their lives at sea to escape Vietnam. Yet, Captain Bell chose to defy these orders that day and through his single decision, I was born. After Captain Bell brought my family along with the other seventy other boat people to a Filipino refugee camp, my parents spent 8-9 months awaiting relocation to the United States. In the meantime, I must have been conceived because just days after leaving the refugee camp and arriving in the United States, I was born in Chicago without a single glimpse of this stormy chapter in my family’s history.

For as long as I can remember, mom went door-to-door in the freezing Chicago snow to clean homes and dad fixed bikes. Despite growing up in what later became a single parent household of four children with barely enough funds to rent someone’s basement to live in, I had always felt lucky to inherit all of the anecdotal stories my mother recounted of her life back in Vietnam. But just like many first-generation kids from an immigrant family, I struggled to figure out how to truly live up to my family’s expectations. Was I supposed to grow up and open a nail salon as 99% of the Vietnamese did in the United States? Was I supposed to do something more interesting with my life, something that would make my mother’s tumultuous journey here worth it? Should I spend my life fulfilling my filial duties to my family or go off on my own, become a self-made [wo]man and pull myself up by my own bootstraps? The burden of the past weighed heavily on my shoulders and I was desperate to find answers to my questions.

I searched far and near for answers, insight, and clues to unravel the past that I barely understood as a child. At 15 years old, I traveled and lived in Beijing hiking up the Great Wall of China and back down to the Yangtze River in search of any clues that would solve the mysteries of my past. In college, I lived in South Korea and stood at the edge of the demilitarized zone peering into North Korea to catch a glimpse of Communism at its best. Throughout my adventures, my family’s story motivated me to overcome poverty and racial discrimination in Chicago’s inner city, graduate cum laude from Northwestern University, and become the first in my family to attend law school. The stark contrast between my privileged life and that of my relatives left behind in Vietnam motivated me to later work with Vietnamese sex trafficking victims in Taiwan and to attend law school to continuing helping the most vulnerable segments of our society. From conception in a Filipino refugee tent to becoming the first attorney in my entire family lineage, I realize now that I would not be here at all had it not been for Captain Bell’s decision, a decision which altered the trajectory of many lives out at sea that day.

Most recently, this investigative process of piecing together my family history has helped me uncover the most valuable treasure I ever expected to find: Captain Bell himself. A casual internet search led me to discover that Captain Bell is still alive and living in sunny California. I recently emailed him to introduce myself as the product of his heroic decision in 1982. Nearly 28 years later through finding Captain Bell and uncovering more facts about what happened that day out at sea, I am discovering how much of a difference one person can make with even just one decision. My mother took a leap of faith by risking her life and fleeing Vietnam so that she would not have to live in a society without choices. Captain Bell defied orders to save a group of complete strangers in need. Suddenly, I realized that Captain Bell’s rescue story was not just another one of my mother’s Vietnam War stories of the past. Captain Bell was alive and by taking my own leap of faith, I could meet this man who caused my life be possible and now make his story a part of my own.

With only 72 hours left to live, the only conceivable way to spend my time would be with the two superheroes who literally and figuratively opened me the doors of life: my mom and Captain Bell. As a single mother of four-children and a hard-working nurse now in her fifties, my mom spends all day and night taking care of sick people. She deserves the world and has dreamed of visiting the hometown she left behind in North Vietnam in the 1970s. I would book First-class tickets to Vietnam to tour the town she left more than 40 years ago and has not had the time nor funds to return. The best part of this trip would be that it could allow me to spend meaningful time with my mom, writing down the tremendous war stories she’s lived through, using my art skills to draw a life-size portrait of the survivors aboard the USS Morton DD 948 on that day of their rescue, and passing my family history down to the next generation of Vietnamese-Americans. Next, I would give Captain Bell a ring and invite him to travel with me to see Vietnam, which has changed completely from the dark memories he likely remembers from fighting the Viet Cong during the war. I would organize a worldwide reunion for all of the ship-mates, refugees, and families connected to the USS Morton. The seventy Vietnamese boat people Captain Bell saved in 1982 and their children, grandchildren, maybe even great-grandchildren would all be in attendance. Aboard a beautiful ship docked near Vietnam, we would share our war stories, our sea stories, and our dreams for the future as Captain Bell’s rescue story is really simply a variation of the same stories many Americans have been telling for the past two hundred years. Yes, despite all the extraordinary details, my story is simply ordinary. And through my 72-hour trip to Vietnam with my mom and Captain Bell, it would all end the same way it began: complete strangers out at sea connected together by the fragile threads of history.

Not long after, I saw a minuscule thing coming to me from that direction; I thought it was a bird of some kind. Strange enough, the bird came to me so abruptly that I heard its sound only after it passed me… Guess what? It was not a bird; it was a fighter jet. This time, I knew where to look, and I followed it for the short while it played pick-a-boo with me.

The following day, mom took me to the celebration arena for a national day. I couldn’t believe my eyes, everywhere was full of fighter jets; but my eyes looked for the one that mesmerized me the day before. And, it was standing right there, waiting for me to come. I approached it with respectful steps, and carefully touched it. It was so cold and tough, yet so beautiful. That day, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. The smell of the jet fuel coming from the engines was so powerful that even I could fly with that kind of a drink.

“Hey; come here” I heard someone calling me. There was really nobody around. “Follow the sharp smell, come on here,” insisted the voice. Was I daydreaming, or had I been poisoned by the jet fuel and lost my conscience? Yeah, yeah, the voice was coming from the rear-end of the engine. It was the nozzle that was talking to me.

The moment I realized who was talking to me, I found myself in the circular, hollow structure of the nozzle. I was too nervous and surprised at first, but after a moment of looking around admiringly, I spoke with the words: “I know the inferno fire that you are exhausting. Isn’t it beautiful? You are so powerful. You are the one that is powering this beauty in the sky.”

The nozzle was not happy to hear my words of flattery. “Hey little boy, you know something, but you don’t know everything. Yes, it is true that I am exhausting that violent river of gas. You are right that this stormy exhaust is in the heart of this beauty in the sky. But you have got to learn more. I am only a solid duct that is accelerating what comes into me. I have no power to compress that humongous amount of air into a volume as small as a bird’s nest. I am completely unable to heat up the air to inferno level. And, the beauty in the sky is not taken up there by me either.”

I was totally disappointed and frustrated by the nozzle. I had thought for an instant that it was my hero; but now, my dreams were destroyed. I felt all alone in a desert. The nozzle must have realized my situation, so it picked up again: “Come on. I am going to introduce you to the unseen heroes behind our mysterious beauty. I am going to show you the inside.”

I was truly perplexed. What else could be more mysterious than a speaking nozzle? The voice of the nozzle slowly diffused into the deep and dark hallway into the engine, and I followed it. Soon, I came by long towers that had a nicely curved shape. As soon as I stepped near them, the floor that the towers were built on started moving. In the midst of this earthquake and a blinding darkness, I could faintly see another row of towers that were stagnant. I threw myself towards them. As I was dealing with my horrified and troubled soul, I heard a thunderous voice that reverberated everywhere:

“How nice to see you here, Adam!” I was doubly shocked. Not only was this unseen thing talking to me, but it also knew my name. “Do you know me?” I replied. “How could I miss your glittering eyes fixed at us whenever we pass over you? I am the turbine, one of the unseen heroes. I am the one that powers the compressors that squeeze the air. I am the one that faces the hot air before it goes into the nozzle.”

Wow, this was the man; this was the legendary hero behind the beauty in the sky. I looked at its towers that displayed nobility and their curved surfaces that embodied beauty. As I was losing myself in admiration, I heard the voice again:

“These are the eyes that I have been seeing every time we passed over you. But I have to tell you something. What you are looking for is not me either, because I cannot create the hot air that energizes everything, including me. Despite the beauties and power embodied in me, I am not the essence that bears the real beauty you are looking for.”

What was that supposed to mean? First the nozzle, now the turbine; every time, I am being attracted, and then I am left alone with a sense of deception. Are these heroes making fun of my admiration of their beauty? If so, they don’t deserve my admiration anymore; if not, then why am I having this feeling of deception? Is it wrong to attribute hero status to something?

Lost in feelings and thoughts like these, I left the turbine, and proceeded further into the darkness. Not only didn’t I know where I was, but also I had no means to determine my whereabouts. In total silence and darkness, I sat at a place that felt like a smooth and large room. Suddenly, a wind started blowing with growing speed, and a constant noise occupied everywhere. I was alarmed and sought somewhere to cling to. With the help of lightning that seemed to come out of nowhere, I saw a cavity that looked safe. After a challenging crawl, I was there. Then, a second lightning came and everywhere burst into fires. As if winds from the hell were gushing out. My jaw dropped down, I stared at this miraculous display of fire.

“Welcome, finally you are here,” told a voice that was distinctly heard despite the violent storm. I felt like I am being driven through a scenario so that where ever I enter, I experience things that I was meant to. “Am I the hero of this scenario?”, I asked myself inside, and laughed at the idea. Upon seeing so many extraordinary things, my awe of the strange things was veiled with habituation. So, I couldn’t pay the respect that was due the voice I heard. Maybe because of this, I received a kick from behind, and I had to struggle against the winds of fire to get back to my seat where I was safe and comfortable.

“Hello, are you still there?” I asked. “Can you tell me where I am?” That distinct voice appeared again in my ears: “Indeed, I am here, but you weren’t!” I bowed my head with shame. Having hurt the only one that could help me in this situation was as foolish as it could be. “And I was with you all along from the start.” What was this? I didn’t know whether to feel ashamed because of my selfish and pragmatic sense of respect, or to burst into a thousand pieces for not having recognized the one who has been with me all along?

“This is as far as you can go in this story. You are in the place where the energy that empowers everything is revealed. It is the heart of the beauty that you have been admiring.” After a second of silence, “Did you find what you were looking for?” asked the voice. I had seen strange things, but none of them had satisfied my heart nor quenched my curiosity. A sad face was my response to the question, but I didn’t know if the voice could see my face. Apparently it did, so that it directed me to another place. “You see this violent fire going on, would you like to fly away with it?” Was this guy crazy? How in the world could I survive in fire? “Well then, there are two ways to get out of here. Either you go along the fire back to where you came from. Or, if you are not able to do so, you go forward.”

With that directive, I started crawling towards the front, into the strong wind. I came across a thing similar to the turbine, and then another hallway similar to the nozzle. At first I was puzzled, because I had seen the same things that I had seen on my way previously. Had I made a mistake and proceeded backwards? That mustn’t be the case, since I had moved away from the fire.

After this stupefying similarity, I was at the mouth of the cave where everything starts. I was able to see the wings too. But now, the aircraft was moving. All of the storm that was going on inside was for accelerating. The force of the acceleration was so strong that I slipped from where I was clinging, and found myself stuck at the beautiful front curve of the wing. Strange enough, the same voice welcomed me again: “Finally you are here.” I didn’t know whether to reply to it or to lose myself while watching the beauty of the aircraft as it soared into the air with an ever increasing speed. It definitely felt like the divers who hear that beautiful voice when they go deeper than they should. I could not resist melting my body in the excitement of the maneuvers. After a while, we were hundreds of meters above where we had started. Now, the aircraft was cruising, and despite the rareness of the experience, it felt like sitting in the living room. With the steadiness of my state, I found myself emerging from the depths of excitement.

“Have you found the beauty you are looking for?” asked the voice again, to which I said yes. “Where do you think that beauty is coming from? From the engines or from the wings?” That question was most unexpected. The engine itself was not able to fly, it was only able to create a strong push. The wings were only beautiful. They did not actively do anything. They only stood there in the wind, and then, lift was there. Without the air, the wings would not create anything. As for the air, we are completely sunken in it, let alone flying. “I don’t know where the beauty is coming from. There seems to be something missing in the ingredients that created the beauty of flight. None of the ingredients seems to originate it. It looks like you put the engine, the wings and the air in the pot, and suddenly something that you did not put comes into being.”

“But you did not realize this point until you made this journey, despite that you have been witnessing the same beauty all along. “

Why was that the case? Why did I have to make this incredible journey in order to become aware of this uncertainty in the source of beauty?

“When you are not actually in a journey like this, you take all the mysteries for granted, because you consider them natural, ordinary. But once you are in the journey, you realize something different that exists neither in you nor in the things you come across. It is as if somebody is tracking what is going on, and whenever the necessary ingredients are there, he secretly adds the missing spice into it at the right amount. And, then? Behold the beauty!”

In company of al Khadr, plunging into secrets

Brilliant young people with countenances of gold

Surrounded by descending sparkling lights

Enraptured with the heavenly potion imbibed

With eyes revealing the secret attained

Their stormy vigor never exhausted

With hearts of steel, never afraid or shrinking

The entire world knows them, lauding their lands and towns

conquering charm mysteriously marks their faces

Equivalent to a genius, each brilliant mind

Waiting for a blessed dawn,

A dawn whose rooster has crowed

Digestion in grain-eating birds

The digestive system of the chicken, which is a representative of the world of birds, is comprised of organs lined up in straight line succession: a beak, mouth, gullet, craw, front stomach (with gland), gizzard, small intestine, caecum, large intestine, cloacae and anus. In addition, enzymes secreted from the pancreas, liver and gallbladder also have digestive duties. Ending in a sharp point, the beak was created especially to be able to pick up single pieces of feed. Chickens do not have assisting organs like the palate, cheek, tongue or teeth that are normally found in the mouth, the first door of digestion in most animals. Ruminating animals like cows, sheep, goats and camels use the tongue instead of a beak for taking food into their mouths, and then their teeth are used to begin the breakdown of food. In chickens, however, this breakdown is initiated with the bottom and top beak. In ruminants there are taste buds in different shapes on the tip, sides and middle of their tongues which also function as the organ for the sense of taste. Since such taste buds are not found in chickens, there is also no perception of taste like that experienced in ruminating animals.

The structure and function of the gullet, or food pipe, has similar characteristics in chickens and other animals. However, just as in all birds that eat single seeds and grains, there is another digestive organ in chickens in the shape of a bag opposite to where the gullet expands. Called a craw, this tiny pouch is a place for the storage, wetting and softening of feed, and it serves the purpose of bringing food to the consistency needed for further digestion; consequently, it lightens the burden of the stomach (just like when we leave food that is difficult to cook, like chick peas or beans, standing in water overnight before we cook it).

A chicken’s stomach is composed of two different sections, the front stomach and the gizzard. The feed the chicken eats passes from the gullet and the craw to the front stomach, where digestive secretions are made. The food is stored here briefly and mixed with the special fluids of the stomach. Found in this secretion are both the pepsin enzyme, which starts the digestion of proteins, and hydrochloric acid, which is secreted to generate the pH level that makes this enzyme effective (and which also helps in the dissolution of minerals). These two important secretions are produced by different glands in the stomach. Like the craw, the gizzard, which comes after the front stomach, is the place where mechanical digestion, which is particular to all birds that eat grains, takes place. The gizzard is called the stomach with muscles because it is comprised of a pair of thick and strong muscle layers. As a result of these muscles constricting strongly, feed is broken down mechanically and ground up. While gathering feed, the chicken usually also swallows small pieces of sand, stone and limestone as if it knows how its digestive system works. Although many of us think that chickens swallow stones because they cannot distinguish them from feed, it is obvious that there is a purpose why they are doing it. If these stones, which are like “mill stones” for the digestive tract, are not found in the gizzard, the feed is not fully ground; consequently, it will pass to the small intestine in a form that will not be fully beneficial to the body.

Depending on its characteristics, the feed eaten can stay in the gizzard for a few minutes or several hours. The small intestine, which comes after the stomach, is comprised of the duodenum (twelve-finger intestine), the jejunum and the ileum. The small intestine is similar in grain-eating birds to those of other animals. The duodenum empties the secretions coming from the pancreas and the bile coming from the gall bladder. The digestion and absorption of the feed actually takes place in the small intestine due to these secretions. Final digestion and the absorption of carbohydrates and protein are effected by bacteria found at the point where the small intestine ends, in the 10-15 centimeter-long, V-shaped caecum.

The large intestine and the cloacae are found in the advanced sections of the digestive system. The role of the large intestine, which is twice as large in diameter as the small intestine, is to temporarily store the waste from the digested food and to maintain the balance of water in the body. The cloacae is a small orifice with a structure formed by the widening of the large intestine towards the anus and where the digestive, defecation and reproduction tracts open up.

While giving grain-eating birds the above mechanisms in order to nourish them, God equipped ruminating animals with different oral, dental, gastric and intestinal structures as well as different digestive strategies.

Digestion in ruminating mammals

While secreting saliva is essential for ruminating animals, it is not necessary for chickens because of differences in their digestive system. As a result of the secretion of saliva the fodder of ruminants is softened and dryness of mouth is prevented. Ptyalin (or alpha amylase), which is found in saliva, has antibacterial properties that protect animals from infections in addition to playing a role in digestion. The mother cows constantly licking their newborn calves is both an expression of compassion and also of wisdom in protecting the newborn from probable infections (Similarly, animals like dogs and cats licking their wounds and thus speeding up healing is no coincidence, but a sign of universal wisdom and mercy). This wisdom shows that saliva, of which cows secrete 90-180 liters and sheep 5-8 liters per day, is not a waste.

The stomachs of ruminants are comprised of four sections; the first three are the rumen, the reticulum and the omasum. These three sections are called the front stomach. The section that does the real work is called the abomasum. Because the nutritional value of grass is very low in comparison with meat, it is obvious that a large bodied ruminant will need a lot of grass. Consequently, the capacity of rumen being 150 liters is a wise and fitting design. In addition, the cellulase enzyme that digests the cellulose walls in plant cells is not produced in the tissues of any mammals. The possessor of infinite knowledge and power, God placed high concentrations of bacteria, protozoa, yeast and fungus-all of which can produce the cellulase enzyme needed to break down cellulose-in the rumen of ruminating mammals. The rumen acts as a fermentation factory because of these microorganisms. Breaking down the cellulose-rich food consumed by ruminants, these microorganisms both fulfill their own nutritional needs and help to meet the host’s energy, protein and vitamin (especially B12) needs within a symbiotic relationship. I wonder where the microorganisms in the rumen learned about this synthesis and assistance mechanisms!

What a magnificent engineering wonder is the “sulcus esophagus,” a semi-duct structure in the shape of a canoe that extends from the end of the food pipe in newborn ruminants to the abomasum where the essential stage of digestion takes place. Due to this structure, milk drunk reaches the last stage of the stomach without passing through the rumen, for there is no matter like cellulose in the content of milk that needs to be broken down. Consequently, there is no need for the milk to go to the rumen. If it were not like this, the milk would go directly to the rumen where it would be ruined by microorganisms, lose its nutritional quality and be like a bribe given in vain to the microorganisms in the rumen.