Humans take up residence in all kinds of environments ranging from sprawling metropolises to some of the most remote corners of the globe that are largely devoid of our modern luxuries. Oftentimes though, we emigrate to other societies for a variety of reasons; curiosity, financial profit, for the sake of adventure, service, to spread one’s beliefs, or to learn about others. Richard Nelson, a white man that taught in one of Los Angeles’ toughest African American schools, is one of those people that left his home behind to learn more about himself and overcome his subconscious prejudices. His article “My White Experience in the Black Community” is an emotional and gripping memoir that can help all of us open our hearts to others.

In worst case scenarios, people flee from their homes to avoid persecution, enmity, exclusion, or even ethnic cleansing. Many Turks have had to flee their home country of Turkey, often via illegal and unsafe practices, with the hope of escaping a brutal dictatorship that no one wanted them to call Turkey their home. Zain Hussain recounts his emotional and life changing encounter with Turkish refugees on his volunteer trip to Greece.

Some of Earth’s most beautiful islands and oceans are home for other creatures, such as Pacific Golden Plovers and Loggerhead Sea Turtles. Despite lacking free will or methodology, they utilize a variety of complex systems to consistently find their way home even if it means travelling hundreds of miles across giant swaths of lands or water. These natural phenomena are astounding and still perplex scientists to this day.

Even the most microscopic creatures find homes for themselves, whether in our bodies or in the bodies of other animals. One such creature, though we would definitely consider it not welcome in our systems, is the trypanosome, a lethal parasite that is a scourge across much of Africa. Such parasites travel through a variety of hosts including worms, eggs, snails, birds, and flies to eventually end up within our bloodstreams.

Sight is one of the most miraculous things for which we can never be thankful enough. Our eyes serve as windows connecting our inner life with the outer world. In “Retina the Mind-Boggler,” Dr. Serranur explains the intricacies of the eye’s physiology. Despite many theories and scientific advances, we still don’t completely know how sight works. Scientists do know that the retina plays a crucial role in this very complex structure – so important, in fact, not every eye surgeon dares touch it.

Stem cell research has expanded our understanding of biology and medicine to once-unimaginable levels. Among the treatments for which the initial findings are promising are paralysis, Parkinson’s, diabetes, and even blindness. Despite these groundbreaking discoveries, many are not sure about how far we should go in genetic programming. Dr. Yorulmaz elaborates on this dilemma in “Embryonic Stem Cells.”

The question of how to handle refugees has been a critical issue throughout human history. Despite many regulations, international legal conventions, and technological progress, refugees still pose intractable questions to governments around the world. Last summer, when Dr. Sophia Pandya was visiting Greece to observe the situation of refugees there, the country suffered one of the deadliest wildfires of the twenty-first century, in which a hundred people died and more than a thousand buildings were destroyed. Greece has been the crossroads for many refugees, including, yes, many Turkish citizens, especially in the last few years. The Erdoğan regime’s clampdown on the Hizmet Movement and many others who oppose his autocracy has forced tens of thousands of Turkish citizens to flee their homes and seek asylum in Europe, the US, and elsewhere. Hundreds of thousands of people have been detained in these purges; thousands more are waiting their turn, as their freedom to travel has been illegally curtailed by the Turkish government. What is their crime? Association with a group that opposes autocracy and supports democracy. For many fleeing injustice, Greece has become the last chance for freedom. What Dr. Pandya saw there was representative of what the Hizmet Movement has been doing for decades: Turkish refugees reached out to victims of the wildfires and distributed food and other aid. This was their way of responding to the hospitality of Greek people, who opened their homes to refugees when, as described in this issue’s lead article, they were forced to flee “dark-spirited night demons who were overwhelmed by hatred, rancor, and enmity, and dejected souls growling with wrath.”

Prophet Moses states that the way to spiritual pleasure and meeting with God, the Divine vicegerency and nearness to Him goes through a stage of fleeing. Ordinary people flee from life’s tumults and sin’s ugliness to take refuge in God’s forgiveness and favor. They declare or consider the meaning of: My Lord, forgive and have compassion, for You are the Best of the Compassionate (23:118). They seek God’s shelter in total sincerity, saying: I take refuge in You from the evil of what I have done.⁴ Those distinguished by their piety and nearness to God flee from their own lesser qualities to the Divine Attributes, from feeling with their outward senses to discerning and observing with the heart, from ceremonial worship to its innermost dimension, and from carnal feelings to spiritual sensations. This is what is referred to in: O God, I take refuge in Your approval from Your wrath, and in Your forgiveness from Your chastisement.5 The most advanced in knowledge and love of God and in piety flee from Attributes to the Divine Being or Essence, and from the Truth to the Truth Himself. They say: I take refuge in You from You,⁶ and are always in awe of God. All who flee seek shelter and protection. As the cons ciousness of fleeing is proportionate to the spiritual profundity of the one fleeing, the quality of the destination reached varies according to the degree of the seeker’s awareness. Members of the first group arrive at knowledge of God. They remember God in everything they see, mention Him, cherish desires, imagine things that are impossible for them to realize, and finally come to rest at sensing the reality of: We have not been able to know You as knowing You requires, O Known One. They always feel and repeat in ecstasy:

Beings are in pursuit of knowledge of You,
And those who attempt to describe You are unable to do so.
Accept our repentance, for we are human beings
Unable to know You as knowing You requires.

Members of the second group sail every day for a new ocean of knowing God, and spend their lives in ever renewed glow of Divine manifestation. However, they cannot be saved from the obstacles that block them from the final station, where their overflowing spirit will subside. With their eyes fixed on the steps of the stairway that leads to higher and higher ranks, they fly upward from one rank to another; however, they also tremble with the fear that they might descend. Members of the third group, freed from the tides of the state and drowned in amazement, are so intoxicated with the “wine coming from the source of everything” that even the Trumpet of Israfil⁷ cannot cause them to recover from that stupor. Only one who has reached this rank can describe the profundity of their thoughts and feelings. Rumi says: Those illusions are traps for saints, whereas in reality They are the reflections of those with radiant faces in the garden of God.⁸ The “garden of God” signifies the manifestation of Divine Unity-the manifestations of one, many, or all the Divine Names throughout the universe. “Those with radiant faces” denotes the Divine Names and Attributes focused on a single thing or being. So, the meaning of the couplet is this: The traps in which saints are caught are the manifestations of the Divine Names and Attributes. These manifestations consist of the illusions in the view of those blind to Divine truths. In the words of Sari Abdullah Efendi, the hearts of the Prophets and saints are mirrors that reflect the Names and Attributes of God. God also manifests His Names and Attributes as the Lord-Ruler, Sustainer, and Master -of the universe, making it a garden with ever-renewed beauties and charms that enrapture the Prophet and the saints.

Notes

1. Sufis view the creation as a shadow of the original, the meaning, the origin, in the Knowledge of God.

2. Sufis consider everything in the world as being no more than a drop, maybe even a mirage, of the ocean. Material existence and pleasures are regarded as having the meaning and worth of a drop of water, while the other world and spiritual pleasures coming from Divine knowledge and love correspond to an ocean.

3. The piece of glass signifies Divine manifestations in the world, while the Sun signifies God, the Origin of these manifestations.

4. Al-Tirmidhi, Dawa‘at, 15; Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Shu‘ayb al-Nasa’i, “Isti’adha,” in Sunan al-Nasa’i, 8 vols. (Beirut, 1930), 57.

5. Muslim, Salat, 222.

6. Ibid.

7. Israfil is one of the four archangels. He will blow the trumpet just before the end of the universe. This may be metaphorical.

8. Mawlana Jalal al-Din al-Rumi, Al-Mathnawi al-Kabir, 6 vols. (Istanbul, n.d.), 1:3.