The meat of the sandwich is comprised of three related forms of sadness. I am overwhelmed with grief and a sense of mourning, for the loss of someone so precious and the understanding that there will be no further opportunities to stand or sit in his presence, converse with him, and to feel emanating from his being the intensity of intelligence, compassion, concern for others rather than for himself, genuine and profound humility, and, simply put, charisma that I have had the privilege of experiencing a handful of times within the past decade. 

That sense of personal grief and sadness is accompanied by my sense of empathy for all of the tens of thousands of individuals beyond myself, near and far, who have been swept up by the wonder of Fethullah Gülen—his words, his actions, his vision—who like me will be bereft of the chance to feel his concrete presence nearby again. More subtle is the sense of mourning for all of those younger people who are drawn to the values, principles, and teachings associated with Hocaefendi who had not yet met him in person and who will be deprived of that opportunity. Who can calculate the numbers of these, going into the future?

This treble sense of grief is, however, sandwiched between two joyful outer slices of fresh, sweet-smelling and -tasting emotional bread. I am joyful on Hocaefendi’s behalf that he has returned to the Beloved Source. His is a return that—in the manner in which he was his own kind of Sufi—has been his ultimate goal; it is a return yearned for as a terminus of and reward for accomplishing his divinely-appointed task: of shaping and shepherding hizmet within our human realm. That yearning and return—and the tears he so often shed in this world of ours—make me think of the words from the Mesnevi (Bk I) of Jelaluddin Rumi, which resonate, together with so many other words and concepts, from that wondrous 13^th-century Sufi poet with whom Hocaefendi shared such a unique spiritual relationship:

Listen to the story told by the reed,
of being separated:
“Since I was cut from the reedbed,
I have made this crying sound.
Anyone apart from someone he loves
understands what I say.
Anyone pulled from a source,
longs to go back…”

Like Rumi and other Sufis, Hocaefendi is that reed, pulled as we all are at birth from the divine reedbed—and longing to return to it. The Sufi who longs for being reunited in Love with God believes that God longs to be reunited with the Sufi: the lover and the beloved are the beloved and the lover….

If joy on his behalf for his happy return to the reedbed is one outer part of my emotional sandwich, the other is both drawn from the same words of Rumi and transcends them. For we who have sought to further Hocaefendi’s work and his vision are the reed bereft of him: he is the loving and beloved reedbed from which we have been forcibly cut off—but we are also the ongoing fulfillment of his vision. I rejoice when I consider all around me—in the Washington, DC area where I live and out to the four corners of the world that I have visited—the countless members of the Hizmet Movement who are engaged in good works inspired by him and by his vision. These extend from shaping exemplary schools in thousands of locations, often (even in the United States) where schools, much less fine schools, are not easily established; to helping provide clean water in remote African villages where clean water is not easily found nearby; to an ever-expanding number of interfaith and multicultural programs that bring people “of diverse tribes” together so that they “can get to know one another.”

The broken-off reed that is silent begins to make beautiful music when the breath of life is breathed into it: it is at once God’s spirit animating the hizmet-filled life of Hocaefendi and also his myriad followers, inspirited by his ideas, whose lives have been animated by the breath of his, Hocaefendi’s, teachings, to bring musical harmony into the world. I rejoice as I consider the splendid role that the Hizmet Movement is playing—and how, in the immediate aftermath of Hocaefendi’s Transition, its members were drawn together more warmly than ever—and I smile with a sense of the extraordinary and beautiful future of hizmet that will make him smile as he observes us moving forward to be part of the process of helping to perfect the world in an ongoing and loving partnership with the Beloved Source to which he has himself just returned.

Once you realize these things about you and the life that you are living, then it really sounds outrageous when people think they have made a good work of art or they have great taste in art. Could it not be that all people have the same taste but only each individual’s perception is different, as opposed to all people having the same level of perception but different taste?

Most people think that taste is something subjective, that is, everybody has their own taste and that is the end of it. There is nothing more to discuss about taste. Hence, there is no such thing as good taste or bad. Everybody has things they like and things they do not, but no one can say that their taste is any better than someone else’s. Thus, we are all tempted to accept the unquestionable character of taste as the truth since almost everybody agrees on it. Although the majority view is often considered acceptable as a way of ascertaining the truth, there are quite a few examples that show that is just not correct. This article is about one of those examples.

If you are part of the big majority of people that thinks there is no such thing as good taste, you should also think that there is no such thing as good art. I can imagine if I was giving a talk about this article and presenting this exact same argument, there would be fifty hands going up objecting: “That can’t be true; there is Mona Lisa, there is Tortoise Trainer, there is this, and there is that.” But then, whoever did not like Mona Lisa or Tortoise Trainer would just have worse taste than yours, or anybody else who liked it might have better taste for that matter. Hence, we arrive at the conclusion that if there is no good taste, then there is no good art. If we follow the argument further, then there is no good artist.

Suppose you are making a painting or writing a poem, what do you think would be guiding you throughout the whole process? The inevitable answer to this question must be “taste” because each stroke of your brush or each line you add is a decision made by you with the help of your taste. Every move you make is a result of your conscious or subconscious thought that it would make your piece better. But then, if you think that there is no place for a concept of being better in art, you should not be able to make any moves. Not only that, by the same token a brand new blank canvas would be just as good as the ceiling of the Hagia Sophia. What is more, by saving a lot of time and energy, you are doing even better with the blank canvas than the guy who painted the ceiling of Hagia Sophia.

Probably you are thinking that the author of these lines has really lost it now! And maybe, you are thinking that it is about time to move on to the next article. But hold on a second!

I think I may have a solution to this nonsense. If Da Vinci was in Robinson Crusoe’s place, he would still draw the Mona Lisa on that island, but surely, he would be happier if thousands of people came to see it every day. So, there is more to art than pure taste; art has people who appreciate it. It could be argued that an artist enjoys his piece for two possible reasons. First, just because he likes what he does; second, there is an audience who will appreciate what he does.

But before appreciation come attention and interest. People must pay attention or need to have an interest before they understand or even think about something. Only after that do they recognize something is beautiful, and after that comes the appreciation.

Attention and interest are two very broad terms. There are so many different things that attract my attention or interest me, often without me knowing it. Sometimes the rhyme of a poem is so soothing and pleasant that I do not even know, when I read it the first time, that I have actually fallen in love with it. I realize this when I figure out that I have learned the whole thing after a few recitations without expending any special effort to memorize it. It is as if, all of a sudden, I start hearing the constant relaxing whistle of a tall reed in my ears along with the wind. It is a great pleasure to fall asleep in the ambiance of that reed. The bed is no different than a throne for me at that moment.

Once I discover such a lone reed with a soothing melody, I visit her from time to time when I get really tired and need some rest. Then, on one of those visits, just before I fall asleep, I see a ray of a different color through the leaves of the reed; one which I had not noticed before. It is an irreplaceable touch. Surely the poet must have hidden it among the leaves and the branches only for his loyal visitors. Exhilarated by the discovery of this beauty, I start telling the fellows in the shade around me about it. I hear you saying now, “Oh! I thought you were alone under the tree.” No, no! That is impossible. If there is a reed, there will always be fellows under the shade, some for the whistle, some for the colors, some for something you do not know, but there will be always some people enjoying it.

I tell you the little story about me and the poet just to make a point about the type of art that intrigues us. Some art lies in the background quietly, some shakes our very souls and makes us tremble. Some gets carved into our brains immediately, whereas some types challenge our intelligence. In all of those different kinds of good art there is a very essential thing in common. It is the common things that the audience shares.

Although poetry is a type of art with a very broad audience, we can always imagine some people who would have no interest in it at all. Maybe a better example would be a type of beauty that would interest absolutely everybody in this world. Is there anything like that? There are tons of things like that. Who would not like a nightingale singing near dawn, or a warm breeze on the cheek, the harmony of different tones of green in a broad forest, human faces, and the like. Let us focus, for example, on that last one. All of us find human faces interesting, right? I believe that it is encoded in our DNA. A parallel to this is the obsessive compulsion of sculptors to make human faces all the time. Or, think about the number of people whose faces you know but not their names and vice versa. Which number is bigger do you think?

If you are not convinced by these arguments or think that maybe I am biased due to the conditions that I developed in, let us put the same question to babies, who are not biased, at least not just yet! Let us see what they have got to say about this. If you are worried that we cannot really understand what they are saying, there is some help from the psychologists. “In 1961, the psychologist Robert Fantz devised an ingenious method to find out about babies and faces. He designed a stand in which, on the bottom level, the baby lies on his back, looking up. A few feet above is a display area where the experimenter puts two large cards, each containing a design-a white circle, a yellow circle, a bull’s eye, or a simple sketch of face. The researcher, peering down through a tiny peephole, can watch the movement of the baby’s eyes and time how long they are directed at one or the other of each pair of patterns. Fantz found that at two months babies looked twice as long at a bull’s eye as at a circle of solid color, and twice as long at a sketch of a face as at a bull’s eye. Evidently, even a two-month-old can distinguish major differences and direct his gaze toward what he finds more interesting.”¹

With this in mind, we are compelled to acknowledge that the human face appeals to an innate common taste in all humans, either because it is beautiful in itself or because it contains most, if not all, of the things that are to “the common taste” of all humans. Then we can conclude that, as humans, our design is such that we are at least able to appreciate the same things.

Finally, we are in a position to define good art. Good art is such that it passes from its creator and reaches a lot of people who enjoy gazing upon it. Good art attracts attention and interest from a lot of people with different characteristics from different cultures and regardless of all their differences, the essential thing is they all have the same aptitude to enjoy the same thing in various different ways. In other words, good art is a manifestation of unity in multiplicity.

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1. Hunt, M., The Story of Psychology, pp. 366, Anchor Books, 1993