Fethullah Gülen, the beloved teacher, author, and poet, passed away on October 20, 2024.

His articles, each a fruit of honest faith, deep thought, poetic refinement, and, yes, suffering, have shaped The Fountain since its inception in 1993. From the very first issue, we humbly tried our best to reflect his vision of peaceful coexistence through dialogue among communities and his belief in the priceless value of every human being. The Fountain proudly cherishes the badge of honor as the only English periodical with Gülen authoring its lead article. To demonstrate our commitment to continue his work, we present this special edition dedicated to his legacy.

Featured in this issue are writers from around the world, with different faith traditions and nationalities, sharing how they were impacted by Gülen’s message, via a school, an iftar dinner, reading his books or The Fountain, or simply through a small act of kindness. We hope their reflections will serve as a testimony to how far and wide his message was welcomed globally and will continue to resonate in our hearts.

Please click to see sample pages of this special edition. The full content will be open to access soon.

The Fountain
On Life, Knowledge, and Belief

Should We Be Grateful? (2018)

How to Face a Disaster? (2017)

I am an Immigrant (2016)

The Defining Theme of Our Age (2015)

You and Your 100-Year-Old Self (2014)

What Is Your Motto? (2013)

The Last 72 (2010 )

Should We Be Grateful? (2018)

1st Place

“Grateful for A Soldier’s War”

• Celine Dan Tam Nguyen

2nd Place

“At Least”

• Gaye Brown

3rd Place

“Homeless”

• Judy Ann Eichstedt

Honorable Mention

“Grateful for Death”

• Jessica Gurgick

Honorable Mention

“What Do You Say?”

• Kimberly Moore

How to Face a Disaster? (2017)

1st Place

Curtains in the Breeze

• Nyri Bakkalian

2nd Place

80 Miles

• Beth J. Polazzo

3rd Place

It’s Not about Where You Break

• Kassandra M. Lighthouse

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Sweaty Armpits and Infinite To-Do Lists

• Jordann Cress

Love and Suicide

• Jan McDaniel

I am an Immigrant (2016)

1st Place

• Peter Ferguson Swarr

2nd Place

• Matthew Hawk Eldridge

3rd Place

• Valentina Locatelli

Honorable Mention

• Salma Hany Abdel Fattah

Honorable Mention

• Claudia Verona

Special Thanks

• Karina Nava-Melchor
• Ray Mwareya
• Lawrence Brazier
• Janette Conger
• Nuran Elif Öztürk

The Defining Theme of Our Age (2015)

How do you think history will record the 21st century?

1st Place

• Mariya Tytarenko

2nd Place

• Tony Mitchell

3rd Place

• Billy von Raven

Honorable Mention

• Deborah Moldow

Honorable Mention

• Serenity Jean Miller

You and Your 100-Year-Old Self (2014)

1st Place

• Elizabeth Allen

2nd Place

• Matt Hritz

3rd Place

• Philip Golabuk

Honorable Mention

• Tarbia Hamid

Honorable Mention

• Jean Blanchard

What Is Your Motto? (2013)

1st Place

• Magdalena Rusanova

2nd Place

• Noble Lee

3rd Place

• Janet Fichter

Honorable Mention

• Caroline Lancaster

Honorable Mention

• Elizabeth Harmatys Park

The Last 72 (2010 )

1st Place

• Joseph J. SALTER

2nd Place

• Ha-Thanh NGUYEN

3rd Place

• Joanna BODNAR

Honorable Mention

• Belinda STURGILL

Honorable Mention

• Kimberly PARKER

We at The Fountain believe that every voice should be heard, and that every challenge should be respected and can offer insight into our own lives.

We all face new challenges in our lives. They can be massive undertakings, such as moving across a country and beginning a new school. Or sometimes the more routine tasks, such as getting out of the bed in the morning while undergoing depression, can themselves be massive challenges.

We want to hear about your challenges and how you mentally, physically, and/or spiritually prepare for them.

How do you find strength when you feel it does not exist? And what have you learned, or are learning, from your challenges?

• Deadline for submissions: March 1, 2020
• Contest open to all writers worldwide
• Ideal word count to be between 1,500 and 2,500
• Submit yours at https://forms.gle/pQj93gNvZiDGd4GaA.
• The winners and the essays of the previous contests can be found at The Fountain Essay Contests

Submissions start:

November 1, 2019

Deadline for submissions:

March 1, 2020

Winners announced:

May 31, 2020

Cash prizes:

• 1st Place – $1,000
• 2nd Place – $500
• 3rd Place – $300
• Two Honorable Mentions – $150 each

Frequently Asked Questions

• THEME
• REFERENCES
• WORD COUNT
• STYLE
• PUBLISHING
• NUMBER OF ENTRY
• DISQUALIFICATION
• EVALUATION
• SUBMISSION
• DEADLINE
• WINNERS
• ELIGIBILITY

THEME

What qualifies a good essay?

An essay that you feel your heart rests more comfortably on. The more concise an essay, the more acceptable it is. Its authenticity and uniqueness, and how elaborately you put your theme into words so that others are inspired from it.

REFERENCES

Do we have to include references, bibliography, notes, etc. as in an academic journal?

The Fountain is not a journal. Thus, we do not expect a full scale reference list for all the information you provide. But, we encourage contributors to provide at least a reasonable number of references (not more than four or five) especially for the arguments borrowed from other sources, as it would make your work more reliable. If the kind of information you provide needs citation, please provide it; but essays with lengthy references are not preferred. Some reference and recommendations for further reading may help readers who are interested in the essay. Accuracy of data is expected in essays in which information provided needs sourcing. An essay based on personal experience does not require citation, and it is equally acceptable.

WORD COUNT

Does the word count limit include the bibliography or just the essay itself?

The Fountain is not a full-scale academic journal, so we expect authors to keep references to a maximum of four or five. Notes can be more. References and notes do not make a big change in word count which is advised to be between 1,500 and 2,500. A range is always necessary to be able to have an objective measure in terms of size.

STYLE

What kind of writing style do you expect? Can we use informal phrases? Is this essay supposed to be a personal opinion piece, or more of a scholarly supported article?

In writing style, we mainly seek consistency. We prefer the Chicago Manual of Style, but if you are more familiar with another style, that is also acceptable. Some informal usage can be OK in a certain essay, but not in another. It is basically the author’s call.

Would an essay in the short story genre qualify for the contest?

As long as your theme is skillfully woven through its structure, and if it upholds The Fountain’s values and principles, yes.

PUBLISHING

Are you going to publish submitted essays anywhere?

We might publish submissions in The Fountain, both the print and web editions, even if the essays did not win any prize. By submitting your essay to this contest, you agree that you give permission to The Fountain to publish it in any medium.

As the copyright holders before published, the authors have the right to submit their work elsewhere on condition that they notify The Fountain in advance.

NUMBER OF ENTRY

Can I submit more than one essay?

No. One entry per person.

DISQUALIFICATION

What makes an essay disqualified?

1. Offensive and devotional essays—particularly essays that emphasize superiority of a specific worldview or derogating a specific worldview—will not be considered for the Grand Prize. Essays that “propagate” a certain spiritual order, a religious denomination, a spiritual leader, or a political activist, etc. in a way that subordinates all other faiths and traditions are considered devotional and will be disqualified.
2. Title is missing – Do not forget to put a title. Title tells a lot about the essay and important for readers and reviewers to see what lies in the center of your message. Missing title will disqualify your submission.

EVALUATION

Who will determine the winners? Can you explain more specifically what you are looking for in a winner?

The winners will be determined by our board who will decide according to the literary effectiveness of the essay in reflecting the philosophy behind the motto, richness in content, and authenticity.

All submitted essays will be evaluated using the following criteria.

1. Relevance to the contest theme (40 points)
2. Innovation & creativity (30 points)
3. Writing style and structure (30 points)

SUBMISSION

How am I going to submit my essay?

Fill out the form, attach your document and send it. You can do it at https://forms.gle/pQj93gNvZiDGd4GaA.

DEADLINE

When is the last day for submissions?

March 1, 2020

WINNERS

When will the winners be announced?

May 31, 2020.

ELIGIBILITY

Who is eligible to participate in this contest?

There is no age limit or a condition to fulfill for entry. The contest is open to all who want to share his or her ideas with us.

I had been considered a lot of things in my life but for the first time in my 100 years, I was a time traveler. I walked out on the moonlit deck behind the house with an envelope nearly as old as I was. It was still crisp and white thanks to the plastic sleeve it had been kept in all these years. I took a seat on a chair beneath a brilliant expanse of stars that seemed to always be there and then smiled, laughing at the fact that they were hundreds of light years away and probably hadn’t even been there at all, not as I saw them my entire life.

Everyone always imagines time traveling to take some sort of machine or vehicle, but that night I had bridged the great divide of 72 years of space-time more gracefully than the Tesseract, using just the contents of just that envelope to have a conversation that had been waiting for nearly a century. I ran my fingers over its corners and edges. I had known how to time travel for years but was waiting for this moment. I had written a letter to myself for my 100^th birthday and now that the family had left, the cake had been divided and devoured, and my sweet wife of 82 years was fast asleep, I was ready to finish what I had started.

I took a deep breath and broke the glue seal on the envelope and pulled out a single sheet of paper. I marveled at how the sheet was so neatly folded and tried to recall how I felt the day I folded it, but I couldn’t get a clear picture. I knew the catalyst was still inside, the magic of the words would transport me back in time.

Upon opening it, the first thing I saw was the date: April 21, 2018. Now, some might imagine the feeling of time traveling to be gradual or spontaneous, that it may feel like every atom is ripping apart or perhaps completely painless and instantaneous, but that’s not how it feels at all. Instead, it feels effortless and gradual, just as the water flowing from the small fountain in the middle of the deck.

We spend our whole lives trying to be something and somebody that we miss who we’ve been the whole time.

My eyes scrolled to the now full open sheet and the memory of the past completely saturated the space between my ears. What would you write to your 100-year-old self? Would you fill every inch of the page with thoughts and questions or memories you may have forgotten? I didn’t. I simply wrote three questions:

• Did you live your dreams?
• Did you love enough?
• Who are you now?

Inside the envelope I also included a photograph of me standing with my pregnant wife and five children. I was smart for as young as I was, I knew that I didn’t need to fill the envelop with pages and pages of endless reminders or questions that at the time couldn’t be answered or replied to. I knew that by just asking those three questions and including that picture that I would be able to bring myself back. Everything I ever knew or existed as a memory in my mind, and no sooner had I taken my eyes off the picture, I saw my younger self sitting in the chair across from me with the softly flowing fountain between us.

“I look great for a hundred,” he said. It made me laugh because people had always told me how great I looked for my age and that I must have found the fountain of youth. I guess it was because he said “I” instead of “you.”

I just smiled and replied, “Thank you.”

At my age, I imagined I would be like the wise teacher before the young rambunctious student. I had often thought about this day and how different I would be from my former self; how he would be young and restless and cocky and wrong about so much. I had learned so much in an entire lifetime; surely, I would finally know everything and be able to answers the questions of the past. This is why I was surprised at the feeling I had as my eyes grazed over the first question.

“Did you live your dreams?” he asked.

I looked at him and he looked the same as I had so many years ago. I smiled and said the first thing that came to mind. “I think so. I’ve married the woman of my dreams, had a bunch of kids and grand-kids, I’ve written books and I’ve defeated the struggle for survival.”

He just stared at me.

“But I’m surprised,” I continued, “that now at 100, my desire hasn’t gone away but now there’s nothing in particular I want.”

He smiled, “Remember what Hafiz said: ‘Once all of your desires are distilled you will have but two choices: to love more and be happy.’”

I smiled knowing that he was right. “That’s exactly it. We live our whole lives chasing dreams. We want to do so many things, have so many things and be so many things. We don’t realize until a lot of time passes that often the anticipation of whatever we were chasing is better than the thing itself. We spend so much time trying to be somebody that we overlook who we even are.”

“So, you’ve lived your dreams then?” he asked again.

“I would say I have, and I am choosing to not only love more, but also be happy.”

We sat for a couple of minutes in silence, the only sound between us was the relaxing lapping of the fountain. I assumed that since he was a projection of my mind that he knew everything I knew and saw what I saw, so he would be asking the questions on the page without any provocation from me. He just stared at the fountain. It was a simple fountain that consisted of three large rocks stacked in the center of a big bowl which caught the water and recycled it back through tubing up through the center of the rocks to endlessly flow, never to run out and never to stop.

“So, do you think you’ve loved enough?” he finally said.

“You know, I remember writing that question down all those years ago, but to be honest I never really thought about it.” I sat for a minute thinking about what to say. “I’ve loved the best I could,” I finally said.

His brow furrowed. “So you don’t think you could have done better? You definitely haven’t been perfect, and you’ve hurt plenty of people over your life…made mistakes—

“Well of course I did. We all do! Everyone makes mistakes. I mean sure, there are things I wish I could have done differently but that doesn’t matter now because I can’t go back and change them.”

“But you’re a time traveler now,” he laughed.

“Sure, we all are. Time traveling is nothing more than remembering the past or imagining the future. We can change things in our minds, even convince ourselves things never happened. But we can’t do a thing about the people involved. Everything we’ve been through was real, but no one can remember it as it really was because we all have our own interpretations of what happened. We all see things through our own filters.”

“We share and fashion moments together,” he said.

“Yes. Do you want to know if I have any regrets? I have things I wish I could have done differently, but to me a regret is something that weighs you down, holds you back. I can’t spend my life living like that—I don’t have that kind of time.”

“No one does,” he smiled.

“That’s right. I believe we are all doing the best we can at any moment. If we could do better, we would.”

He leaned forward. “You don’t think that’s true, do you? Surely, we could always do better, we just don’t choose to?”

I smiled and said, “Nobody chooses pain on purpose—nobody sane anyways. So, I think we all like to think we are sane and if you hurt someone or make a mistake, it was the best you could do because no one who knows better would hurt themselves or anyone else on purpose. I like to believe that if we could have really done better, we would have.”

“Unless they’re insane,” he added.

“Right, and if you were insane it wouldn’t matter one way or the other would it?”

We both sat in the dark listening to the fountain. It continued to flow, and I thought about how my wife hated the sound of running water. I thought it would be nice to have a fountain in the house, but she politely informed me it would be better outside, to create a peaceful atmosphere at the back of the house. I know that she knew it made me happy but didn’t want to tell me no, and we effortlessly compromised. As effortlessly as the water flows.

“Do you know why you bought this fountain?” he asked suddenly.

“What?” He had caught me off guard. “Because I like it, I guess.”

He leaned back in the chair and smiled. “It’s because you aren’t able to answer the last question.”

I thought about all I had been and been through in my life: a young stupid kid, a slave in the factories, a writer, a father, a husband and friend. “I’ve been a great many things,” I told him, “but suffice it to say I am who I am, be it a great many things.”

He smiled, “Are you any closer to knowing?”

For the first time since I had started this I wondered what the purpose was. The perplexity of the question that I had spent such a great deal of my life trying to answer still eluded me, even here in my moment of grace. What seemed worse was the fact that although I am open to life playing out as it will, this whole experience hadn’t turned out anything like I imagined it would. I thought that out of any situation in life that could be controlled or predicted, an imaginary conversation in my mind would be it. I was 100-years-old, wise and charismatic, and I would be teaching the immature bratty youth that was my former self the lessons of life that I had mastered.

I had it all figured out, I thought. I closed my eyes and said, “No, I’m not closer to knowing.” To amazement as I opened them, he was gone.

I sat for a while wondering what just happened. I waited for so many years to finish this silly little project I started, this living experiential time capsule of sorts, and I couldn’t. My past life was also nothing like I imagined, which left me feeling in even less control. Instead, he was the wise teacher, and I was the foolish student. And then there was the fountain. “It’s because you aren’t able to answer the last question,” he had said. He was right, but why?

So I stared at the fountain, watched the water, and thought. “What did he mean?” I said aloud. I stared for a while trying to think of some complicated reasoning or clever idea that could connect my identity crisis with the riddle of the fountain. “I wish I would have asked him what he meant,” I said to the running water. Then, an idea so simple and elegant wove its way into the tapestry of my thoughts and brought me relief.

Why had I done this in the first place? Surely, it wasn’t about me asking my past-self questions, but the other way around. That’s when it all came together. The water in the fountain never ran out and never overflowed. It was all about balance. The fact that I couldn’t answer the question of who I am was because I didn’t realize the balance of my being. I thought that at the end of my life I would have all the answers, that when we were born we were empty and at the end we were overflowing.

But the fountain never empties and never overflows because it is in an unending process of recreating. It was fresh and new, constantly changing and moving while at the same time staying the same. It is in perfect balance between the extremes of existence.

Somehow I had known this all along. I had the idea to write myself a letter, ask myself on my 100^th birthday three simple but powerful questions, and along the way I managed to buy a fountain that would serve as the metaphor and reminder of the greatest truth of life. We spend our whole lives trying to be something and somebody that we miss who we’ve been the whole time. That truth can only be found in the balance of all things, from the mundane to the miraculous, the scientific to the spiritual, and from the personal to the universal.

I realized that I am like the fountain: never empty, and never full.  But in knowing this, however, my happiness will always be overflowing.

In an age of overspecialization in learning and over-indulgence in day-to-day occupations, The Fountain’s discourse refers to an overarching coverage of the human life with content as diverse and rich as the human life itself, yet with a common thread and pattern that is neatly knitted all the way through our diverse departments under humanities and sciences.

The Fountain is a composition from which our inner calling echoes, a reflection of what is not always visible to the eye, or a response to the yearning deep in the heart and mind which sometimes finds its definition best expressed in a poem, and at other times in a journey into outer space or through the veins of the human body.  It is reading the universe, the major book of creation, and making sense out of it by way of the manual of Divine guidance. The Fountain is an effort to try and see the reality through the veils of apparent causes and to obtain our share from each phenomenon, each of which is a letter enclosed with a message addressing us.

In this issue, we are celebrating Black History Month with Laila Muhammad. The grandchild of Elijah Muhammad, the founder of the Nation of Islam, and the daughter of Warith Deen Mohamed, she is recognized more by association with her family, but she has continued her family’s incredible legacy of community work. In our interview with her, you will not only read about her family, but you will also encounter a social activist with common sense and compassionate vision. Anyone who is involved in any type of community work will benefit from her words. “We have to move forward,” Muhammad says, adding “collectively” at the end, with emphasis. This message is more relevant than ever at a time when our society is growing more polarized on multiple axes of race, religion, and gender.

Laila Muhammad’s message resonates with a book Justin Pahl reviews in this issue: Peace and Dialogue in a Plural Society, by Fr. Thomas Michel. Fr. Michel is a Catholic priest and a professor at Georgetown University who has been involved in interfaith dialogue with Muslims for many decades. He’s traveled and lived with Muslims in many countries including Indonesia, the Philippines, Turkey, the United States, and Europe. His research in this book focuses on the Hizmet Movement and how the movement’s educational and dialogue efforts around the world are contributing to peace in the plural society of the twenty-first century.

A complementary piece to the above themes is “The Age of Self-Awareness” by Caroline Halford. Halford writes, “The world became connected very quickly and with that came not only conflict, secrecy, and fear, but also progress, growth, and knowledge, or at least, attempts at these things.” This global plural society has stepped into an age of self-awareness in the twenty-first century, Halford argues. Whether our self-awareness will diminish into self-obsession or will allow us to be great, continuing the legacy of those who came before us, is up to us.

This issue’s lead article “Chaos and Flourishing Hopes” redefines our relationship with the past, the present, and the future. While some of us delve into the glorious days of our past, others, especially younger people, submit themselves to fanciful thoughts of the future, Fethullah Gülen writes. Yet according to Gülen, the best path is to implement “what is required in every stage of life,” after which we will perceive the past-future-present as “the three angles of a single unit, and we will be able to experience each period of time with its own depth. The golden ages of human history have always been experienced when the concept of time has been perceived as such.”

As he defines a perspective as a concept of time, Gülen also establishes a prescriptive approach to misfortunes and ordeals: “Going through such ordeals is how we can overcome the weariness caused by monotonousness. This is how we can always sense the pleasures and enjoyment to the same extent in the positive sense. This is in fact the transformation of difficulties and afflictions into spiritual prosperity.”    

This issue takes us on a tour from Asia to the Mediterranean. The ocean just off the coast of Taiji, Japan, turns blood red every year when dolphin hunting season starts. Betul Aydin describes this graphic tragedy, which sees the senseless slaughter of these cute, intelligent animals. The author wonders: Is such a massacre really necessary? Why does this hunting have to be so indiscriminate and painful? Is dolphin meat healthy? What are the environmental consequences of this bloodshed? We hope Aydin’s article can raise further awareness about this tragedy.

Off to the west, our next stop is Spain. We’ve covered Andulusia and the Alhambra palace before. But the Andalusian Umayyads built such a fantastic, enduring civilization that it is worth revisiting, whether through a reference to their scientific magnificence or an appreciation of the architectural monuments they left behind, like the Alhambra. Faisal Warsani writes about the palace’s beautiful ornamentation, including the grand muqarnas, courtyards, and geometric patterns.

Back to the Far East, Daniel Skubik takes us to South Korea, sharing his reflections from an interfaith trip in which he recently participated. Skubik says the term “interfaith dialogue” is ambiguous and too often misleading, since it is used to cover a wide variety of interactions and expectations. He writes about four forms of engagement that help explain what interfaith dialogue really means and how it should be implemented.

Dialogue does not only occur through face-to-face engagement. Daniel Hummel writes on an important part of our modern lives, which influences our interfaith conversations, too: social media. We’ve all faced the cruelty of “internet trolls.” How can we use the internet to discuss important, sometimes divisive subjects without resorting to vitriol, name calling, and personal insults?

Let us remind you that the 2016 Essay Contest “I Am an Immigrant” is still underway. The deadline has been extended to December 31. For submissions and other details, go to http://essay.fountainmagazine.com.