Kirana,such honesty as yours is admirable,& it think it augurs well for this website’s new format.I too have been following the ‘Names of Allah ‘ series of articles in so much as if one understands His attributes one stands a better chance of understanding His will & The Prophet’s{pbuh} revelations therefrom. In my part of Northern England I can tell the truthful following tale(reflection even).As a younger man I worked on the farms of N.Cheshire,a rural area to the south of the town of Stockport.One thing we looked after as well as the pastures & the soil & the livestocks were the fresh water ponds there which as you can imagine were of high value.Butterflies,fish, frogs,source of livestock drinking,& more besides..Were Allah not to cause the seeds to germinate with the seasonal warmth & the moisture from rain how would anyone even eat?In more modern times some of those small farms threatened by wide new roads,cheaper milk elsewhere(hypermarkets&quotas from govt agencies that thought big all the time ) fell into disrepair & then more latterly disuse & then total abandon.What a shame,but for years I kept up environmental care of some of the ponds…one in particular where even the migrating wildgeese were visitors.How they honked on take off!But along came people bent on leisure or convenient dumping of rubbish & the work grew even harder just to maintain what holiness& blessing had created. What can one then do as one approaches one’s senior years.?
Not throw in the towel to use a sports analogy?Pray for assistance in a worthy cause because of what one’s faith teaches?Worry that the Prime Minister may rarely speak on invisible little issues?We had a field drain that passed under a lane & served a smaller pond from which the sheep in the pasture would drink.I can hardly begin to describe to you the ‘insults’ this drain suffered.Its metal cover stolen,its consequent concrete cover smashed & deposited in the 4′ deep manhole,even large dead carp tossed in there& left to rot.
Myself thus despondant & yet you tell of the faithful of old not allowing themselves to be removed from their joy of praising God. A paraphrase I’ve had to use because I know so little Arabic qualifications.What I know is ‘Bismillah,A’rahman,A’rahim’ & this I would say if distressed & I’d work on& take the volumes of detritus away in my ’89 VW van.
I did have a young press photographer accompany me on one occasion & he did go ahead & put photos on an Environmental blog & his idea was to gain wider support for the work.One hopes the outcome will consequently be improoved, but the tide of
the consumer society is a high one in terms of what is dumped willy-nilly & thrown away.If only the meaning of Al-Hameed were understood by more than the faithful the green areas would fare better I believe.Brian Cokayne/Stockport/ Eng;and

Salaam,

I usually go through the remembrances of the mornings and evenings, as collected in An-Nawawi’s book. The title escapes me at the moment, but I think he has one book on remembrances.

Hope this helps!

Jinan

I think living primarily an urban life, in an urban job, alongside others who also do so and expect to do so for their lifetimes, makes you a little blinkered about how many different ways of living and being there are in the world, aside from this norm. And any long period of time in one reality makes you start to compare yourself to each other, makes you start to compete against each other, and this makes it hard to be grateful for everything, and focus on blessings, because you are always seeing what you’re lacking. I don’t know if it makes it harder or easier, when you are no longer even particularly interested anymore in the things that occupy most of your peer group.

So I think next year I will try to take more time for myself and go to places closer to Allah’s natural creation and connect with people closer to it, to get a better perspective and remind myself of the incredible nature that Allah provided that underpins the artificial reality we have built which then occupies so much of our effort and time.

And then also make a point to go to varied and diverse places and people, however I can, and remind myself of the different priorities and paradigms that exist in people’s lives in the world, and it may help stop me comparing myself to others since there’s no real point in the concept of comparing (and ‘losing out’) when there are so many different realities people live with – I need reminding that different things are valued or not in different conditions, and some things that seem to matter someplace pale in significance when you would simply change the setting.

I reflected on this as well: “…we cannot find the joy or sweetness in those favors.” Indeed, ironically many people who are especially gifted in something or another find themselves burdened by those natural talents, regarding it as more a curse than a blessing. Anything that differentiates you too much can cease to become an advantage and cross over to being a means of alienation. And yet the gifted personalities in Islamic history were not tortured souls but were joyful in the exercise of their talents. I suppose the secret was that they employed them in the service of God. Perhaps I should try to do more of the things and be with people that make me happy in the possession of my talents, and simply do far less of whatever else that clearly does not give me that value.

Maybe all this while my habits make it a lot harder for me to be happier in my lot.

“I tried to have conviction that, because I had said the remembrances that day, I had not lost my phone.”

Any advice on what rememberances are best on a daily basis for this? Also which remembrances of Dhikr are best?

Thanks!