Reading the Signs of God

Photo by I. Chatterjee

I live high in the Alpujarran mountains of Andalucia in Spain and the views across the mountains to the Mediterranean are stunning and give a great deal to reflect upon. The entire universe, including ourselves, is a great book filled with the signs of God waiting to be read. At this time of year, after the intense heat of summer, the weather is beginning to change. A pleasant drop in temperature, cooler breezes, a subtle change in the quality of the light are all harbingers of the coming Autumn and as I walk above the village and look out to sea I am reminded of the importance of rhythm in our lives and its connection with time.

From the beating of our hearts and the breathing of our lungs rhythm is an essential partner in the passing of time and the two link arms and appear throughout the natural and biological world and also manifest in cultural, religious, and social scenarios. If rhythm is honoured then the result can be a creative unfolding of divine surprises and moments of grace that reveal the true humanity of an individual. It is these divine surprises and blessings that suggest to me the melodies, keys, and chords for which rhythm builds the framework.

Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani on the Elements

While reading Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani’s ‘The Secret of Secrets’ (translated by Shaykh Tosun Bayrak al-Jerrahi al-Halveti) I came across the following ayat (verses) from the Qur’an which he introduces like this:

“Two of the four elements are earth and water, which are responsible for the growth of faith and of knowledge, give life to the living and appear in the heart as humbleness, for earth is humble. The other two elements are fire and ether. They are the opposites of earth and water. They burn, destroy, kill. It is the Divine that unites these opposites in one being. How do water and fire coexist? How are light and darkness contained within the clouds?

It is He Who shows you lightning, causing both fear and hope; it is He Who raises up the clouds heavy with rain.

Nay, thunder repeats His praises, and so do the angels, with awe. He flings the loud-voiced thunderbolts and therewith strikes whomsoever He will … (Sura Ra’d 12, 13)

The Shaykh goes on to speak of the union of opposites and how the human becomes a mirror reflecting the Divine Names, or Attributes. Of all creatures the human being is the only one that reflects all the Attributes. Traditionally these are seen as Jamal (Beautiful) and Jalal (Powerful). The Shaykh goes on to say, “Man contains the whole universe in his being: that is why he is called the unifier of multiplicity, the macrocosm.”

When experiencing a storm like the one I posted about yesterday, there is the experience of the Power and Might of God in the roar of thunder as the electric tension cracks through the air causing the lightning and a sonic shock wave as the surrounding air expands. Then comes the rain, beautiful, welcome, and full of blessings for the soil. The loud and magisterial followed by the musical and the nourishing. Yet even within the former there is great beauty and in the latter the power to destroy through flooding.

Observing the elements provides so many lessons on the Names of God and how their ‘energy’ works within creation and within ourselves.

Thunderous Outburst

I thought I had finished here for today but I just had to come back again and let you know that it’s raining. In this very dry and hot landscape we love water and never take it for granted. After finishing the last post I went out to take the rubbish to the bins at the bottom of the road/track. As I walked through the night the entire landscape was suddenly lit up over and over by sheet lightning. I was delighted as the rumble of thunder crossed the skies shortly after the lightning. But was it going to rain? Sometimes we get the special effects without the water as it passes over very fast. I felt one drop, then another. Finally, Alhamdulillah, as I was walking back heaven let loose its blessings. Immediately I think of Hazrat Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani and his words on the elements in The Secret of Secrets. More about that tomorrow I have to hurry before the electricity cuts out …

Herbs Against Flying Insects and a Writer’s Worst Injury

There are plenty of insects flying through the air at this time of year but the locals have an intriguing custom to keep them away. A sprig of small leaved herbs is hung over one ear. It looks like young marjoram and wilts very quickly giving the wearer something of a rakish look. Strangely it is only the men who follow this custom.

It isn’t the insects that are worrying me right now though but an injury to my right thumb (I am right-handed). I cut myself quite deeply on glass. The wound is small but deep and is now dressed and bound. Inshallah, it should be better in about three days but at present I am typing very slowly. One advantage is that I get a break from washing the dishes!

Translation and the Power of Words

Today the heat has been hard to bear. The usual breeze that brings some refreshment didn’t arrive today and even now as the call for Maghrib prayer is about to sound from my laptop it is hot and humid. The sky over the Mediterranean is pink and blue and the swallows of the village are returning to their nests under the church eaves. As they settle down for the night I continue writing. I have had a good writing day today. I completed some translation work this afternoon and wanted to press on with an article that needs to be finished tonight.

Stay indoors and write!

It’s a beautiful day but there is writing to do. I’ve got several articles to complete and I must make time to continue with my new novel which is still very much in its beginning stages. To be fair, it is not difficult to stay indoors during the day in July. Where I live, and that’s the mountains of Southern Spain, it is very, very hot and most people stay indoors until the evening. Then the village comes alive with the chatter of families and friends sitting on their terraces and patios. Children squeal and laugh with renewed energy after the lethargy of the day, and the night sky is magnificent.

I look forward to a walk after sundown in the refreshing breeze that hardly ever fails us at that time of day. But for the moment it is back to work and I am quite content to be sitting at my laptop within the shelter of these thick, ancient walls.

Diary of an Andalusian Village: The Sounds of Summer

Photo by Y K Randall

The heat of summer is fully upon this little village, day and night, and with it come the special sounds of the season. Because the village is high in the Alpujarra Mountains we often have a pleasant breeze. The open air swimming pool has now opened for July and August and the sound of children having fun carries on the breeze.

It is during these two months that the village comes alive. Families who have moved down to the coast to live and work return to their ancestral home to relax and enjoy the countryside. The daytime is usually quiet apart from the singing of birds or the chatting of people on their way to the bakers for the day’s supply of bread.

It is after dark that the village begins to buzz with sound. After a hot day it is refreshing to sit out on patios and roof terraces to eat and chat. Groups of children can be heard playing outside until late. They are completely safe. The village is like a large family and everyone takes care of each other. The roads are little more than cemented tracks and in the middle of August you can be in the Plaza chatting about life with whoever is around. Then there are the fiestas which are inevitably very noisy affairs with tables set up around the Plaza and free food for everyone and music until the early hours of the morning. My favourite time of day is early morning before the sun rises. The only sounds come from the birds awakening and the bus arriving at 6am. This is a good time of day to go for a stroll. There is always a breeze as the sun rises and the mountains are bathed in a rosy glow. At times like this prayer comes naturally in unity with the entire natural world.

The Threshing Circle (excerpt from a novel in progress)

Threshing Circle

Photo by Y K Randall

A threshing circle is about sixty feet in diameter. It is built of cobbled stones spiralling from the centre outwards. There are many of them in the Alpujarra mountain range. There is no longer any need to separate the grain from the chafe as wheat is not grown in this part of Spain any more. Threshing circles are now protected sites. Wild flowers and grasses push up between the cracks. The wind remains. A threshing circle is always placed in a position most open to the wind with valleys or ravines all round. They afford the best views and Yolanda had discovered one just outside her chosen village within a week of her arrival. Every morning at dawn she would leave her rented house and walk to the threshing circle. As she left the village she smiled in anticipation. The noises of an awakening community, endearing as they were, now receded behind her. She heard only the song of birds. Upon stepping on to her circular sanctuary she inhaled deeply and once again, as every morning, she expressed thanks for the wide open space, for the strong breeze, for the paradoxical sense of tranquillity and shelter in such an exposed spot.

A small grove of cypresses stood close to the circle, and a stone wall that was the only remains of an ancient dwelling. A dog rose grew across what would once have been a corner of the house but which now spilt its old stones down the steep incline of the mountain side. An old shoe and a broken water flask lay abandoned amongst the rubble and fallen foliage.

Copyright Y K Randall, Granada, 2007

On the Road

Photo by Y K Randall

Recently my Shaykh set me an assignment to take a camera and go ‘hunt light’. So I took a digital camera that is as old as a digital camera can be and went for a stroll through the village and its outskirts. Of course light is always present but are we always aware of it? The light of the Real is eternally present but how easy it is to shroud the gaze behind preoccupation with the day’s events, or the various concerns and emotions that we allow to cloud our hearts from its capacity to embrace the whole of life as a gift and a journey towards our potential destination as true human beings. I perceive it as an adventure that is full of lessons and trials, beauty and love.

I have chosen this photo of the road outside my village because for me it symbolizes this journey. A route taken with the support of Sufi practice that involves constantly pulling the focus back to the One Who is within all creation. Closer to us than ourselves and beyond our imagining; before all beginnings and after all endings; immanent and transcendent, full of love, majesty, and light. I’m still at the beginning and stumbling over obstacles whose source is finally in me, the tricks of the nafs (ego matrix), that need to be transformed into helpers along the way. This vehicle needs maintenance and that is also part of being on the road and it is well worth it when those moments of awareness of the unity and love of God arise.

Uniting the Opposites

It has been raining for nearly three days now with a few breaks. We are so high here that sometimes the clouds rise up from the Mediterranean and wrap themselves around us. When I looked out last night nothing could be seen but a few house lights hanging in the dense mist. Earlier on I heard a few rumbles of thunder but the storm did not come our way. It was a pleasant synchronicity today that while reading Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani’s ‘The Secret of Secrets’ I came across the following ayat (verses) from the Qur’an which he introduces like this (translated by Shaykh Tosun Bayrak al-Jerrahi al-Halveti):

“Two of the four elements are earth and water, which are responsible for the growth of faith and of knowledge, give life to the living and appear in the heart as humbleness, for earth is humble. The other two elements are fire and ether. They are the opposites of earth and water. They burn, destroy, kill. It is the Divine that unites these opposites in one being. How do water and fire coexist? How are light and darkness contained within the clouds?

It is He Who shows you lightning, causing both fear and hope; it is He Who raises up the clouds heavy with rain.

Nay, thunder repeats His praises, and so do the angels, with awe. He flings the loud-voiced thunderbolts and therewith strikes whomsoever He will … (Sura Ra’d 12, 13)

Diary of An Andalucian Village: Rain Blessings

The weather has suddenly turned wet and cold. It has rained all night for two nights in a row now. This is wonderful as we have had very little water for two years and are officially experiencing a drought. High up in the mountains here, and with the Mediterranean before us, we get to see a lot of sky and one of the joys of autumn and winter are the fantastic cloud formations and the uncluttered views of sunrise and sunset. Even better are the thunder storms which you can watch moving across the mountains until it’s right overhead and it becomes more sensible to get off the roof and run in doors before flying debris, or even lightning, strikes you down. The village is then transformed into a series of waterfalls as the rain gushes down and washes away the dust from streets and vegetation. Everything is so much greener after the mighty wash.

Photo by I. Chatterjee

An Imminent Fugue
I watch the clouds today
in colours purple, indigo and grey,
hanging dark and huge, as
swollen with an imminent fugue

Colour sings alone the theme,
joined in fury by wildest wind.
Then in contrapuntal dash
texture shot by lightning flash.

Skip one, skip two in silent
consonance until divergent
motion tears apart the map
with the din of thunder clap

It has broken. Rain slaps ground,
sky begins again the round,
displays its stunning beauty
with majestic, trembling sound

Hu’s Names alive in vibrant signs,
a language for each eye and ear.
A text of love writ on the body
of creation far and near

After the storm the water flows.
Running in rivulets down
every street. It knows
intimately each parched atom

in this thirsty land. Field,
and rock, deep roots of loss,
your heart, mine too,
is nourished by the rain of Hu

© Katherine Randall, Granada 2006

Diary of an Andalusian Village: Spring Flowers and Arab Towers

It’s much warmer up here in the mountains now. When the seasons change it happens quite abruptly leaving you walking around in inappropriate clothing for a couple of days until you realize this is really it and Spring has arrived. This happens especially when, like me, I took a very early bus to a town much further down the mountain and found that although it was chilly waiting for the bus with only a jumper on instead of a coat, by the time I arrived it was very hot indeed.
This morning I visited my friend who I haven’t seen in a while because she and her husband have been busy bringing in the olive harvest. We speak some of the time in Spanish and some of the time in English so each can learn the others language. Today she took me down to her land outside the village. They keep bees as well and as we sat by an ancient Arab water basin we were surrounded by them. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Amalia, ‘they know me,’ and it was true, neither of us was stung. Above the water basin was a stone built arch, the entrance to a tunnel into the cliff side which is part of the old system of irrigation that directs water to where it is needed as it flows off the mountain. Water is scarce so every drop is precious. Vegetation isn’t as lush up here as it is down on the coast but, apart from the almond trees which have been in blossom for about a week now, there is an array of spring flowers many of them so tiny you have to bend down to see them reveal their intricate beauty. The soil is full of stones and rocks and conducive to the abundant growth of wild rosemary, thyme, lavender, and sage. Once upon a time wheat was grown here as well but the only remaining witness to this are the large round threshing circles, built of cobbled stone and placed strategically on the windiest outcrops. You can be assured that if you are standing on a threshing circle you will be looking out on a wide open view in all directions; down the valleys to the Mediterranean coastline with its regular  tower-forts that served as lookout posts and beacons, allowing news to travel literally as fast as fire from Cadiz to Almeria.
As we get back in the car, Amalia tells me proudly that there are two Arab graves on her land. I nearly jump out of the car again but she has already turned the ignition, I really want to see those graves and she promises to take me to them next time. I begin to wonder if the former Arab owners of this land, who have left signs of their presence clear to see, were actually Amalia’s ancestors, maybe a family who were victims of the Inquisition and the forced conversions of the 15th and 16th centuries? There must be records somewhere of the Muslim presence in the rural areas of the mountains, it’s obvious, of course, in the architecture, the agriculture, the language, and the large Arab built towns such as Cordoba, Seville, Granada, but the Spanish people went through a huge denial of their Islamic (and Jewish) heritage even succumbing to the dubious and destructive claim of ‘racial purity’ during the time of Franco when Muslims and Jews were forbidden entry into Spain. These mountains once provided food supplies to the Kingdom of Granada and the people who worked hard on the land deserve recognition. I am hoping that when I go to see those graves with Amalia they will have tombstones with names on them.

Diary of an Andalusian Village: A Winter’s Day in a Spanish Village

Winter is a strange time up here in the mountains. I remember one Christmas, just two years ago, when it was so warm that people were wearing summer clothes and sitting outside the cafés drinking coffee and chatting. The good weather continued on into January and that was the year we saw the Moroccan coastline during sunset several days in a row. This time last year saw a completely different scenario with snow drifts several feet thick and some people having to be rescued from their Cortijos (farmhouses) by helicopter. Locals said they had never seen anything like it before, they were used to a light sprinkling of snow but not this much and for so long. This year has been cold with a little snow and some rain. I don’t know if these aberrations in the usual weather patterns have anything to do with global warming, I suspect they do, but I do wonder if more dramatic landscapes like ours feel the changes in more obvious ways.

With a population of approximately five hundred people, the village is very small and in one respect there’s not a great deal going on here in terms of cultural, or social events but in other ways this is a very lively community and its life is patterned by the seasons and work in the fields. A lot of people own land as well as their houses in the village. Barely anyone here can make a decent living from agriculture, the crops being figs, almonds, vines, and olives there are other places in the world who with large-scale farming dominate the markets. Agriculture here serves more as a useful addition to the annual income and of course to the family diet. Favourite vegetables are peppers of all varieties, broad beans, courgettes, aubergines, avocados, and a variety of fruits. Slim red peppers tied to string and hung up to dry decorate the balconies and patios of many a house here in late summer. Alas it is winter now and today I’ve been sitting at my laptop writing while the clouds over the Mediterranean rose and wrapped themselves (do they have selves?) around the village. I couldn’t even see the church when I looked out of the window and that is saying something. It does not have much in the way of architectural merit but it is very large for such a small community and it dominates the plaza, in fact there isn’t much plaza left over because of the size of the church. Wrapped in cloud today it was obscured from view but it could be heard. When someone dies in the village the church bells ring and they rang this evening. I don’t know who died but I will hear about it tomorrow when I go down to the bakery for bread. Those church bells have been ringing quite often for the dead this winter.

Painted Puddles

It’s been raining a lot this week. That’s good, we need it so much as we’ve had almost no rain for a year. The day before yesterday it snowed a couple of inches and then melted a few hours later when the sun shone through. The village rapidly transformed in to a series of small waterfalls as the water poured down the mountain and through the streets. As I trudged up the steep path from the plaza to my house this evening it looked as if someone had spilled paint all over the road, turqouise and flamingo pink, until I realized that the puddles were reflecting the evening sky and its colours perfectly!

Diary of An Andalusian Village: Above the Snowline

I live in a mountain village eleven hundred meters above sea level. To the South I can see the Mediterranean, reminiscent of so many historical events important to the world. The countries that surround its waters have spawned the foundations of the three Abrahamic religions; the philosophical debates of Ancient Greece; great poets and musicians, and several stunning archaeological finds. The waves of the Mediterranean resound with the clashing swords of pirates, the prayers of pilgrims, and the distress of the shipwrecked. If I gaze across the sea at night I can make out the lights of tankers and cruise ships. The lights of towns on the coast sparkle like jewels on black velvet and the lighthouse beams its protective ray at regular intervals.

The view to the North is utterly different. The Sierra Nevada mountain range fills me with awe as I gaze at its majestic grace. At this time of year it is covered in snow which shines, luminescent, on nights of the full moon like tonight.

The mountain range on which I live runs between the Sierra Nevada and the coastline, for most of the winter we lie beneath the snowline but the past two years have been exceptional. Just two nights ago I was driving back from Granada, which lies behind the Sierra Nevada, when it began raining in torrents. This was really an occasion for joy as we are experiencing a drought at present, but driving up mountain roads when the rain is pouring off the sides, bringing down soil and stones, is not fun; especially when a small skid can take you over the edge to certain death.

Worse was to come as we drove higher and the rain became snow, and then even higher where the snow was settling fast and the bends become more frequent and difficult until finally the wheels of the car were spinning, no longer able to grip, and the car got stuck, luckily against the mountain side and not on the edge.

After fruitless attempts to clear the snow with nothing but our hands and feet, two men in a 4×4 stopped and helped. They pulled the car out and we began the descent back to the hotel-in-the-middle-of-nowhere that we had recently passed. Once safe, after a good meal and a hot drink, I went out to view the landscape. It was stunningly dramatic: mountains, cork oaks, all bearing their mantle of thick, white snow with dignity and inviting me to partake in their aura of shelter and wellbeing. As I gave thanks for our safety I was reminded of the words in the Quran that ‘over every soul there is a watcher.’