Oh Allah, Don't Occupy My Mind With Things That Cause Me Anxiety. Don't Let My Heart Be Attached To Someone

“I very proudly entered the forestry school as an 18-year-old and telling them that the reason that I wanted to study botany was because I wanted to know why asters and goldenrod looked so beautiful together. These are these amazing displays of this bright, chrome yellow and deep purple of New England aster, and they look stunning together. And the two plants so often intermingle rather than living apart from one another, and I wanted to know why that was. I thought that surely in the order and the harmony of the universe, there would be an explanation for why they looked so beautiful together. And I was told that that was not science, that if I was interested in beauty, I should go to art school. Which was really demoralizing as a freshman, but I came to understand that question wasn’t going to be answered by science, that science, as a way of knowing, explicitly sets aside our emotions, our aesthetic reactions to things. We have to analyze them as if they were just pure material, and not matter and spirit together. And, yes, as it turns out, there’s a very good biophysical explanation for why those plants grow together, so it’s a matter of aesthetics and it’s a matter of ecology. Those complimentary colors of purple and gold together, being opposites on the color wheel, they’re so vivid, they actually attract far more pollinators than if those two grew apart from one another. So each of those plants benefits by combining its beauty with the beauty of the other. And that’s a question that science can address, certainly, as well as artists. And I just think that “Why is the world so beautiful?” is a question that we all ought to be embracing.”

— Robin Wall Kimmerer, “The Intelligence of Plants”, from the podcast On Being with Krista Tippett (via peatbogbodyhasmoved)

in cold blood

— nizariat

what’s it called when you’re so disconnected from reality that cold water doesn’t feel like anything and you can barely taste food anymore

paralysis from fear is far worse than potential failure or rejection! the anguish of a life not fully lived will weigh heavily on your heart at the end of it all!

The part where Zachariah (AS) started to question the possibility of things after Allah sent him glad tidings of a son whose name will be John.

Zachariah (AS) thought his wife’s barrenness and him being old will make it impossible for them to have a child.

An Angel said to him “it will be, your lord says ‘it’s easy for Me, for I created you before, while you were nothing’” (Surah Maryam: 9)

Now I’m thinking about all the times I ask Allah for certain things and because of the current trajectory of my life, I sometimes rethink my request because will this be possible???

It’s so easy for us to forget about the greatness and might of our Lord. This is the same Rabb who created the heavens and earth from nothing.

There is no limit to his bounties.

O Allah, make me good for myself and the people around me.

— Michelle Williams

Heart is connected to the face!

‎Ibn Taymiyyah رحمه الله said:

‎ “What is in the heart from light and darkness, good and bad, a lot of it flows to the face and the eye, and they are the greatest things connected to the heart.

‎ That is why it is narrated on the authority of Uthman رضي الله عنه, that he said: “No one is hid his secrets except Allah reveals it on the pages of his face and the slips of his tongue.”

‎ [الاستقامة (1/355)]