Ordinary Days…..
He says, be grateful for ordinary days.
“What are ordinary days?” I ask.
They are the days
when nothing seems to happen….
yet a young leaf quietly unfurls
to breathe the spring,
and a daisy moves in Dhikr as it leans into the wind
guided by The Divine.
They are the days
when rain drips on your balcony turning…..
into a turning haze of Sema skirts,
when no human music is heard…
yet the gulls cry out their wild hymns,
and a grey cat stretches in the sun
as though the world were its own.
Ordinary days are mercy disguised..
days when no bombs fill your sight,
no children limp through your thoughts,
when distant ظلم fades from your heart..
yet You, O Allah,
are never absent:
silently, surely,
writing the end of oppression
in ways unseen.
They are the mornings of Fajr…
eyes still heavy with sleep,
yet the body renewed,
called gently into حضور.
They are the small unveilings…
a cucumber peeled,
its skin a quiet حماية,
reminding us how we shield what we love.
They are the turning of laundry,
whites washed, colors pressed,
and with each stroke of the iron
the unseen wrinkles of life
are smoothed away.
They are simple meals,
a boiled egg, a sliced cucumber….
yet the heart tastes abundance
as if seated at a Turkish kahvaltı.
Ordinary days are pauses,
no great rise, no sharp سقوط
just a stillness
where the heart rests,
the mind is still,
and the hands remember
their purpose in small things.
They are the days
when no جنازة gathers your family,
no anger fractures your home,
no illness shadows your friends,
when life moves at a quiet, patient pace,
and you move within it
without racing ahead.
They are the moments
where peeling a potato becomes love,
where stirring the pan with صلوات
brings a calm no medicine can offer.
Ordinary days…
when nothing changes everything,
yet everything is held
in gentle balance.
They are the days
when the heart leans toward the Divine,
and the body follows,
not ahead, not behind,
but حاضر… present.
So be grateful
for ordinary days…
for they are not empty.
They are gifts….
where شكر meets إيمان,
and the unnoticed becomes
a quiet doorway
to Him.
** dedicated to Hodja Reyhan who taught us the gratitude of ordinary days as commanded in Surah Luqman.