Technology

You know,

glass and metal may seem to be quite unlike each other,

one very fragile, the other extremely durable,

yet the crafts needed to be learned to manipulate them are similar

in their use of heat and cold,

and the border between solid and liquid.

From a base substance of earth,

sand and ore,

a sequence of skilled processes can produce something refined,

precisely useful for a purpose,

including the display of beauty.

Iron needs heat to extract it from its earth,

and its purification and strengthening

rely on repeated heating and cooling,

along with the bending and stretching,

the beating and shaping,

to end up with any intended result.

And these basic processes have always been recognised

as mirroring the human life experience,

linked to inner spiritual understanding,

the feelings and emotions that accompany the physical experience.

For our lives to reveal our true inner selves,

we need to be put through what feels like tough times,

and everyone faces a different world that shapes them,

but the processes are the same.

Like iron, we need to be purified,

and what needs to be purified is in our hearts.

When our being is filled with love,

not the physical passion that is so often confused with it,

we talk of our hearts melting,

and as they melt they shed what is impure,

imperfections that harm us.

For our hearts to truly soften they need suffering,

uncomfortable times,

getting heated and beaten, like a blade under a smith's hammer,

or plunged into freezing water, like an athlete's ice bath,

not enjoyable but a necessary part of the process.

Out of hardship comes ease

says the Qur'an.

To get stronger muscles they need to be worked,

and that's hard, and that hurts,

yet in the end, what was hard becomes easy.

But of course there's always something harder to try them out on.

Our life experience is a spiritual one

lived in the receptacle of the body,

so although understanding the life experience to be spiritual,

muslims also took great interest in the body,

which introduced another field

that required precision instruments for specialised tasks,

namely medicine and surgery.

And from dealing with wounds in warfare,

with limbs chopped off,

to the everyday growths and breakages of the human body,

increased medical knowledge demanded new tools

to get at bits of the body that were hard to reach,

and then manipulate what they found when they got there.

Over a thousand years ago,

Al-Zahrawi's encyclopaedia described instruments

to crush internal stones,

and to assist in childbirth,

and avoid the need for Caesarean births,

though muslim surgeons did develop those

and many other surgical procedures

in the service of their fellow humans.

Whether in the study of metal

used in service of the study of human health,

or the study of the human body in the service of humanity,

whenever we live in the service of God,

wherever we look,

to our horizons or in ourselves,

there we will see the Face of God for a reward.