The Coke Can in the Creek

There is the account of a father out with his two boys, five and three years old, in an incredible place in Yosemite Valley — it is just so beautiful — and they were playing in the creek, and they both had these Ninja Turtle underpants on. And the father said: that underwear looks so incongruous. Aesthetically, it was just ugly. So he went and took their underpants off and let them play around naked, and it was beautiful. In other words, it was very interesting. Why is that? What is it in ourselves that recognises that, when we see it? Walking along, it is a beautiful view, and suddenly one sees a Coke can, and it kind of crushes the heart. It is ugly. Not only the can, but the act that put it there. There is something incongruous there. There is something that really stirs us up. What is that? From the Muslim perspective, it is our desire for iḥsān. We desire to make beautiful.

The highest act of making beautiful is to be in the divine presence. That is the highest act. When one enters into the sacred space, when one is aware of the divine in the world, it becomes difficult to rape and pillage the world one lives in. It becomes difficult to turn a creek into a polluted, foul-smelling entity. It becomes difficult to mass-produce things that will end up in a few weeks, or a few years, in the garbage can. And the ancients really had a sense of this, and this is why the things they made last to this day. We have them in our museums, and we go and we look at them. What is it in them that wanted to create that? That is this desire to make beautiful. And the hadith says: God is beautiful and He loves beauty. And this is why God loves the beauty makers: because they are being God-like. They are taking on divine qualities.

So how does one do this? Because we are stuck with the self. Wherever you go, there you are. And where are you? This is the human predicament.