Serving the Guest: A Sufi Cookbook
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In the Name of God,
the Infinitely Compassionate and Merciful

Have you ever considered all the means of sustenance which God has bestowed upon you from on high?

Let man, then, consider the sources of his food: how it is that We pour down water, pouring it down abundantly; and then We cleave the earth with new growth, cleaving it asunder, and thereupon We cause grain to grow out of it, and vines and edible plants, and olive trees and date palms, and gardens dense with foliage, and fruits and herbage, for you and for your animals to enjoy.

And, behold, in the cattle too there is indeed a lesson for you: We give you to drink of that milk which is within their bellies; and you derive many other uses from them: for, you eat of their flesh, and by them as by the ships over the sea you are borne overland.

God is He who has created seven heavens, and, like them, the many aspects of the earth Through all of them flows down from high, unceasingly, His creative will, so that you might come to know that God has the power to will anything, and that God encompasses all things with His knowledge.

Behold, We have…made you into nations and tribes, so that you might come to know one another... This community of yours is one single community, since I am the Sustainer of you all: remain, then, conscious of me.

from Serving the Guest: A Sufi Cookbook
Copyright © 1999, 2000 by Kathleen Seidel
Sources of previously published material by other authors used by permission, and print sources for images, may be found at http://www.superluminal.com/cookbook.