A doctor setting a badly healed bone sometimes has to break it again. The breaking is not the opposite of healing. It is part of it.

The tradition holds that the 99 names of Allah fall broadly into two categories. Jamal, beauty, ease, expansiveness. The warmth of being held, of doors opening. Jalal, majesty, constriction, purification. The pressure of something being taken, a door closing that you wanted to stay open.

Most people have a strong preference. The claim the tradition makes is that this preference misunderstands what Jalal is for.

The heart is a mirror. A dusty mirror cannot reflect clearly. Light faces it and passes without leaving a proper image. The polishing comes through the Jalal qualities, the loss that severs an attachment, the difficulty that strips a layer of ego, the constriction that closes a door that was leading astray. The qualities of Allah's Jalal attributes polish the heart so that the qualities of His Jamal can be reflected.

He is Al-Qabid, The Constrictor, and Al-Basit, The Expander.

Ad-Darr, The Distresser, and An-Nafi', The Beneficial.

The names come in pairs not because they cancel each other out, but because they are both expressions of the same will, working toward the same end.

Just as the human being cannot see in pure light or pure darkness, light and dark must blend and interlace for vision to awaken.

The bone set wrong can only be corrected by breaking it again. This is not cruelty. It is the work of someone who knows what the bone is for.

We do not always know, in the moment of breaking, which kind of hand is holding us. The tradition's answer to that uncertainty is clarity: both hands belong to the same loving Creator.

Reflect on this:

What difficulty in our lives may be correcting something that comfort allowed to remain crooked?

^{Share your reflections in the poll at the end of the email.}