Renovatio

11/21/2025

When Marva Collins brought Shakespeare and Thoreau to muted, traumatized children in 1970s Chicago, it was hard for others to see the point. "She steeped her young pupils in literature and philosophy; she took them to libraries and museums; and twenty years later, the formerly mute spoke eloquently, and those who had once been swept aside like dust were lawyers and accountants."

Collins is a marvelous example of someone who brought out beauty in a place society had forgotten.

https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/the-power-of-beauty-in-dark-places

11/20/2025

Charles Darwin couldn't convince his own contemporaries that natural selection was real.

Science historian Oubai Elkerdi on what Darwin believed—and why the history of science matters:

Studying Darwin’s life and his philosophical influences tests our beliefs about “science” and helps us to be informed, granular, and selective about our commitments.

11/20/2025

In Sufism, poetry is a "privileged means of conveying spiritual realization, the fulfillment of the human potential." Not all who attain this realization compose poetry, and not all poets attain this realization.

As Rumi writes:

Between the realized saint and the imitator are great differences,
for the former sings like David, while the latter is but an echo.
The saint’s words rise up out of burning passion,
but the imitator has memorized some old sayings.

Oludamini Ogunnaike on poetry's unique ability to convey confounding truths.

Poetry is perhaps unique among the arts for its capacity to combine seeming opposites into a totality that mirrors that of our own being.

11/18/2025

NEW: “The Power of Beauty in Dark Places”

Writing about beauty when the state of the world seems dire to so many may feel antiquated and irrelevant, but Dr. Angel Parham
boldly disagrees.

“I do not ignore the powerful forces of social and economic injustice, oppression, and violence that mark the lives of young people in inner cities. I have visited homes where children are forced to care for themselves; I have rushed with my own children to stay clear of the windows while bullets fly outside. So no, I do not speak of the power of Beauty lightly or naively. I speak of it because I know the power that Beauty—and sometimes Beauty alone—has to inspire a life-giving, life-saving vision for human flourishing.”

Among the transcendentals, Beauty is often left for last: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. But might it succeed when the others fail?

11/12/2025

The very same scientific laws that explain how the world works prohibit it from explaining why the world exists.

Accomplished engineer Asad Islam explain, “The problem of how things began is different from the question of how they work. In particular, the mystery of the ultimate genesis remains scientifically insurmountable, not because we don’t know enough science but because science doesn’t know enough. Science is limited in what it can reveal to us. When it comes to the first cause and the ultimate genesis, the laws of science break down; in particular, the first law of thermodynamics, which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed from one form to another. Science can never satisfactorily explain how something appeared from a state of absolute nothingness, a state in which nothing—not even the laws of physics—existed.”

“Science Shows Nature Is Too Complex to Originate through Chance”
https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/science-shows-nature-is-too-complex-to-originate-through-chance

11/03/2025

In a personal reflection, accomplished engineer Asad Islam takes on the Big Questions and discovers an ideological bias that stymies the scientific pursuit of truth.
https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/science-shows-nature-is-too-complex-to-originate-through-chance

10/31/2025

The eighteenth-century Moroccan sage Moulay al-‘Arabī al-Darqāwī gave the following advice to a man who came to him economically and emotionally burdened by his debts:

“In a time of adversity, both good and evil are present, never absent, and near, never far. If at that time you invoke your Lord and forget yourself, you will profit, and otherwise, you will lose. Whenever times of need come and overshadow you, occupy yourself with the means that your Lord has enjoined upon you and pay no attention to anything else. Be that way always when a time of difficulty comes your way, and evil will leave you and good will come your way. If you give up your will to your Lord in times of need, or hardship, or tribulation, and you do not seek to help yourself by any secondary means you have, that is the greatest station, and above it there is no higher station except prophethood.”

https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/states-of-need-are-gift-laden-carpets

10/31/2025

Michael Sugich offers sage wisdom on embracing the ebbs and flows of life: "We ought to change our reference points and not listen to the popular narratives that measure everything in life from a purely material and temporal—that is to say, profane—standpoint. We can disengage from the chatter of the common people and the headlines. We spend far too much time consuming bad news about events and issues we can do nothing about apart from prayer and supplication. The reality of our existential situation is something else altogether. Moulay al-‘Arabī wrote:

So, beware of this. Put yourself totally in God’s Hands, and you will see marvels, and do not put yourself in the hands of the world as so many people do, lest there afflict you what has afflicted them. By God, if our hearts were truly with our Lord, the world would come to us inside our very houses, let alone outside, even as our Lord says, “O world! Serve those who serve Me, and weary those who serve you!”"

https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/states-of-need-are-gift-laden-carpets

10/31/2025

“I have found that what we most fear, adversity itself, can be the best teacher, as humbling and painful as it can be, because one is rendered helpless and in need, which is, in fact, our true condition.

Only when we have reached the end of our tether and are forced to give up our will do we see marvels.

During such times, an extraordinary dynamic is set in motion, and we witness the oneness of action and existence as God moves us through His creation, responding to our need in real time, and to the needs of others, including our worldly benefactors.

“States of need,” wrote the thirteenth-century jurist and Sufi master Ibn ‘Aţā’ Allāh, “are gift-laden carpets.”

-Michael Sugich

Adversity can be the best teacher—because through it one is rendered helpless and in need, which is, in fact, our true condition.

10/30/2025

You may be surprised to know that Stephen Hawking, the preeminent theoretical physicist and cosmologist of the second half of the twentieth century, definitively claimed that the universe created itself from nothing. He said:

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”

Asad Islam aptly observes in his new essay: “[Hawking] uses a prerequisite—the law of gravity—to argue that the universe can create itself from nothing. But he does not address the elephant in the room: Where did the law of gravity come from? How could it appear on its own from nothing? Chance cannot create the laws of physics. Hawking’s claims do not answer the ultimate genesis question.”

https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/science-shows-nature-is-too-complex-to-originate-through-chance

10/28/2025

The moon's size and distance from the earth produce the precise gravitational pull that keeps the planet from wobbling, which would otherwise create a hazardous climate. Another uniquely life-supporting characteristic of earth.
https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/science-shows-nature-is-too-complex-to-originate-through-chance

10/27/2025

When modernity insists that the universe is the product of mere chance, it overlooks the profound harmony woven into creation.

Read this week's newsletter on Renovatio's latest release: “Science Shows Nature Is Too Complex to Originate through Chance” by Asad Islam

When modernity insists that the universe is the product of mere chance, it overlooks the profound harmony woven into creation. In this excerpt from a personal reflection, Asad Islam—an award-winning scientist with a PhD in electrical, computer, and systems engineering—describes earth as a precis...