Children’s books top 25 (collated) for ages 8-12+ (read to or read by). /  by Mustafa Gouverneur

Children’s books top 25 (collated with friends):

  • 1. The Hobbit

    2. Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien (not written specifically for children but powerful if they can engage)

    3. My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George (“an accessible and completely unsentimental survival guide disguised as an adventure narrative wrapped in an ode to nature.”)

    4. Hatchet by Gary Paulsen

    5. The Birchbark House series by Louise Erdrich. ("These books follow the lives and adventures of an Ojibwe family (with strong female protagonist, Omakayas) as they're pushed west by white settlers. Beyond the compelling plot and perspectives that challenge the Little House books of my youth, a reader might come away with new and useful land-based knowledge/skills.")

    6. The Silver Chair; Voyage of the Dawn Treader; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia) by C.S. Lewis

    7. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

    8. The Wizard of Oz full series

    9. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

    10. Ghazali's Book of Knowledge for Children by Fons Vitae

    11. The Secret Garden 

    12. The Life of the Prophet by Gouverneur & Azzam

    13. Ottoline series by Chris Riddell

    14. Charlotte’s Web

    15. A Carpet of Flowers, by Elizabeth Borton de Treviño

    16. The Jungle Book

    17. The Borrowers

    18. Pippi Longstocking series

    19. Black Beauty

    20 Little Women & Pride and Prejudice (children's versions)

    21. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

    22. Wisdom Tales books e.g. Amir 'Abd al-Qadir & some of Demi's books

    23. Conference of the Birds by Alexis Lumbard

    24. The Iliad and The Odyssey- good graphic novel adaptations

    25. Where the Mountain meets the Moon by Grace Lin

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On ‘Moderns’, Epistemology and First Principles /  by Mustafa Gouverneur

“The special mark of the modern world is not that it is skeptical, but that it is dogmatic without knowing it. It says, in mockery of old devotees, that they believed without knowing why they believed. But the moderns believe without knowing what they believe - and without even knowing that they do believe it. Their freedom consists in first freely assuming a creed, and then freely forgetting that they are assuming it. In short, they always have an unconscious dogma; and an unconscious dogma is the definition of a prejudice. They are the dullest and deadest of ritualists who merely recite their creed in their subconsciousness, as if they repeated their creed in their sleep. A man who is awake should know what he is saying, and why he is saying it – that is, he should have a fixed creed and relate it to a first principle. This is what most moderns will never consent to do. Their thoughts will work out to most interesting conclusions; but they can never tell you anything about their beginnings. They have always taken away the number they first thought of. They have always forgotten the very fact or fancy on which their whole theory depends.”

- G. K. Chesterton

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The Objective --- Wendell Berry /  by Mustafa Gouverneur

A Timbered Choir

Even while I dreamed I prayed that what I saw was only fear and no foretelling,
for I saw the last known landscape destroyed for the sake
of the objective, the soil bludgeoned, the rock blasted.
Those who had wanted to go home would never get there now.

I visited the offices where for the sake of the objective the planners planned
at blank desks set in rows. I visited the loud factories
where the machines were made that would drive ever forward
toward the objective. I saw the forest reduced to stumps and gullies; I saw
the poisoned river, the mountain cast into the valley;
I came to the city that nobody recognized because it looked like every other city.
I saw the passages worn by the unnumbered
footfalls of those whose eyes were fixed upon the objective.

Their passing had obliterated the graves and the monuments
of those who had died in pursuit of the objective
and who had long ago forever been forgotten, according
to the inevitable rule that those who have forgotten forget
that they have forgotten. Men, women, and children now pursued the objective
as if nobody ever had pursued it before.

The races and the sexes now intermingled perfectly in pursuit of the objective.
the once-enslaved, the once-oppressed were now free
to sell themselves to the highest bidder
and to enter the best paying prisons
in pursuit of the objective, which was the destruction of all enemies,
which was the destruction of all obstacles, which was the destruction of all objects,
which was to clear the way to victory, which was to clear the way to promotion, to salvation, to progress,
to the completed sale, to the signature
on the contract, which was to clear the way
to self-realization, to self-creation, from which nobody who ever wanted to go home
would ever get there now, for every remembered place
had been displaced; the signposts had been bent to the ground and covered over.

Every place had been displaced, every love
unloved, every vow unsworn, every word unmeant
to make way for the passage of the crowd
of the individuated, the autonomous, the self-actuated, the homeless
with their many eyes opened toward the objective
which they did not yet perceive in the far distance,
having never known where they were going,
having never known where they came from.

Sahl al-Tustari Spiritual Advice /  by Mustafa Gouverneur

Sahl al-Tustari once met a Sufi in Mecca to whom he gave spiritual counsel. The man replied, ‘O master, I am incapable of this on account of the people.’ Sahl then turned to his disciples and said, ‘a man will not attain to the reality of this affair (i.e. realization) until he has one of two qualities: either people fall away from his sight to such an extent that he does not see anyone in this world except God and himself, aware that no one is able either to harm or benefit him, or his ego (nafs) becomes so insignificant in his own eyes that it does not matter in what state people see him.'

–– Cited by Ibn ‘Abbad of Ronda in Sharḥ al-ḥikam al-‘aṭā‘iyya. Thanks to Ayn Kha

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Fear /  by Mustafa Gouverneur

“The saint hath no fear because fear is the expectation either of some future calamity or of the eventual loss of some object of desire, whereas the saint is the 'Son of the Moment' ( or 'son of his time' - 'ibn waqtihi'); he has no future that he should fear anything; and as he hath no fear so he hath no hope, since hope is the expectation either of gaining an object of desire or of being relieved from a misfortune, and this belongs to the future; nor does he grieve because grief arises from the rigour of time and how should he feel grief who is in the radiance of satisfaction (rida) and the garden of concord (muwafaqat)?”

-Al-Junayd of Baghdad (830 -910)

"It is the silence of the world that is real." /  by Mustafa Gouverneur

“Those who love their own noise are impatient of everything else. They constantly defile the silence of the forests and the mountains and the sea. They bore through silent nature in every direction with their machines, for fear that the calm world might accuse them of their own emptiness. The urgency of their swift movement seems to ignore the tranquility of nature by pretending to have a purpose. The loud plane seems for a moment to deny the reality of the clouds and of the sky, by its direction, its noise, and its pretended strength. The silence of the sky remains when the plane has gone. The tranquility of the clouds will remain when the plane has fallen apart. It is the silence of the world that is real. Our noise, our businesses, our purposes, and all our fatuous statements about our purposes, our business, and our noise: these are the illusion.”

Thomas Merton, “No Man is an Island” p. 257

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The Name /  by Mustafa Gouverneur

"When you once get the taste of His Name and find that it is capable of making the mind still, calm and serene and of revealing the joy of the Divine, it will take possession of the mind, which will be drawn towards it irresistibly. Who would not have the Name always with him when he has once experienced that it has proved to be the great joy and solace of his life? So, chant the Name with all your heart and it will lead you to the highest spiritual experience."

- Swami Ramdas

Thanks Ram de Leon

Thanks Ram de Leon