Old Age: Consoling Hopes

Through the grey hairs appearing in my hair and beard, and through the disloyalty of a friend whom I had considered the most faithful, I began to feel an aversion to the seemingly dazzling and alluring pleasures of worldly life in Istanbul.

My nafs, once enamoured of earthly pleasures, began instead to seek spiritual joys. In old age, which appears cold, burdensome, and unpleasant in the eyes of the heedless, I longed for consolation and light.

All praise be to Allah! A hundred thousand thanks be to Him! For in place of those false, tasteless, and transient worldly pleasures, I found in Lā ilāha illā Hū and in the light of the unity of Allah the true, enduring, and sweet joys of īmān. And old age, which appears cold and burdensome in the eyes of the heedless, became, through that light of Tawhīd, luminous, warm, and radiant in my eyes.

O elderly brothers and sisters!

Since you possess īmān, and since your lives contain prayer and worship, which illuminate īmān and cause it to flourish, you may regard your old age as an eternal youth. For through these very means, you can attain true and everlasting youth.

The truly cold, burdensome, ugly, dark, and painful old age belongs to the unbelievers. Even their youth, like their old age, is cold, burdensome, and dark. It is they who should weep and cry out: “Oh, what regret! Oh, what loss!”

But you, venerable elderly believers, should say:

ٱلْحَمْدُ لِلّٰهِ عَلَى كُلِّ حَالٍ

Therefore, be grateful and rejoice.

The Twelfth Hope

Once, under the pretext of exile, I was sent to the village of Barla in the province of Isparta, where I had to endure a painful captivity. There I lived alone and forsaken, cut off from human companionship and all correspondence. While I was in an utterly miserable state, afflicted by illness, old age, and loneliness, Allah, out of His perfect mercy, bestowed upon me a consoling light in the form of insights and mysteries of the Qur’an. Through that light, I tried to forget my bitter, painful, and sorrowful condition.

I could forget my homeland, my friends, and my relatives. But there was one person I could not forget: Abdurrahman, my nephew, my spiritual son, my most devoted student, and my bravest friend. We had parted six or seven years earlier. He did not know where I was and therefore could neither come to my aid nor console me; and I knew nothing of his circumstances, so I could neither write to him nor share my innermost feelings with him. In my old age, I needed someone like him, someone so loyal and devoted.

Then, suddenly, I received a letter. I opened it and saw that it was a letter which fully reflected Abdurrahman's true character. Part of that letter, in which three clear karāmāt are evident, has been included in the Twenty-Seventh Letter. That letter moved me to bitter tears, and whenever I remember it, I am still deeply affected.