99 Names of God

I believe in the Holy and Universal Spirit, to whom mankind has given many names and one love…our God, ineffable and divine.

The Sufis teach that there is great healing in the recitation of the 99 names of God that are found in the Qur’an. The divine names, the sifat, are 99 attributes of Allah mentioned in the Qur’an and as such they have no independent existence of their own. As you go deeply into any one of the aspects, you are led back to the essence of the One Name, ineffable and divine, because these attributes are manifestations of the essence.

All the divine names, the “many names” of God are all contained in the one Name, Allah. As you sound the names—and indeed, the Sufis also teach that all things begin in sound—you can begin to fully awaken to the essential Name, which is unique.  

Wali Ali Meyer, in Physicians of the Heart likens it to a playing of a musical scale. He writes: “All the notes of the scale are manifestations of the main note, the tonic note. In singing the attribute note, the singer learns about the tonic because the attribute note is fully present in the tonic.” I think about all those years of singing in church and in school choirs…my dad would use a pitchpipe or a choir director would have the accompanist sound one note on the piano, the key or tonic—and from sounding that one note,  everyone could find the starting pitch for their parts. Indeed the entire scale was embedded in that one note. I never really appreciated the magic of that sounding…how it is that one note could facilitate a choir, or a congregation of 250-300 people, as they set out on a harmonic adventure—in tune and moving from start to finish singing different pitches but always held in relationship to the tonic note of the music. Truly, all the notes to be sung were embedded in that initial sounding.  

Likewise, say the Sufis, our daily lives are the musical investigations of all the notes, of all the 99 sifat, the 99 attributes of Allah. As I sound the Christuman tone this morning,” I believe in the Holy and Universal Spirit, to whom mankind has given many names and one love…”, may I rise to sing this day’s song making full use of the musical scale to create a new beauty and harmony of this day.  And I pray, with this Christuman key note always sounding in my ear, “let not my song be cut short before its fulfillment.”