Cream of Remembrance- Our Morning Prayer Routine

This has truly been a labor of love.  .  .  I have been working on the audio/video/pdf of the Cream of Remembrance for two months since the end of the al-Maqasid summer retreat. It was important for me to finish this project because words can not adequately describe how much I loved my mornings at the retreat. The Cream of Remembrance along with Shaykha Nagheba's class & the sister's remembrance gathering was the absolutely best part of the retreat. Most nights I would go to sleep at 2:00 am, sometimes 3:00 am . . . just to wake back up at 4:00 am to make it to the Pre-Fajr/Post Tahajjud Adhkar (Remembrance). My cabin was one of the furthest from the prayer room/classroom and I would walk alone each day in the peace of the dark night to the prayer room (except for the night that I slept in the prayer room.)

From the wudu . . . 

to stepping out my front door . . .

to the saying of the most Beautiful Names of Allah. . .

to the beautiful adhan being called by a kindred soul. . .

to being led in prayer by our favorite Trenton Imam. . . 

to al-Wird al-Latif . . .

to the final Du'a.

Photo by Zainab Ismail

It hurts my heart to be apart from those blessed mornings. My soul still yearns to go back to that time, although I know it is not possible. Therefore, I have tried to recreate as much of it as I could at home until . . .

The Arabic is beautiful, but understanding it in your mother tongue, in the language of your heart is something else. The energy of the brothers reciting Imam al-Haddad's poem in Arabic is fully realized when you understand what is being said:

My soul has a need, O Lord. Fulfil it, 

for You are the Best Fulfiller of Needs.

(O Allāh)

Its fire and ash is blazing in my heart and soul,

quenched with happiness and mirth.

(O Allāh)

Once You are satisfied, joy and happiness

will be my state, my hallmark, and my raiment.

(O Allāh)

The Knowledge of my Lord has spared me

(from) having to beg and choose.

(O Allāh)

For myself, I sit and recite along with the full recording, however for my Beloved children, I have them recite Ya Allah and the Beautiful Names of Allah. Reciting the names of Allah supports The Name and the Named curriculum we have been working on. They also do their Fajr and al-Wird al-Latif.

There was an extra component that I had been doing before the retreat that I continued after al-Wird al-Latif and "before" Shaykh Yahya's class, reciting the daily du'as from the book: The Accepted Whispers.

I also tried to keep up with the routine of reciting the Istigfars from the book: Prayers for Forgiveness , seeking forgiveness of Allah before Maghrib.

After returning home from our week long retreat, I went looking for the Cream of Remembrance in transliteration and English translation with little avail. I could only find an old xeroxed copy. Therefore, I started the arduous task of making it into a word document, which could of have been fairly easy except for all the symbols "ā   ī   ū"  that I had to add to follow the format of the original. When I started typing it, I noticed that the recording from the retreat was a little different in some areas with many parts omitted. Therefore our version of the Cream of Remembrance only includes what was on the audio. Then I started to put together a video to help with memorization , something that could be played in the background while we work throughout the day .

From the video an audio was born, which could easily be played on our kindle and shared with others. I emailed the word document to my kindle device and it shows up nicely as a kindle formatted document. It may not be like sitting in the actual gathering, but it's the next best thing . . . 

InshaAllah each day my family recites the Cream of Remembrance, it will bring us closer to more gatherings like this and closer to the Creator of Everything in Heavens and the Earth, Whom deserves to be remembered.

I went through it many times before sharing it, each time finding a mistake. If you find a mistake, know that it is from my imperfection and that Allah is the Absolute Perfection. Even in my imperfection there is great beauty to be found, so please make du'a for our Prophet and his family, the compiler and authors of the Cream of Remembrance, and all who have helped bring this publication to us.

Note: There are two du'as that I added to the pdf from the Cream of Remembrance that is not in the recording: Supplication for entering and exiting the mosque. InshaAllah when Shaykh Yahya has some time, he will record the missing supplications . . .  and when he does I will gladly enter it into the video and audio.

Update 3/31/2015: Habib Umar's Final Version of the Khulasa- Cream of Remembrance is available for Download now.

Download:
Cream of Remembrance PDF & Audio

Watch:
Morning Invocation Youtube