{"id":2,"date":"2008-08-19T21:34:04","date_gmt":"2008-08-20T01:34:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/?page_id=2"},"modified":"2008-09-11T16:33:26","modified_gmt":"2008-09-12T00:33:26","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/about\/","title":{"rendered":"About"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"In the autumn of 1990 I found myself on a quest to find a new crescent moon.\u00a0 It was in response to a\u00a0mindless debate among Muslims college students nearing the end of Ramadan, the month of fasting, that year.\u00a0 In spite of a 1400 year old tradition of marking the months by actually seeing a new moon, they chose instead to argue over how to mark its beginning with some other technique.<\/p>\n

Being an outdoors person, I decided to go out a see it for myself.\u00a0 It was not long before I had witnessed the birth of a new crescent moon and I was very excited.\u00a0 However, my claims were not believed.\u00a0 Instead of furthering an argument, I opted to just deliver proof and I found myself out there with a camera.\u00a0 I soon had a photo of the moon and all debate about my sightings ended.\u00a0 However, that was just the beginning for me.<\/p>\n

Slowly I found myself upgrading photographic equipment and out on weekly if not daily jaunts into the surrounding natural areas in pursuit of not only moon photos, but also everything else in nature\u00a0that I laid my eyes on.\u00a0\u00a0Then in October of 1993 I became aware of the overwhelming\u00a0beauty of our world upon witnessing and photographing the youngest crescent I have ever seen.\u00a0 The experience was so moving that it had me questioning what my relationship with the world had become.\u00a0 It was not something I could verbalize or explain to friends, but in retrospect what I was experiencing was love for Mother Earth.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>So what.\u00a0 What did it matter?\u00a0 I was not the only person who ever loved the great outdoors.\u00a0 But then five years later it coalesced when I had heard a tradition from the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, where he was reported to have said – “The Earth is your Mother, so take care of your Mother<\/font><\/em><\/strong>.”\u00a0 Now you can’t take care of something that you don’t love, at least not very well, and I knew what my love for the Earth finally meant and where I had to go with it.\u00a0 I also realized that if the Earth was truly our mother, then maybe, just maybe, she had something to say to us about how we were treating her, the other creatures that walk on her back, as well as how we were treating ourselves.<\/p>\n

So I listened with my heart to what my eye saw through the camera and started to share it with anyone who would lend me an ear.\u00a0 Organic Light Photography soon followed to provide an outlet to share what I was learning through my artistic photographic expression and not long after www.organiclightphoto.com<\/a> was started and has lead me to this web journal as a means to reach as many people as possible with a very\u00a0simple message.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nWe need to live in peace with each other, the other creatures, the plants, and the Earth.\u00a0 If we don’t, we risk our very existence.\u00a0 The Earth is continually showing us how to do this.\u00a0 We only need to open our hearts to what she is saying.<\/p>\n

My hope with this web journal, Organic Light Pan, is that I can help elucidate what the Earth is trying to teach us.\u00a0 I invite you to come along with me and hopefully we can achieve peace among us all.<\/p>\n

Peace to you all. – Youssef<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the autumn of 1990 I found myself on a quest to find a new crescent moon.\u00a0 It was in response to a\u00a0mindless debate among Muslims college students nearing the end of Ramadan, the month of fasting, that year.\u00a0 In spite of a 1400 year old tradition of marking the months by actually seeing a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2\/revisions\/78"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}