Psalms 148:9 Meaning Mountains and All Hills

Tasbīḥ: Glorifying God Tasbīḥ names the praise that runs through everything, and the Quran says nothing exists that fails to praise God, though people cannot make out how. Someone who assumes the world stays quiet until a person speaks has the order backwards, since the sound was going long before they showed up. Their own praise is one voice added to a great deal that was already happening.

Sujūd: Bowing down Sujūd is bowing, and the Quran speaks of the stars and the trees bowing to God. Neither one decides to do it; each simply follows the way it was made, and that following counts as its bowing. So praise can look like nothing dramatic at all, just a living thing doing the ordinary work it was built for.

Āyāt: Signs Āyāt means signs, and the Quran uses the word for hills, rain, and growing things as much as for anything written. A road sign matters for where it points rather than for the metal it is cut from, and these work the same way. A person can take the beauty, stop there, and never follow the direction the beauty was giving.

Tajallī: God showing Himself Tajallī is Ibn Arabi's word for God showing Himself through created forms. He held that no two showings ever repeat, which is why the world comes in thousands of shapes instead of one. A tall old tree shows something a bare ridge cannot, and the ridge shows what the tree cannot, so the variety itself carries meaning.

Dhikr: Remembrance Dhikr means keeping God in mind. Everything else does this without a break, while a person's attention wanders off and returns many times a day. When someone comes back to it, they are not starting the praise but rejoining a chorus that never paused for them.