Category: baha’i

Today is a Bahá’í holy day, the anniversary of the birth of Bahá’u’lláh (Nov. 12, 1817, but translated into the lunar calendar = Nov. 7 this year). This is the equivalent of Christmas for christians, thankfully not encrusted with the layers of commercialism that have grown over “the holiday season”. But the event is itself a gift to us, like Christmas was. My sister wants to know what I want for Christmas, and actually I can’t think of a single material thing to tell her. Instead this prayer written by Bahá’u’lláh expresses it today, for me. I picture all of us living in a nice tall shady forest:

Glorified art Thou, O Lord my God! I give Thee thanks inasmuch as Thou hast called me into being in Thy days, and infused into me Thy love and Thy knowledge. I beseech Thee, by Thy name whereby the goodly pearls of Thy wisdom and Thine utterance were brought forth out of the treasuries of the hearts of such of Thy servants as are nigh unto Thee, and through which the Daystar of Thy name, the Compassionate, hath shed its radiance upon all that are in Thy heaven and on Thy earth, to supply me, by Thy grace and bounty, with Thy wondrous and hidden bounties.
These are the earliest days of my life, O my God, which Thou hast linked with Thine own days. Now that Thou hast conferred upon me so great an honor, withhold not from me the things Thou hast ordained for Thy chosen ones.
I am, O my God, but a tiny seed which Thou hast sown in the soil of Thy love, and caused to spring forth by the hand of Thy bounty. This seed craveth, therefore, in its inmost being, for the waters of Thy mercy and the living fountain of Thy grace. Send down upon it, from the heaven of Thy loving-kindness, that which will enable it to flourish beneath Thy shadow and within the borders of Thy court. Thou art He Who watereth the hearts of all that have recognized Thee from Thy plenteous stream and the fountain of Thy living waters.
Praised be God, the Lord of the worlds.

A follow-up on the previous post–

The 20th century artist Giacometti has done some drawings that show our world as mostly empty space with thin lines holding it together; they remind me of the particle traces that commonly illustrate physics experiments.

Here’s one of his drawings:

And here’s a lovely montage of a physics particle-trace image with a photo of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá superimposed over it:

(linked from another post of Vahid Ranjbar’s, on ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Tablet of the Universe)

This is leading me to visualize the world as a very complex series of mathematical operations (for lack of a better word) which in turn generate matter (probably space too). Unfortunately I can only make vague noises about math, I lost track at calculus, so maybe my admiration is misplaced. But we do know our physical world, and the atoms comprising it, are mostly empty space, and that’s the feeling Giacometti’s drawing evokes.

On a similar topic, Mandelbrot sets and fractals were popular in the 80’s and 90’s; there was even a ms-dos program called fractint for generating them, which I had a lot of fun playing with. A good book on some of the research is James Gleick’s “Chaos: making a new science” originally published 1988.

(The movie is Arrival, which I mentioned before)

I’ve been following the writing and videos of physicist Vahid Houston Ranjbar for a while (isn’t that a wonderfully international name? Persian, American, Indian) but somehow failed to notice this post from 2017.

… On first blush it would seem a ridiculous violation of … physics to “remember the future”. But when I think about it more, I must confess it takes a bit more thought to understand why we don’t remember the future in the way we can remember the past. If we suspend for a while what we ‘think’ we know about causality, it is not immediately obvious why …

He also has a series of videos on youtube on the theme of the Platonic Ideal way of viewing the world vs the Materialist view. And this video which he did is an introduction to a Bahá’í view of the changes to our world that started mid-19th century.

Luke Slott’s music has been growing on me in the last few months. When I first heard it a year or two ago, it seemed nice but very simple, sort of like practice exercises. But as I look at what he’s done recently, I think that simplicity is deceptive– it’s very subtle and very much a devotional. He’s creating a new album for the upcoming centenary called Home of Light, and he’s posting the songs on YouTube as they’re done.

The first song, “Tablet of the Land of Bá”, takes its text from this Tablet by Bahá’u’lláh to His Son, who had gone on a visit to Beirut. To me it’s the expression of very human feelings. The photos of Akka (Acre, Israel) and the prison from that time are very touching too.

The second song, “Whatever we are (Still are we Thine)” is especially touching to me right now. It reminds me in its simple directness of the “Another world” video I mentioned some months ago.

He’s also doing a series of “Vignettes” sharing his thoughts about ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in the process, and giving us Tucsonans a nice view of Dublin greenery in the background (minus the likely humidity). They also contain advertisements for his work, but nicer than the average ads.

Another song I keep coming back to, not so simple, is a setting of The Tablet of Ahmad.

(his homepage is www.lukeslott.com)

[updated 5/23/22]

I ran across a book on Amazon by an acquaintance from my college days, Intended: a marriage in black & white. It’s a memoir of growing up in Illinois, with a focus on her painful 5-year engagement to marry George, a black man, and the racism she encountered. It’s very well written, understated, and it does finally end well.

I didn’t know her, but in our little Bahá’í community of Normal, Illinois it wasn’t possible to not follow her story as it unfolded, and some of the anonymized people she refers to I knew at the time. I met her in a group during my first week or so as a freshman, and I remember 2 things: She intentionally wore mismatched socks, and she was a very talented mime artist. I met George once or twice but never talked to him — he had a very soft & kind voice, and he went on to become a social worker.

What Sharon brings out so well was the racism we absorbed just growing up in southern Illinois, never aware, for me never even showing because I almost never met a black person so I didn’t have to face my own reactions. She quotes one of her most supportive and open-minded friends asking her “but what about the children?” Now, 45 years later and in a more diverse city, I can see that such children are very cute & wonderful, but I can remember the fear then. And George’s family had the same fears.

From the acknowledgments:

The first story in this book was prompted by my friend … she posed a question: “Is there a story from your childhood that would have predicted your life now?” I immediately thought of the Black doll I loved. And thinking about that story led to more stories that revealed a clear path, an intentional one to the life I have.

This is just a link to an article by Hugh Locke from Dec. 2020 that I think is a good view of our current point in history, and possibly the only one referencing the 1648 Peace of Westphalia 😉

Navigating the Double Epoch: Thoughts on changing humanity’s current plot line

The Google search on “oneness of humanity” mentioned in the article as having over 5 million results, now (July 2021) shows about 8.5 million.

In regard to his affairs, let him repeat nineteen times: “Thou seest me, O my God, detached from all save Thee and cleaving unto Thee. Guide me, then, in all mine affairs unto that which profiteth me for the glory of Thy Cause and the loftiness of the station of Thy loved ones.” Let him then reflect upon the matter and undertake whatever cometh to mind. This vehement opposition of the enemies will indeed give way to supreme prosperity.

This was revealed by Bahá’u’lláh for Shaykh Kázim Samandar, date unknown but in the latter part of the 19th cent., probably in tumultuous times.

There’s also a nice song with this text in one of my favorite albums, Radiant Heart (Shadi & Shidan Toloui-Wallace, bilingual)

Decisions can be hard — you look at what you’re leaving and you see an ending, with no assurance of anything positive to replace it. But not acting is an assurance of nothing positive to replace it either, and time runs out.

Praying is hard too; reading or saying the words is easy, but that’s only to call out the feelings and yearnings, which I still can hardly ever do, after decades. Then being still and “listening” neutrally, without prejudice, is even harder; never wholly attainable. Buddhist meditation might have the idea. You have to be empty.