100 Years of Freedom

'Abdu'l-Baha spent 40 years in prison. On July 24th, 1908 after the Young Turk revolt religious and political prisoners were ordered released. It still took until September to release 'Abdu'l-Baha as His jailors weren't sure if he was included.

This anniversary deserves to be celebrated with a local teaching campaign everywhere. 'Abdu'l-Baha wrote

O that I could travel, even though on foot and in the utmost poverty, to these regions, and, raising the call of "Ya Baha'u'l-Abha" in cities, villages, mountains, deserts and oceans, promote the divine teachings! This, alas, I cannot do. How intensely I deplore it! Please God, ye may achieve it.

For Americans this date is close to our Independence Day celebration, and linking these events with an explanation of how this allowed 'Abdu'l-Baha to come to here and share the Faith, and the current situation of the Iranian believers, and the Prayer for America should interest many reporters. Pass the idea on to your Local Spiritual Assembly Public Information Officer.

Food for Body & Soul

For every thing, however, God has created a sign and symbol, and established standards and tests by which it may be known. -Abdu'l-Baha (The Secret of Divine Civilization, p. 33)

Know thou that every created thing is a sign of the revelation of God. Each, according to its capacity, is, and will ever remain, a token of the Almighty. Inasmuch as He, the sovereign Lord of all, hath willed to reveal His sovereignty in the kingdom of names and attributes, each and every created thing hath, through the act of the Divine Will, been made a sign of His glory. So pervasive and general is this revelation that nothing whatsoever in the whole universe can be discovered that doth not reflect His splendor. Under such conditions every consideration of proximity and remoteness is obliterated.... Were the Hand of Divine power to divest of this high endowment all created things, the entire universe would become desolate and void. -Baha'u'llah (Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah, p. 184)

Adib Taherzadeh in his The Revelation of Baha'u'llah v 3 wrote:

In the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, Bahá'u'lláh states that there is no merit in reading His words when tired. He says that to read a few lines with a spirit of joy and fragrance is better than to read a whole book when depressed and weary. This commandment is very much tune with the law of nature which advocates that a person eat his food only when he is hungry. Another similarity is that in nature one must eat food regularly every day. To eat once in a lifetime is not sufficient. It is the same with reading the Words of God, which is the food for the spirit. To read the Holy Writings once in a while is not enough. As ordained by Bahá'u'lláh, the individual must, if he is to grow spiritually, read His words which are recorded in His Tablets twice every day. These words with all their vivifying forces must then be allowed to penetrate the heart and to strengthen one's faith.

Basically, I think he's saying that nourishing our bodies is representative of nourishing our souls. For us this means reading the writings at least twice daily.

It's interesting to note the Christian custom of saying Grace is somewhat parallel -inasmuch as during most of that dispensation most Christians could not read and didn't possess a copy of their scriptures, praying mostly with one's own words had to suffice. And if you think of prayer as a conversation with God; I suspect really effective pray-ers do more listening then talking anyway. Somewhat off the subject, people who tell me that they don't need religion -that they pray directly to God remind me a bit of talking to a child who's talking to you with their fingers in their ears so they don't have to hear what your saying.

Back to the topic. How do you eat? Mindfully? Joyfully?

I find the whole vegetarian thing makes me very mindful of what I'm eating, particularly when I'm counting calories/nutrients -which for me means eating very healthy foods while trying to gain weight. I could do to gain some weight spiritually you know too. So, I intend to work the system a little backwards eating physically in a regimental way because it's good for me, all the while using the outward sign to prompt the spiritual eating and take care of guilt issues.

Guilt issues? you say! Well all those repetitions of "Clean your plate there are children starving in India/China ." (Depending on whether my mom or my grandma [blame Pearl S. Buck here-thanks NPR for this insight] was speaking -on the news at the time it was Ethiopia that had a famine.) Well instead of making me want to eat more food I wasn't hungry for, I had even less of an appetite thinking of those who didn't have enough to eat.

So I hereby, resolve not to feel guilty about eating my vegetarian diet, and transfer all my guilt to my reading of the Writings -after all more people go without reading from them than without food. I've really gotta teach more.

Best Fortune Cookie Ever

I ate out tonight, and had Thai at a Chinese restaurant in town. I love the peanut-butter sauce hot; had it over veggies and tofu. I can't believe I almost forgot to take the best fortune cookie ever. It said, "You are a lover of words, someday you will write a book." I'm actually keeping it -I put it in my wallet. I intend on making this one come true.

What is [now] hidden behind the veil of destiny will in the future become manifest.
-The Blessed Beauty as quoted by the Master in a Traveler's Narrative. (I'm quoting it out of context, but it's applicable nevertheless.)

Green Power

It's been a busy week, and I feel really drained. So I thought I'd write about energy. The title today will link with a site that will help you get green energy. In my case for a small premium I can get it through my regular power company. Locally it's 68% wind energy and 32% landfill gases. It won't cost a lot as my bills are already low -I switched out to florescent lighting about five years ago, and being hypothyroid has brought an air conditioning free summer for many years now.

I've thought about doing this before, but I wasn't as motivated to really do something more until the whole bio-fuel vs. food prices phenomenon recently made the connection between our energy waste and people starving around the world today.

I think this will go down better than my ill-fated attempt to bicycle to work a few years ago. That lasted two weeks (You have to commit to use green electricity for a year to sign up). I really enjoyed it, even though it was probably a wee bit dangerous, at night on a busy single lane state road with no bike path. The real problem though, was a different connection between fuel and hunger -I simply couldn't eat enough to keep up my weight.

So anyway, I'll be going down to the power company this week and switching over.

The following quote from a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi, dated December 8, 1947,

Our contributions to the Faith are the surest way of lifting once and for all time the burden of hunger and misery from mankind, for it is only through the system of Bahá'u'lláh -- Divine in origin -- that the world can be gotten on its feet and want, fear, hunger, war, etc. be eliminated.

makes me think along a parallel line, what have I been thinking about doing for the Faith that I haven't been "sufficiently" motivated to do? Hmh, food for thought.

-jeff

Anonymity in God? A Personal Meditation

Should your names fade from every mortal mind, and yet God be well pleased with you, ye will indeed be numbered among the treasures of His name, the Most Hidden.
(Baha'u'llah, The Summons of the Lord of Hosts, p. 46)

At first glance this passage (and it's surrounding verses) seems to promise that God holds the fameless or forgotten faithful -the hidden, close to a hidden, a secret part of Himself. Even more so after reading the following passsage:

And when He purposed to manifest His beauty in the kingdom of names and to reveal His glory in the realm of attributes, He brought forth His Prophets from the invisible plane to the visible, that His name "the Manifest" might be distinguished from "the Hidden" and His name "the Last" might be discerned from "the First", and that there may be fulfilled the words: "He is the First and the Last; the Seen and the Hidden; and He knoweth all things!"
(Baha'u'llah, Gems of Divine Mysteries)

Upon reflection though, the Name of God the Hidden isn't apart from the Manifestations of God, the Revealers of all God's Names, but that at one time one Name shows forth and Another at a different time. In fact, Baha'u'llah identifies Himself as the Hidden Name revealed.

I testify that within thee (the city of Tehran) He Who is the Hidden Name was revealed, and the Unseen Treasure uncovered.
(Baha'u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah, p. 120)

And the notes to the Kitab-i-Aqdas state that

In Islam there is a tradition that among the many names of God, one was the greatest; however, the identity of this Greatest Name was hidden. Bahá'u'lláh has confirmed that the Greatest Name is "Baha".

Similarly, the beloved Guardian wrote:

He was formally designated Bahá'u'lláh, an appellation specifically recorded in the Persian Bayan, signifying at once the glory, the light and the splendor of God, and was styled the "Lord of Lords," the "Most Great Name," the "Ancient Beauty," the "Pen of the Most High," the "Hidden Name," the "Preserved Treasure,"...
(Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, p. 94)

So, unlike at first glance Baha'u'llah isn't telling us that God is hiding the unknown faithful away in some hidden part of Himself, but that He as the Manifestation of the Greatest Name is claiming them for Himself. Furthermore, the Blessed Beauty has us pray to God -invoked by His Hidden Name asking for an eternal (spiritual) fame not comfort in anonymity:


I pray Thee, O my Lord, by Thy hidden, Thy treasured Name, that calleth aloud in the kingdom of creation, and summoneth all peoples ...Ordain, O Lord, through Thy most exalted Pen, that which will immortalize our souls in the Realm of glory, will perpetuate our names in Thy Kingdom, and safeguard our lives in the treasuries of Thy protection.
(Baha'u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah, p. 300)

That first passage means quite a bit more to me and in some ways the opposite of what I thought upon first reading it.

-jeff

Making Kites

We made kites today at Lions & Whales. It's funny, it was my grandfather who first made a kite with me, and I used one of his saws today too to make the notches for the frames, but I didn't remember until I woke up that he was buried 23 years ago today. I remember holding my brother while he was crying at the funeral but not crying myself, in fact I don't think I've ever cried at a funeral. It sounds almost sociopathic, but I don't mean it that way. Heck some t.v. commercials make me tear up. And I cried the hardest ever when my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer, just not when she died. It's the "bon voyage" aspect --the whole they're gone and we won't see them for a long time. I guess for me the line between this world and the next has always been somewhat permeable, the dead still present. I've just always been aware of the truth behind the Baha'i teaching that the good people keep doing good and that the bad can't hurt us (they don't have any real substance).

Grandpa retired the year I turned four, and lived about 4 miles from us. When my brother or I'd get sick during the winter and had to stay home from school he'd come over and make a snowman outside our window. My room was in the front of the house and it must have looked funny the snowman facing in, but it was for me and not everyone going by. I still feel watched over --protected. Grandpa felt particularly present today. One of the quotes we read today was "O my Lord! ...make him one of Thy angels whose feet walk upon this earth even as their souls are soaring through the high heavens." This my answered prayer for today. I love you Grandpa.

-your "Jeffy"

Eeyore

Well I feel like the youth that came to me with ideas they were excited about to raise money for the Baha'i funds. Unfortunately, they all violated one rule or another. As a treasurer you hope for excited youth involvement and then to have to kick them in the teeth. Anyway, the fireside idea from a few days ago, at least looking like it did is dead for reasons of cultural ignorance/insensitivity on my part. I mean I'm glad it happened now, before some feelings were hurt, but seeing the kids excited about doing it really got me going. My mantra of late is this quote from the Blessed Beauty: "Of what importance is the shipwreck to the fish of the spirit"

-jeff