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