"The First Call of the Beloved" - part 2

O YE PEOPLE THAT HAVE MINDS TO KNOW AND EARS TO HEAR!

The first call of the Beloved is this: O mystic nightingale! Abide not but in the rose-garden of the spirit. O messenger of the Solomon of love! Seek thou no shelter except in the Sheba of the well-beloved, and O immortal phoenix! dwell not save on the mount of faithfulness. Therein is thy habitation, if on the wings of thy soul thou soarest to the realm of the infinite and seekest to attain thy goal.

Well it looks like the fast got the better of me yesterday, and I never got around to writing this article. Sorry about that. I hope your fast is going well, dear Reader. Oh, and I guess the fact that I have to reassemble our kitchen after the military redid our floor and cupboards might have had something to do with it, too. By the way, if you ever have to have kitchen renovations, or have them done to you, I would suggest not doing them during the Fast.

Now, where were we? Oh, yeah.

In the main body of this Hidden Word, we seem to be referred to as a bird. Before I go into that, though, I should point out that the middle section, "O messenger of the Solomon of love" was in the original a reference to the Hoopoe bird. Shoghi Effendi understood that the English readers would likely not know the story of Solomon and the Hoopoe bird, who carried his messages to the Queen of Sheba, so he translated it to "messenger" for our benefit.

Either way, there are three birds that Baha'u'llah references as a metaphor for us, or our spirit: the "mystic nightingale", the "messenger of the Solomon of love", and the "immortal phoenix".

Each of them has their own home, or destination. The first is "in the rose-garden of the spirit". The second is "in the Sheba of the well-beloved". And the third is "on the mount of faithfulness".

While Baha'u'llah is encouraging us to the highest ideal, for example "the rose-garden of the spirit" as opposed to just any old rose-garden, I believe that there is value in exploring what I call the "lower case" version of each of these. By doing so, we see a path that is so beautifully laid out in front of us. Same thing with the three birds referenced. We can look at any old nightingale, no particular hoopoe bird, and pretty much any phoenix out there, and again, we will see a path of progression.

As Baha'u'llah begins with the birds, let us do the same.

A nightingale, a hoopoe, and a phoenix.

To be honest, I didn't really know much about these birds before beginning this article, so I had to do a bit of research.

The nightingale, as I'm sure you know, dear Reader, is a songbird. It has a stunningly beautiful song, and has been revered through the ages. From Homer and Sophocles, to Chaucer and Shakespeare, the nightingale has long been used as a symbol for lament and love. Due to its spontaneity of song, it is also used as a symbol for inspiration and creativity. It is, however, a fairly plain looking bird.

The second bird Baha'u'llah uses here is the hoopoe. This bird has a much more varied symbolic history. In Leviticus, it is considered non-Kosher, and the Jewish peoples were forbidden to eat it, but in 2008 it was voted the national bird of Israel. In the Qur'an, it is the hoopoe who brings news to Solomon of the Queen of Sheba, and proceeds to carry letters back and forth between them. In Persia, they were seen as an emblem of virtue, having guided the other birds through the seven valleys to the King of Birds, the phoenix, which, it turns out, is actually the group of 30 birds that were successful in their journey. By stressing the importance of their unity, the hoopoe bird shows them that they themselves are actually that "King of Birds", as long as they remain united.

Does this begin to sound familiar?

Oh, and the hoopoe is quite a beautiful bird, especially when its crown of feathers is fully displayed.




Finally, there is the phoenix, that mythical bird symbolizing the sun, time, the Empire, resurrection, life in Paradise, and the highest state of man. Any picture I put here would likely pale in comparison to the image you have in your own mind.



As you can see, we go from the drab to the beautiful to the mythical, ever increasing in splendour. We go from creative inspiration, to the teacher or messenger, to the magical. We also go from the simple lover of the flower that grows on this plane to the bird that guides all the others to their heavenly state, to that bird that only exists in the highest paradise.

No matter how I look at it, this path is filled with wonder and meaning, from the bare basics to the most splendid of all, it is a path that Baha'u'llah is encouraging us to walk, or perhaps fly.

But where is this path leading? The rose-garden, the Sheba of the well-beloved, and the mount of faithfulness.

A rose-garden is so beautiful, with so much to delight the senses. Whether considered with the visual and all the myriad colours, or the olfactory with the beautiful scent wafting through the air, a rose-garden is a true delight to the senses.

Sheba, however, is shrouded in mystery. It has long been thought to be Saba, one of the oldest and most important kingdoms in southern Arabia. The wealth of this kingdom was, and still is, legendary. But perhaps most important was the willingness of their Queen to go to Solomon and learn from his wisdom.

Finally, the mount of faithfulness, a mountain so difficult to attain that only the truly faithful are able to scale its heights. It is, in the Qur'an, the Mother of all mountains, extending all around the world. But in mystic symbolism of the middle East, it is often used as a symbol for the human heart.

From a small garden to an entire country, and eventually to the entire planet, this path also leads us onwards and upwards.

And we can even look at the attributes of these different places: the rose-garden of the spirit, the Sheba of the well-beloved, and the mount of faithfulness. The spirit, the well-beloved, and faithfulness. It is our spirit that is first attracted to the well-beloved, to which we must remain faithful.

Or perhaps we wish to look at the attributes of the birds? The mystic nightingale, the messenger of the Solomon of love, and the immortal phoenix. It is the mystic, in this case, who walks this path, finding the love of God and sharing it with others, and thus earning their immortality.

No matter how we look at it, this Hidden Word is just the beginning of our journey to our Beloved.

And that, dear Reader, is a journey we all should take, "if on the wings of thy soul thou soarest to the realm of the infinite and seekest to attain thy goal."