Whose Voice, ESW 8

The Shaykh’s prescribed recitation is over, and Baha'u'llah is speaking once again.

And what does He immediately talk about? The voice.

But let’s start at the beginning. Oh, and even before that, let me just remind you, dear Reader, that these are only my own thoughts about this book. Nothing official, of course. You can do with them as you will. I won't be offended. Now, on to the beginning.

“O Shaykh! Know thou that neither the calumnies which men may utter, nor their denials, nor any cavils they may raise, can harm him that hath clung to the cord of the grace, and seized the hem of the mercy, of the Lord of creation.”

Interesting. Calumnies, denials, and cavils. Calumnies are easily the worst of these. They're like backbiting, that most grievous of sins, except they're also lies. Backbiting at least is true. Denials are less obviously malicious. Instead of lying about Baha'u'llah, these are simply people who deny His claim. And then there are the cavils. They’re just petty complaints. Annoying. They don’t even imply a denial, just a pesky question.

For a religious scholar, that last one may be the most interesting of all. Calumny is horrible. Denial is at least fairly obvious, even decisive. But caviling can look remarkably like scholarship. It can involve careful arguments, learned references and considerable knowledge. In fact, the less serious these things appear, the easier they may become to justify. And yet all three are placed together here as things that ultimately cannot harm the person who has “clung to the cord of the grace”.

Then Baha'u'llah turns from their voices to His own.

“By God! He, the Glory of God (Baha), hath spoken not from mere impulse.”

Baha'u'llah has just referred to the things that are spoken or raised against Him. And now He says that He Himself has “spoken not from mere impulse”. I can't help wondering about the implied contrast. How much of what Muhammad-Taqi and others have said about Baha'u'llah has come from careful investigation, and how much from impulse, assumption or simple reaction?

And there is another contrast here that's intriguing. Muhammad-Taqi has just spent four paragraphs speaking words that did not originate with him. Baha'u'llah gave him the words, and he was asked to give them his voice. Now Baha'u'llah effectively says to consider His own voice. He has not spoken from “mere impulse”. Instead, He points towards the source.

“He that hath given Him a voice is He that hath given a voice unto all things, that they may praise and glorify Him.”

There seems to be an escalation here. We begin with the voices of those who utter calumnies, denials and cavils. Then comes the voice of Baha'u'llah. Finally the One Who “hath given a voice unto all things”.

“There is none other God but Him, the One, the Incomparable, the Lord of strength, the Unconditioned.”

And suddenly we've been here before.

This Epistle began, “In the name of God, the One, the Incomparable, the All-Powerful, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise.” Now, only a few paragraphs later, we find ourselves once again standing before “the One, the Incomparable”.

But we haven't come full circle. It feels more like a spiral.

When we encountered those words in the Invocation, Muhammad-Taqi had not yet been asked to do anything. Since then Baha'u'llah has spoken about God and the Messenger, told Muhammad-Taqi what his ear was created for, asked him to practise renunciation, turned him towards the Most Great House, and given him words to recite. Muhammad-Taqi has heard his own voice speaking words that came from Baha'u'llah.

Now Baha'u'llah speaks again and tells him that the words He says come from God. And so we return to “the One, the Incomparable”.

The words are the same, but we are not standing in the same place. Even the attributes that follow have changed. At the beginning we had the All-Powerful, the All-Knowing and the All-Wise. Here we have the Lord of strength and the Unconditioned. The former seems to mirror the All-Powerful, while the Unconditioned takes me back to the All-Knowing and the All-Wise. Not because they mean the same thing, of course, but because our own knowledge and wisdom are among the things that condition the way we see the world.

And Muhammad-Taqi is very much conditioned. His education, his religious position, the opinions of those around him, his own certainty about what is true, all of these might condition the way he sees. In fact, some of the very things that have given him knowledge may now be preventing him from seeing beyond it. Aren't those some of the very things Baha'u'llah has just asked him to set aside through renunciation?

And now the spiral brings him back before God, the Unconditioned.

I’m not sure what to make of that word yet. Perhaps the rest of the Epistle will give us a reason to return to it. But already I find myself looking differently at what initially appeared to be a repetition.

Baha'u'llah has brought Muhammad-Taqi back to where he began. Just not at the same level.

The Waters of Renunciation, ESW 4-7

At the end of the previous paragraph, Baha'u'llah tells Muhammad-Taqi to “recite”. He has told him to give ear, reminded him what that ear was created for, asked him to purify his soul with the waters of renunciation, and turned his face towards the Most Great House. And then, after all that preparation, He gives him something to say.

And I have to admit that on my first reading, it almost sounded like grovelling.

“O my God, O my God!” it begins. And from there, for four lengthy paragraphs, Baha'u'llah places words on Muhammad-Taqi's lips in which he acknowledges his own weakness before God, asks for forgiveness, confesses his failings, and pleads for assistance. This is a powerful Muslim cleric, a man accustomed to others listening to him, and Baha'u'llah is asking him to say these words aloud.

Which takes me right back to the ear.

There is a huge difference between being told, “You have behaved arrogantly before God”, and hearing your own voice say words acknowledging your condition before Him. Baha'u'llah could simply have told Muhammad-Taqi what was wrong with him. Instead, He changes the speaker. These are Baha'u'llah's words, but Muhammad-Taqi is being asked to give them his own voice. And if he has followed the instruction in the previous paragraph, he will also be listening to himself say them.

Perhaps that's why the “waters of renunciation” come first.

Baha'u'llah begins the Kitab-i-Iqan by asking the reader to become detached. Before He begins answering the questions of the uncle of the Bab, before He starts laying out His arguments, He tells him what he needs to do if he is going to understand them. That has always made sense to me. The uncle of the Bab was a seeker. He had questions and had come looking for answers. But if we are too attached to the answers we already have, we aren't going to be particularly good at recognising new ones. At least, that's how I've tended to think about it.

Muhammad-Taqi presents a rather different problem. He was not coming to Baha'u'llah with questions, as far as I'm aware. He wasn't a seeker asking to be shown the way. Quite the opposite. He was a powerful Muslim cleric, the son of the man Baha'u'llah had named the Wolf, and had himself been an enemy of the Faith. The uncle of the Bab knows that he has questions. Muhammad-Taqi seems convinced that he already has the answers.

And yet Baha'u'llah begins with both men in much the same place.

In paragraph 2 of the Iqan, Baha'u'llah says that nobody can truly partake of all these bounties “unless and until he ceases to regard the words and deeds of mortal men as a standard for the true understanding and recognition of God and His Prophets”. In the Epistle, He tells Muhammad-Taqi, “Purify thou, first, thy soul with the waters of renunciation...” In both cases there is a prerequisite. Something has to happen to the reader before the argument can really begin.

Muhammad-Taqi is himself one of the religious leaders whose words and deeds others might regard as a standard. Simply repeating the instruction from the Iqan would therefore hardly have the same effect. He isn't merely attached to what religious authorities have told him. He is a religious authority.

Which makes me wonder if I've been thinking about detachment incorrectly all this time. Perhaps detachment isn't a requisite for seeking. Maybe it is a requisite for seeing.

The uncle of the Bab needs to become detached because he is trying to see something he does not yet understand. Muhammad-Taqi is asked to practise renunciation when he seems convinced that he already understands. Their starting points could hardly be more different, but both need something to change before they can see differently.

After asking Muhammad-Taqi to practise renunciation, Baha'u'llah doesn't immediately begin giving him proofs. He asks him to examine himself.

Again and again, Baha'u'llah places words on his lips that require him to consider his own condition before God. What initially struck me as grovelling now looks rather different. The effect is to turn Muhammad-Taqi's attention away from judging Baha'u'llah and towards examining the person doing the judging.

In the Iqan, Baha'u'llah is speaking to someone who is trying to understand why people have rejected the Messengers of God. He can take him back through history and show him the pattern. Again and again a Messenger appears, and again and again the religious leaders and people of the age reject Him.

But Muhammad-Taqi isn't merely trying to understand that pattern. He is part of it.

Perhaps that is why Baha'u'llah turns his attention towards himself. Before this powerful religious leader judges the claim before him, he is asked to consider the condition of the person doing the judging. And he doesn't merely read Baha'u'llah's assessment of that condition. He is given words with which to voice it himself.

This makes the comparison between the two books even more fascinating. In the Iqan, detachment prepares a seeker to reconsider what he thinks he knows. In the Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, renunciation may be preparing an already-certain man to reconsider who he thinks he is.

Perhaps that is what I missed when I first read these paragraphs and thought they sounded like grovelling. Humiliation doesn't seem to be the point. Seeing is.

The uncle of the Bab needs help seeing what he thinks he knows. Muhammad-Taqi may need help seeing the person he thinks he knows.

And Baha'u'llah begins by asking him to listen to that person's voice.

Give Ear, ESW, 3

At the end of the first two paragraphs of the Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, I found myself thinking that Baha'u'llah was beginning on common ground because He didn't want to be confrontational. He begins with God, moves naturally to the Messenger, and describes things that a Muslim cleric such as Muhammad-Taqi could presumably accept.

Then I read paragraph 3.

Baha'u'llah doesn't avoid confrontation. He prepares the ground before confronting.

“Give ear, O distinguished divine...” He says. Listen. And then, curiously, He stops to explain why the ear exists in the first place: “The ear of man hath been created that it may hearken unto the Divine Voice on this Day...” Muhammad-Taqi presumably knows what an ear does, so this isn't an anatomy lesson. Baha'u'llah is telling him what his ear is for. More particularly, He is telling him what it is for “on this Day”.

And then comes “Purify thou, first, thy soul with the waters of renunciation...”

First.

Before Muhammad-Taqi can listen properly, he has to practise renunciation. And that's not quite the same word as detachment, the word Shoghi Effendi uses in the opening passages of the Iqan. To me, renunciation sounds more active. Detachment can describe my relationship to something, while renunciation seems to suggest giving something up, whether a habit, a possession, a claim, or perhaps even an assumption. I'm not sure why the Guardian chose this word here. But given the difference between the two recipients, I find the difference intriguing.

Then Baha'u'llah begins moving him, almost physically, through the rest of the paragraph. He moves from the ear to the soul, which we might think of as encompassing the whole person. From there He moves to the head, and then to the crown placed upon that head, bringing our attention back towards the ears with which the paragraph began. He then moves to the body, which is to be adorned with piety. And then the body itself begins to move. Muhammad-Taqi is told to arise and set his face towards the Most Great House. In turning his face, of course, he also turns his head and positions those ears towards a particular point. Baha'u'llah has prepared the ears and then positioned them.

This is where I began to feel that the ice was getting rather thin.

The language surely would have sounded familiar to a Muslim cleric. Muhammad-Taqi would have spent his entire life turning towards the Kaaba in prayer. Muslims throughout the world set their faces towards that House, and pilgrims physically circle it. And now Baha'u'llah tells him to set his face towards the Most Great House, “the Spot round which circle in adoration the denizens of the cities of Eternity, and which is the Source of joy unto such as dwell on earth and in heaven”.

I don't think Muhammad-Taqi would have understood “the Most Great House” as another name for the Kaaba. The phrasing is different. But the imagery seems difficult to miss. Set your face towards this House. All circle around it. Whatever else is happening here, Baha'u'llah has moved very quickly from the comfortable common ground of the first two paragraphs to language that seems to echo one of the most fundamental acts of Muhammad-Taqi's own religious life.

So perhaps I had it slightly wrong before. Baha'u'llah doesn't begin on common ground because He intends to remain there. He begins there because it gives Him somewhere from which to move.

But there is another movement in this paragraph that I find even more intriguing.

It begins with the ear. “Give ear.” Then Baha'u'llah draws our attention specifically to that ear and explains its purpose. From there He moves through the person: the soul is purified with renunciation, the head is crowned with the fear of God, the temple adorned with reliance on God, and then the whole person arises and turns. By setting his face towards the Most Great House, Muhammad-Taqi has also turned the ears with which the paragraph began.

And then comes the final word of the paragraph: “recite”.

At first I wondered if the whole paragraph almost travelled in one ear and out the other. But that's not quite right. It begins with the ear, travels through the person, and then ends with Muhammad-Taqi being told to speak. Assuming he actually recites the words aloud, they come out of his own mouth and go right back into his ears.

The paragraph seems to have come full circle.

From God to Us, ESW 1-2

The first paragraph of the Epistle to the Son of the Wolf begins about as simply as it possibly could: “Praise be to God...” And then Baha'u'llah spends the entire paragraph doing exactly that. He praises God. After the invocation, with its reference to the One, the Incomparable, the All-Powerful, the All-Knowing and the All-Wise, He continues by describing God and His sovereignty over creation.

And it’s interesting, isn’t it? Baha'u'llah is writing to a Muslim cleric who has been an enemy of His Faith. There is going to be plenty in this Epistle that Muhammad-Taqi will find challenging, perhaps even offensive. But Baha'u'llah doesn't begin there. He begins with God.

And He doesn't merely begin with a statement that God exists. He begins with praise. Praise is not an argument. It isn't an attempt to prove something to the other person. It is an orientation. Before Muhammad-Taqi is asked to consider Baha'u'llah, before he is asked to reconsider his own actions, before he is asked to examine the claims of this new Faith, both writer and reader are placed before God. Given what we saw in the invocation, this seems a natural continuation. Muhammad-Taqi may be a powerful and learned religious leader, but the conversation does not begin with either his power or his learning. It begins by turning his attention towards God.

From there, the second paragraph seems to move quite naturally from God to His Messenger. Baha'u'llah has begun with God, but now the question becomes how God's guidance reaches us. “He it is Who hath revealed His Cause for the guidance of His creatures, and sent down His verses to demonstrate His Proof and His Testimony...” From God, then, we move towards Revelation.

And this is where the second paragraph becomes particularly interesting to me. At this point Baha'u'llah has not yet asked Muhammad-Taqi to accept anything particularly difficult. He is a Muslim cleric. He already believes in God. He already believes that God sends Messengers. He already believes that those Messengers bring guidance to humanity. So far, there is very little to argue about.

Perhaps that is part of the method. If I begin a conversation with someone at the point where we disagree, then the disagreement immediately becomes the subject of the conversation. Each of us takes up our position and begins defending it. But if I begin with something we genuinely share, we can stand together for a moment and look in the same direction. Baha'u'llah begins with God, and then moves to the Messenger of God.

There may be something else happening here, too. The Messenger described in this opening isn't merely someone who appears, delivers a message and leaves. His coming has consequences for creation. Before Muhammad-Taqi is asked to judge the particular claims before him, Baha'u'llah is establishing something about the relationship between God, His Messenger and the world. He is describing what a Messenger actually does, and doing so in terms Muhammad-Taqi can presumably accept. Instead of beginning with something like, “You are wrong about Me”, He begins much further back. Who is God? What is a Messenger? What happens when a Messenger appears? These are questions Muhammad-Taqi presumably thinks he already knows the answers to. Perhaps that is precisely why they are such useful questions with which to begin.

We already know that this book will be a great challenge to its recipient. Given that, those first words begin to feel considerably less like a formality. Before Baha'u'llah begins the difficult work of challenging this man, He establishes where the conversation begins: “Praise be to God...”

The Invocation, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf

Some of you probably know that I've spent over twenty years studying the Iqan with a dear friend of mine. I've sure written enough about it. And only a few days ago I finished writing a book about some thoughts and insights on that incredible volume. Of course, Samuel and I are still finishing up our paragraph by paragraph look at the book, but that's another project.

So my question was, now that I've finished this book, my commentary, not my study of the Iqan, what next? And I thought why not go from the beginning of His Revelation to the end? Let's move from a book written for a sincere seeker to one that was revealed for an avowed enemy. Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, or ESW if I ever feel lazy about typing it all out, sure seemed to fit the bill.

So, taking a page from my Iqan studies, let's dive in and see what this later volume has to reveal, and how it differs from the earlier one. Whereas the Iqan was answering the questions of the uncle of the Bab, and helping remove the veils preventing him from recognizing, what is this volume trying to do?

That's my intro, so here is the actual article:

The Invocation

I've often written about the attributes of God, and particularly about the way they can sometimes work on two different levels. When Baha'u'llah describes God as the All-Knowing, for example, the capital letters remind us that God's knowledge is infinitely beyond anything we can possess. But knowledge, in the lower case, is also a quality we are encouraged to develop within ourselves. We can never be All-Knowing, but we can become more knowledgeable. We can never be All-Wise, but we can grow in wisdom. Or as I like to say, whatever God is in the capital, we are in the lower case. And as I also believe that nothing in the Writings is random, I have often found that the virtues named in a particular place are the exact ones we need to cultivate at that particular moment. They always seem to address, or relate to, the situation being discussed. 

This is one of the things I love about reading the Writings. Within a tradition in which the Word of God is understood to possess layer upon layer of meaning, there seems little virtue in stopping after the first plausible interpretation. This doesn't mean that every interpretation is equally valid, of course. If an interpretation contradicts other teachings in the Writings, that's a pretty good indication that we've wandered off somewhere. But otherwise, why stop looking? There may always be another meaning waiting there.

All of which came to mind when I began re-reading the Epistle to the Son of the Wolf.

Baha'u'llah begins:

“In the name of God, the One, the Incomparable, the All-Powerful, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise.”

It's easy to pass over an invocation like this. After all, invocations are fairly common in the Writings, and this one certainly seems straightforward enough. God is One. He is Incomparable. He is All-Powerful, All-Knowing and All-Wise. Nothing surprising there.

But this particular invocation is in a book addressed to a particular person.
Shaykh Muhammad-Taqi was a powerful Muslim cleric, the son of the man Baha'u'llah had named the Wolf. He was not some powerless individual sitting quietly on the sidelines of history. He possessed religious authority. His words carried weight. People listened to him. And as the Epistle will make painfully clear, Baha'u'llah was writing in a world in which religious power had already been used to terrible effect.

Given that, those first two attributes seem to establish something very important. God is the One. He is the Incomparable. Whatever Muhammad-Taqi may think of his own station, however much authority he may possess, there simply is no comparison. In one sense, it's a reminder of scale.

And then comes All-Powerful.

That seems particularly striking when addressed to someone who is himself powerful. Perhaps All-Powerful doesn't merely diminish Muhammad-Taqi's power by comparison with God's. Maybe it also provides a standard by which his own power can be examined.

What has he done with it?

After all, power itself isn't necessarily bad. We all possess some degree of power. Parents have power over their children. Teachers have power over their students. Employers have power over their employees. Religious leaders can have tremendous power over those who look to them for guidance. The question is what we do with it.

And then comes All-Knowing.

Power without knowledge is dangerous. Muhammad-Taqi has exercised judgement concerning the Cause of God, but has he actually known what he was judging? Has he investigated? Has he listened? Has he recognised the limits of his own knowledge?

Suddenly the invocation doesn't seem quite so simple.

God is All-Powerful. Muhammad-Taqi has power. God is All-Knowing. Muhammad-Taqi has knowledge. And then God is All-Wise.

Wisdom seems to take the other two a step further. Knowledge alone isn't enough. I can know a great many things and still make terrible decisions. Wisdom has something to do with what I do with that knowledge, how I apply it, when I speak and when I remain silent, when I act and when I wait.

And Muhammad-Taqi isn't merely knowledgeable. He is a religious scholar. Knowledge is part of the very basis upon which his authority rests. He has knowledge, and he has power. The question, then, is how wisely he has used them.
Power. Knowledge. Wisdom.

I don't think we need to choose between seeing these words as descriptions of God and seeing them as a reminder of what is within us. I believe they are both. In the upper case they remind Muhammad-Taqi of his own insignificance before God. His power is nothing beside the All-Powerful. His knowledge is nothing beside the All-Knowing. His wisdom is nothing beside the All-Wise.

But in the lower case they may also point towards qualities he possesses and capacities he is being called upon to develop. And that makes the invocation feel very different to me.

Baha'u'llah isn't merely addressing a man who needs to be humbled. He is addressing a man who needs to change. Humility may be necessary for that change, but so are knowledge and wisdom. Even power need not disappear. It can be used differently. It can be used to protect, rather than harm.

In fact, later in the Epistle, Baha'u'llah will call upon him to use “the power of wisdom and the force of thy utterance” to extinguish hatred and enmity. The man whose words have carried such destructive power is not being told to stop speaking. He is being shown another way in which that power might be used.
And all of this is there before we even reach the first paragraph.

The One. The Incomparable. The All-Powerful. The All-Knowing. The All-Wise.

Five attributes. The first two seem to place the reader before God, reminding him of the immeasurable distance between them. The next three can do that as well, but they also seem to turn our attention back towards the reader himself. His power. His knowledge. His wisdom.

Perhaps that's one of the things an invocation can do. Before we begin reading what Baha'u'llah says to Muhammad-Taqi, it can quietly suggest how we might look at the man who is about to hear it.

And, of course, how we might look at ourselves.

Four Little Words

If you've ever taken the first Ruhi book, there's a good chance you know this quotation:

“The betterment of the world can be accomplished through pure and goodly deeds, through commendable and seemly conduct.”

It's right there in the first section of the first unit. I've studied it, memorised it, talked about it, and probably quoted it more times than I can count. It's one of those passages that has become so familiar that I don't always stop and think about it anymore.

But recently I did, and what caught my attention were four little words: pure, goodly, commendable and seemly. At first they seem almost redundant. Pure and goodly deeds? Commendable and seemly conduct? Isn't Baha'u'llah basically saying that the betterment of the world comes about when we do good things and behave well?

Well, yes. But why use four different words to say it?

And, as always, this is just my own understanding, nothing official. If it helps you think about the quotation in a new way, great. If not, no problem.

The first thing I noticed is that the four words aren't simply strung together. They're divided into two pairs: pure and goodly deeds, commendable and seemly conduct. And, at first, the pairs almost seem backwards to me. I would have expected a person to have pure and goodly conduct, while their individual deeds might be commendable and seemly.

But then I started thinking about the difference between a deed and conduct. A deed is something I do. Conduct is how I carry myself. A deed can take just a moment, while conduct seems to describe something broader, maybe the manner in which I move through the world and interact with the people around me. I’m not actually sure about that last part, but it sounds good for now. Once I began looking at the words that way, the pairings didn't seem backwards at all.

Purity comes first, and once again it begins with the heart. I’ve said this countless times, and it's true here, too. Everything in the Writings, it seems, begins with the heart. Before I ever do anything, there is the reason I am doing it. Am I really trying to help someone, or am I just hoping they'll notice how helpful I am? Am I giving because I want to give, or because I want other people to see me giving? The actions may look exactly the same from the outside, but depending on what is happening in my heart, they can be very different.

Then comes goodly. A pure motive doesn't necessarily produce a good action. I can sincerely want to help you and still make an absolute mess of things. We've probably all done that at one time or another. They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, so good intentions aren't enough. Some of the most horrific things in history occurred because people genuinely believed they were doing good. Nope. The deed itself has to be good.

Then Baha'u'llah moves from deeds to conduct, from what we do to the way we carry ourselves while doing it.

The first word He uses is commendable. Something commendable is worthy of praise, thank you Mr Dictionary. It’s the sort of behaviour we’re happy to see in someone else, and maybe even want to imitate. This becomes particularly interesting when the deed itself is already good, because I can do something genuinely helpful and still behave terribly while doing it. I can give someone money while making them feel small for needing it. I can offer good advice in a condescending way. I can serve on a committee, do everything I've promised to do, and make everyone else miserable in the process. The deed may be good, but my conduct is less so.

And then we come to seemly. It's an odd little word. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use it in a conversation, except as part of this quote. We use its opposite, though, “unseemly”, but something being “seemly”? Not so much.

As I understand it, something seemly is fitting. (Thank you Mr Dictionary, once again.) Appropriate. Suited to the circumstances. And suddenly I can see why Baha'u'llah uses it to describe conduct rather than deeds. The question isn't only whether the thing I'm doing is good. It's whether the way I'm behaving is appropriate at the moment. “Not everything that a man knoweth can be disclosed, nor can everything that he can disclose be regarded as timely, nor can every timely utterance be considered as suited to the capacity of those who hear it.” (Thank you, Baha’u’llah.)

Imagine someone who is grieving. I may sincerely want to comfort them, and I may want to share something beautiful about the life of the soul. I may speak gently and lovingly, with all the care I can muster. But perhaps they just need me to sit there and listen. The words I want to say may be wonderful, and there may come a time when they will be exactly what is needed. Just not now.

Teaching the Faith offers all sorts of examples of this, too. I can sincerely want to share something that has transformed my own life, and I can do it respectfully and lovingly. But if the person in front of me is trying to tell me about the worst day they've had in years, maybe this isn't the moment for me to launch into an explanation of progressive revelation. Maybe I need to listen.

So, for my own use, I tend to think of the quotation as saying, “Do the right thing, for the right reason, in the right way, at the right time.” And yes, I know I've reversed the first two. I think it sounds better that way. Sue me.

What I particularly like about this is how easy it is to get one of those parts wrong. I can do the right thing for the wrong reason, or the wrong thing for the best of reasons. I can do the right thing for the right reason and make a complete mess of the way I do it. And I can get all three of those right and still choose the worst possible moment. I’ve probably managed each of those at some point. No, I’m probably too humble there. I know I’ve managed each of those numerous times.

So, let’s go back to the beginning of the quotation: “The betterment of the world…”

That's quite something to expect from our deeds and conduct.

We talk a lot about changing the world, and the problems facing it can seem so enormous that it's difficult to imagine what any one of us can possibly do about them. But Baha'u'llah brings it right back down to the things we do every day and the way we carry ourselves while doing them. A single deed. Our conduct. The state of our heart. The effect we have on the person standing in front of us.

Maybe that’s what I’ve been missing all this time. The betterment of the world happens through the person standing in front of us.

- - - - -

Oh, and for those who are wondering, I haven't forgotten about my goal of a hundred articles. I think I have 75 to go. I'll double check, but I'm pretty sure it's 75 to go.

So, to try and catch up and achieve that goal, I'm now aiming for three articles a week, published on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Let's see how I do. 

Consort

“Consort with the followers of all religions in a spirit of friendliness and fellowship.”

I've written about this quote before. In particular, the word “consort”. It's not a word we use very often anymore, except perhaps when talking about royalty. Prince Philip was the consort of Queen Elizabeth II. He was her husband. And that's a fairly intimate relationship.

So when Baha'u'llah tells us to “consort with the followers of all religions”, I don't think He's merely asking us to tolerate each other. Tolerance seems a pretty low bar anyway. I tolerate a mosquito buzzing around my bedroom because I'm too tired to bother swatting it. I can’t imagine Baha'u'llah is calling for that between the religions of the world.

Even friendliness doesn't quite seem to capture it. I can be friendly with the cashier at the grocery store. I can be friendly with someone I meet on the bus. But if we take “consort” seriously, there seems to be something a little bit more.

Only recently, though, I noticed something else about the quote. Baha'u'llah doesn't tell us to consort with other religions. He tells us to consort with their followers.

People.

It never occurred to me before, but I think that may be important.

After all, I can learn quite a bit about Judaism by reading a book. I can study the history of Islam. I can learn what Buddhists believe, what Christians teach about the Eucharist, or why Hindus celebrate Diwali. All of that is worthwhile, and I would probably be a better neighbour if I knew more about the religions of the people around me.

But none of that means I know them. Not as people.

Knowing that Jews celebrate Passover isn't the same as sitting at a seder with a Jewish family. Knowing what Christians believe about communion isn't the same as understanding what receiving it means to a Catholic. Knowing that Muslims fast during Ramadan isn't the same as sitting down with a Muslim friend at the end of the day and sharing iftar.

Religions are lived by people, and people are always a bit more complicated than the little descriptions we give of their religions.

I grew up Jewish, and I know there are plenty of things you can read about Judaism that are perfectly accurate and still won't tell you very much about what it feels like to grow up Jewish. They won't tell you which melodies remind someone of their grandmother, which foods mean that a holiday has really arrived, which prayers they love, which traditions they struggle with, or which childhood memories suddenly come rushing back because of a particular smell.

You learn those things by knowing someone. Perhaps that's part of what it means to consort.

And then I began wondering whether we Baha'is sometimes make religious unity a little too easy for ourselves.

We believe in the fundamental unity of religion. We believe that Moses, Christ, Muhammad, the Bab and Baha'u'llah all come from the same God. We recognise Krishna, Zoroaster, and Buddha as divine Educators. We can explain progressive revelation and show how the great religions are connected.

But I can believe every bit of that without having a single close friend who follows another path. I can believe in the unity of religion entirely from within the Baha'i community.

Consorting won't let me do that.

If I'm going to consort with people of other religions, I have to actually know some. I have to spend time with them and listen to them, not because I'm waiting for my turn to tell them what I believe, but because I'm interested in what they have to say. And if we're actually friends, sooner or later I'm probably going to discover what they love about their religion. And that’s important.

Interfaith conversations often seem to focus on what we have in common. And there's good reason for that. Common ground gives us somewhere to begin. We all believe in love. We all value compassion. We all want peace.

But friendship eventually gets beyond the things we have in common.

If I really know someone, I begin to encounter the things that are peculiar to them. The things they love that I don't particularly understand. The traditions that mean everything to them and nothing to me. The beliefs with which I may genuinely disagree. And somehow the friendship survives.

Perhaps that's another thing hidden in the word “consort”. Prince Philip didn't become Queen Elizabeth. That would have rather defeated the point. Their intimacy required them to remain two separate people. They had different personalities, interests, responsibilities and histories, all while sharing a life.

Maybe religious fellowship can work like that, too.

I don't have to pretend that all religions are identical in order to recognise their common Source. I don't have to blur the differences between them or reduce them to a handful of principles on which everyone can agree. I can allow a Muslim to be thoroughly Muslim, a Christian to be thoroughly Christian, a Jew to be thoroughly Jewish, and still sit down with them as a friend.

In fact, perhaps real fellowship requires that. Otherwise I'm not really getting to know you. I'm getting to know the parts of you that resemble me, and that’s not quite the same, is it?

There is another temptation here that I think is worth mentioning. For many of us, teaching our Faith is important. In the Baha’i Faith, Baha'u'llah repeatedly calls upon us to share His teachings. Naturally, when we meet people and become friends, religion may come up. If you’ve ever spent any time with me, you know that that “may” is a bit of an understatement. After all, it’s a very important part of my life, so why wouldn’t I talk about it? Of course, not all the time, nor in every conversation. But when it seems relevant, I do bring it up as naturally as anything.

But what happens if I begin the friendship because I hope to make you a Baha'i?

If my friendship has an objective attached to it, then I'm not quite sure it’s friendship anymore. You have become, at least partly, a project. And Baha'u'llah doesn't say, “Consort with the followers of all religions so that you may teach them.” He says to consort with them “in a spirit of friendliness and fellowship”.

Maybe the fellowship is itself part of the work. Maybe sitting at your table matters even if you never sit at mine. Maybe learning why you love a particular prayer matters even if you never read one of Baha'u'llah's. Maybe knowing you well enough that your religion stops being something foreign to me is already helping to build the kind of world Baha'u'llah describes.

And perhaps that's why I keep coming back to that old-fashioned word, “consort”. Not tolerate. Not coexist with. Not learn about. Consort with.

Get to know people. Eat with them. Listen to them. Celebrate with them. Learn what they love. Let them learn what you love. And don't be afraid if, after all of that, you're still different. After all, diversity is what makes the world more beautiful.