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.

A Walk through the Year

I've been using the Bahá’í calendar for years, and I've always liked the fact that most of the months are named after attributes of God. Bahá, Splendour. Jalál, Glory. Jamál, Beauty. And so on through the year until we finally arrive at ‘Alá, Loftiness, the month of the Fast. Questions, of course, isn't an attribute of God, as far as I'm aware.

I've also known that these names weren't simply invented for the calendar. They have their roots in an Islamic prayer attributed to Imám ‘Alí. But recently I found myself looking at the names written out in order, and a question occurred to me: Why this order?

In case you're like me, and didn't grow up with that calendar song, the names are: Splendour, Glory, Beauty, Grandeur, Light, Mercy, Words, Perfection, Names, Might, Will, Knowledge, Power, Speech, Questions, Honour, Sovereignty, Dominion, Loftiness.

Normally I just think of them the way I do the Gregorian calendar, as a list of names. Bahá, like January, comes first. ‘Alá, like December, comes last. And all the others have their spots seemingly randomly in between. But a calendar isn't experienced as a list. It's lived as a sequence. We move through these words, one after another, year after year. Like a path.

Once I started reading them that way, I began seeing little groupings that I hadn't noticed before. The year begins with Splendour, Glory, Beauty and Grandeur. Those seem almost entirely concerned with the majesty of God. They don't ask me to do anything. They simply describe something magnificent. Splendour. Glory. Beauty. Grandeur. It feels as though the year begins by turning our attention towards God.

Then comes Light, and that seems different somehow. Light travels. Light reaches something. If there is light, something can be illuminated. And these five together? Where I live in the northern hemisphere, they lead us from that last moment of winter through the whole of spring, that season of promise, but, it is worth remembering, not fulfilment. It is like a reminder that from the darkness we can turn our attention to the Divine, focus our entire being on it, and the light that emanates will lead us into the rest of the year.

Immediately after Light comes Mercy. I don't know whether there's any significance to that pairing, but I like it. Besides, this is just my own thinking on it, nothing official, so take it or leave it. It's up to you. I won't be offended. I promise.

So here we are, at the beginning of summer. God's splendour, glory, beauty and grandeur could leave Him infinitely distant from us. But to help bridge that gap, there is Light, and then Mercy. Something comes from God towards His creation.

Then we get Words. Now that really caught my attention.

Splendour. Glory. Beauty. Grandeur. Light. Mercy. Words.

It's almost possible to see a movement there. God is. God shines. God shows mercy, and because of that infinite mercy, He speaks. As has been said many times, God may be unknowable, but we can know something about Him, namely that He loves us, which is why He sends us His Messengers.

Again, I have no idea whether this is intentional, but I've noticed that there is nothing random in the Writings. And when I explore these odd notions that flit across my mind, they always seem to lead to interesting places.

After Words come Perfection and Names. That pairing sent me down another little path. We know God through His names and attributes. We speak of the All-Merciful, the All-Knowing, the Powerful, the Loving. The names don't contain God, any more than the word “ocean” contains an ocean, but they give us a way of approaching what would otherwise be beyond our understanding.

And then, almost exactly halfway through the year, the seasons change again. We arrive at autumn, that season of harvest.

Might. Will. Knowledge. Power.

Those four seem to belong together almost too neatly. At first I tried rearranging them in my mind. If I were putting together a sensible little progression, I would probably start with Knowledge. Know what needs to be done, decide to do it, and then exercise the strength and power required to accomplish it.

But that's not the order. Maybe that's another warning against trying too hard to turn the calendar into a secret instruction manual. Or perhaps it's simply a reminder that God knows more than I do.

So what happens if I follow His order instead?

The seasonal transition occurs in the middle of Might. That's interesting. After all, we had to work hard all summer to bring our crops to fruition. It required strength to get here. But that's only the beginning. Now we need to bring in the harvest.

Then comes Will. Anyone who has worked on a long project knows how much will can be required for that final push. The work may be nearly finished, but nearly finished isn't finished. You still have to bring the harvest in.

Knowledge tells us when to do it. Too early and the crop hasn't fully matured. Too late and it begins to rot. There is a right time to harvest, and recognising that time requires knowledge.

And finally comes Power, the ability to actually do the work.

I have no idea whether the Báb intended any of that when He placed those four names in that order. Probably not. But once again, following the path has taken me somewhere I hadn't expected.

The next two make the sequence even stranger: Speech and Questions.

That made me smile. After all that splendour and glory, after light and mercy and words, after might and will and knowledge and power, we arrive at Speech. And what follows Speech? Questions.

I love that. We speak, and then we question. Or perhaps God speaks, and then we question. Or perhaps our speech itself should lead to questions rather than answers. I don't know. But given how important questions have become to the way I read the Bahá’í Writings, I find it delightful that there is an entire month called Questions, and that it comes immediately after Speech.

At this point my mind moved away from the harvest and towards religion itself. I began wondering whether there was another pattern I could see here. A new religion begins. The seeds are sown, the ground is prepared, and the apostles and heroes of the Faith go out into the world. Through their speech and their actions, something begins to change.

Then come the questions.

Some of those questions lead to greater understanding. Some lead to disagreements. Over time, as a religion grows and develops, institutions arise, interpretations accumulate and authority becomes established. The original revelation continues to transform lives, while at the same time people begin adding their own ideas to it. Those two processes can exist side by side.

Again, I'm not suggesting that the Báb designed the calendar as a coded history of religion. I'm simply following where the sequence takes me.

Now we are at the beginning of winter, as we come to Honour, Sovereignty and Dominion. These feel regal again, rather like the beginning of the year, although perhaps stronger. We began with Splendour, Glory, Beauty and Grandeur. Now, near the end, we find ourselves once again contemplating attributes that belong to God.

And perhaps that's important after Questions.

However complicated religion may become in human hands, the Honour is still God's. The Sovereignty is still His. The Dominion is still His. We may build institutions around a religion, argue about its teachings, or even claim authority for ourselves, but none of that changes where the real authority lies.

Then something interrupts the calendar.

Ayyám-i-Há.

These days don't belong to any month. We have spent the first eighteen months moving through this sequence of names and suddenly we step outside it altogether. We celebrate. We give gifts. We practise hospitality and charity. We prepare ourselves for the Fast.

I've written before about Ayyám-i-Há, but seeing it in this particular sequence made me think of something else. It comes before the renewal.

That reminded me of the forerunners of the great religions. John the Baptist appears before Christ, preparing people for what is about to happen. Shaykh Aḥmad and Siyyid Káẓim prepare their followers for the coming of the Qá’im. They aren't the renewal itself. They announce it. They prepare people for it. Their very presence says that something is coming.

I find myself seeing Ayyám-i-Há a little like that here. Not as a symbol the Báb necessarily intended, but as occupying a similar place in the pattern. The year hasn't turned yet. Naw-Rúz hasn't arrived. We still have the Fast ahead of us.

But already there is celebration.

Renewal hasn't come, but something is telling us to get ready.

Then we enter the nineteenth and final month: Loftiness.

That name seems almost comically inappropriate for the Fast. The Fast is the time when I become most aware of my own limitations. I get hungry. I get thirsty. I discover just how much of my day revolves around wondering what I'm going to eat next. Whatever lofty ideas I may have about my spiritual condition tend to become considerably less lofty sometime in the middle of the afternoon.

And yet the month is called Loftiness.

Perhaps, though, that's precisely the point. The attribute isn't mine. None of these attributes is mine.

I've spent the entire year moving through the names and attributes of God: His Splendour, His Glory, His Beauty, His Mercy, His Knowledge, His Power, His Sovereignty. Then, during the final nineteen days, I am asked to abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset and turn my attention more deliberately towards Him.

The year ends not with my loftiness, but His.

And then comes Naw-Rúz, the equinox. The year doesn't begin on an arbitrary anniversary. It begins with something actually happening in the heavens. The earth has reached a particular place in its journey around the sun. The seasons turn. Spring begins where I live in the northern hemisphere, and the calendar returns to its first word.

Bahá. Splendour.

That's where I find myself wondering whether the calendar is doing something I hadn't noticed before. We don't merely use these attributes to name the months. We live inside each one for nineteen days. Then we move to another. Splendour gives way to Glory, Glory to Beauty, Beauty to Grandeur. Eventually we pass through Words and Names, Will and Knowledge, Speech and Questions, Sovereignty and Dominion. Finally we arrive at Loftiness and the Fast.

And then the whole thing starts again. We arrive right back where we started. But perhaps we don't. A year has passed. We've moved through all nineteen names. We've celebrated, fasted, prayed, worked, loved, struggled, succeeded at some things and made a complete mess of others. We arrive at the equinox as slightly different people from those who stood there a year earlier.

And the calendar gives us the first word again: Splendour.

Maybe that's one of the things I like most about a calendar built from the names and attributes of God. You never finish it. You come back and look again from a slightly different perspective.