Water into Wine, ESW 28-30

We have spent quite a bit of time looking at the standard Baha'u'llah has established for religious leadership. Religion is supposed to further unity and fellowship. Justice and equity should lead to “the well-being of the world and the protection of the nations”. If we believe we possess a truth someone else doesn't recognise, we are to offer it with kindness and goodwill. And then Baha'u'llah showed us the false shepherd, the one who looks like a shepherd but is really a wolf preying upon the flock.

Now He turns directly to Muhammad-Taqi.

“O Shaykh! We have learned that thou hast turned away from Us, and protested against Us, in such wise that thou hast bidden the people to curse Me, and decreed that the blood of the servants of God be shed.”

There it is.

I think this would have read very differently to me if Baha'u'llah had said it twenty paragraphs earlier. But He didn't. He first spent all that time establishing what religion is supposed to do, and what a religious leader should look like. Only now does He tell Muhammad-Taqi what he has done. He has told people to curse Baha'u'llah and decreed that blood should be shed.

It's difficult not to think of the wolf.

But what really surprises me is Baha'u'llah's response. He doesn't threaten Muhammad-Taqi in return. Instead He quotes someone who willingly accepts the judgement that his blood should be spilled, and then says, “Whatever befalleth in the path of God is the beloved of the soul and the desire of the heart.”

Then the images begin.

“Deadly poison in His path is pure honey, and every tribulation a draught of crystal water.”

Poison becomes honey. Tribulation becomes crystal water. Adversity becomes “a morning dew upon His green pasture, and a wick for His lamp which lighteth earth and heaven.”

These aren't merely images of endurance. Baha'u'llah isn't saying that poison is unpleasant but we should put up with it, or that tribulation is difficult but we can get through it. The thing itself seems to be transformed. Poison becomes honey. Tribulation becomes water. Adversity becomes dew, nourishing the pasture, and a wick through which light can shine.

And that makes the contrast with the previous section even more interesting.

We just read of those who are like “clear but bitter water”, outwardly appearing crystal pure until tested by the Divine Assayer. Now, only a few lines later, Baha'u'llah speaks of tribulation as “a draught of crystal water”.

In the one case, something that appears pure is actually bitter. In the other, something that appears bitter, persecution and tribulation, becomes pure water. Perhaps appearance and reality are still very much with us.

Then Baha'u'llah tells Muhammad-Taqi to turn towards God and gives him another prayer. Once again we find the same movement we saw earlier in the Epistle. Turn. Speak. Listen.

“Aid me, O my Lord, to set myself towards Thee, and to hearken unto the voice of Thy loved ones...”

There's the ear again.

Then we encounter these loved ones who are those “whom the powers of the earth have failed to weaken, and the dominion of the nations has been powerless to withhold from Thee”.

Muhammad-Taqi is a man of considerable earthly power, and Baha'u'llah has just reminded him of one of the ways he used it. He ordered people to curse Baha'u'llah and decreed that blood should be spilled. Yet now the prayer placed before him asks for help in listening to people whom earthly power cannot weaken.

You can hurt them. You can even kill them. But apparently that doesn't mean you have power over them.

Then we come to paragraph 30.

“O Shaykh! Verily I say, the seal of the Choice Wine hath, in the name of Him Who is the Self-Subsisting, been broken; withhold not thyself therefrom.”

We've just had crystal water, and now we have wine.

I can't help but be reminded of Jesus at the wedding in Cana. There He takes ordinary water and turns it into wine. It is His first miracle in the Gospel of John, the first of the signs through which He begins to reveal Who He is. And here Baha'u'llah has just offered Muhammad-Taqi crystal water and now offers him the Choice Wine.

What a wonderful image of the transformative power of the Manifestation. Water is already good. It is pure. It gives life. But the Manifestation transforms it into something more.

And perhaps that is precisely what Muhammad-Taqi is being offered.

Baha'u'llah isn't merely asking him to stop persecuting people. That would certainly be an improvement, but perhaps the invitation goes much further than that. He has been asked to listen, to detach himself, to become just and fair-minded, to use his voice to quench hatred, and to consider what religion is actually for. Now the seal has been broken and he is invited to drink.

“Withhold not thyself therefrom.”

That wording catches me. Baha'u'llah doesn't say that the wine is being withheld from Muhammad-Taqi. Quite the opposite. The seal has already been broken.

If he remains thirsty, he is the one withholding himself.

Then Baha'u'llah repeats something we have already seen: “This Wronged One speaketh wholly for the sake of God; thou too shouldst, likewise, for the sake of God, meditate upon those things that have been sent down and manifested.”

There is that question of motive again. For the sake of God.

And even after everything Muhammad-Taqi has done, even after commanding others to curse Baha'u'llah and decreeing that blood be shed, the invitation is still there. The wine has not been taken away from him. Baha'u'llah does not say he has forfeited his chance to drink it. Instead, He exemplifies “Thy Name, the All-Merciful, [which] sufficeth to banish and blot out every trace of sinfulness from the world.”

The seal is broken. The wine is available. “Withhold not thyself therefrom.”

What Lies Beneath, ESW 23-27

At the end of the last section, Baha'u'llah explained what He meant by the “divines” of Persia. They are those who “outwardly attire themselves with the raiment of knowledge, but who inwardly are deprived therefrom”.

Outwardly and inwardly.

Baha'u'llah immediately follows this with a series of passages from the Hidden Words. The first begins, “O ye that are foolish, yet have a name to be wise! Wherefore do ye wear the guise of shepherds, when inwardly ye have become wolves, intent upon My flock?”

Well, that's not subtle.

Baha'u'llah has just said the purpose of religion is to foster “the well-being of the world and the protection of the nations”. It should lead to unity and fellowship. The person who possesses truth should offer it with kindness and goodwill. These are the standards Baha'u'llah has just established. And now we have a shepherd who eats the sheep.

The next image is in the same vein, if a little less violent.

“Ye are even as a spring, which is outwardly clear and pure, but inwardly is of such bitterness that no one can taste thereof.”

Outwardly and inwardly. But this time you can't tell what's wrong with the spring just by looking at it. It looks clear. It looks pure. Until you taste it.

That seems particularly appropriate when Baha'u'llah is talking about people who outwardly possess the “raiment of knowledge”. Someone can look learned. They can have the position, the education, the clothing, the vocabulary, all the outward signs that tell us this is someone worth listening to. But what happens when you actually drink from the spring? What happens when you reflect on their words?

Perhaps this takes us back to something we just saw. If we want to know whether religious leadership is serving its proper purpose, look at what it produces. The appearance of the spring isn't the test. The water is.

Then comes another Hidden Word:

“O essence of desire! At many a dawn have I turned from the realms of the Placeless unto thine abode, and found thee on the bed of ease busied with others than Me.”

Busied. Didn't we just see that word? Just a few paragraphs earlier Baha'u'llah spoke of people who “have busied themselves with the things they possess”, while remaining unaware of “the things God possesseth”. And now God comes looking for this person and finds him busied with something other than Him.

I have to wonder what that means to Muhammad-Taqi. After all, he was a religious scholar. I would imagine he was pretty busy with religion. But are being busy with religion and being occupied with God the same thing? Not necessarily.

That's a little uncomfortable.

I can spend all day studying the Writings, writing about them, talking about them, doing things that appear to be connected with God, and still have to ask myself what I'm actually occupied with. The activity itself doesn't answer the question.

And then the next Hidden Word stopped me.

“O bond slave of the world! Many a dawn hath the breeze of My loving-kindness wafted over thee and found thee upon the bed of heedlessness fast asleep.”

Wait a minute.

Didn't we just see someone else asleep when a breeze came?

Baha'u'llah just described the beginning of His own Revelation. “I was but a man like others, asleep upon My couch, when lo, the breezes of the All-Glorious were wafted over Me, and taught Me the knowledge of all that hath been.”

Now we have another person asleep, and another breeze passing over him. But the results couldn't be more different.

Baha'u'llah is asleep upon His couch when the breezes come, and He awakens to His Revelation. His voice is raised between earth and heaven. Here the “bond slave of the world” is asleep upon the “bed of heedlessness”, the breeze of God's loving-kindness passes over him, and he remains asleep.

The contrast is striking, especially when Baha'u'llah has spent so much of this Epistle talking about listening. “Give ear.” The ear was created to hear the Divine Voice. Muhammad-Taqi has been told to ponder, to recite, to listen to the meaning of the words. Perhaps the breeze can pass over us and we can still sleep through it.

And then we have the counterpoint.

“Those divines, however, who are truly adorned with the ornament of knowledge and of a goodly character are, verily, as a head to the body of the world, and as eyes to the nations.”

However.

So this isn't a condemnation of the divines simply because they're divines. Baha'u'llah has spent several paragraphs showing us what false religious leadership can look like, and now He shows us the other possibility.

And notice the clothing. At the beginning of this section there were those who “outwardly attire themselves with the raiment of knowledge”. The false shepherds wear a “guise”. Now these other divines are “truly adorned with the ornament of knowledge”.

But there's something else added here. They are adorned with knowledge and a goodly character. Perhaps that's part of how we tell whether the spring is sweet.

And look what these true divines become: “a head to the body of the world, and as eyes to the nations”.

Eyes.

We've seen those before, too. Baha'u'llah has already spoken of those “whose sight is keen”, and He has been asking Muhammad-Taqi to look again at things he thinks he already knows. Now the true divine isn't merely someone who can see. He can somehow become an eye for the nation.

Which takes me back to those first two words again.

Outwardly and inwardly.

Apparently the difference between the false divine and the true one isn't whether he looks religious. Both may possess the outward appearance of knowledge. The difference seems to lie somewhere deeper, in what that knowledge has made of him, in what it produces, and perhaps in what others receive when they drink from his spring.

Establishing the Standard, ESW 16-22

In the last few paragraphs, Muhammad-Taqi was given a very short prayer: “O God, my God! Attire mine head with the crown of justice, and my temple with the ornament of equity.” And then, almost as if Baha'u'llah is answering that prayer Himself, the very next paragraph begins, “Justice and equity are twin Guardians that watch over men.”

But their purpose, justice and equity, is not merely to make him a better person. “From them are revealed such blessed and perspicuous words as are the cause of the well-being of the world and the protection of the nations.”

Once again, we move from the individual to the world. Muhammad-Taqi has been asked to examine himself, to listen, to ponder, to practise detachment, and finally to use his wisdom and his voice to quench hatred. Now justice and equity are described in terms of the well-being of the world and the protection of nations. Whatever Baha'u'llah is asking of this one religious leader, the consequences reach considerably further than the man himself.

And then Baha'u'llah seems to begin establishing a standard.

He speaks about God and the Manifestations, those “Mystic Gems”, explaining that they have appeared in order to tell humanity about the One Who is otherwise beyond our sight and knowledge. Then He turns to religion itself. “That the divers communions of the earth, and the manifold systems of religious belief, should never be allowed to foster the feelings of animosity among men, is, in this Day, of the essence of the Faith of God and His Religion.”

Never be allowed.

That's a pretty strong statement, especially in a letter to Muhammad-Taqi. Baha'u'llah doesn't say that religious hatred is bad, or that it would be nice if people of different religions got along a little better. Nope. He’s far stronger about it. Religious belief should never be allowed to foster animosity.

And He gives a reason. “These principles and laws, these firmly-established and mighty systems, have proceeded from one Source, and are the rays of one Light.” Their differences do not justify hatred because their origin is one.

This brings me right back to the Invocation, “the One, the Incomparable”. We began with the oneness of God, and now that oneness has implications. If these religions proceed from one Source and are rays of one Light, then hatred between their followers isn't merely socially destructive. It seems to contradict something fundamental about the religions themselves.

Baha'u'llah then shows us just how destructive that contradiction can become. “Religious fanaticism and hatred are a world-devouring fire, whose violence none can quench.” And this isn't an abstract warning. He describes what that fire looks like when it is allowed to burn: war, villages destroyed, lives lost, possessions abandoned. The hatred that begins in hearts and is fed by words eventually becomes something terribly physical. This doesn’t just affect a few people, or even merely an entire village. It is “world-devouring”.

This makes me think again about what Muhammad-Taqi has just been asked to do. Only a few paragraphs earlier, Baha'u'llah told him to use “the power of wisdom and the force of thy utterance” to quench “the fire of enmity and hatred”. And now that same hatred is described as a “world-devouring fire”.

That metaphor has suddenly become much larger.

Perhaps this is part of the standard Baha'u'llah is establishing. If you want to know whether religious leadership is serving its proper purpose, look at what it produces. Does it increase the knowledge of God? Does it further unity and fellowship? Does it protect the nations and contribute to the well-being of the world? Or does it feed the fire?

Then Baha'u'llah gives us the alternative: “Ye are the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch.”

I have read that line so many times that I often forget how radical it is in this context. Baha'u'llah is writing to a man whose religious world was filled with divisions between believer and unbeliever, pure and impure, faithful and heretic. And after describing religious hatred as a world-devouring fire, He tells him to look at humanity as the fruits of one tree and the leaves of one branch.

Not different trees growing beside each other and learning to tolerate one another. One tree.

And from there the vision continues to widen. Baha'u'llah speaks of the illumination of the whole earth and of the protection and security of all mankind. Earlier we moved from Muhammad-Taqi himself to the peoples of the world. Now we seem to be looking at humanity as a whole.

But then comes the problem. If this is the standard, why doesn't the world look like this?

Baha'u'llah speaks of the “thick clouds of oppression” that have obscured this station, and He points specifically towards the divines of Persia. He seems to be making very sure that Muhammad-Taqi understands what religion is supposed to look like, and holding up a mirror so he can reflect on his own actions.

And so, once again, we return to behaviour.

“Consort with all men, O people of Baha, in a spirit of friendliness and fellowship.”

There is the standard made practical. Unity isn't merely a nice, little theological claim about one Source or one Light. It must become something visible in the way we deal with people.

Baha'u'llah even tells us what to do when we think we possess a truth that someone else doesn't recognise. We are to share it “in a language of utmost kindliness and goodwill”. If the person accepts it, fine. But if they don't, should we force it on them? Demand they accept our understanding of it? No. We are told to leave them to themselves and pray for them.

Again, I have to put this in context so I better understand how radical this is. Baha'u'llah is writing to a religious leader whose position gives him considerable power over what happens to people who disagree with him, and He establishes a very different standard for religious disagreement. Offer what you believe to be true with kindness and goodwill. If it is rejected, don't become angry. Don't compel. Don't abuse. Pray for the person and leave them alone.

And then we return to the voice one more time. “A kindly tongue is the lodestone of the hearts of men.”

After everything we have already seen about the voice, I can't help but hear that differently here. Muhammad-Taqi has been told what his ears were created for. He has been given words to recite. He has been told what tongues are for. He has been asked to use the force of his own utterance to quench hatred. And now Baha'u'llah tells him what kind of tongue can attract hearts. A kindly one.

“It is the bread of the spirit, it clotheth the words with meaning, it is the fountain of the light of wisdom and understanding.”

I've actually written an entire article about this quote before, called “A Kindly Tongue”, so I won't go through all of that again here. In that article I wondered whether part of what Baha'u'llah is saying is quite practical. If our tongue isn't kindly, people may simply stop listening. The Bread of Life can't feed someone who won't receive it, and our words can't convey much meaning if they never really make it past the person's ears.

What I hadn't noticed then, because I wasn't looking at the quote in the context of this Epistle, was what comes immediately before it. Muhammad-Taqi has already been told to quench hatred through “the power of wisdom and the force of thy utterance”. And now Baha'u'llah tells him that a kindly tongue is “the fountain of the light of wisdom and understanding”.

There we are, back at wisdom again.

Perhaps we're being shown something about what that “power of wisdom” actually looks like. It isn't merely having the right argument or knowing the right thing to say. The kindliness of the tongue seems to be part of the wisdom itself.

And then, right at the end of this section, Baha'u'llah says something that seems to prepare us for what comes next. By the “divines” He means those who “outwardly attire themselves with the raiment of knowledge, but who inwardly are deprived therefrom”.

There is that distinction again between possessing knowledge and actually knowing. Muhammad-Taqi has already been told that he may need to be delivered from the darkness of ignorance. Baha'u'llah has told him that He Himself attended neither the schools nor the controversies of the learned. Now He describes people who look learned on the outside but are deprived of knowledge within.

I think I begin to see why Baha'u'llah has taken so much time before turning directly towards the iniquities of the divines. He has established the standard first.

What is religion for? The knowledge of God, unity and fellowship. What should justice and equity produce? The well-being of the world and the protection of nations. How should we see humanity? As the fruits of one tree and the leaves of one branch. How should we treat someone who rejects what we believe to be true? With kindness and goodwill. What should our voice do? Quench hatred. What kind of tongue attracts the hearts? A kindly one.

Only after establishing all of that does Baha'u'llah begin to turn towards the people who claim religious authority and ask, in effect, whether their lives and actions meet that standard. And Muhammad-Taqi is one of them.

Perhaps that is why the order matters. Baha'u'llah doesn't begin by condemning the man and then explain what he has done wrong. He first gives him something against which he can measure himself.

Now is the Moment, ESW 13-15

After everything Baha'u'llah has asked Muhammad-Taqi to do so far, it is remarkable that He continues. Muhammad-Taqi has been told to give ear, to practise renunciation, to recite, to ponder, to listen carefully and pay attention to meaning. He has been asked to become just and fair-minded, and has heard Baha'u'llah describe the source of these words. All of that seems to have been preparing him for something. “Now is the moment in which to cleanse thyself with the waters of detachment that have flowed out from the Supreme Pen, and to ponder, wholly for the sake of God, those things which, time and again, have been sent down or manifested...”

There are those waters again. Earlier Muhammad-Taqi was told to purify himself with the waters of renunciation, and then Baha'u'llah expressed the hope that he might “inhale the breath of detachment”. Now he is told to cleanse himself with “the waters of detachment”. He is also told once again to ponder, although this time Baha'u'llah adds something. He is to do it “wholly for the sake of God”. I wonder if that is partly a question of motive. Muhammad-Taqi isn't being asked to investigate Baha'u'llah in order to defend his position, preserve his reputation, win an argument, or prove that he was right. He is being asked to consider what has been revealed for the sake of God alone.

And then something seems to change. Most of the instructions so far have concerned what Muhammad-Taqi needs to do within himself. Listen. Renounce. Recite. Ponder. Pay attention. But now Baha'u'llah asks him to do something in the world. He is to “strive, as much as lieth in thee, to quench, through the power of wisdom and the force of thy utterance, the fire of enmity and hatred which smouldereth in the hearts of the peoples of the world”.

There is the voice again, although now Muhammad-Taqi isn't being asked to use his voice to recite words Baha'u'llah has given him. He is being asked to use his own utterance, guided by wisdom, to quench hatred. That seems especially powerful when addressed to a man whose words have helped inflame it. Baha'u'llah isn't merely asking him to stop using his influence destructively. He is asking him to turn it around. The same power of utterance that can help kindle enmity can be used to extinguish it.

And this takes me all the way back to the Invocation. We wondered there about the All-Powerful, the All-Knowing and the All-Wise, and whether those divine attributes might also cause Muhammad-Taqi to consider his own lower-case power, knowledge and wisdom. Now, thirteen paragraphs later, Baha'u'llah actually asks him to use “the power of wisdom and the force of thy utterance”. Perhaps that was where all of this was going. Muhammad-Taqi already has influence. He already has a voice. The question is what he is going to do with them.

The next paragraph seems to widen that question from Muhammad-Taqi to religion itself. “The Divine Messengers have been sent down, and their Books were revealed, for the purpose of promoting the knowledge of God, and of furthering unity and fellowship amongst men.” That word “purpose” catches my attention after everything we've just seen about the voice. A few paragraphs ago Baha'u'llah told us that God gave a voice to all things so that they might praise and glorify Him. We then encountered the rather severe statement that a tongue deprived of the fragrance of that praise was “unworthy of any mention, in word or yet in thought”. The voice has a purpose, and its worth seems somehow connected with whether or not it fulfils that purpose.

Now Baha'u'llah tells us that religion has a purpose, too. The Messengers and their Books have been given for the knowledge of God, and for “unity and fellowship amongst men”. Then comes the painful contrast: “But now behold, how they have made the Law of God a cause and pretext for perversity and hatred.” Religion hasn't merely failed to produce unity. The very thing intended to produce unity and fellowship has been used as a pretext for hatred.

So perhaps the question we asked about the tongue can be asked here as well. What is religion for? If its purpose is the knowledge of God, unity and fellowship, then surely we have to judge what we are doing with religion partly by whether it produces those things. However learned our arguments might be, however certain we are that we are defending the truth, if the result is perversity and hatred, something has gone badly wrong.

And Muhammad-Taqi is not merely a religious person. He is a religious leader. Baha'u'llah has just asked this particular religious leader to use the power of wisdom and the force of his utterance to extinguish hatred, and then immediately reminds him that the Messengers and their Books were given to further unity and fellowship. It is difficult not to hear the connection.

Baha'u'llah then says that people “are cleaving fast to, and have busied themselves with, the things they possess, and are unaware of, and shut out as by a veil from, the things God possesseth”. I find myself wondering what those things we possess might include. Material possessions, certainly, but perhaps also our learning, our interpretations, our position, our reputation, even our certainty that we already know what God requires. Muhammad-Taqi possesses a great deal of religious knowledge, but some of that knowledge may have become the very thing preventing him from recognising what is before him. Once again we seem to have returned to detachment, although from a slightly different direction. The problem isn't necessarily possessing these things. It may be cleaving fast to them.

And then, after all this, Baha'u'llah gives Muhammad-Taqi another prayer. It is remarkably short: “O God, my God! Attire mine head with the crown of justice, and my temple with the ornament of equity. Thou, verily, art the Possessor of all gifts and bounties.”

That imagery feels familiar. Near the beginning of the Epistle, Muhammad-Taqi's head was to be crowned with the fear of God and his temple adorned with reliance upon Him. Now the same head is to be crowned with justice, and the same temple ornamented with equity. Perhaps those are precisely the qualities he needs if he is going to do what Baha'u'llah has just asked of him. He already possesses a powerful voice. He already possesses learning. What he needs is the justice and equity that will allow him to use them properly.

And I find it amazing that Baha'u'llah once again doesn't simply tell Muhammad-Taqi that he ought to be just. He puts the request into Muhammad-Taqi's own mouth. Muhammad-Taqi has to ask God for justice and equity himself, and then acknowledge that God is “the Possessor of all gifts and bounties”. Justice and equity aren't presented as qualities he can simply assume he already possesses because of his position or learning. They are things he needs to ask for. After everything Baha'u'llah has just said about the things people possess and “the things God possesseth”, that final acknowledgement seems particularly appropriate.

Which brings me back to those opening words: “Now is the moment”. Perhaps everything before this has been preparation. Baha'u'llah has been teaching Muhammad-Taqi how to listen, what to do with his own voice, and how to examine the person doing the listening. But eventually all that listening and pondering has to become action, and the action Baha'u'llah asks of this powerful religious leader is to use his wisdom and his voice to quench hatred. Perhaps that is one way of knowing whether he has really begun to hear.

The Call, ESW 11-12

Muhammad-Taqi has been told what his ears were created for, and then given words to recite. Baha'u'llah has told him that God gave a voice to all things so that they might praise and glorify Him. And in the prayer we just looked at, Muhammad-Taqi was asked to say that any tongue deprived of the fragrance of God's praise was “unworthy of any mention, in word or yet in thought”.

Now Baha'u'llah returns to His own voice. But first He asks God to help Muhammad-Taqi to be able to do something.

Oh, before that, though, my usual reminder that these are just my own thoughts as I wander through this incredible book one more time. They’re nothing official. Just where my mind goes as I’m sipping coffee here on a beautiful late summer morning. Now, where were we? Oh yeah, I remember.

“We beseech God to aid thee to be just and fair-minded, and to acquaint thee with the things that were hidden from the eyes of men.”

Justice and sight are connected, and not in the usual sense of blind justice. There are things that have been hidden from people's eyes, and Muhammad-Taqi is being asked to become capable of seeing them. And once again Baha'u'llah doesn't simply tell him what conclusion to reach. He asks him to “reflect upon that which hath been revealed, and to be fair and just in thy speech”.

Hmm. Speech again.

And the hoped-for result is familiar, too. Baha'u'llah says, “that perchance the splendors of the daystar of truthfulness and sincerity may shine forth”.

Perchance.

We just had “haply”. Now we have “perchance”. Once again, Baha'u'llah can ask Muhammad-Taqi to reflect, to be fair and just in his speech. He can give him something to consider. But there is still room for Muhammad-Taqi himself. His free-will is never trampled upon. Perchance truthfulness and sincerity will begin to shine.

And what will that light do? It “may deliver thee from the darkness of ignorance, and illumine the world with the light of knowledge”.

That seems particularly pointed when addressed to a religious scholar. Muhammad-Taqi is presumably one of the people his society would regard as knowledgeable. Yet Baha'u'llah is still speaking to him about being delivered from “the darkness of ignorance”. Knowledge, apparently, is not simply a matter of how much you have learned.

Then Baha'u'llah gives him something to reflect upon.

“This Wronged One hath frequented no school, neither hath He attended the controversies of the learned.”

I love that He mentions both. He hasn't attended their schools, but neither has He taken part in their controversies. Given what we have already seen about cavils, that second part seems fairly directed at him, or at least those of his profession.

And then comes His explanation:

“By My life! Not of Mine own volition have I revealed Myself, but God, of His own choosing, hath manifested Me.”

This takes me right back to the voice. Only a few paragraphs ago Baha'u'llah said that He had “spoken not from mere impulse”, and that the One Who gave Him a voice is the One Who “hath given a voice unto all things”. Now He says much the same thing about His Revelation. This isn't something He decided to do. “Not of Mine own volition have I revealed Myself.”

He was called.

And to explain what He means, Baha'u'llah quotes from His Tablet to the Shah: “O King! I was but a man like others, asleep upon My couch, when lo, the breezes of the All-Glorious were wafted over Me, and taught Me the knowledge of all that hath been.”

There is so much in that image. He is asleep. The breezes come. He is taught. And then: “...He bade Me lift up My voice between earth and heaven.”

There is the voice again. But this time I find myself thinking of another voice.

According to the account of Muhammad's first Revelation, Gabriel appeared to him and commanded him, “Recite!”

We have already encountered that command more than once in this Epistle. Baha'u'llah has repeatedly told Muhammad-Taqi to recite words that He has given him. And now, only a couple of paragraphs later, Baha'u'llah tells him about the moment when He Himself was called and commanded to lift up His voice.

I'm not sure how far I want to take the parallel, but I find it difficult not to hear the echo. Muhammad was called and told to recite. Baha'u'llah was called and told to lift up His voice. And Muhammad-Taqi, who has rejected Baha'u'llah's claim, is now being told to recite the words that have flowed from Baha'u'llah's tongue.

Perhaps there is another parallel worth noticing. Muhammad-Taqi is being asked to lend his voice to words given to him by Baha'u'llah. Baha'u'llah, meanwhile, describes Himself as lending His voice to the One Who called Him. He even describes Himself as a leaf. “This is but a leaf which the winds of the will of thy Lord, the Almighty, the All-Praised, have stirred. Can it be still when the tempestuous winds are blowing?”

The wind blows and the leaf moves. And Baha'u'llah has already said much the same thing in another form: “Not of Mine own volition have I revealed Myself.” The movement does not originate with the leaf, nor does the voice originate with Baha'u'llah.

“His all-compelling summons hath reached Me, and caused Me to speak His praise amidst all people.”

Again, He is summoned. Again, He speaks. And once again we have praise, the very purpose for which we were told only a few paragraphs ago that God gave a voice to all things.

Then comes another remarkable description: “I was indeed as one dead when His behest was uttered. The hand of the will of thy Lord, the Compassionate, the Merciful, transformed Me.”

The images keep changing, but there seems to be a similar movement within them. The breezes come to the man asleep upon His couch. The wind stirs the leaf. The behest is uttered and the one “as dead” is transformed. The summons comes, and He speaks.

And perhaps that helps explain why Baha'u'llah began paragraph 11 by asking Muhammad-Taqi to reflect.

Muhammad-Taqi is being confronted with a claim that his education and position have apparently led him to reject. Baha'u'llah doesn't respond by trying to defeat him in one of those “controversies of the learned”. Instead, He asks him to be just and fair-minded, to reflect upon what has been revealed, and to be fair and just in his own speech.

Baha’u’llah tells him He was commanded by a voice. And perhaps Muhammad-Taqi is being asked a fairly simple question. Where does he think this voice comes from? He can continue to judge it by the learning “current amongst men”, by the schools Baha'u'llah never attended and the controversies in which He never participated. Or he can listen to the voice itself and ask whether what it is saying is true.

After all, Baha'u'llah has been preparing his ears for exactly that.

What Is Your Tongue For?, ESW 9-10

I'm looking at paragraphs 9 and 10 together for a fairly simple reason. The first tells Muhammad-Taqi how to pray the prayer, and the second gives him the prayer to pray. And Baha'u'llah is remarkably specific about how he should approach it.

“They whose sight is keen, whose ears are retentive, whose hearts are enlightened, and whose breasts are dilated,” He says, can “recognize both truth and falsehood, and distinguish the one from the other.”

That seems an appropriate place to begin when speaking to Muhammad-Taqi. As a religious scholar, distinguishing truth from falsehood is presumably something he believes himself quite capable of doing. And yet Baha'u'llah doesn't point here to scholarship, learning or religious authority as the qualities that make this possible. He mentions keen sight, retentive ears, an enlightened heart and a dilated breast.

Only a few paragraphs ago Muhammad-Taqi was told to “Give ear”, and then reminded what his ear had been created for. Now we learn something more about that ear. It isn't enough for it simply to hear. It needs to be retentive. It needs to hold on to what it hears.

And then Baha'u'llah tells him what to do:

“Recite thou this prayer that hath flowed from the tongue of this Wronged One, and ponder thereon with a heart rid of all attachment, and with ears that are pure and sanctified, be attentive to its meaning...”

There's quite a sequence there.

Recite these words. Ponder them with a heart rid of attachment. Listen carefully to them, presumably with those retentive ears so that the words stay with you. Pay attention to their meaning.

And then:

“that haply thou mayest inhale the breath of detachment and have pity upon thyself and upon others”.

Haply.

I love that word. With luck. Maybe. Perchance.

Baha'u'llah doesn't say that if Muhammad-Taqi follows these instructions he will necessarily become detached. He doesn't say that he will inevitably become more compassionate towards himself and others. He tells him what to do, how to approach the prayer, what to listen for, and what may result. But then there is that little word, haply. There is still something required of Muhammad-Taqi himself.

And I think we should probably take Baha'u'llah's instructions seriously as we move into the next paragraph. I'm going to presume that you, dear Reader, are taking care of the reciting, pondering, detachment and careful listening. I'm going to focus on the meaning.

The prayer begins, “My God, the Object of my adoration, the Goal of my desire”. That word “Goal” catches my attention because Baha'u'llah has already given us a goal for this prayer. He hopes that, haply, Muhammad-Taqi will “inhale the breath of detachment and have pity upon thyself and upon others”. Presumably that compassion is not separate from approaching God, the Goal of his desire, but part of what happens as he moves towards Him.

The prayer then reminds Muhammad-Taqi just how precarious his own position is. Whoever God "exaltest is raised above the angels”, while whoever God abases is made “lower than dust, nay, less than nothing”. It would be very easy for a man in Muhammad-Taqi's position to look down upon those he regarded as beneath him.

But if it is God Who exalts and abases, then the person who has fallen could just as easily have been me. And if I can see that, perhaps it becomes a little easier to have pity upon others.

But Baha'u'llah goes even further. “Though wicked, sinful, and intemperate, we still seek from Thee a ‘seat of truth’.” We. Not they. Muhammad-Taqi is being asked to include himself among those who are wicked and sinful, while still asking God for something far beyond anything they might deserve. He isn't being allowed to stand apart from everyone else and judge them. He is standing among them, asking God for mercy.

And then we come to what almost sounds like a correction. “Everything Thou doest is pure justice, nay, the very essence of grace.” Justice, nay, grace. Justice is important, of course. Baha'u'llah speaks elsewhere about reward and punishment as two pillars upon which the stability of the world depends. But if none of us is truly worthy before God, then I'm not sure I want to stand too firmly on the side of demanding justice. Grace is something else. Grace is mercy and compassion shown to us even though we don't deserve it. And if Muhammad-Taqi is being asked to recognise the grace that God has shown him, perhaps that might help evoke similar feelings in him towards others.

The prayer continues by asking God to “Vouchsafe Thy strength, O Almighty One, unto Thy weak creatures”. That must be an interesting thing for a powerful man to pray. Muhammad-Taqi was not one of the weak members of his society. He was a religious leader whose words carried influence and whose actions had consequences for others. But if he is sincerely praying that the weak be strengthened, what does that prayer demand of a powerful person who encounters them? It becomes rather difficult to pray for their strengthening while using your own strength to crush them.

And then we're back to the voice again.

“Should the fragrance of Thy praise be shed abroad by any of the divers tongues of the world, out of the East or out of the West, it would, verily, be prized and greatly cherished.”

Only a couple of paragraphs ago Baha'u'llah said that God “hath given a voice unto all things, that they may praise and glorify Him”. Now that purpose is given another image. Praise has a fragrance, and any tongue in the world, whether from East or West, that gives off that fragrance is to be prized and cherished.

But then comes the other side of it.

“If such tongues, however, be deprived of that fragrance, they assuredly would be unworthy of any mention, in word or yet in thought.”

Wow. Not even worthy of being thought about? Whew.

If we don't fulfill the purpose for which our voice was given, then we, or at least our tongue, are “unworthy of any mention, in word or yet in thought”.

And think what that means for Muhammad-Taqi. His tongue is one of the principal instruments of his position. He teaches. He argues. He gives religious opinions. People listen to what he says. The issue isn't simply whether his arguments against Baha'u'llah are clever, learned, technically defensible, or even sincerely believed. Baha'u'llah has established a much more fundamental criterion.

What is your tongue for?

And once again Baha'u'llah isn't merely telling Muhammad-Taqi this. He has put the lesson into his own mouth. Muhammad-Taqi has been told to recite a prayer in which he himself declares that the value of a tongue lies in whether it carries the fragrance of the praise of God. The very tongue that has been used to speak against Baha'u'llah and His followers is being given very different words to speak.

Then, after all of this, the prayer ends:

“We beg of Thee, O Providence, to show Thy way unto all men, and to guide them aright.”

All men.

I find myself thinking back to the reason Baha'u'llah gave for this exercise in the first place. Recite the prayer. Ponder it with a heart free from attachment. Listen carefully. Pay attention to its meaning. And haply, perhaps, perchance, you may “inhale the breath of detachment and have pity upon thyself and upon others”.

Muhammad-Taqi has been made to acknowledge that his own position depends upon God, to place himself among the sinful, to move from thinking about God's justice to recognising His grace, to pray that the weak might receive strength, and to declare that the worth of his own tongue depends upon what he does with it.

And then he is made to pray for everyone. Not for himself. Not for the people who agree with him. Not for those he considers righteous. All men.

Perhaps that's how the prayer can teach him to have pity upon himself and upon others. It seems almost to widen, to dilate, as it goes, from “My God”, to “we”, to the weak, to the tongues of East and West, and finally to “all men”. It makes it increasingly difficult for Muhammad-Taqi to stand apart from everyone else.

And even after all of that, Baha'u'llah only says “haply”.

The prayer can put the words into Muhammad-Taqi's mouth. It can give him something to ponder. It can give those retentive ears something worth holding onto.

But what happens next is still up to him.

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.