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.

Myrtles

Back in February I posted about "The Falcon". In that article I quoted the Kitab-i-Iqan, where Baha'u'llah refers to "the divine Luminaries," who, "by their loving care and educative influence, cause the trees of divine unity, the fruits of His oneness, the leaves of detachment, the blossoms of knowledge and certitude, and the myrtles of wisdom and utterance, to exist and be made manifest" I then said that I could write an entire article on just the word "myrtles". Well, here it goes.

The myrtle itself is an evergreen shrub, native across a broad region stretching from the Mediterranean towards western Asia. Its leaves are small, dark green and glossy, while its flowers are delicate and white, eventually giving way to dark blue-black berries. But perhaps its most distinctive feature is its fragrance. The leaves contain tiny glands filled with aromatic oil, visible as translucent specks when held up to the light, and release their fragrance when crushed. And that, dear Reader, is what you get when you try to do a summary of an article on botany. Scientifically fascinating, but dry as a camel's packed lunch.

Ok, so what about its symbolism? After all, this is a plant with a long history of being symbolic. To the ancient Greeks, the myrtle was associated with Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. According to one tradition, when Aphrodite emerged from the sea she concealed herself behind a myrtle bush, so the plant became associated with beauty and youth. Over the centuries the myrtle gathered other associations as well, including love, victory, immortality and eternity. And that was another summary, but not quite as dry. After all, it had the ocean in it.

To be honest, though, that was all a sidestep to what really interests me: its place in ancient Persian culture. I mean, this is the Iqan we're talking about. So let's do one last little summary.

The myrtle appears in Zoroastrian tradition as an attribute of Ahura Mazda, and was associated with immortality and eternity. Its fragrance was compared to the fragrance of rulers, the political type, not the school room type. Herodotus records that the Persians used myrtle in sacrifices and spread it upon the ground during celebrations, while later traditions associated it with regrowth and vitality. In other words, to a Persian reader the myrtle was not simply a pretty flowering shrub. It came trailing behind it a very long history of religious and cultural associations.

Enough with the sere summaries that were merely and loosely rewritten from various dictionaries. That's not why we're here.

My question, now that I know a little bit more about this flowering shrub, is why does Baha'u'llah use it here?

He's describing the effect of the care and influence of the Manifestations of God. And what does all this cause? "(T)he trees of divine unity, the fruits of His oneness, the leaves of detachment, the blossoms of knowledge and certitude, and the myrtles of wisdom and utterance, to exist and be made manifest."

Cool. But let's break it down a bit and see if we can understand why myrtles are stuck in there at the end.

Baha'u'llah is talking about trees, fruits, leaves, blossoms, and myrtles. As I mentioned before, that last seems oddly specific. But it also moves us from the generic to the particular. The first four can be anything anywhere. When I picture them in the generic, I tend to think of a garden.

But not myrtles.

I mean, yes, they are cultivated in gardens, for sure, but they're also a very wild, hardy shrub that grows on the rocky hillsides in the Mediterranean regions. So I guess there are two very different associations.

Now of course, I don't know what Baha'u'llah intended. After all, this is nothing official, just my own personal view on it. But still, I can't help but think that He intended these associations.

A small, hardy, evergreen shrub. Nothing particular to look at, most of the time, but when the time is right, very impressive. At least to me it is. I love them. 

Ok, now let's step back a moment.

The "trees of divine unity". What immediately comes to mind is that "trees" is really broad category. They can be any tree, anywhere. Deciduous. Conifer. In the rain forests of South America, or the great sprawling forests in northern Canada. They can be the fruit-bearing apple, a pine, an oak. Pretty much any tree you want. But when we see them, we immediately recognize them as a tree.

Come to think of it, that's where He's leading us with the Manifestations, isn't He? They vary depending on where and when they were born, but they are all essentially a Manifestation, just as a tree is a tree.

Unity.

And what is the fruit of the tree of unity? The recognition of oneness. From the tree to the fruit. From unity to oneness.

The leaves, which draw down the energy of the sun, do so through detachment. Without detachment, that quality He has been cultivating in our heart since the opening line of the Iqan, is essential for recognizing new truths. We need to be detached from our own current understanding to be able to rise to new heights of knowledge.

Oh, knowledge. The "blossoms of knowledge and certitude".

Ok, I could go on and on about this, but let's just say that blossoms are temporary. They come and go with the seasons. It's interesting to think of "knowledge and certitude" that way. But it's true, isn't it? Those things we know today, those truths we are certain of, get shaken with new knowledge. Those blossoms fall away as we come to understand more of the world around us, allowing new blossoms to come forth. And blossoms turn into fruit, given time. 

But enough about all that. You can easily see how much more there is to say.

What about the myrtles? That's why we're here, right? To talk about myrtles?

The fruits, leaves, and blossoms are all parts of a plant, but the myrtle is the plant. 

And I think that's what really caught my attention.

Knowledge is something we have. Wisdom is something we become.

I can learn all sorts of things. I can read books, study the Writings, listen to talks, take courses, talk with people far wiser than myself, and slowly gather more and more knowledge. Some of that knowledge will last. Some of it will change as I learn more. Some things I am absolutely certain of today may turn out to be a little more complicated tomorrow.

The blossoms come and go.

But wisdom is different. Wisdom isn't merely knowing something. It becomes part of who we are. It grows through experience, through making mistakes, through trying things and discovering that they don't work quite the way we thought they would. It grows through listening, through reflection, through learning when to speak and, perhaps more importantly, when not to.

And then there is utterance.

This is where I find the myrtle even more interesting. Remember those aromatic oils I mentioned way back at the beginning? The ones that made that first paragraph as dry as a camel's packed lunch? They're not just in the flowers. They're in the leaves. The fragrance is part of the plant itself.

Wisdom and utterance.

Perhaps utterance is what happens when wisdom begins to spread beyond ourselves.

Again, I have no idea if this is what Bahá'u'lláh intended by the metaphor. I'm just looking at the word He chose and wondering why He might have chosen it. But the more I look at the myrtle, the more appropriate it seems.

It's an evergreen. It endures through the seasons. It's hardy enough to grow on rocky hillsides, but it can also flourish under careful cultivation in a garden. It flowers. It bears fruit. And it carries its fragrance within itself.

Which brings us back to the beginning of the quotation. All of this comes about through the "loving care and educative influence" of the Manifestations of God.

They cultivate us.

And perhaps the point of that cultivation isn't merely that we acquire knowledge, or even that we become certain of what we know. Perhaps, given time, all that loving care and education changes what we are. We become a little wiser. And if we're fortunate, something of that wisdom finds its way into our utterance and spreads beyond us, much like the fragrance of a myrtle.

All this from a single word.

I had a feeling that looking at the word, the one that stood out at the end of the sentence, might be worth looking at a bit more closely.

What do you think?

"Spiritually Destitute"

All right, that may seem like an odd title for my blog, but bear with me. It comes from the Kitab-i-Iqan, paragraph 239. He says, "...how grievous hath been the faithlessness and arrogance of the spiritually destitute in the face of that sanctified Beauty."

"Spiritually destitute"? What the beejeebies does that mean?

When I try to consider something that puzzling, I usually go for a brisk walk. Helps clear the cobwebs out of my musty old brain. And so that's what I did with this one.

Now, from here I could put all my thoughts in a nice neat order, typing them in such a way that it looks like a solid argument worthy of a university term paper.

But I won't.

Instead, I think I'll subject you to the way my train of thought ran with this quote.

* * * * *

"Destitute" means "completely lacking". I only know that because I looked it up on my phone as I was walking. I mean, I thought that was what it meant, but I just wanted to make sure

So, they obviously had some spiritual qualities when they were born, for we were "created noble", but they did something that left them destitute.

Now, I know He's talking about those that are learned, "the divines of the age" from paragraph 238, "who have turned away from the Beauty of God". They're "clinging to their own learning", unwilling to consider anything different. He says that they're faithless, so I'll just take His word on that. But He also say they're arrogant. That's something I can grasp onto.

I know from previous sections in the Iqan that the underlying issue is a spiritual one, not an intellectual one . So arrogance is likely a symptom of this "spiritual disease", a term from paragraph 236. And one sign of this disease is "clinging to a verse", despite others that give a different view.

Ok. So clinging to a single verse out of context is not good. Got it.

They're also arrogant. Baha'u'llah isn't slamming knowledge. Not at all. What He does condemn, though, regularly throughout this book, is believing that our knowledge is somehow the final say on an issue. He tells us right at the beginning, paragraph 2, to "cease to regard the words and deeds of mortal men as a standard" for recognizing truth. That would include ourselves, too. In other words, always be open to the possibility that we're wrong, or at least that we can learn more and grow in our understanding.

Arrogance is kind of the opposite of that.

Given all that, how do they lose their spirituality? How do they go from having it, to being "destitute"? Somehow it flowed away from them. Oh, flowed!

That's an interesting image. We often speak of spirituality as something we "receive" or "drink" or "draw near to". Baha'u'llah Himself has already spoken of rivers, oceans, and the Kawthar of divine Presence.

If we think of spirituality like water, then it flows downhill. So when we are arrogant, it flows away from us. This is one of the reasons humility is so important.

Oh, and in the Iqan, Baha'u'llah demonstrates this humility. After all, He hadn't declared His mission yet, so the uncle had no reason to regard His words as infallible. At least, not when the book was written. Interesting.

Maybe that's why He regularly encourages the reader to check out the old stories for themselves. He's telling us not to take His word for it. Paragraph 3 (yes, I've read this book a lot in the past few years), He says, "Refer ye, to verify this truth, to that which hath been recorded in every sacred Book." And He does this a lot in the Iqan.

He is demonstrating that humility which is so important.

But these arrogant leaders are not. In fact, they're doing just the opposite. Paragraph 237, where He says that if the Manifestation reveals "that which is the least contrary to their desire, they bitterly oppose Him". Not the most contrary, but the least. So it's not about the intellectual argument. It's about anything that goes against what they say. That's the height of egotism.

And maybe that's also why He says that Socrates "was indeed wise, accomplished and righteous", and praises him as "the most distinguished of all philosophers and was highly versed in wisdom." Socrates' whole thing was that he recognized what he didn't know. He was, in that regard, the epitome of humility.

So here, in this section of the Iqan, where Baha'u'llah is using the verses from the Qur'an to guide the uncle to turn to the Writings of the Bab and see if they're from God, He is essentially telling the uncle to beware of this danger. Don't think that you know it all. Don't presume that what you believe is the final say on something.

That is a spiritual quality, not an intellectual one.

And maybe that's why these divines are being recognized as "spiritually destitute".

Another Thought on the Short Obligatory Prayer

I bear witness, O my God, that Thou hast created me to know Thee and to worship Thee. I testify, at this moment, to my powerlessness and to Thy might, to my poverty and to Thy wealth.

There is none other God but Thee, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting.

Three sentences. That's all it is.

And yet it is the foundation of so much.

Just in case you don't recognize it, and I'd be surprised if you don't, it's the Short Obligatory Prayer from Baha'u'llah. One of the three that Baha'is are to recite every day.

Oh, not that we have to recite all three every day. No, we get to choose which of three, the long, the medium, or, you guessed it, the short.

Anyways, this is the short one. I mean, you can't really get much shorter, can you?

But what a powerhouse prayer it is.

As you may have noticed, I've been thinking a lot about prayer as tool for recalibrating how we view the world. So what about this one? It's short enough to be able to really dive into it and not take up too much of your time, dear Reader.

Oh, and just in case I haven't mentioned it in a while, these are just my own personal thoughts on this. Nothing official. That's why this blog is called One Baha'i. It's just one Baha'i. Me. Feel free to take it or leave it. I won't be offended, I promise.

So, why would Baha'u'llah mandate this prayer? What is it about it that makes it worthy of being said every day?

What really strikes me about it today is that we are not asking for anything in it. There is no request at all. It's just a statement of reality.

It starts by acknowledging why we were created, then moves on to a statement of our reality, and concludes with an understanding of God.

That's actually fairly simple. Profound, yet simple.

We begin by publicly stating, bearing witness, that we have been created to know God. That's the first thing. Why do we exist? To know God.

After knowledge comes worship. For honestly, once we come to get a beginning understanding of God, how can we not worship Him? And this is not the simplistic view of God that we've had in the past, neither the old man in the garden nor the old dude sitting on a throne on a cloud. No, this is the God of which Baha'u'llah says that the All-Possessing "is but a vassal dependent upon Thee", and the All-Compelling "is but a suppliant fallen upon the dust, awe-stricken by Thy dreadful might, Thy sovereignty and power". This is a God that is far beyond what we have ever conceived before, and one that is far more believable than those gods that people decry as mere myth.

This is a conception of God that we can truly worship with our rational mind, not to mention our soul. For if our rational mind cannot come to terms with it, then it would be irrational to worship.

No, this opening statement is a very straightforward line about why we exist, and is asking us to be conscious of that fact.

From there we get into a simple statement of our relationship to our Creator. We are powerless, and He is mighty. We are poor, and He is wealthy.

We are not asking for relief from our poverty. We are not asking for any help in anything we may desire to accomplish. It is just stating a reality.

And why is this important? Because it resets our understanding of ourselves. We often think we have power, but in reality we are powerless. We cannot stand up against a hurricane or an earthquake, no matter how much we might prepare. We can never stop, not even for a moment, the gentle tread of time. When it comes to the things that truly matter, we are all powerless before God.

Some may think themselves wealthy, either because they might have a few more grains of sand than another, or a few more rocks in their pocket. But in the grand scheme of things, we are all impoverished before the illimitable wealth of our Creator.

And then it concludes with a reminder that we can always call on God if we do require assistance. He is our helper when we are in peril, and it is good to remember that.

As I said, most prayers ask for something, but this one doesn't. It merely bears witness. It tells us why we exist. It doesn't ask for any assistance. it just says that it's there if we need it. It doesn't request any wealth, it just acknowledges our state of poverty. It reminds us that the problem isn't that we are poor, only that we imagine ourselves rich. And once we've recognized that, both our purpose and our limitations, as well as God's reality, then who else could we turn to?

I love the logic of it.

And once these things fall into place, so, it seems, does everything else.

Oh, and in case you thought I forgot about my commitment, 79 left to go.