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.