Courage

I read a lot of books. I mean, like, a lot. I love reading. One of my favourite things.

Anyways, this morning I read a passage in a book that got me thinking: "Courage is what you earn when you've been through the tough times and you discover they aren't so tough after all."

This reminded me of that passage from Words of Wisdom, a tablet I really should study in detail here one of these days: 

The source of courage and power is the promotion of the Word of God, and steadfastness in His Love.

To start, as I've said many times over the years, many people have told me that they don't have enough courage to teach the Faith openly or directly. But if you look at that passage again, you will notice that courage comes from teaching, not the other way around. And yes, steadfastness is in there, too, but please, one at a time.

How, I wondered this morning as I sipped my coffee, do those two quotes relate?

Let's go to a strange example to put in this blog, namely the German bombardment of London during the second world war.

Psychologists noticed a strange phenomenon, an unusual result that occurred because of it. The British people living in London became far more courageous, or at least what we would call courageous. You see, the Germans figured that this constant bombardment, the Blitz, over such a long period would be a great piece of psychological warfare. They presumed that it would send the population in a state of shock. Even the British government was concerned about that, and for good reason, too. They almost stopped building their bomb shelters because they were afraid that the people who took refuge in them might never willingly come out. In fact, they even built several psychiatric hospitals just outside the city because they expected a flood of people needing them. They actually believed that such a bombing, with the resultant panic and shock, would cost them the war.

In fact, the exact opposite happened.

Beginning in the fall of 1940, Germany launched 57 consecutive nights of devastating bombardment, and then continued for eight months to drop tens of thousands of high-explosive bombs, and literally more than a million incendiary devices. Now think about that for a moment. Imagine those numbers. Try to picture what it must have been like to be in the city of London and receive such a devastating blow. No wonder the government was concerned.

By the end of those few months, over 40,00 people were killed, upwards of 46,000 injured, and more than a 1,000,000 houses and over 70,000 other buildings were damaged or destroyed. "Every hundred yards or so, it seemed," wrote one witness, "there was a bomb crater or wreckage of what had once been a house or shop."

And yet, the vast majority of those that survived did not panic. In fact, most reported that they were more courageous than before the Blitz.

Why? Simple, really. Most of us are afraid of being afraid. And when we face that fear and come out the other side, we discover that our fear was actually more frightening than the thing itself.

In other words, before the Blitz, countless Londoners were rightfully scared of being bombed. But when the bombs fell, less than 100,000 people were killed or injured. And horrific as that number might be, it also meant that the remaining 8,000,000 people were not hurt.

In the attack, there were three groups of people on the ground. The first are those that were killed, or 40,000 in this case. The second is the near misses. Those are the people who were near enough to feel the blast and were possibly injured, but survived. That often results in the shock that the government was afraid of, but generally only occurs in those that are that close to the actual explosion.

But the third group are what some refer to as the remote misses. They're a block or two away, and contrary to the near misses, they come away with a sense of excitement, or a slight feeling of invulnerability. A near miss, as one person said, might leave you traumatized, but a remote miss makes you feel invincible.

There are numerous reports in diaries and interviews demonstrating this exact phenomenon.

In other the words, the Blitz killed 40,000, and traumatized another 100,000 or so. But it left the remaining 7,860,000 feeling like heroes.

Now consider that quote from Baha'u'llah again:

The source of courage and power is the promotion of the Word of God, and steadfastness in His Love.

And add into that a quote from 'Abdu'l-Baha, in which He says, when raising our children, we should encourage them "to work and strive, and accustom them to hardship."

You can begin to see how the fear of failure or ridicule can prevent us from teaching, but when we actually do get out there and share the teachings, we rarely ever encounter that reaction. Well, assuming we do so with tact and wisdom. But if we do, we rarely actually encounter that reaction. Our fear was the only thing holding us back. And once we overcome that, we discover that the fear was groundless, or at least magnified in our imagination.

Now, I'm not actually comparing teaching to being bombed. Not at all. It's really there to help explain the issue. But it does begin to give us a glimmer of what the friends in Iran are going through, and what they have gone through for so long, and why they are such spiritual giants.

To me, this story of the Blitz, and the results that arose from it, help give us an understanding of this quote from the Writings. The source of courage seems to be a result of our encounter with that which scared us in the first place. And here? Baha'u'llah seems to be reminding us of this truth, while still emphasizing the importance of steadfastness in helping us be one of the "remote misses".

After all, as Baha'u'llah said, "whosoever standeth firm and steadfast in this holy, this glorious, and exalted Revelation, such power shall be given him as to enable him to face and withstand all that is in heaven and on earth."