Whenever I have thirsted
though my tongue sought water
my soul sought for this.

Whenever I have yearned
though my dreams dreamt of futures
my soul dreamt of this.

Whenever I have labored
though my efforts aimed higher
my soul aimed at this.

Whenever I have swooned
though my heart longed for beauty
my soul longed for this.

Experience is a gilt onion.
I peel it back, layer by layer,
and always I find this.

This is the purpose.
This is the meaning.
This is the intent.

Perhaps you wonder what I mean?
In truth, you wonder about this.

As I look around at the world, I find many things to admire. Certainly there is more misery than joy to be found, and I know few people who bath in happiness for any great length; but there is also so much good… Enough that sometimes I get excited enough for my friends to laugh at me.

Last night I was regaling a friend about the tastiness of fried plantains (which, by the way, you have just got to try). I buy them at the store here in Grenada every time I visit, and in fact just finished another plate of them. But it’s not the plantains themselves that get me excited; it’s the indefinable quality of them, a quality of goodness that to my eyes seems universal of all good things.

For I think the world represents the greatest secret ever told, but that it takes a lifetime to unravel what is just before our eyes:

How strange that while the Beloved is visible as the sun, yet the heedless still hunt after tinsel and base metal. Yea, the intensity of His revelation hath covered Him, and the fullness of His shining forth hath hidden Him.1

The real question I want to bring up today is: why are the most religious of people sometimes the most dour about life? I would think that the more a person falls in love with God, the more their life would be full of… well, love, peace, joy, happiness. Instead, religiosity seems to sharpen the eyes of criticism when regarding this crude plane of dust. The more in love with perfection people become, the more distasteful they find the imperfections of the world. Until at last they simply long – with day following interminable day – for their release from this fleshly prison.

I can’t really fault them for this, seeing as how the Earth is not held up very highly in Scripture. When referred to, it is “the dustheap of this mortal world”. Or: “… but a show, vain and empty, a mere nothing, bearing the semblance of reality. Set not your affections upon it.” Or even: “… the whole world, in the estimation of the people of Bahá, is worth as much as the black in the eye of a dead ant…”.

Ok, so I’m not arguing this point and it would be foolish to try. The world is just an amalgam of matter-formed energy with no apparent value beyond what human beings make of it. Only we, in our poetry, eulogize the moon and the stars and the sun above. The animals are content merely if their bellies are full. And clearly we’re the only ones who think that gold has any value whatsoever.

What I want to argue is the difference between intrinsic and applied value. I agree with the sentiment that the Earth is a ball of dirt. I myself am made from the dust of stars. When Bahá’u’lláh refers to me as a “moving form of dust”, it sounds exactly right.

However, the Prophets themselves came to us in these forms of dust. They did not appear in the guise of angelic beings made of light – however much this may characterize their inward nature. Rather, they appeared as dust so they could speak to dust, using the language of dust. Yet I know of no pilgrim who, in the presence of His Shrine in the Holy Land, would declare to me that dust alone was buried there.

Consider likewise the example of ink and parchment. Parchment is the dried skin of animals, such as goats or sheep. Ink is (or was) oxidized iron dust mixed with water. It doesn’t get much cruder than that. When the Holy Word was written down at the time of Jesus Christ, it was fixed on animal skin using watered dust. If that’s all we thought of it, would anyone have paid attention?

It wasn’t the medium itself that had value, but the Message. The medium was crude enough to be disgusting when you think about it, while the Message was beyond all hope of words. That which is godly and divine was fixed upon a point of crude matter. And this was done so we could have access to it, and translate it into concepts and forms that made sense.

I think the world around us is no different. It practically sings with the mention of God – however much it may be, in itself, a ball of dirt. It’s the Message that’s key.

Then why do the Scriptures emphasize and re-emphasize this point, over and over, that the world should not be esteemed? I think it’s because humans have a tendency, over time, to revere the Messenger beyond the Message.

Take the example of parchment and ink again. When something like the Qu’rán is written on it, the parchment becomes a relic by virtue of its content. And the older it is, the more revered, until at some point, people make pilgrimage to it just so they can see it and be near it.

But what if the One Whom it foretells as coming after should arrive at that place of homage and set the book aflame, declaring that the time of the old laws had ended? How would the people react? Muhammad did something similar when he went to the Ka`bih in Mecca and destroyed all the sacred idols of his forebears, claiming that idolatry was forbidden by God. Here He was, the One charged with the Message of God, destroying the objects of veneration of His own people. And this because crude matter, in the form of idols, had come to mean far more than it should.

There is a constant danger of this kind of misplaced veneration in praising what is good about the world, for fear that people will mistake the world itself for what is being praised, rather than the Good reflected from it. Human beings do the same thing when they imagine themselves to be beautiful; and yet they, themselves, only manifest Beauty for a while; they are not the home wherein it dwells.

But with that aside, neither can we throw out the baby with the bath-water. If we held that all parchment was only the dead skin of animals, the word of God could never reach us! If we avert our eyes from the world, thinking it to be dust alone, how can the rays of Beauty reflect from it and reach us? What medium of the Good will ever be acceptable to us, if we judge it solely by the good of the vessel alone?

How can we long for God to reach us if inwardly, in that place where we long for spirit and perfection alone, we unconsciously ask that He not appear to us in mortal forms? If we deny the functional value of the world at the same time that we deny its inherent value – if we persist in this demand – how can we ever understand Who Bahá’u’lláh, and the other Prophets, really were?

They stood in relationship to God as the world does to His attributes. Each is a Messenger bearing a divine Message. It’s up to us not to confuse the two.

Even as the sun, bright hath He shined,
But alas, He hath come to the town of the blind!2

Tags: Beauty, Matter

A cornerstone of maturity is knowing how things will appear through the eyes of another: how others are affected by action and consequence. The perfection of maturity is when those other’s eyes are God’s.

Sometimes I feel as though we are all candles, placed in a room, intended to illuminate the vast treasures that are contained therein. Some burn brighter, some not at all, but the more of us that do, the greater the scope of these grand visions.

But it seems that at some times I am more mesmerized by the lights than I am by what they reveal. Or I bemoan my own feebleness next to others; or I feast on my pride next to still others.

But whether I am dim or bright; whether we are few or many; whether I am held fast in the dust, or in the finest candelabra — whenever I turn my eyes toward the aim of our being, and that Face our inner light can best reveal, it is then that all seems just as it should be.

It was the first day.

Even as the Earth
I drew the clouds of self about me;
blocking out a Sun
Who never ceased to shine.

And in that darkness,
I wept with great sadness:
turning the dust beneath me to cloying mud…
Caught in the mire between me and Thee.

Now it is the second day.

Green shoots have fought their way
through dirt and weighing sod.
From the muck arises a teeming life;
even the worms have purpose.

Tomorrow, it will be the third day.

When the sun shall break from the clouds,
and the mist of self — of airy substance only —
will know an end to such days as these.

I’ve recreated my computing blog, and moved it to an appropriate new home, at my professional site, New Artisans LLC, the company I use to front all of my computing work. I’m using a Mac application to create and manage that site named RapidWeaver, which I hope means that it will be much easier for me to keep up to date! Please read on there for my latest article on org-mode in Emacs, and TCP/IP-based attacks and the Linux utility iptables.

Recently I had the opportunity to give a talk on the Seven Valleys at a nearby Bahá’í school here in Colorado. The A/V person was able to record the talk as an MP3, which I offer here to anyone who’s interested in the topic. Please be aware that all opinions are my own. The files are each around 40 MB in size.

http://johnwiegley.com/7valleys1.mp3
http://johnwiegley.com/7valleys2.mp3

Tags: Seven Valleys

When the smell of rain
is fuller than the rain itself…

When one drops fall
and then a thousand;
when the first bolt
divides the sky;
when a clap resounds
like the Hands of God;
and the water on your lips
fell from Heaven…

After the fury and the darkness
will shine every color
that eyes can see.

If a candle approach the Sun,
how can it complain of its smallness,
its feebleness, its weakness?

Alone in the dark, it weeps and pines.
Even it shines — but to no avail.
O futile, feeble candle!
If truly you aim for the Sun,
how will you complain?

With each step:
your tears flow stronger
your light grows weaker
even your steps will fail…

  For these are the signs of progress!

One who stands before the Sun
must lose all trace of self —
but not through effort or intention:
any more than a runner
intends to lose his breath.

And when you find the Sun,
there can be no more sorrow —
even as your light dims
and your faculties recede…

  He who finds the Sun knows only glory.

What cup is there more bitter than Time?
All life’s beauty, lain in the dust;
all tomorrow’s hopes, forgotten.
To our lips we raise a vinegared tang,
where only yesterday, there was wine.

Trust not the deceit of color or song.
To the eyes, a wondrous thing;
to the ears, a paean of heaven.
Already the Puppeteer readies his box,
where he hides them all before long.

Yet, in the lover’s heart lies a secret.
A knowledge unknown to tongues;
a truth hidden even from minds.
That in the heart of pain lies a door,
one step beyond grief and regret:

That if we had not loved, we should not hurt;
that if we’d been not warm, we would not shiver.
All bitterness we taste is in memory of sweet;
all longing we feel, a proof of union.

For this terrible pain we call our life,
is knowledge that the soul knows of better.

It is written:
  “Verily, we are from God,
  and to Him shall we return.”