A mirror cannot capture the light of the
sun,
nor can words — but for a moment —
contain all that a heart may feel.
Written for my wife Nasim on her birthday yesterday.
This entry is dedicated to my friend Sina, considering how many times we’ve pondered this subject together.
The question of right and wrong has always burdened the religious mind. Some consume most of their energy seeking to toe an invisible line that, to them, guards salvation. But I have come to believe that while righteousness fully deserves our attention, it does not deserve our focus. To explore this idea further, I offer an analogy.
Today I was driving on the freeway down to Phoenix from Flagstaff. As I drove, I noticed the lines on the road, the traffic signals, and the signs for speed and services. I was always aware of these things — even when I wasn’t aware of them — because for each and every moment of that three hour drive I had to stay within lines not too much wider than my own car. Such a narrow path demands constant, considerable attention.
But the fact was, once I set myself on that course I largely ignored these restrictions. My focus was on the beauty of the day; on my thoughts; on the feel of driving which I enjoy so much. The “rules” had my attention, but my memory of the trip has nothing to do with the rules I followed.
If I had spent the whole trip angonizing over the exact distance I was from each lane, over my exact speed, over the exact moment when I signaled to switch lanes — people would not reward me for my exactitude, but would think I had a mental disorder. In fact, I bet I was far from “perfect” in my observance of every rule. However, the aim was to safeguard my journey, not judge my performance.
I think the “rules of the road” are like the rules of life. Religion sets out a path of spiritual fulfillment and tells us how to successively traverse that path. Now, I could completely ignore all these rules; I might even get away with it for a while, but sooner or later it would lead to ruin, just as it would in my car. There is value to following these laws, even if I don’t enjoy them as much as I would careening along at 120mph.
And if all God had wanted was a group of souls to go from point A to point B, it would have been more efficient just to create them all at B, safe and content. But since we have this life ahead of us, there must be a greater wisdom in traveling than there is in arriving. It’s like our joyful memories of childhood: they are not memories of finally reaching adulthood, but of how fun it was to be kid! Who we are is not a distinct, end product, but the sum of all those moments of slow and steady growth. The journey makes us; the goal was in the traveling itself.
We follow the lines on the road to avoid a crash; we stay on the road so we can travel at high speeds and avoid damage; we stop at traffic lights to avoid collision with other travelers: All of these details deserve the utmost attention and consideration, but not a single one of them deserves our focus. Life is much more than just what we do or how: it’s in the flavor, the experience and the effect. The real question is: where are these rules taking us? What is the goal of righteousness? What fruit is to be had from a life lived rightly?
One Sufi poet said it thus, writing as if quoting God, saying:
“O handful of earth! If I had not heaven for recompense and hell for punishment, would you ever think of me? If there were neither light nor fire, would you ever think of me? But since I merit supreme respect you must adore me without hope or fear; and yet, if you were never upheld by hope or fear would you ever think of me? Since I am your Lord, you should worship me from the depths of your heart. Reject all that which is not I, burn it to ashes and cast the ashes to the wind of excellence.”
The rules of morality do demand continued obedience, but even as important to success as such rules may be, once the end is accomplished they live on only in the fact of success itself. Their own substance is forgotten. Does the virtuoso remember how he keyed the piano? His soul is home only to the music, and all else a required means to that end.
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
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
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.