Bahá’í World/Volume 2/Haifa, ‘Akká and Bahjí
HAIFA, ‘AKKÁ AND BAHJÍ
Excerpts from the Diary of
KEITH RANSOM-KEHLER
(From Star of the West)
FIRST SERIES OF SKETCHES
SHIMMERING in the moonlight on a far horizon lie the lights of Haifa. It appears from here like some mysterious floating island that the transported mariner might pursue forever. It is impossible to see at night its attachment to the permanence of Mount Carmel, that rises there out of the sea like the earth’s backbone, insulating the spinal chord of history. The mighty Prophets passed over it like the nerve currents of humanity, quickening those portions whereunto they were directed. Tomorrow I shall climb that mountain to the Shrine of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, another symbol of man’s pilgrimage upward—“not to a tomb ever, but to a meeting-place with the spirit of Divine Beauty for transfiguration.”
Haifa! Five hundred passengers leave the Adriatic here. As I step from the tender with the rest of the throng a cordial voice cries, “Welcome, Mrs. Ransom-Kehler. I am so glad to see you.” In all that mass of humanity Fugeta, who had never seen me before, or my photograph, distinguished the Bahá’í pilgrims.
When ‘Abdu’l-Bahá came to America, H. S. Fugeta was a medical student at the University of Michigan. Like his famous forerunner who was short of stature, he climbed a sycamore tree to see the Master pass by. “Come down, Zachias, for this day I would sup with thee,” called the flute-like voice of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and Fugeta relinquishing every human tie followed Him back to Mount Carmel to become a helper in the household.
I am greeted first by Fugeta, a child of Nippon, then by Isfendiar from the cradle of the race, and next by Effie Baker, fair, cameo-like, the first person in Australia to embrace this all-inclusive message. On, on, the irresistible tide of fellowship and good-will is carrying the soul of humanity to a new altitude of love, abnegation and service. Effie, with a self-effacement that only the love of God could give, reflects the spirit of the Holy Family in her work at the Pilgrim House. She comes out to embrace me with unaffected cordiality and to knit still closer those intangible bonds that will hold me to this sacred spot forever.
Lady Julian, the Anchoress of Norwich, has given such a stirring account of the curious vision under which she seemed to encounter reality! As I remember it, indistinctly, the universe lay in her hand like a small hazelnut and the overwhelming sense of the presence of God assured her: God loves it; God keeps it. . . . Of course it's ridiculous to say that God inheres in localities; let me put it conversely and say that it is unthinkable to me that any spiritually awakened soul could step on to the plain of ‘Akká without being acutely aware of that intensified exaltation and reverence that I always think of as constituting the “fear of God.” Ever since I had learned that ‘Akká fulfilled the Bible prophecy and become a door of hope for the nations, I had lived for the moment that would initiate me into its mystery.
It is like throwing flowers in the fire to attempt to describe the pilgrimage to [Page 130]
Bahjí (the home of Bahá’u’lláh) or to the Garden of the Ridván connected with it. The pilgrim house at Bahjí is primitive and unforgettable. Opening on a small court-yard with a vivid patch of grass, one graceful lemon tree full of pale fruit, the stable to one side, the kitchen to the other, the doors wide and deep, is the room where we sit at breakfast; and the birds seem to prefer this big room to high heaven, for they are incessantly darting in and out. Horses are evidently too valuable to be put in stables with outside openings. So Soheil Effendi must ride his Arabian stallion through the dining-room each morning to the grassy plain! ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s white donkey and her foal continue the procession. Then breakfast: Yad’u’lláh, the care-taker of the house presiding at his shining samovar, everyone having hot tea, olives cured in oil, goat’s milk cheese, the flat cakes of bread split and toasted, Syrian honey, and for the Occidentals, oranges picked as needed in this vicinity.
Venus is the evening star. I sit solitary on the steps of the quaint old pilgrim house, entranced with her magical beauty: in this latitude and through this atmosphere she is bright enough to cast a shadow and light seems incessantly to brim up and overflow the beaker of her brilliance. The minarets of ‘Akká pierce a rose and saffron sky; the Mediterranean is still a precious blue. Twilight encroaches; the silence is vaster than any sound; something at the base of one’s soul stirs like an unsuspected Titan, buried for centuries beneath mountains of artificiality and compromise—the eternal quest, the divine adventure, the incessant surge of the soul toward something too magnificent for comprehension, too ecstatic for words. Suddenly, with a crash, the dome of silence is shattered by the uncanny laugh of the jackals. Elisha must have heard them here, and the priests of Baal whose prayers were no more effective than this call of wild beasts. Their sudden silence seems to leave a vacuum. A few vagrant stars appear, and silhouetted against the sky the camel caravans move slowly up the coast to Tyre. Now the shepherds on two distant hills start piping to their flocks, a plaintive, poignant testimony, like all Oriental music, to the ineffable home-sickness of the soul. The moon swims up, pale to virginity; no such robust moon as we know in the early evening. Then, and as from the portal of paradise a mystical beautiful chant arises. It is the voice of a woman, broken with sobs, tragic with longing, rich in praise; and as I listen to her heart-breaking, exalting song, it seems to me that it is rising from the lips of every woman in the world: the essence and epitome of all that ever loved and suffered. It is Laila, the cook, who in her humility has not even entered the Shrine, but is kneeling on the garden path outside. Surely in her reverence, her obedience, her lowliness, her longing, she carries up to God, in that beatific wail, something of the desire of our tortured hearts to reach Him. The wide beds of stock begin to loose their fragrance with the coming up of night, mingling with rose and jasmine. Laila passes me alert and smiling, restored completely by her abandonment to the Spirit. This is a sleight-of-hand which men seldom experience.
What soul is ample enough to house both Love and Wisdom? Love a prodigal expenditure of Life’s mysterious energy: Wisdom a discriminating choice of Life’s subtlest values. Just as some creatures are born to burrow underground and others to sing a kindred soul out to the face of the sun, so some beings are predestined by an alchemical pinch of heavenly leaven to this unconquerable yearning that knows no rest so long as one unloving thing is left on earth. It was for this indeed that Bahá’u’lláh released into this world such a rapture that those who have caught but one drop of His Elixir find the universe shrunk to a point too narrow for their wide yearning.
These are the thoughts that shake one as he wanders over the flower-decked
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plains of ‘Akká—to woo the world into the knowledge and love of God—not a gloomy, half-hearted, wistful relationship, but a joy and a glory beyond our brief capacity, which constitutes that endless pursuit by the soul of a Love that never faints, a Beauty that never fades, a Truth that never fails.
The great problem is how to teach the wayward, burning, insatiable heart its discipline and abnegation without changing its quality. To borrow a crude figure from science the question is how to change it from one of those highly unstable elements that is ever seeking com- bination, into a catalyzer, when it has reached this high calling of divine love, that changes those things that come into its presence without itself suffering change.
- “It may be when my heart is dull
- Having attained its girth
- I shall not find so beautiful
- The meagre shapes of earth.”
But that abundant life to which the great Prophets call us inheres in the idea that the heart can mature and at the same time never lose its response to life's infinite variety.
The sister and wife and daughters of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá are like this—divine catalyzers, as it were. They do not preach to you nor attempt to reform you, but by coming into their presence you—became something; something a little nobler, a little worthier than you had been before. Bahíyyih Khánum, the sister of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, has, from the age of five, lived through experiences and calamities the like of which no Occidental woman could faintly imagine. Exquisite, fragrant, imperturbable, assured, she walks among the fluctuating conditions of the world like a star through its appointed course in the heavens. After one has been stirred by the presence of women like the sister and the wife of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, our curious little evidences of “firmness” are practically meaningless. That self-congratulatory state of the Occidental when he has performed some little service for his Cause is unknown in Haifa. “Leave faith to the faithful and faithlessness to the infidel; one drop of pain in Thy Love is enough for the heart.” Until the heart be eternally bruised by this sweet wound of love we may never hope to shed fragrance, such as these great women shed, about us. Day and night the daughters of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, without stint and without rest, are building up through their deeds of continual kindness those solid barricades against the forces of ignorance, prejudice and malevolence; those outposts of service, love and peace that mark the boundaries of another world. We see in these six women a faith that never waivers, a gift that never varies, a love that never tires—celestial caryatides, it might be, bearing on their heads the structure of the new civilization.
The unique and outstanding figure in the world today is Shoghi Effendi. Unique, because the guardianship of this great Cause is in his hands, and his humility, modesty, economy and self-effacement are monumental. Outstanding because he is the only person, we may safely say, who entrusted with the affairs of millions of souls, has but one thought and one mind—the speedy promulgation of peace and good-will throughout the world. His personal life is absolutely and definitely sacrificed. The poorest boy in America struggling for an education would consider himself hardly used to have no more than those bare necessities which this young man voluntarily chooses for himself. The ladies of the household typify the Cause as Love and Faith. Shoghi Effendi adds to this the elan of the New Day, Action and Progress.
So to comprehend and administer all the relationships in a huge organization that only satisfaction and illumination result; never to see anything smaller than the world-wide import of all our movements, no matter how parochial; to clarify with a word the most obscure situations; to release in countless souls the tides of [Page 133]
energy that will sweep the cargoes of these glad-tidings round the world; to remain without one moment's cessation so poised in God as to be completely naturalized into His attributes—these are some of the characteristics that make of Shoghi Effendi the unique and outstanding figure of our time. And this without reference to his surpassing mental capacities that mark this spiritually superb person as a penetrating thinker and brilliant executive. The world, its politics, social relationships, economic situations, schemes, plans, aspirations, programs, defeats, successes, lie under his scrutiny like infusoria beneath a microscope.
Infusoria share with men the dramatic fact that sensory devices and motor devices occur side by side in living things; which means if we don’t like the kind of world we’re living in we can, through the divine reinforcements that Bahá’u’lláh has dispatched to us in this gifted century, make an entirely different world of it, sane, joyous and noble. Shoghi Effendi is the Commander-in-chief of this great new army of faith and strength that is moving forth to vanquish the malevolent forces of life.
Tomorrow is the day of parting. For weeks I have looked forward with a kind of hollow sickness to this moment, wondering what device God might use in order to give me the strength to say goodbye. The moment is here and with it, ecstatic happiness! Through a quiet miracle the situation was saved by that radiant being, lent us from heaven, the Master’s wife (Munírih Khánum). “You should be very happy,” she said, her lovely face aglow with sincerity, “for you have the opportunity to go out into the world and give to others these glad-tidings of the Kingdom of God.” Then a great peace poured into my soul.
It had seemed to me on leaving America that I came to Haifa as a blank page ready to be written upon with the language of the spirit. But one conversation with Shoghi Effendi, casual, impersonal, over the luncheon table, showed me that I was a mountain of dogmas, preconceptions, inflexibilities, and nonsense: In the nine weeks at Haifa, however, the predispositions of a lifetime vanished! I had always had vaulting spiritual ambitions ! I had wanted to see and to know what Frances, Catherine, Theresa saw and knew. But when I knelt in prayer before the Shrine of Bahá’u’lláh, I hadn’t the smallest concern in this earth whether I ever knew anything or saw anything beyond the burning fact that God has kept His Covenant with Us, and that only as human beings grasp this conception and seize this unparalleled opportunity can we enter into the fullness of His Promises. For the first time in my life I was empty—and at peace.
SECOND SERIES OF SKETCHES
IT IS Ramadan, the month of fasting. From the moment when it is light enough to distinguish a black thread from a white one, the Muslim must abstain from food until the sun has set. A gun booms from the Mosque announcing the official departure of the orb of day.
How gratifying it is to the human heart to be able to find those substitutes for self-effacement and sacrifice, which are the primal command of every great religious Teacher. To repeat set prayers, to fast, to give alms, to wear sack-cloth and tonsure—how man delights to offer these external evidences of devotion while retaining all the scheming privacies of the heart.
Muḥammadan nations follow the lunar calendar, so that there is a continual rotation of anniversaries. (For instance, the martyrdom of the Bab which we always commemorate on the ninth of July, is commemorated in Haifa this year on March thirteenth.) Thus the fast month is continually changing for the Muslim. If it fall in winter, it is not so difficult,
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but coming in summer when the sun sets late and rises early it works a real hardship on the devout.
All the year through the Muḥammadans must pray five times a day, and wash before each of these required periods for the commemoration of God. The Prophet advises those sojourning in the desert where water is inaccessible, to wash with sand. The skin can be quite thoroughly cleansed in this way.
Nothing could be more embarrassing to the average Occidental than to be seen praying; except in the cold and meaningless conformity of the average public meeting. To fling himself on his knees, lift his hands to heaven, bend prostrate on his face before any and every passer-by, is incompatible with our egotism and our self-consciousness. Our approach to the Almighty must, whatever its ardor or intensity, be well within the confines of good-form. But the Arab, unconstrained and naif in his appeal to God, kneels by the road-side.
It is interesting to note the reason that we so often see the Arabs at prayer at this particular spot. One of the awful horrors that greeted the family of Bahá’u’lláh when they arrived in ‘Akká was the evidences of strange and disfiguring diseases on all sides. It was said that “a bird could not fly over ‘Akká and live”—so foul was the water, so stagnant the marshes, so prevalent malaria, so damp and hot the atmosphere, so primitive the sanitation.
We see enacted again and again in the drama of life the same recurring episode: a Being arises who utters the Call of the Kingdom of God, and releases in the potency of His Word that irresistible might that draws man back to his spiritual origin. Not only with no prestige (often forcibly shorn of it), no human assist- ance, but against the malicious opposition of organized society, He establishes His authority and revivifies the dead hearts of men.
So when Bahá’u’lláh came to ‘Akká as a prisoner, it was a shift on the part of His persecutors to do away with Him and His followers without actual physical execution. Those in authority had been warned against Him as a most dangerous heretic and traitor; for church and state being one, any act of infidelity to Islám is not only heretical but a political crime as well.
Now behold one of those mysterious miracles that follows in the path of these mighty Beings! In a short time the Governor of ‘Akká is seeking to know what favor he can do for Bahá’u’lláh! “Repair the old Roman aqueduct, and bring an abundant supply of clear fresh water to ‘Akká,” is the reply. Then the moats were drained, and so one by one the malignant things disappear and good things succeed them. And now the opening here in front of Bahjí, in the aqueduct restored to usefulness by the kind jailer, is a favorite place for the Arabs to pray because here they can perform their required ablutions.
We are sitting under the great oaks between the old Mansion of Bahjí and the sea. The Arabs carry on their devotions as if they were absolutely alone in the middle of a desert impervious to our glances and conversation. A darling old woman from a garden near-by has appeared with a huge clean kerchief full of salted sun-flower seeds. The Oriental ladies lay bare the small white flake of a kernel with perfect ease. For an Occidental to succeed in opening one is not an achievement; it is a career. Farúd brings out bowls of orange juice in which crisp tender leaves of romaine lettuce are rolled and dipped; while the conversation turns on the relative place of Byron and Wordsworth in English literature.
This is the kaleidoscopic East that exercises an ineffaceable spell over the soul of the Westerner. “When you hear the East a-callin’ you won't never ’eed naught else.”
Here comes a troupe of young boys, handsome, care-free fellows, out for a holiday. Nothing could be more depressing than the part played by women in the public life of the Orient. The costume [Page 135]
of the Turkish woman, which prevails here also, is gloomy and sinister to the last degree. Entirely of black with a tight-fitting black cap completely covering the head and ears and a thick black veil making any sight of the face impossible, it gives the impression of a victim just ready for the hangman; this is the costume still tenaciously adhered to by millions of women.
The white costume of the north African provinces with the white veil, revealing the eyes, is charming. The dainty bit of white chiffon worn just under the nose and secured with gold rings about the ears is characteristic of the fashionable Egyptian woman; but this awful shroud of the Turkish and Syrian women is really hideous.
In America where women are so ubiquitous, men have to plan a good deal how to keep away from us; but here comes a troop of gay young boys for an afternoon of frolic—not a woman permitted to be in sight—and their idea of a holiday is to bring a guitar-like instrument and sing poignant love-songs.
Toward sunset when the day is cooler, we walk into ‘Akká to do some errands in the bazaars. It is very late and only one or two are open. As the merchant is showing us his wares the gun that marks the end of his fast is suddenly fired. Quick as a flash his little boy runs to a nearby stall to fetch some dates. There is a tradition that the Prophet broke his fast with dates. Hungrily, greedily, the man stretches out his hand and then with quick courtesy presents them to us saying, "Fadile" (kindly help yourselves). How many Occidentals, who have had no food from daybreak to sunset, would offer it first to total strangers?
It is astonishing to see how the repatriation of the Jews is rapidly changing the whole social structure of Palestine. Men and women (unveiled, naturally) are seen together everywhere. The very fabric of society is giving way before these strange new impacts; and changes that it might otherwise take centuries to accomplish, are rapidly succeeding the old order.
God promised His chosen people millenia ago that they would one day work out their aspirations in this milieu friendly to their objectives. It was to be accomplished in that latter day when good tidings would be published and peace proclaimed. It is indeed significant that the first firman permitting the return of the Jews to Palestine was issued when Bahá’u’lláh was exiled.
The Semite has offered two great gifts to civilization; first a passionate monotheism reiterated after the great teaching of Moses with increased intensity by the Semite Muḥtammad. Second, trade and commerce, which together with the stupendous Occidental contribution of news and communication, are doing more to unify the world than law or education or religion have so far accomplished. We remain perfectly wil1ing to kill those whose opinion on religion or form of government may differ from our own, but the world over, people are becoming more and more hesitant about killing their customers.
A sharp and bitter economic readjustment is going on in Palestine, due to the introduction of Occidental trade usage. The old hit-or-miss barter of the East is going down before the accurately determined price and quality standards of the West. An unsung hero in our historic annals is one A. T. Stewart, the predecessor of John Wanamaker in New York. One bright Monday morning his astonished customers discovered that everything in his shop was marked with a fixed price, and the old romantic habit of letting the soft-voiced woman with charm have her spool of thread a cent or two cheaper than the hard-faced termagant, passed from Western practice.
The Jew, in his repatriation experiment, has brought with him the viewpoint of the Orient and the practice of the Occident. The Germans alone (there is a large colony in Haifa) can offer him competition [Page 136]
. The Arab watches in baffled amazement his own countrymen turning as customers to those who are taking his economic life.
That practice honored throughout civilization of keeping things dear and men cheap, is tragically evident here on all sides. Such tattered people! Such degrading labor! My gorge rises as I see men burdened like camels, almost breaking under loads that only a horse would carry in America.
There is the sense that the scene is occurring in its pitiless sordidness and constant reiteration as of two thousand years ago, while that stern Voice of accusation and summons rings athwart the centuries: “For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. . . . Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.” (Matthew 23 :4-23.) Oh, God, how long—how much longer will it be before we lift ourselves above that moral plane that permits us to live delicately in the midst of the want and of the suffering of our brother man!
I wander into a shop attracted by a Turkish necklace. A very beautiful young man, about the age of one of my own boys, waits on me. I take him to be a Hindu. “What is your nationality?” I ask. “I am a Jew,” he answers. “Oh,” I exclaim with unaffected pleasure, “it always makes me so happy to meet a Jew ! We must never forget that it was you who gave us the noblest conception of the human mind—that of one God the loving Father of all mankind!”
The boy quickly reached into his showcase and drew out a pin that I had admired. “Take this,” he said earnestly, “keep it always as a souvenir of me.” At that moment his brother, across the shop, having heard nothing of the previous conversation, caught his words. “What, what is this?” he shouts in great excitement, “are you giving away our goods?” With an imperious gesture the boy replies, “Say not a word! This woman is our friend. I will make it all right with you,” and with ill-expressed thanks I hurry away to conceal my emotion. It recalls to me, as such things always do, what a man in prison once said to me: “What all this world is dying for, is a friend!”
In the Shrines this great sense penetrates me—the realization that Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá are our changeless Friends, common to all and special to each. In moments of strength and hope and enthusiasm, it is our great flair to work under their direction, to spend ourselves, to use our insight and vigor for the accomplishment of their ends. But in those moments when fatigue and disappointment harass us, in those moments that psychology refers to as “collapse,” where can we turn in our doubt and desperation but to those Mighty Beings who shine like majestic Suns along man’s path!
Nothing can ever happen to me now that can thwart me, in imagination, from burying my face in the jasmine-strewn threshold at Bahjí and knowing as a definite part of my spiritual equipment, forever, that “God will assist all those who arise to serve Him.”
THIRD SERIES OF SKETCHES
TIBERIAS and the Sea of Galilee. “Hearts cannot contain Me, and minds are troubled because of Me.” In these sacred spots of Palestine there is always a figurative straining of weak lungs in rare air; the sense that this exalted atmosphere is too high and fine for the clumsy mechanism of ordinary life. Something Unseen forever moves beside one; a cloud of joyous witnesses and that [Page 137]
little band who followed the Protagonist in the great drama of Christendom, walking after Him down this dusty road that led to the Sea of Galilee—and to everlasting Life. “For this is Life eternal! To know Thee, the only True God,” and the Manifestation “Whom Thou hast sent.”
Here from the hilltop is the first sight of the lapis waters of this gem-like lake. The whir and drift of pinions press nearer; the haunting sense of having passed this way before—not in any gross human fashion but in the lift of the soul to a new level of reverence—and of pain; that never-ending pain due to the realization that even those who know their Lord in His Day so frequently increase His burdens and multiply His Cares. Not so much pain because of Judas, as pain because of Peter, because of those who brought their frailties, their wrangles, their littlenesses into His very presence. Three short years in which to renew again God's Covenant with man, in which to proclaim His imperishable evangel of eternal salvation to a brutal world; three short years in which to outflank the hosts of tyranny, greed and materialism—and not one precious moment to waste in anything personal or less than total dedication to His ends and purposes.
A world to be saved and nobody to save it but frail, selfish, willful, cowardly human beings!
The life of Shoghi Effendi* gives me the real example of what it actually means to devote one’s life to the service of others. “Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be yet lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of Glory shall come in.” (Psalm 24:7.) It is solely through such “gates” and “doors” as the Guardian that the spiritual life of humanity can truly emerge. "The King of Glory" can only come into the world through the release of those qualities, the performance of those personal obligations, the assumption of those attributes that lead us from the beast to the angel.
One of the supreme proofs of the Prophet of God, when He appears in the world, is His unique ability to transform hearts and revolutionize lives. To hear, as we far too frequently hear, that we should not look at the followers of a Great Prophet but look at His teachings, is very much like saying that we should not test the flying power of an airplane but look at its outline. Of what possible advantage is the coming of the Manifestation of God from age to age if His presence is only to amass a certain bulk of literature to be read in leisure moments; to outline a remote Utopian scheme inaccessible to human performance?
The thing to which our gaze is directed in scrutinizing the claim of the Prophet is no more what He teaches than the effect that His teachings produce in human lives.
*Guardian of the Bahá’í Cause, who resides in Haifa.
I often wonder if my estimate of history has been clouded by too intense an expectation; too impracticable a perfectionism as regards myself and my fellows; for as I look back over the contours of history and attempt to heft those strange objects we call institutions, comities, epochs and cycles, they strain my mental muscles as a falling weight rather than dazzle my eyes as an effulgent light. Always the same story: God calling to His impregnable standard the souls of men; always promising that the import of His command shall come to pass, and we, meagre mites, in the mighty sweep of His exhortation proving again and again unequal to the spiritual task that He spreads before us. The spirits of men proving unequal to their high calling, the very stones, the stones of hard hearts and narrow human interests take up the stupendous labor of lifting the inert substance of selfishness into the divine dimension of love and unity.
As we differentiate the historical purpose of the mission of our Lord Jesus, it [Page 138]
seems to have been the releasing of the individual from slavery: physical, political, religious, mental and moral: to establish the rights of the individual, to emphasize the value of the human soul. We may safely say that in the fruition of democracy and of scientific achievement this freedom has been acquired; the irresistible power of God’s Word has executed its divine purpose—but with what a sacrifice of intent, when we view modern man, responsive to the affairs of this world, but skeptical and lethargic with regard to that “Kingdom” that “is not of this world.”
Standing here on the lovely shore of Galilee, the shadow of the cross seeming to stretch before rather than behind me, I can see the multitude straining in His Footsteps, not interested in learning of Him how to put more into life, but interested, then as we are today, in how to get more out of life; begging, not for the opening of that inward eye that is a window set toward heaven; but for the opening of the merely physical eye which in beholding, no matter how fair, the objects of this world can never see beyond its limitations. To lift a man from somatic death—of what value is this? He must but die again. But here in the very presence of Him who in that day alone could confer the ineffable bounty of Unending Life, here they were taking account of a mere span of human days.
Truly it is the nature of Form to receive; but it is also the nature of Spirit to give, and in all those countless multitudes who were partakers in His mercy how few there were who gave back to Him that indispensable allegiance that was necessary to establish His Kingdom on earth.
Human conditions can only be changed by human beings. That curious conception, recrudescent from time to time in theology, that there is a force moving in the world independent of human choice and human effort, which brings to pass a certain predestined pattern that human beings are powerless to assist or to thwart, certainly has no place in the direct teachings of the Founders of any of the Sacred Religions.
This world and its destiny depend too appallingly upon human beings. The call to follow Them is a call to the most intense, vigorous, and unremitting effort. We may see but we cannot enter that Kingdom whose paths are peace, without putting aside our riches of whatever kind, material, mental, personal; without going back to that degree of naivete, faith, and enthusiasm that characterizes our childhood days. The effort of spanning a chasm or leveling a mountain is slight in comparison to allaying our prejudices, and finding our raptures in complete detachment from the experiences of this world. The “superhuman effort” to which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá summons us is this dramatic engaging of all the forces of the soul to combat our petty personalisms and subtle egotistical pretentions.
The beauty and terror of this spot! Where the corpse is, there are the eagles gathered together: then the eagles of the Roman legions; today the eagles on our dollars, a world still steeped in greed and commercialism. Not until the earthquake, the wind, and the fire of our struggles, our brutalities, and our oppressions have passed, shall we be able to hear the still, small voice of God’s changeless command, “Love one another.”
A deep ineffaceable impression comes to me here by the shores of this tiny sea. Again and again ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said, “Look ye at the time of Christ,” warning us that one by one the events of that era would be repeated in this age, in which the great prophecies of Jesus are fulfilled in the coming of Bahá’u’lláh. His warning is to enable us to thwart those tendencies that swept Christianity away from its Founder and established it upon a basis alien to His teachings. The Pauline theology bears no relation, however remote, to the pure teachings of Jesus. His teachings are based upon a dynamic and fundamental change in the life of the individual. In the poignant parable of
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the Last Judgment those who win a place on the right hand of the King are those whose lives have been dedicated to the service of others: in Paul’s theology those who are saved are those who believe that Jesus Christ died for them. There is not so much as a germ of likeness in the two ideas, and still it is the teaching of Paul that triumphed in the church: but it was the teaching of Jesus that refusing to die lifted up here and there through the pages of history those mountain-peaks of light that reflected His true meaning to a wistful world. “Why seek ye the living among the dead?” It is the living Christ that lures the soul. This moribund figure of theology no longer intrigues even the mind.
Peter, with his tenacious grip on orthodoxy, attempting to substitute new dogmas for old; Paul's intolerance of old practices for a new age; the historic conflict that made a continent too small to contain them both; Paul’s retirement with his strange assortment of influences from the Greek mysteries, Alexandrian philosophy, Indian belief, Mediterranean cult practice, welding them all with one superb effort of the imagination into an instrument that would conform to Hebraic interpretation ; and then with the irresistible power of a gigantic personality making his followers believe that even if an angel from heaven should say that “my” gospel is not correct they were to place no credence in it. . . . Neither Peter nor Paul near enough to the spirit of their Lord to make it important which won, carrying on a conflict itself utterly contrary to the direct command of Jesus.
The spirit of those disciples, marvelous as it was, was not flame-like enough to melt the solid rocks of men’s hearts and minds into the fire of the love of God. And so God had to lift up stones to serve Him.
To be sure the great purpose for which Jesus came is accomplished. God’s Word does not return void unto Him. But though the Spirit of Freedom has been liberated in the Christian era, with it walks hand in hand rapacity, the barbarous ethics of poverty, crime, corruption, war. If God had had spirits instead of stones to perform His orders what might the world have been today!
There is an irony about such contemplation that strengthens the will and prospers our purposes. Almighty God! grant that in this day no thought, however vague, may obtrude itself beyond the shining dedication of Thy servants, who have beheld Thy Glory and partaken of Thy Power, to cleave the mountains of selfishness, roll back the seas of confusion and doubt, pluck up the isles of division and separateness, and according to Thy mighty prophecy, destroy as with fire all the barriers of the earth; that mankind may be fused through the consuming flame of Thy love, into one kindred and one soul.
There stand, beside this quiet shore the Christian church and the Muḥammadan mosque: the gates of hell have prevailed against both in the centuries that separate them from their Founders. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá walked here to efface the footsteps of those forces and tendencies in life that lead men astray. Only in a church built upon the solidarity and sympathy of the human heart can we adequately worship Him. Let us build forthwith in our harmony, unity and understanding the Temple of the Living God.
Now they are calling me to start upon the homeward journey. But I have written nothing about Tiberias! The Son of Man passed down that road. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá the Beloved of the world, walked this way! What else matters?
