2.
JOINED BY GOD
BY GEORGE TOWNSHEND
THE Day of God is come. Mankind is approaching maturity. Its spiritual powers and susceptibilities are ripening. It is able at last to understand the true nature of marriage and to make the home what God intended it to be. Holy Writ therefore in this Age gives us pronouncements, counsels, exhortations and commands which call the closest attention of every believer to the sacred institution of marriage and which with all the authority of revelation, assign to it a key-position in the material and spiritual order of human life.
What was taught by precept was confirmed in practice. The Báb, Bahá’u’lláh, and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the Exemplar of the Faith, were all married men and fathers of families; and the home of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
Morning Session of Mid-Winter Eastern States Youth Conference, New York City, 1940.
known to many western visitors, stands as a pattern of what the ideal home of the New Era ought to be.
“Know thou,” wrote ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, that the command of marriage is eternal. It will never be changed or altered.” True marriage is a spiritual relation between united lovers—a particular state of being to which special blessings are attached by God. “No mortal can conceive the union and harmony which God has designed for man and wife. If they are united both spiritually and physically and if the foundation of their affection is laid “in the very centre of their spiritual being, at the very heart of their consciousness” then they will have “eternal unity throughout all the divine worlds and improve the spiritual life of each other.” Such union ”is a splendor of the light of the love of God.”
The paying of honor to celibacy as to a condition specially pleasing to God is due to human misunderstanding. In His Tablet to Napoleon III Bahá’u’lláh bade the monks to “Enter into wedlock that after you another may arise in your stead. . . . But for man, who on My earth would remember Me, and how could My attributes and My names be revealed? Reflect and be not of them that have shut themselves out as by a veil from Him, and are of those that are fast asleep.”
Bahá’u’lláh commends marriage, but He does not make entrance into it easy. The initiative lies with the lovers themselves; they are free to choose. But they are strictly enjoined to give to this choice conscientious and deliberate thought. They are to acquire knowledge of each other’s character and to make sure beforehand that their outlook on life is in accord on both spiritual and physical matters. They are to be frank and open with each other and if their mutual consent is finally given it is to be complete and entire.
Thus they are expected to employ reason as well as emotion, common sense as well as instinct, in order that they may reach a sound and firm decision; and their union is to represent knowledge as well as love.
When their own consent is given they must obtain before marriage is possible the consent of all their four parents, if living; they must in other words submit their proposed union to the objective judgment of those who know and love them best and who are next to themselves most closely concerned with their happiness. Once this consent is obtained the marriage may go forward.
Thus a Bahá’í marriage is not a personal matter between two united lovers but also a social matter between them and the community and a spiritual matter between them
Bahá’í Youth Regional Conference held in Hall of Religious Conference, Los Angeles City College, 1940.
and their heavenly Father. When these relationships are justly combined together, and when as commanded in the Bahá’í revelation the lovers live as equals and can thus help one another to the full limit of their capacity, then is the union real and perfect.
It is not for this earth only. It is intended to be and must be by them regarded as an eternal binding, an everlasting communion and friendship. A true unity of hearts once attained on earth is not dissevered in any of the worlds of God. "I love thee,” cried the poetess to her husband, “with the breath, smiles, tears of all my life and if God chooses I shall but love thee better after death.” The fulfilment of this hope is one of the great truths about the eternal realms revealed by Bahá’u’lláh.
The marriage ceremony contains the three elements, the personal, the social, the spiritual. But its unique impressiveness and beauty and power are due to the spiritual meaning which inspires it and the spiritual aspirations which it enshrines. The Bride and the Bridegroom stand before the Bride’s man, the Witnesses, and the Bahá’í Reader of their choice; but they stand also in heart and soul before the Mercy-Seat of their Great Father on High. Through their joint declared submission to His will and desire they win the privilege of a sacred union truly made in heaven. From God they seek blessing, happiness and strength for the years to come, and to Him they are directly responsible for the due performance of the precious, divine trust they have undertaken.
How often has ‘Abdu’l-Bahá written and spoken of the importance of unity in a home, basing it always on spirituality and telling of the radiance which it sheds afar and of the blessings which it draws down from above. With what power and what exaltation of joy does He in His ”Marriage Tablet” exhort united lovers to this unity! Here indeed is a picture of true marriage—both mystical and practical—which shines with the “light of the splendor of the love of God.”
He tells lovers how to meet the special
tests and strains to which their union may
be subjected. "The bond which unites
hearts most perfectly is loyalty,” He writes.
"True lovers once united must show forth
the utmost faithfulness one to another.”
But He adds at once that they are to dedicate
themselves first of all to God and that
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their hearts are to be "spacious, as spacious
as the universe of God.” He bids them to
beware above all of jealousy (which "vitiates
the very essence of love”) of any kind
of hypocrisy, of nursing a grievance or
making it known to others: rather they are to
consult together on their problems in
private and to show to one another the greatest
frankness and understanding. They are to
turn their hearts and their minds towards
high, happy, heavenly things and discuss
with one another their noblest thoughts and
aspirations. Their home is to be "a haven
of rest and peace,” for others as well as
themselves. "Be hospitable, and let the
doors of your house be open to the faces
of friends and strangers. Welcome every
guest with radiant grace and let each feel
it is his own home.”
They are to be examples of perfect love so that whosoever enters will "cry out from the heart, ‘here is the home of love,’ ” and that people will say to one another: "it is as though from all eternity God had kneaded the very essence of their being for the love of one another.”
Their children are a sacred trust from God to whose instruction and guidance they are to consecrate themselves.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá bids them nourish continually their union with love and affection: for it is like a tree, a living, growing, expanding, deepening thing bearing fruits of love and unity that will be "for the healing of the nations.” In one beautiful image after another He bids them fill their hearts with love, give themselves up to love, know nothing but love. They are to dwell in a paradise of love, "build your nest in the leafy branches of the tree of love. Soar into the clear atmosphere of love. Sail upon the shoreless sea of love. Walk in the eternal rose—garden of love. Bathe in the shining rays of the sun of love. Be firm and steadfast in the path of love. . . .” In these and all the other love-laden phrases which He uses He does more than urge in many forms again and again a lesson hard enough for imperfect beings to learn and apply. He reveals in these objective external images the real existence of a universe of love which only a lover knows and which only a lover can enter. This sweeter, fuller life may be a sea on which to sail, a sky in which to soar, a rose-garden in which to walk, a sun in whose rays to bathe, a path, a tree, a flower, a melody, an ocean full of pearls: but always it is a real world created for lovers, offered to lovers, laid open for their use, a world of unshadowed beauty and infinite delight wherein they may go forward together passing from discovery to discovery, from happiness to further happiness.
If this world be hidden from men it is hidden in the heart of Truth and the veil that blinds unloving eyes is the veil of inexperience and ignorance. It is, as He shows, of the essence of existence. If the lover sees his beloved transform for him the living earth around him, this is not an idle dream:
"Yours is not a conscious art;
’Tis the wild magic of your heart.
You but speak a simple word,
Often said and often heard,
When before my wondering eyes
An unveiled Paradise
Bursts about me into flower.
Here each nimble-footed hour
Daft with all the fun that’s in it
Dances like a madcap minute.
All the earth in light unfolden
Seems a chamber green and golden
Dight for love’s festivities;
And a thousand harmonies,
Softer, sweeter more endeared
Than my heart had ever heard,
Gush from every bank and rise
Fill the woods and touch the skies.
Wind and cloud and leaf and stream
Notes of purest music seem,
And all nature, like a choir‘
Tuned to the sun—god’s lyre,
In new hymns of jubilee
Chants her ancient ecstasy.”
Love is the true revealer and the passage
of time takes nothing from such a vision.
United lovers who through all the years
have fought side by side the rugged battle
of life unyielding, who have shared anxiety
and trial and sorrow, who have mingled
their tears together—tears of grief as well
as tears of joy, who have seen one another
falter and stumble and go on again, who
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have helped and been helped, have forgiven
and been forgiven, they know as none other
can know how precious is fellowship in
love, and with a fuller illumination and a
deeper thankfulness than of old they say
again the sacred verse that made them
forever one: “We are content with the will
of God; we are satisfied with the desire of
God.”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá was the Exemplar of the perfect life, and to His Word God gave creative power. This Tablet of His is itself a Marriage Song so exalted, so joyous, so triumphant, aglow in every part with overflowing, outpouring, illimitable, heavenly love that it makes love seem the Reality, the Essence of all existence, and puts all unlovingness to shame.
