I Blog Poetry and Prose

What is time?
Is time a hostage of the material world?
Is the material world a hostage of time?
Is time and the material world loves eternally entwined?

Yesterday evening, I attended the Zoom meeting of the Feast of Questions. The above quote is one that I picked out for the Feast readings, it comes from a talk given by 'Abdu'l-Baha in 1912. The specific question he discussed, at that time, was the equality of men and women. Gender equality is one of the basic teaching of Baha'u'llah, and one of the topic 'Abdu'l-Baha spoke about when he came to America in 1912. There are, of course, other important questions facing humanity today. Some of them Baha'u'llah and 'Abdu'l-Baha wrote about, while other questions they didn't specifically mention in the sacred writings.

Today we celebrate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights  , which was released by the United Nations on December 10, 1948. While the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was released in the twentieth century, it was in the mid-nineteenth century that Baha'u'llah, the prophet founder of the Baha'i Faith, established human rights as God given rights. In 1912, 'Abdu'l-Baha, the son of Baha'u'llah, gave a talk in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in which he spoke about ten teaching of Baha'u'llah. One of those teaching was an "equal standard of human rights".

God is the answerer
of all prayers and all questions:
each age, aeon, epoch, and dispensation
has it own needs
and its own questions.

On the first Monday in December 2020,
I have tied
the knot in my rope,
and I am hanging on,
as I dangle above the chasm
of the New Year.

For me, December isn't the Holiday Season. If one of my friends or family invites me to their holiday celebration, I will go and participate in the celebration out of respect for my friend or family member. When I go out in public--this year I will be wearing a mask--I will say Happy Holidays, because I don't know which winter holiday the person I'm talking to celebrates. If someone says Merry Christmas, I will respond with a Merry Christmas. Otherwise, I will smile--under my mask--and say Happy Holidays.

December isn't a joyful month for me, and I'm not sure it ever was. The short, usually cloudy, days, and the long dark nights make me sad. I've never--that I can remember--went to a movie in December. As a child, I watched holiday specials on television, and enjoyed them. I listened to Christmas carols in church, radio, or played them on the record player; I always enjoyed the songs. This enjoyment alleviated the sadness (the depression) for a little while, but it didn't dissipate it. Plus, having a birthday on December 24 didn't help my mood.

I raise my voice in praise of the Word of God--
the monarch of all words--
and the mirror of His attributes to humanity.
who in this day is Baha'u'llah,
the Glory of God.

I remember a December night
when the stars were glittering lights
adorn the dark boughs
of a celestial fir tree.

The light ignited
by the Glory of God
now burns bright
in the spiritual realm,
the Kingdom of Abha,
the Abha Paradise.

On this most auspicious day,
I contemplate 'Abdu'l-Baha--
the Center of Baha'u'llah Covenant--
the Most Mighty Branch,
the Most Great Branch,
the Mystery of God,
the Perfect Exemplar,
the Master,
and the Servant of Baha.

Poetry
is the language of the spirit--
the dialect of the human soul--
the verses
of all the world's sacred scriptures
echo the voice of the Holy Spirit,
and reverberate
with God's love for humanity.

Twenty-twenty draws to an end--
it's the year hasn't been a friend,
the year of the coronavirus pandemic,
and the year humanity realized
that racism is an epidemic.

Slowly,
we are moving
toward a new normal,
in which xenophilia--
not xenophobia--
is the norm.

What a wondrous gift
God h as given humanity
in this age of turmoil and stress;
words of comfort
to guide us into maturity.

War poems reverberate through the dawn,
a tribute to heroes--
both the living and the dead--
who left their homes
and gave their all
for their country.

Unity's circle is drawn,
it encompasses all humanity--
no matter what the color,
the creed,
the nation,
or the culture--
we are all one species,
one family.

Gratitude is transformative!
Each day brings new reasons to be thankful,
and to express thanks
to the Lord.

Until I read "Spiritual Newsletter (November 4, 2020)" , I had never heard of a Spiritual Biography. After reading Lilli ☕ 's description of one, I realized that was something I have been contemplating for a few years. This year's NaNoWriMo project "Epistles From My Soul" , while it isn't exactly a spiritual biography, comes close to one. In this book, I am writing letters to people who have passed into the spiritual world. So far I have written letters to Baha'u'llah, The Bab, my Mother, my Father, and my paternal Grandfather. I plan to write letters to my paternal Grandmother, my maternal Grandmother, my maternal Grandfather, and about four other people.