Love's Honour

Oneness of God, Love's Honour and the Honour of Love

By John Taylor; 25 February, 2006

In the Republic, Plato's Socrates is asked whether one is a
philosopher who has a taste for knowledge; is it enough that they are
curious and never satisfied with what they know? Socrates answers that
inquisitiveness does not suffice at all. There are any number of
dilettantes, tourists, amateurs and fans of obscure, abstruse
knowledge; these trivial specialists flit like intellectual
butterflies from flower to flower and never come away with anything
substantial from their whimsical quest. A true philosopher, he says,
is not an imitator but a true "lover of the vision of truth."
(Republic, Book 5, pp. 200-1) A lover loves the entire beloved, not a
part of her. The real lover marries a whole person and lives and
suffers together with her as one, throughout time and eternity; the
imitator of love is like a foot fetishist who gets a momentary rush
from contacting a token, a body part. Similarly, a lover of money
wants all wealth, not merely to hold a coin in his hand and savor it.
Love is never satisfied with anything less than the whole.

In more theoretical terms, love is holistic. It sees the world in
terms of virtue, breaking everything down into opposites, good and
evil, just and unjust, beautiful and ugly. There is good and its lack,
justice and its absence, beauty and its lesser forms. But these
opposites constitute two, not one. Love cannot be satisfied with two;
two is, in the mathematics of love, less than one. A lover of wisdom
looks beyond twos to the whole of love, to all truth. Nor are there
many ones, the good, the just, the beautiful. There is a One behind
all other ones giving them life, God that is. The true lover leaves
off the many for the One, saying in the words of the knight to his
lady, leaving on his quest for the Holy Grail,

"I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more."

Honor is our wintry month of Sharaf, the virtue for the time of
leaving, of goodbyes, of old age, of tragedy rather than comedy,
ultimately of death. Love is power, power over death and separation.

Every Friday night Stu and I play table tennis in the Youth Center and
there in the middle of everything, children running around her, balls
bouncing off her from time to time, sits Mrs. Richardson (I think her
name is), one of the most amazingly decrepit oldsters I have ever
seen. Every time she faithfully, precariously makes her way to the
center alone on her walker, defying ice and snow, the wheels of the
walker veering ominously toward the curb. Last night we met her on the
way, Silvie and Thomas playing racing games with each other that
suddenly seemed life-threatening to her, like pretty much everything
else in the world. Seeing the walker's desire to plummet her into the
road, I offered to pull it straight for her but, having no teeth, she
gummed something like, "Mmmm, mmum, grrble, mummurereble, mufflgum..."
Her manner seemed to indicate that she could handle it herself, so I
let her be and stood watch for plummeting kids until she reached the
insecurity of the Youth Center.

Last night Mrs. Richardson sat even more in the middle of it than
usual, right between where Stu and I were playing ping pong and where
Tomaso and nine-year-old Aron were playing a strange combination of
sports, a kind of floor hockey using whiffle paddles, a table tennis
ball and boots for goal posts. Later Aron's father, Bruce, challenged
Stu to a game and I had a rare moment in the youth center to sit in
idle repose and look at what was going on around me. I began once more
reflecting upon my longstanding question, why the heck does this poor
old babushka come here? Why take the risk? Everything here is a
standing peril, a clear and present danger to life and limb. This is
the last place she should be.

Then I put myself in her shoes, and I thought, this is exactly the
place I would be. It is the only place. What is the alternative?
Vegetating in front of a television? Gumming at people who do not
understand a word of what you are saying, and when they do, replying
in an inaudible voice? Sitting in secure silence, contemplating my
pains and disabilities? Do that and you are already dead. She is
clearly drawing life energy out of this frenetic youthful agitation,
even when looking down, seemingly lost in her knitting. And did not
Baha'u'llah tell the monks: "He that secludeth himself in his house is
indeed as one dead. It behoveth man to show forth that which will
benefit mankind." (Summons 1:136) I do not know how she is benefiting
others but she is certainly getting something out of this vibrant
atmosphere. I took out Silvie's little digicam and took a snapshot of
her there.

Then I thought how ironic it is that I, who believe so strongly that
there should be diversity of ages in every group, should have such a
sharply drawn example mounted right here before me. It is a picture I
could never make up; if you put it in a novel that a writer about age
diversity should spend his time here, it would not be credible. But
then I thought again. Mrs. Richardson has been coming here for quite a
while. For Christmas I remember that she covered a table tennis table
with her own gift for all, a selection of various dollar store
trinkets and baubles, take whatever you please. I began to think, is
this a strange irony or did her presence here give me this idea in the
first place? I honestly could not remember. Is this age diversity idea
my unconscious tribute to her, or is it her gift to me? Is this a
fruit of her desire to benefit mankind, not to sit as one dead
confined safe and secure in a moldering shell of a body idle in her
room? Hers is the honor that abides in wisdom, a wisdom above wisdom,
divine, the sort that the oneness of God "makes pure in the fire of
wisdom," as spoken of in the Bhagavad Gita (4:10),

"Many there be who come! from fear set free,
From anger, from desire; keeping their hearts
Fixed upon me -- my Faithful – purified
By sacred flame of Knowledge. Such as these
Mix with my being."

This Baha'u'llah, in the guise of the Great Being, said in the Lawh-i-Maqsud,

"The Tongue of Wisdom proclaimeth: He that hath Me not is bereft of
all things. Turn ye away from all that is on earth and seek none else
but Me. I am the Sun of Wisdom and the Ocean of Knowledge. I cheer the
faint and revive the dead. I am the guiding Light that illumineth the
way. I am the royal Falcon on the arm of the Almighty. I unfold the
drooping wings of every broken bird and start it on its flight."
(Tablets, 169)

May the Falcon start Mrs. Richardson and honorable lovers like her off
on their flight.

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com