Martyrdom of God's Spy

On the Martyrdom of God's Spy

By John Taylor; 2006 July 09

I dreamed this morning about ritual. What I remember is very vague, something about going to Anglican churches that were all empty until I came across this one dynamic priest who had a large, thriving congregation. His secret, he explained, was that he had innovated with rituals; he had found a way of being true to the old while reaching out to the new. I suppose I must explain that my father's family is Anglican, my Aunt is a lay nun and my Uncle Ron, now deceased, was a priest. Now that I think of it, perhaps this dream was in response to an internet "newspaper" article I read just before retiring to bed last night about how Steven Hawking recently asked this question to the Yahoo Answers List: "How can we assure the survival of human race over the next two hundred years?" He got tens of thousands of answers to his query, one of which was:

"If you really are Steven Hawking then you have already answered your own question, the only way to be sure is to begin colonizing the moons and planets of our solar system."

So it would seem that the answer given by my daemon in a dream was that renewing human rituals is the key to human survival. I rose out of bed, mechanically performed my morning rituals, which included 95 repetitions of the Greatest Name and reciting the Tablet of Ahmad. I plunked onto the sofa, waves of sleep inertia still washing over me and turned my mind over and over on that question, how can ritual be the answer? It is true that fundamental physical needs are not going to change. But it is unlikely that having everybody on earth performing the same exercise ritual at the same time will ever be feasible. The Chinese do it, it is true, with those outdoor Tai Chi dances, but it is hard to imagine that happening elsewhere, in every culture, least of all the individualist West.

Thomas happened to be alone with me for breakfast, as Mom was puttering and Silvie was in the bathtub. I didactically explained to him why breakfast is the most important meal of the day, how I make mine as balanced as I can, a cup full of Gazpacho for veggies, two free range eggs smothered in olive oil and ground flax seeds, a half cup of pomegranate juice, green tea, a high grain cereal with milk. He asked his typical, relevant questions, "If you could cover the head of a pin with atoms, would there be a million of them?" I did not know, but volunteered that electrons are much smaller, that you could squeeze a great deal more of them onto the head of that pin. "Would there be a million and ten, then?" he said, his eyes growing larger. Probably more, I speculated. The next comment followed in logical progression, at least for a six year old. He put his fingers together very close, "If you had an atom this big, then you probably could only squeeze one of them onto the head of a pin." Most probably, I replied.

I have noticed that for my daughter the life of the imagination is the big thing, she loves to write fictional stories about bats all day long. But Tomaso uses his imagination differently, it is pervaded with what you could call "if granny had wheels she would be a trolley-car" thinking. For example, yesterday I broke out the boxes of lego blocks that I had stored for years under the basement stairs, and he set to work on them in the garage, spending hours building a "spaceport." He mounted a defender canon on one wall of the space port and placed a space dragon behind to guard where it could not shoot. Now if I had said to him, as I often do, "Yes, but I have a super blaster here and will blast your spaceport out of the sky. "Yes," he would reply, "But if you did, I would have a super blaster reflector that would reflect it back to you and blow your ship out of the sky." For him his response is always a logical consequence of the attack. In imagination he is always prepared with an adequate, devastating response to any imagined dangers. In other words, he and Steven Hawking are very much alike.

Silvie is preparing a little drama starring her stuffed toys about the martyrdom of the Bab for the celebration at Anne Nichols home this afternoon, and she just came asking if it is all right to shine a light on the place where the Bab is. My on-the-spot judgment was that it would be irreverent to have the flashlight represent His Person but shining a spot on the place where he is would not be. "Can I use powdered sugar for the smoke of the guns?" Um, our hostess would probably not appreciate that on her living room floor. Try this white plastic, it looks a little like smoke. Then Thomas calls us both down to see the sets he has designed for the play. Silvie and I go down to the garage and see what he has prepared. It looks exactly like yesterday's Lego space port. Silvie is appalled and objects, "It is supposed to be set in Baghdad, not in space."

As you see, there are interruptions upon interruptions now that the kids are home from school and this morning I have just given up, forgot about concentrating, gone with the flow and just wrote about what was happening instead of doing what I wanted, joining forces with Steven Hawking to save the world. It was working for a while too, I was writing something. But wait, I am not supposed to be writing anyway, it is a Holy Day. I give up. Have a happy Martyrdom of the Bab. Talk among yourselves. Enjoy the occasion. Tomorrow I will turn my mind to the ritual whisperings of my ritual dream.

Oh, wait. I wanted to mention that over breakfast while talking to Thomas I cracked a new book that I had just bought from the Haldimand Library's remaindered book sale, one I read back in the 1980's called "The Discoverers," by Daniel Boorstin, and which has influenced me a fair bit over the years. Its headpiece quotation is what Lear said to his dying faithful daughter when he in mad despair hoped and dreamed that they might live a private, happy life together in peace:

"And take upon us the mystery of things, as if we were God's spies."

That is the ritual we need, a discovery of the mystery of things found out by God's spies. Like Hawking, we need to ask the right question, find out the way to make the human tragedy into a comedy, devise successful rituals without form, like the priest in my dream did, rituals to fulfill the essentials of human needs and leave room for diversity in what is not essential. That is what the Martyrdom of the Bab was all about anyway, wasn't it? Making invincible spaceports out of a barracks square in Baghdad. Wait a minute, the martyrdom did not take place in Baghdad, it was Tabriz, wasn't it? Excuse me while I check out some rehearsals.

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John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com