Waves

Counting Waves of Forgiveness

By John Taylor; 2007 June 04

Our Haldimand Assembly is sponsoring its last public meeting for this season next week. Betty Frost will be speaking about her book, "A Key to Loving," Tuesday June 12th at 8:00pm at the Garfield Disher Room of the Haldimand County Public Library. Here is the blurb on the poster we are distributing,

"How can we have creative, loving relationships with our life partner, relatives and colleagues? We all want love, but resentment, anger and hurt feelings often lock us out. What is the `Key'? The author of `A Key to Loving,' Betty Frost, will present some answers from the Baha’i Writings. A book signing will follow."

The other day I was visiting a friend in Smithville. We had an idle few minutes chatting on the street with an old timer. "You come from Dunnville, do you?" he said to me, "When I was young and I had to drive through Dunnville I would roll up the windows and go through without stopping. We used to call it Dodge City, what with all those bars and the crime and such." This came as a surprise to me, having lived here ten years. I guess I came to Dunnville from an even tougher town, Hamilton, so it seems mild to me. The only sign of that old Smithvillian's stereotype that I have seen is the drug dealing in Central Park, which I witness out our living room window. In Hamilton I never saw it being done openly in the parks, as it is here.

My spiritual dad, Jim, wrote with some further ideas for my idea of projecting a Baha'i film on my garage door during Mudcat Festival. He suggested showing photos of the Baha'i holy places in Israel, and offering a free handout of a brochure and even a DVD-ROM with the photos, Ocean and other electronic resources on it. I have ordered the "Promise of World Peace" video. I would like to use Jim's idea of showing photos as a promo for a later showing of the film. This does not work during the day, so we will have to do this on fireworks night, when there is some competition from overhead. I scrounged up an old, white window blind and when I tried it last night as a movie projection screen it was just perfect. Now I have a panoramic widescreen backdrop for my garage door cinema. No painter's drop cloth for us. Unfortunately my sister-in-law's laptop does not recognize the video projector as a second monitor, though it does recognize ordinary monitors. I will have to overcome this snag in order to have the photo show, though the film, when it arrives, should work direct from a DVD player.

On Saturday night I drove the kids to see Momka (Mommy, in Czech) perform in the Voices of Unity choir. It was their last concert for this season. The guest soloist was one Margaret Bardos, a soprano of truly spectacular talent. I swear she is the best singer I have ever heard in a live performance. Maybe some recorded voices I have heard were better, but recordings cannot compare to the real thing. I feel privileged to have heard her before she hits the big time. She only recently declared her belief in Baha'u'llah, I hear. Marie, who knows her, said that when she applied for the Mohawk College music program they told her she would never make a living with her voice. I think now that this my problem, why I never became a famous writer; nobody ever told me that had no talent and I would never make it as a writer. If somebody had conferred upon me that honor I would have set out to prove them wrong and would have made it.

The choir itself sounded much better than the last time I heard them; Marie thinks the problem before was the acoustics of the hall. Silvie will be old enough to join the choir next year but I had not been having much success persuading her that that would be a good idea. Until that concert. She came home humming her favorite tune of the evening, Ed Vandendool's "Counting Waves." The composer lives in nearby Brantford and was there to perform. You can hear the song, if you want, on Penny Filias's site, messageinabottle.com. It is about going to Akka and counting forty waves and gaining total forgiveness for all your sins, past and present, even as it was prophesied of old (specifically, in a Hadith cited at the end of the Epistle to the Son of the Wolf).

Silvie was singing "Counting Waves" to herself when I caught the spirit of the thing. I was inspired to do a bit of interpretive dance. Working the tune, I pranced like Tiny Tim counting tulips out into the surf,

"One, two, three, to the sea, Oh I am being forgiven, four five six, happy, happy, joy, joy, seven, eight, to the waves, la dee da!"

"Oh, Tata, stop! Please stop. I am serious."

You know some parents dread having teenagers, but I am looking forward with anticipation to her thirteenth birthday this summer. There is nothing to compare with the thrill of being regarded as the most uncool individual in the world. I never was all that cool in my youth, so now at least I have a shot at being the most uncool person in the whole wide world, ever. Maybe not for everybody, but at least in the eyes of one sweet little darling.

It really is a funny thought, though, that someday the residents of Akka will be able, thanks to the Baha'is running out to apply for Carte Blanche divine forgiveness by prancing like idiots in the waves, counting each and every one that hits them, to apply for status as one of the seven wonders of Israel. How could they lose? What could be more mysterious and wondrous than such a spectacle? Okay, I am making fun of Baha'is, but there is no reason to think that the wave dancers would not be Muslims too. The idea comes from a Muslim Hadith, after all.

Silvie did recover from her revulsion for my dance and, thanks to the song, started to ask about pilgrimage. Now she not only wants to join the choir, she also is asking for us to apply for pilgrimage. I might have to actually apply now, in hopes that within five years I can shoot up several tax brackets higher. Miracles do happen.

When I get negative feedback from my readers I work it out with the sender but when Anon dislikes what I write I must either leave it be or work it out here, on the Badi' list. I usually do the former, but in this case I think it is instructive to respond and deconstruct. Anon is admittedly a great poet, and the non-Baha'i anonymous is, I hear, far more abusive and profane than the Baha'i kind. Anyways, this is what Baha'ianon had to say about my latest,

"Dear John,

"I have gained much from your many thoughtful and creative ruminations. I offer this comment reluctantly in the spirit of constructive feedback. The insights and sometimes remarkable correlations you develop between established schools of thought and the Baha'i Revelation are unfortunately vitiated by your unwarranted criticisms of the work or efforts of others.

"Your comments about Momen are an example. Could you have not provided an overview of his thesis on mystical community and identified its pearls of wisdom instead of beginning with a comprehensive characterization of Momen's work as "dry"?

"Baha'u'llah's call for fairness demands exceptional spiritual effort on our part: `I testify that every man of equity hast recognized his unfairness in the face of the revelation of the splendors of the Day-Star of Thy Justice...' And the Words of the Master surely tell us the standard we should aim for: `We must ever praise each other. We must bestow commendation on other people, thus removing the discord and hatred which have caused alienation amongst men.' It is a standard which as the International Teaching Centre emphasizes, requires `mastering the art of effective encouragement.'"

"I don't expect you to post this, but I am sharing my heartfelt concern with you as a fellow follower of the Ancient Beauty. You have so much to offer, but please do not succumb to the old ways of caustic criticism and disputation which our Faith has come to abolish."

I was a little hard on Moojan Momen, wasn't I? But then again, as the most published Baha'i author in the world, do you really think that Dr. Momen is hurt that I, the least published Baha'i author in the world (with zero books to my credit), find his writing dry? What he writes is technically called "primary source materials"; it is designed either as a reference or for a narrowly defined audience. That audience does not include general readers like myself. To say that I find most of what he does dry is a comment on me, not on him.

In my experience with being criticized, I find that any dig at what I did not set out to do tends to bounce right off. Dr. Momen does not aim at being interesting. Why should he? A specialist does not expect to appeal to a wide audience, a scholar deals directly with source materials and reports them as found. Being dry is a virtue because it reduces distractions. He is very good at what he does and does not need me to say it. It would be arrogant to expect him to change one iota to appeal to more people.

In order to understand why I brought up the dryness of Momen, you have to appreciate what I was setting out to do, and especially the genre or medium in which I am writing. In the case of the Badi' list and the Badi' Blog, this genre is called the essay. An essay sets out to do what is in many ways the reverse of a specialized, formal book or paper. In other words, it tries not to be dry. "Essay" comes from the French, essai, or try, meaning originally an “irregular, undigested piece.” It is unfinished, it uses the first person; it is tentative, not afraid of making mistakes, and showing those mistakes front and center. When I do not know something I tell you. If Momen does not know something, he does not mention it; if he did, the reader would ask, "Why do you not find out?" In an essay mistakes are what it is all about. They are essential to the learning process that the essay describes. An essay mentions personalities, it brings in the author as a character, in fact usually the author is the central character. School essays are not allowed any of this, but the literary genre most emphatically, completely unapologetically, does.

Recently, a friend and reader whom I had not seen for a long time gave me the highest complement possible for an essayist (it would be an insult to a specialist like Momen). She said that she does not feel like we have been separated, that when she sees me it is just like a fictional character had just stepped out of a book. That is a good thing, because I and everybody I meet are an inherent part of what my essays deal with. That is how I learn, and I write about what I learn. If I learn from it, I write about it, be it my own blunders, books or the bugs I walk on accidentally in the street. It is hard for Anon to appreciate this, but it is so. If you forget, look at the top of badiblog.blogspot.com, where it says, "I am an essayist." I really mean that. I do not mince words. I write essays. I try not to write essays most of the time, I do it very unwillingly, but I know myself and I know by long and bitter experience that try as I might, that is what I do and probably always will.

In the case of Dr. Momen, I brought him up because I was trying to learn about mysticism in order to teach the Faith to my friend Stu (who fortunately does not have a computer and cannot read this, at least not yet). I was bending low to summon up the dredges of interest in mysticism, and failing. Ironically, the best source on Baha'i mysticism was by this notoriously dry writer, in the latest World Order Magazine. His essay, I said, was not uninteresting, not a totally arid desert. In fact it is very good. I have waded half way through, so far, and the question on my mind as I read was: Could I use this source material and make up a slide presentation that would not bore me to tears and that Stu would find persuasive? That, by the way, is the service that specialists render, they allow others to make use of their discoveries for the good of humanity. If you want to know more about what Momen says specifically, read the article for yourself. As always, it is impeccable work.

I am concerned in my essays about questions in my mind, because that is what essays are all about. It is a fact of human nature that most of our basic questions arise from personalities, and interactions of self with other individuals. Does that mean gossip or backbiting? Does the Baha'i Faith forbid the mention of personalities completely? If so, it would exclude the Baha'i essayist completely. We would be like Baha'i actors, who were asked to avoid that profession because of its present corruption, unless they have no other choice. In spite of that, there have been people who did well as both actors and Baha'is. Am I the only Baha'i trying to write essays? I cannot answer that. Should I be doing it? I cannot answer that either.

Actually, in my first decade as a writer (at the time it was all in the form of long letters to a handful of friends, long before the Net came along) I learned the hard way that there is an invisible line that is almost impossible not to cross sometimes. Being addressed to a few individuals who were not involved, most of the harm in my letters was avoided. My pile of letters will probably have to stay unpublished until long after I and those I knew are dead and gone. As the Writings say, when it comes to personalities, "Silence is best." But I had no choice, being so strangely ill, I had to write in order to keep my sanity. I still do. The question that is always on your mind is, "How do I write essays involving personalities and somehow avoid crossing the gossip line?" I am still learning, I still cross the line at times. I suppose that if I ever stopped learning it would be the last essay I ever wrote. I get burned, and others get burned too, by that terrible hellfire, but it is the same as any profession. If you are afraid of getting shot, do not become a cop or a soldier. If you are afraid of hellfire, do not be an essayist, or for that matter, do not read essays.

Having said all that, I was quite inspired by Anon's methodology of criticism. In its own way, it is a highly artful communication. If I knew you personally, Anon, any direct answer I give might be taken in a disputatious spirit, which is the very thing you criticize me for. Since I do not know you, and you chose anonymity, I feel free to learn from you. I have come up with the following general rules for the critical Baha'i, hampered as we are by the Writings against gossip and backbiting:

Rule One: Always sugar-coat your words with ample helpings of praise. This creates respect and goodwill and helps the bitter medicine go down. Stern fathers do the same thing, they whack their kids hard but hug them afterwards, they beat their wives to within an inch of their lives, but then they "make it all up" by bringing her flowers. One step back, two steps forward.

Rule Two: Be sure to make ample use of five dollar words. In spite of the name, they cost you nothing. Like anesthetics, they distance you from the imminent pain of the patient you are about to operate on. Everybody admires your learning, as well as your incisiveness.

Rule Three: Express reluctance. Your victim sees that you do not want to do it, and that has a soothing effect. A patient on an operating table watching his surgeon about to make the cut loves to see him shut his eyes just before making the slash. It shows he is confident and in control, and makes the next life seem all the more attractive.

Rule Four: Chain saws cut faster than electric knives. Always use scriptural authority to "energize" your cuts and reduce the chances of kickback. Unlike earlier, obsolete Holy Books, the Baha'i Writings cannot be misused. They are too holy, and mention the word "unity" with great frequency. The saying, "The devil quotes scripture" is passe, so make free use even of admonitions not to criticize to cut as fast and deep as you can.

Rule Five: When the shortcomings of a third party are mentioned, inadvertently, in passing, or even in your own imagination, do not miss your chance. Be sure to jump in in their defense. This sets you on the moral high ground of righteous indignation, of defending the helpless, those who, not being there, cannot defend themselves.

Rule Six: Make use of the "rhetoric of the dispossessed," which deflects retaliation like bullets off Superman's chest. The Mullahs of Iran do it, and look how well they do against Baha'is and Sufis. And if your relationship with those present is imperiled by your defense of whoever you find convenient to defend, well, that is just one of the costs of having superpowers.

Rule Seven: Never underestimate the power of humor. Not yours, theirs. Levity opens up a thousand opportunities for criticism. Whenever somebody makes a joke, take them seriously. When people speak metaphorically, take them literally. Never, ever take anything in the spirit in which it is offered.

Rule Eight: Sharpen your observation skills. Every slip and mistake you see is a chance for profit. Never overlook anything, never fail to point out a flaw to a person's face. People are stupid and have no idea. When they learn how stupid they are, it creates gratitude in their hearts and makes you loved of one and all. Others see the love between you and want to be a part of that too. Let your motto be, "One step back, two steps forward."

Rule Nine: Nine is the number of unity. When you go to Akka, count up your forty waves or forty thousand waves but never think that the only realistic way for sins, past, present and future ever to be washed away is for you, me and every believer to abide in the Prisoner of Akka by putting out the very eye that sees flaws in God's creatures. That would hurt. Easier and quicker is to dance like Tiny Tim, one step back, two steps forward.