By
Friday nights I am the second volunteer assistant at the Youth Impact Centre, along with its live-in youth pastor, Richard -- they have a rule that there must be at least two adults supervising at all times. Every time we meet, Richard asks me: "What did you write about today?" Better still, he is more than ready to listen to my answer. What comes out of that serves as our conversation while we hit the ping pong ball back and forth. Even though he does it every time, it still comes as a shock to have to verbalize what I wrote that day. Shock in a good way, because I learn from it. (Richard, as a Christian can ask me this question guilt-free. My Baha'i friends shy away, perhaps feeling that they should have read the Badi' blog entry for themselves, even though it comes out too late in the day for me to reasonably expect even the most avid reader to have seen it yet) My writing is too private, it is meant to be shared. I could not enjoy anything more than going over this daily essay, my pride and joy, as often as possible.
After I got over my usual surprise at being asked what I wrote, I told him about the theme of yesterday's essay, about Manbiot's book "Heat," and his ideas for solving global warming, and how Mo Tzu's proposals for a government that acts as an applied teacher ("...the task of the leader lies nowhere but in increasing the numbers of the talented.") jibes perfectly with what Manbiot says we need right away, a carbon rationing system, which would mean the formation of a body of officials of great integrity and initiative.
In the literal give and take, tit for tat, ping for pong of our table tennis discussion, Richard asked at one point a question he has asked a few times in the past, "What do you think of Canadian sovereignty?" I did not have a ready answer, nor did we have the chance to discuss it at length, so frequent are the interruptions. I could only comment that I find the answers that you encounter Ad Nausium in the media tedious. English Canadians usually end up defining our identity in contrast to Americans, which leads nowhere. But I slept on it and now will try now to give a better thought out answer to the question.
The first thing we should ask is: what is sovereignty? This time I will talk about that question in general, in a future essay about Canadian sovereignty in particular.
As Baha'is we are reminded by our holy Badi Calendar on a monthly and yearly basis that Sultan, sovereignty is an attribute of God. It comes almost at the end, in the winter season, and as such is a "golden," senior, or mature virtue. It is a virtue we expect to see in old age, whereas spring virtues like Jamal, Beauty, tend to be found in youth. Sovereignty, then, is above all a capital "S" sovereignty, a quality of God, and our own, human, small "s" sovereignty follows from that.
So, what is capital "S" Sovereignty? It surely means that God is our Sovereign, or King. A king is different from other sorts of leader. A king rules by inherent, inherited right, while other leaders serve in a limited, temporary capacity. I have read a few contemporary royals make this point: a sovereign is more, not less dependent upon the opinion of the people than a democrat. A king is born to his station and bears its burden over the long term. It is a family thing. A prince can often rule from cradle to grave. Power is born to them as a heritage, not as a reward or attainment.
In this age, princes are constitutional monarchs, meaning that they are relieved of the burden of direct power. They operate by personal knowledge, not theoretical (connaitre not savoir, to use the distinction built into the French language); they use charisma, inspiration and influence, similar to how the learned function in the Baha'i Administrative Order. But still, Baha'u'llah left a place for royalty in His Order, and we can imagine a Baha'i prince in future knowing personally and "having the ear" of several generations of members of the Universal House of Justice during his lifetime. This would lend the consistency and stability of tradition to the rule of the House from one generation to the next, just as royals do for lower levels of government.
Be that as it may, the fact is that since we were all created in God's image, we are meant to reflect His Kingship or Sovereignty. As Paul put it,
"For by him were all things created, in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through him, and to him." (
This bond is the basis of creativity, our greatest human heritage. From the highest to the lowest, all are mirrors of God's holy sovereignty. That is what we radiate out when we think of human rights, personal responsibility, and say things like: "there is no accounting for tastes." Eccentricity, ownership, independence, all are images of sovereignty in the individual, all flickering images of our reflective relation to the Most Great Sovereign. The Master put it as a motto: nearness is likeness. We are close to God insofar as we participate in His sovereignty as a family right. As members of His royal family, we gain independent privileges, such as the right to rule our own bodies and our own lives. This is Sultan.
Family is the first sovereignty, our basic expression as what Aristotle called "political animals." Family is the only political institution that is truly universal. As an Egyptian novelist recently expressed it: "No matter who it is, they are always somebody's son or daughter; that links us all, no matter what country we live in." I may not serve at the United Nations, but as a family member I know sovereignty intimately.
The touchstone of all virtues is love. To talk of sovereignty without love is to profane human relationships; it is to ignore the imperative behind the Parable of the Talents. Love by nature turns respect for a person's sovereignty into a family obligation that expects a long term return on every investment. This is why the Master taught that we should see everybody we meet as a family member, either a mother, father, brother, sister, son or daughter.
Mo Tzu made an important contribution to our understanding of the role of universality in sovereignty. The Confucians had argued that we must love our family members first and foremost. But Mo Tzu asked the pointed question of genius: what good does it do to respect and pay homage to my father and mother if everybody else treats their elders like bilge? Chances are, mom and pop are going to spend most of their time with people who are not their immediate kin. If so, the thing that will help them most is universal love, not filial duty. If love were universal, all would treat their elders with the respect and kindness that they do their own parents. This would benefit my parents far more than anything I can offer them as help. Even were I go to extraordinary, superhuman lengths to help, the fairness and kindness of strangers is what is most likely to do them most good.
Abdu'l-Baha, using an image used also by the stoic philosophers, pictured the degrees and relations among the various sovereignties as a series of concentric circles. First there is a point, the individual, then it widens out to family, then city, province, country, continent, and then the whole planet. There are other circles of unity, such as the language we speak, our ethnicity, skin color, whether we are male or female, and so forth. None of the circles crosses any other because there is one God, one truth, one planet, one people.
There can never be contradiction or conflict as long as the truth stays where it has sovereign right: foremost in our minds. Each circle of unity is an element of the other. But we can and do cross the circles. We short circuit sovereignties every time we forget principle and break our sacred covenant with truth, the invisible agreement that vivifies all levels of sovereignty.
A video I saw lately really helped me understand how these circles are centered out by a unique new law established in the Aqdas. It is called "Huququ'llah, The Right of God." I highly recommend this two-part video presentation. Drop this essay and order it right away. The first section consists of the most concise history of the Faith I have ever seen. While talking about the Siyyih Chal, for example, it actually shows a video of that horrible but holy location (this footage must have been smuggled in from
In sum, the message of the talking heads in the video, based on the Writings, is that Baha'u'llah established Huqquq as a unique, direct link between the point, the individual, and the center of the Faith, the House of Justice. Unlike other funds in the Cause, this goes by right, 19 percent of equity, with no earmarking or any other say in how it is spent, straight to the
So, the picture of other sovereignties is like a point surrounded with concentric circles, but the Huqquq is a fountain or underground river leading straight from the point to the center of the world, unifying the other circles from top down as well as bottom up; giving it joyfully unites our heart with all hearts through Him, in His paradise.
"As to the Righteous, they shall drink of a Cup (of Wine) mixed with Kafur,- A Fountain where the Devotees of God do drink, making it flow in unstinted abundance. They perform (their) vows, and they fear a Day whose evil flies far and wide. And they feed, for the love of God, the indigent, the orphan, and the captive,- (Saying), `We feed you for the sake of God alone: no reward do we desire from you, nor thanks. We only fear a Day of distressful Wrath from the side of our Lord.'" (Qu'ran 76:5-10, tr: Yusuf Ali)
No comments:
Post a Comment