Mustagath

Local News and an Invocation for Protection

By John Taylor; 2008 Jan 16, 17 Sharaf, 164 BE

NSA member Gordon Naylor was able to speak at Mrs. Javid's Fireside tonight, so she bumped the lineup by one week. She complains that no Baha'is are bringing contacts, so please make a special effort to come with all your buddies. Gordon is surely among the best-informed and funniest speakers in the Baha'i world, so come out even if you are friendless. As of yesterday, here is the latest schedule:

Here are the upcoming Wednesday night firesides at Mrs. Javid's home in Flamborough. If you live in the area, please distribute this information to your community.

January 16, 2008; Gordon Naylor, So Famous no Topic is Needed

January 23, 2008; Sam, "Science and Religion."

January 30, 2008; Anne Pearson, "Environmental Crisis, Spiritual Crisis."
Poster text: "If our worldview shapes our environment, then the cause as well as the solution to global warming is essentially spiritual."

February 6, 2008; Feast (no fireside)

February 13, 2008; Peter Gardner and John Taylor, "Baha'i Proofs of the Existence of God."
Poster title: "Is there a God, or what?"
Poster text: "Is there a God? How do we know? What proves that He exists? What does not? The Baha'i proofs of deity differ radically from earlier attempts to answer these questions."

All are welcome to come investigate the Baha'i Faith every Wednesday evening at 8:30 pm at 132 Hillcrest Avenue, Dundas. For more information, call (905) 627-0352.

This Badi' Blog is perhaps the most frequently updated in the Baha'i world, but there is a difference between quantity and quality. I freely admit that the Barnabas Quotidianus Blog beat me out for quality when it reported on a first-hand visit to the holy land for the celebration of the first of the twin birthdays last week. If you have the Baha'i calendar program, "New Day Calendar," you would have seen these holy days coming up and wondered why Hijri dates are honored at the world center. It is all explained in Leith's blog entry, "Celebration of the Birthday of the Bab in Haifa January 12th, 2008"

Entry in the Barnabas Quotidianus Blog:
http://www.leithjb.net/blog/2008/01/12/celebration-of-the-birthday-of-the-bab-in-haifa/

We in Dunnville have a couple of members of our Baha'i community in this batch of pilgrims. They are still in Haifa, so expect to be hearing on this blog more about this two day holiness extravaganza from Ron and Cheryl when they get back, which will be within a few days.

 film: "Glorious Sacrifice" Cinequest Film Festival
 Badi' Blog reader Pat Reid writes: This is truly a wonderful video and has left me with feelings of confirmation, sadness, joy and determination. I hope this video will touch you as it has touched me. The site says about it: "A Canadian artist, a native of Iran, examines short letters from a father whose accounts were secretly passed on by a sympathetic guard in the prison. By painting an expression of the ordeal, the artist explores the injustices linked to the roots of his martyred father."
 http://www.jaman.com/a/video/0WxEborvv5Pk/

Prayer for Protection: Ya Allah El-Mustagath

 This prayer caught my attention this morning: Ya Allah al-Mustagath. It has been translated by: "O Thou God from Whom relief and help is sought most urgently." I have also seen Mustaghath translated as "The One who is invoked for help," or even "One invoked."

 When I became a Baha'i I was told that this is a premium prayer; you are not to say it lightly, only during an earthquake or disaster or other emergency of momentous import. In ordinary distress use the lower octane, "Ya Baha'u'l-Abha." If it is something really trivial that just troubles "deaf heaven with your bootless cries," you can always resort to the bronze, the slim economy model, the simple "Allah'u'Abha."

 Anyway, what happened was that I finished Hitjo Garst's "From Mountain to Mountain," and started looking around for stories about Abdu'l-Baha for the almost-daily Baha'i children's class we have been holding in our house. I tried to get Garst's new sequel, which is available on the George Ronald Oxford website. I called the Canadian BDS, host of the site, "Baha'i Books Online," but they had never heard of it. I have been meaning to order it from England but have not got a Round Tuit. Too busy writing about it...

 Anyway, meanwhile a non-Baha'i friend whose kids are studying the Faith requested a story about the Master that shows Him interacting with people of various cultures and religions. Actually, the NSA asked us to do that a couple of years ago, and I tried to find such an anecdote and failed. Can anybody out there help me with this?

 In my search for stories about the master I came across a very obscure but interesting collection of personal stories and anecdotes... No, I think that maybe somebody sent this reference to me. If it was you, sorry.. anyway it is apparently a taped and transcribed record by an early believer, transcribed virtually without editing, and it is to be found on the Baha'i Academics Library Site. The following is the first story in the book, and judging by its quality this book is going to feature prominently, both on the Badi' Blog and in our Almost-Daily Children's Class.

 O Thou Help Me... (Story told by Ali Kuli Khan, one of the translators for the Master, in 1933)

 It was in 1912 that Dr. Ali Kuli Khan - preparing for the visit of Abdu'l-Baha to Washington - began to consider the questions he would ask Him upon His arrival. And, thinking it over, Dr. Khan realized that the one thing he wanted most to know was some prayer he might utter quickly and from deep within his heart, when the moment came when, as the representative of his country (then Persia) in Washington he must make some instant diplomatic decision.
 When these moments came, as they did frequently - Dr. Khan felt that while he always sincerely did his best, his wisdom was very limited and finite. If only he might have a prayer that would draw to him a greater wisdom -- "Ah, if he only might have such a prayer."
 So the day came when Abdu'l-Baha was to arrive and Dr. Khan, accompanied by the Washington believers, drove to the station to meet Him. The greeting was warm and deeply moving, and Khan's heart was still filled with this one question he wanted most to ask the Master.
 And they were perhaps halfway back, driving up Pennsylvania Avenue, when Abdu'l-Baha suddenly told Khan this story:
 It had happened when Baha'u'llah had been gone from Baghdad for some two years. At that time no one knew where He was and all hearts were sick with the fear that they never would see Him again.
 At this time Abdu'l-Baha was a small boy, and the continued absence of His Beloved Father had become unendurable. So, one night, all night long, the little boy (whom, even then, Baha'u'llah referred to as The Master) paced restlessly up and down saying, shouting, beseeching, "Ya Allah el Mustaghas! Ya Allah el Mustaghas!" all night long.
 And in the morning, when dawn was breaking, a messenger came to the door to say that a stranger was at the city gate and had sent word to the family that He wished them to bring to Him fresh raiment and water to bathe in... So Abdu'l-Baha knew His beloved Father had returned.
 And Dr. Khan knew the cry that he, too, might utter in his moments of need Ya Allah el Mustaghas (which I am told means Oh, Thou help me in my extremity!).
http://bahai-library.com/ives/stories/HELP.HTM

 Another source on the Web offers another version of the invocation.

 Prayer for Urgent Needs

 This prayer was revealed by Baha'u'llah for Mirza Abul Fazl when the latter went into exile with the promise that if he would use it any juncture, help would come. (This prayer is to be used at midnight. followed by the recitation of the Greatest Name 95 times, using "Ya Allah El-Mustagath", which means "O Thou God from Whom relief and help is sought most urgently.")
 Prayer:
 "O My God! I beg Thee by the King of Names and Maker of heaven and earth, by the rustling of the leaves of the Tree of Life, and by the Utterances through which the realities of things are drawn unto us, to grant me [here name your supplications and wishes]"
(Star of the West, Sep 1923, Vol. 14, No. 6, p. 166)

 <http://apples.pupiloftheeye.net/Ya_Allah_El_Mustagath.html>

 This note appears on a site by an African American Baha'i writer on health and prayer; it entices the attention of a scatterbrained browser like myself, and the book she is plugging here promises many more such lesser-known supplications. I signed on to periodic newsletter. Her site is:

 <http://apples.pupiloftheeye.net/>

 Another location, also on the Baha'i Academics Library, offers another prayer, this time from a Tablet of Baha'u'llah Himself. The prayer is very short and comes at the end of a very short tablet. It is a work known as the Tablet of the Four Waves, or Waves of Mustagath, Alwah-i-Mustagath and was provisionally translated by Stephan Lambden,

 "Praise be unto Thee, O my God, my Master and My Support! Preserve Thy saintly ones from the evil of Thine enemies and render them victorious through the hosts of Thy Power and Thy Sovereignty. Do Thou make every single one of their deeds to be a lamp among the deeds of whomsoever is upon Thine earth, such that it might transform darkness into Light. Thou art indeed the King of the Divine Theophany and the Judge on the Day of Gathering. No God is there except Thee, the Ultimately Real, the Knower of things unseen." <http://irfancolloquia.org/28/lambden_amvaj>

It seems that the Bab in the Bayan used the term "Mustagath" as a general description of the coming Age, and perhaps the suffering of Baha'u'llah. I do will not get into that; I am hardly qualified to discuss it anyway, and time is running out for today. I did want to share a little discovery that I found after the third or fourth page of Google references to the keyword "Mustagath." It is, as far as I can see, a story told by a non-Baha'i about his experience in Vietnam. Evidently a Baha'i told him to say it, and this is what he says happened. Having read this fellow, one Don Child's anecdote, definitely, I do not care how high-octane this prayer is, you are going to hear me troubling deaf heaven with it on a regular basis.

"... The prayer that I recited was a one-line Bahai prayer in Persian. It had been given to me by a friend, who told me to say the prayer in times of extreme distress. It went something like "Ya Allahal Mustagath." I repeated this over and over during the five-minute ride to the ridgetop. As we neared the embattled landing zone, I could smell attar of roses, and I was soon in the midst of a full-blown mystical experience. In the midst of gunfire, I was in Paradise!
"I had to jump from the chopper when it was still ten feet off the ground because we came under fire from an NVA machine-gun emplacement. Still, the smell of a rose garden hung in the air. For two hours, I was moving around the hilltop taking care of wounded. I felt totally invulnerable, and in fact had a grenade slap me in the back of the leg without injuring me." <http://www.noetic.org/publications/stories/tales/main.cfm?page=child1.htm>