Tuesday 15 May 2012

Many thanks, Baha'u'llah

Many thanks, Baha'u'llah, for coming to earth and suffering your whole life so that you could 'download' from the Houri a message saying that God, who I can never know directly, has come to call me home. For decades, I thought I was listening. But I wasn't. I was listening to people around me and Baha'i administration types and such like, and getting caught up in human affairs at all levels. And for years, I got caught up in my own dramas, which I thought had substance, but didn't.

Finally, I actually began to listen to you. And I began to hear you say that you wanted me to forget the world and tune in to you, your word and melody. Then I started to hear the mysteries. Now I'm not very good at keeping focused on you, but I know where I need to keep my attention. And, dear Baha'u'llah, I am grateful beyond all that you took the pains, which have lead me to eternal joy and freedom from the heartaches all around. To think that God created it all just so humans might know. I say 'wow' to what you have willed me to know.

Monday 7 May 2012

To the eternal I call thee

When Baha'u'llah says, time and again, to detach from the world, I've discovered that that includes not letting myself get caught up in world affairs. In the past, I've been so rapt up in the horrors that I have felt distanced from God. It's not that I don't care anymore; it's that I now recognise I am powerless and that the world is in God's hands not mine.

And so, I reach for my morning reading and discover these words of solace: "To the eternal I call thee, yet thou dost seek that which perisheth" (AHW 23). Gee, when Baha'u'llah puts it that way, I wonder why I get caught up in what's going on (for it does all perish). The idea of being called to the eternal sounds amazing. I like to try to experience the eternal inside me, so that I can answer Baha'u'llah's call to it. I try to locate that timeless joy, where all good is all about me. Wow, I'm so pleased Baha'u'llah trained me to read the writings and find this place. Can't wait to see what the eternal is like in the next world!

Sunday 6 May 2012

Back to Baha'u'llah

I haven't posted for a while. Some serious work came my way, and I had to give up things to do it. Also, I need to listen to Steve, who has given up saying to me that it is worth blogging about an idea that I think is obvious, and that takes only a paragraph to outline.

Ever into self-flagellating - that's me. And it has been a veil between me and God all my life. What is, essentially, a very simple message from Baha'u'llah - "love me and return to me" - I make complicated by turning it into hard work.

It's not about doing things, Alison; it's about being in love with one who is more worthy than anything else to make a claim on your heart.

'Just as soon as I'm finished this, I'll be with you, Lord.' Dah.

'No, Alison, come now. Forget that, and come now.'

Launching a new blog on my website

After about 18 months of umming and ahhing, I finally decided to go against the advice of the author community. That advice is to set up an ...