It's December 21st. Solstice for some, Yule for others, frantic shopping day for some people. Some of us are getting ready for Christmas stuff in various guises, other people are getting ready for Hanukkah...this time of year has a lot of celebrating in it.
As a Baha'i, I actually don't have any holidays of my own this time of year. I celebrate Christmas with my family and friends, but the next "big thing" for me and other Bahai's isn't until Ayyam-i-Ha in February. The next actual Holy Day is Naw Ruz, which is all the way away in March. I love so many Christmas traditions, though. People make extra efforts to see each other, we all have foods that we only seem to get to around this time of year, I get to spoil people I like (although I am still more prone to "hey I thought of you so here's a cool thing I found" style gifting, more than anything)...it's good stuff.
But right now, I find myself reflecting less on Christmas itself, and more on what sort of things it has in it. What do traditions look like? What things do I like about it? What could I do without? What makes it special?
You see, this is the first year I've been a Baha'i. So a lot of this year has been me learning a lot about what general stuff happens in a Baha'i life - what do holy days look like? Some are somber and reflective, some are full of joy and delight. What does Nineteen Day Feast look like? What does devotional life in my community look like?
I've learned a LOT. I've learned my community is amazing and caring and full of life and joy. I've made friends that I feel like I've known my whole life, and I've learned how to find my feet and my space and my path of service. But a lot of it has been me learning what things are, and now that I know what Ridvan is and what Naw Ruz is and what the fast looks like...now I get to figure out what sort of traditions I might like to build for myself around them.
Maybe I want to borrow some stuff I already know. Ayyam-i-Ha is about generosity and charity, so I can borrow some of Christmas's traditions there. I can find ways to share of my time and energy and love. Ridvan is about delight and change and renewal - I can borrow a lot of Christmas's childlike joy for that. Plus, gatherings usually mean food, so I can pull out my mom's shortbread recipe, and make speculaas cookies, and all the other things I love to make for holidays.
And maybe I'll figure out new things I like. Friends have told me about origami birds and toy camels and trees and dinners they hold and songs they sing and I don't know if I want to do any of that, but I know some of it sounds pretty fun. I'm going to get to make whole new traditions - some will draw on my past, some will be from my present, and some might be completely brand new things. Like the Twin Holy Birthdays are always going to mean cake and bright happy things, because to me, that's what birthdays need.
The fun part is? There's not really rules about any of this. In fact, we're told often to avoid strict rituals and tradtions (beyond things like the obligatory prayers, and so on). We're told that this is supposed to be for the whole world, and we value unity in diversity so much, that we don't want to tell people how they're supposed to do this stuff. Find ways to celebrate that suit you, your community, your family, all of that. If it doesn't feel good or right or proper, it's okay to let it go. And I like that. I like that I'm going to find paths through these things that fit me and the people around me and the people I care about. It's going to be a series of adventures, and they might not always be the same. It's gonna be a good ride, I think.
Saturday, December 21, 2019
Thursday, December 12, 2019
May An Elephant Caress You With His Toes
It's that time of year where everyone starts wanting you to think about the year that's almost over. What did you do? What did you miss? What was good? What was bad? What books did you read, what music did you listen to, how did your life change over the past 525600 minutes, 365 days, all of these moments, how did they shape you? And it's almost the end of 2019, so people are getting extra fluttery over things because "its the end of a decade", so you get all those questions, but ever the louder.
None of us are the same person we were a decade ago. None of us are the same person we were a year ago. Heck, I'm not even sure that the Ash-that-was-yesterday is the same Ash-that-is-today (I certainly sneezed a lot less yesterday. Thanks, ever-evolving cold-thing). Change happens, slowly but surely. We're not the same as we were, but we're us, still. The core things that make us...us are still there. Even if everything feels impossible different.
I was making my bed this weekend, and I noticed my blankets. It's winter, so I have quite a few on my bed right now (and since my husband knows me well enough to not share with me because he's gonna end up cold and blanket-less because I burrito into all the blankets, there's even more on the bed). In a way, the blankets on the bed tie me to who I am, in the core of myself.
On my side of the bed, the bottom layer is a quilt my Nana gave me that I've had for...many years. I can't remember how long I've had it, but it's been in my life long enough that at some point, someone (my sister, I think?) put a new backing on it (which happens to be one of my old bedsheets). It reminds me of her so often when I snuggle into bed. My Nana gives excellent hugs, and she is always quick to tell a joke or say something that makes you smile. I can feel that, under her blanket.
The second layer is a quilt my sister made - when she got married, all her attendants (is that the right word? Her bridemaids and stuff) got a quilt she made out of old clothes and other things of hers. I can tell you about almost all the fabrics on it - so many memories of ridiculous adventures we had. My sister is very much my partner in absolute joy and silliness, and her quilt holds all of that.
The top layer right now on my side is a GIANT thick fuzzy blanket with a moon and star theme. My parents gave it to me when I was in my teens, I think. Maybe younger. It comes out only in the winter, when I am super cold. It's like all their love is so strong that it fills the blanket and keeps me so warm, that I can't use it most of the time.
When it's too hot for that blanket, I often have this amazing purple and yellow sunflower quilt that my mother in law made for my husband and I when we got married a couple years ago. It's made of so many pieces, and I know it took her a really long time to make. I think about how much love and dedication she put into it, and how much love she sends to us from far away. (She's still living in the US, and we're in Canada.)
My blankets help ground me in a whole lot of love. Whoever I was, whoever I am going to be, whoever I am - I am loved. I have all of this love stored in all of these blankets (and those are just the ones that are on my bed, there are more in my closet that are full of love and stories too). I am a daughter and wife and granddaughter and friend and sister and a whole lot of other things that aren't going to disappear any time soon. I am very lucky to have a family that surrounds me with love and warmth, even if they're not right here to give me a hug. My blankets are proof of that.
Family is important - one of the things the Baha'i Faith talks a lot about is the idea that we can't have world unity if we don't have family unity. I like how making my bed is a very physical reminder of the unity my family has created, and how blessed I am to have it.
On my side of the bed, the bottom layer is a quilt my Nana gave me that I've had for...many years. I can't remember how long I've had it, but it's been in my life long enough that at some point, someone (my sister, I think?) put a new backing on it (which happens to be one of my old bedsheets). It reminds me of her so often when I snuggle into bed. My Nana gives excellent hugs, and she is always quick to tell a joke or say something that makes you smile. I can feel that, under her blanket.
The second layer is a quilt my sister made - when she got married, all her attendants (is that the right word? Her bridemaids and stuff) got a quilt she made out of old clothes and other things of hers. I can tell you about almost all the fabrics on it - so many memories of ridiculous adventures we had. My sister is very much my partner in absolute joy and silliness, and her quilt holds all of that.
The top layer right now on my side is a GIANT thick fuzzy blanket with a moon and star theme. My parents gave it to me when I was in my teens, I think. Maybe younger. It comes out only in the winter, when I am super cold. It's like all their love is so strong that it fills the blanket and keeps me so warm, that I can't use it most of the time.
When it's too hot for that blanket, I often have this amazing purple and yellow sunflower quilt that my mother in law made for my husband and I when we got married a couple years ago. It's made of so many pieces, and I know it took her a really long time to make. I think about how much love and dedication she put into it, and how much love she sends to us from far away. (She's still living in the US, and we're in Canada.)
My blankets help ground me in a whole lot of love. Whoever I was, whoever I am going to be, whoever I am - I am loved. I have all of this love stored in all of these blankets (and those are just the ones that are on my bed, there are more in my closet that are full of love and stories too). I am a daughter and wife and granddaughter and friend and sister and a whole lot of other things that aren't going to disappear any time soon. I am very lucky to have a family that surrounds me with love and warmth, even if they're not right here to give me a hug. My blankets are proof of that.
Family is important - one of the things the Baha'i Faith talks a lot about is the idea that we can't have world unity if we don't have family unity. I like how making my bed is a very physical reminder of the unity my family has created, and how blessed I am to have it.
Friday, November 29, 2019
Forever Flicker in Closeup
I am...not a small person. I take up space. I'm 6 ft tall, and roughly 300lbs. I'm a giant, and I love it. I don't care to be tiny - my body serves me well, and does a lot of amazing things for me and with me. It gets me where I need to go, it lets me give really good hugs, it's good for a lot. I'm used to taking up space, it's not a new concept. I thought me and my body were on pretty good terms - I love it, it loves me, I make sure to feed it vegetables more often than cake, I rest when I need to, all of that good stuff. I'm not perfect, but I try.
But...lately, I've discovered that me and my body aren't always as good at talking to each other as I thought. I've started doing bellydance - very casual intro stuff taught by someone I very much value. It's fun, but...it's hard. And not just physical work hard - that I expected. I expected learning to move in new ways using new muscles would be an adjustment, and it is. What I didn't expect, was how much my brain make my body resist.
It's supposed to be about surrender - about letting the music show you what it wants, how your body should move. It's a conversation, it's freedom...it's a lot of me forgetting where my feet are, because there's a disconnect somewhere in my middle. It's me being terrified to move, to flow, to let go. It's not about how I will look - I'm a fat human, I'mma gonna wobble like a giant jello. It's about...moving and taking up the room and not being good at it and letting myself feel it and move in ways that aren't "proper", are just feeling and sensuality maybe and just...surrendering.
I never realized how tightly I hold myself. I try so hard to make sure I take up just enough space, but not too much space, that any of myself doesn't touch anyone sitting beside me on the bus, that I am as small as I can be so that people don't call me out on the ways they find my size offensive or annoying. My husband remarks on how my shoulders are always tight, from hours of holding myself just so. I don't even realize I'm doing it, most of the time. I'm just used to accepting I take up space, and hoping that enough other people don't notice in uncomfortable ways til I get through the day.
I have no desire to lose lots of weight (and I know how impossible, statistically, that all is anyhow). I'm cool with being soft and curved and how my butt fills my jeans. I just...don't know how to move, how to let go. how to feel the beat of the music, that audacious conversation, and to let go long enough to let myself be a part of it. Anyone who has gone dancing with me has heard me refer to myself as an electrocuted octopus, because I don't know how to just...let the music talk, without all of my brain screaming at it about how this is NOT OKAY.
I'm trying to undo that. I'm trying to get through years of purity culture, of church teaching me that True Love Waits and the world insisting that as a person in a woman-shaped meat suit...I need to be quiet and submissive and how dare I enjoy this magical gift of a body that God gave me.
I'm *done*. I'm tired! I don't wanna listen. Maybe I will make a terrible bellydancer. Maybe my limbs WILL be everywhere and maybe I *can't * figure out the 1-2-3 beat and maybe I will just be all jello all over the place....but maybe...that's okay. maybe it's okay to just...love myself in all of my learning to let go, to surrender, to let myself be a part of that conversation.
Abdu'l-Baha reminds us that we should "[r]eflect upon the inner realities of the universe, the secret wisdoms involved, the enigmas, the inter-relationships, the rules that govern all. For every part of the universe is connected with every other part by ties that are very powerful and admit of no imbalance, nor any slackening whatever." I am connected with every other bit of the world, with the music and sounds and feelings and people and everything. I'm allowed, even encouraged, to be a part of that. We're all one thing, many pieces of one whole. So I'm not letting go, so much, as just...letting myself feel the music and be one with it, and find the ways it is tied to me and I am tied to it.
After all, as one of my most favourite quotes from Abdu'l-Baha reminds me, "Consider the flowers of a garden. Though differing in kind, color, form, and shape, yet, inasmuch as they are refreshed by the waters of one spring, revived by the breath of one wind, invigorated by the rays of one sun, this diversity increaseth their charm, and addeth unto their beauty. How unpleasing to the eye if all the flowers and plants, the leaves and blossoms, the fruits, the branches and the trees of that garden were all of the same shape and color! Diversity of hues, form and shape, enricheth and adorneth the garden, and heighteneth the effect thereof. In like manner, when divers shades of thought, temperament and character, are brought together under the power and influence of one central agency, the beauty and glory of human perfection will be revealed and made manifest."
So maybe right now I'm just a shaky little sapling in the wind, but it's a start. I am giving myself permission, right now, to let go, to move, to stop letting the old world drag me down by my toes. If we wanna change the world, we gotta learn how to move. So...I'm gonna dance.
But...lately, I've discovered that me and my body aren't always as good at talking to each other as I thought. I've started doing bellydance - very casual intro stuff taught by someone I very much value. It's fun, but...it's hard. And not just physical work hard - that I expected. I expected learning to move in new ways using new muscles would be an adjustment, and it is. What I didn't expect, was how much my brain make my body resist.
It's supposed to be about surrender - about letting the music show you what it wants, how your body should move. It's a conversation, it's freedom...it's a lot of me forgetting where my feet are, because there's a disconnect somewhere in my middle. It's me being terrified to move, to flow, to let go. It's not about how I will look - I'm a fat human, I'mma gonna wobble like a giant jello. It's about...moving and taking up the room and not being good at it and letting myself feel it and move in ways that aren't "proper", are just feeling and sensuality maybe and just...surrendering.
I never realized how tightly I hold myself. I try so hard to make sure I take up just enough space, but not too much space, that any of myself doesn't touch anyone sitting beside me on the bus, that I am as small as I can be so that people don't call me out on the ways they find my size offensive or annoying. My husband remarks on how my shoulders are always tight, from hours of holding myself just so. I don't even realize I'm doing it, most of the time. I'm just used to accepting I take up space, and hoping that enough other people don't notice in uncomfortable ways til I get through the day.
I have no desire to lose lots of weight (and I know how impossible, statistically, that all is anyhow). I'm cool with being soft and curved and how my butt fills my jeans. I just...don't know how to move, how to let go. how to feel the beat of the music, that audacious conversation, and to let go long enough to let myself be a part of it. Anyone who has gone dancing with me has heard me refer to myself as an electrocuted octopus, because I don't know how to just...let the music talk, without all of my brain screaming at it about how this is NOT OKAY.
I'm trying to undo that. I'm trying to get through years of purity culture, of church teaching me that True Love Waits and the world insisting that as a person in a woman-shaped meat suit...I need to be quiet and submissive and how dare I enjoy this magical gift of a body that God gave me.
I'm *done*. I'm tired! I don't wanna listen. Maybe I will make a terrible bellydancer. Maybe my limbs WILL be everywhere and maybe I *can't * figure out the 1-2-3 beat and maybe I will just be all jello all over the place....but maybe...that's okay. maybe it's okay to just...love myself in all of my learning to let go, to surrender, to let myself be a part of that conversation.
Abdu'l-Baha reminds us that we should "[r]eflect upon the inner realities of the universe, the secret wisdoms involved, the enigmas, the inter-relationships, the rules that govern all. For every part of the universe is connected with every other part by ties that are very powerful and admit of no imbalance, nor any slackening whatever." I am connected with every other bit of the world, with the music and sounds and feelings and people and everything. I'm allowed, even encouraged, to be a part of that. We're all one thing, many pieces of one whole. So I'm not letting go, so much, as just...letting myself feel the music and be one with it, and find the ways it is tied to me and I am tied to it.
After all, as one of my most favourite quotes from Abdu'l-Baha reminds me, "Consider the flowers of a garden. Though differing in kind, color, form, and shape, yet, inasmuch as they are refreshed by the waters of one spring, revived by the breath of one wind, invigorated by the rays of one sun, this diversity increaseth their charm, and addeth unto their beauty. How unpleasing to the eye if all the flowers and plants, the leaves and blossoms, the fruits, the branches and the trees of that garden were all of the same shape and color! Diversity of hues, form and shape, enricheth and adorneth the garden, and heighteneth the effect thereof. In like manner, when divers shades of thought, temperament and character, are brought together under the power and influence of one central agency, the beauty and glory of human perfection will be revealed and made manifest."
So maybe right now I'm just a shaky little sapling in the wind, but it's a start. I am giving myself permission, right now, to let go, to move, to stop letting the old world drag me down by my toes. If we wanna change the world, we gotta learn how to move. So...I'm gonna dance.
Wednesday, November 13, 2019
Threw Our Roses in the Snow
It's...suddenly very winter. This week went from "oh hey I can still get away with running shoes and my middle weight coat" to "BOOTS HATS MITTS BIG COAT ALL OF IT ALL THE LAYERS". Complete with large piles of snow everywhere.
It's cold, it's dark, it's not my favourite time of year. Coming home from work in the dark is hard, and I miss green and growing things. Sparkly snow is nice, but then I think about the sidewalks not being safe, and I lose my happy.
So, I am trying to focus on the things that...aren't dark cold misery slush gross. Like how people are getting excited about the holidays (whatever wintery ones you celebrate). This is my first holiday season since I declared, and it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately. How do I integrate my new Baha'i self, with all the holiday stuff around me?
I mean...mostly, it's not gonna change. I'm still excitedly finding Christmas gifts for my loved ones (I bought the BEST book for my nephew, and I can't wait to read it with him), planning events with my family and friends so we can see each other and eat delicious things (that reminds me, I should find my speculaas recipe...) and enjoy each other's company. I might not "do Christmas" in the same way my Christian family or friends do, as in it's not a Baha'i holy day or anything, but I still love the happy spirit of it, and the chances to remind people I like that oh hey, yes, it's dark, its cold, there's snow everywhere, but we can find the joy amidst all of that.
So, I'm starting my list of card-sending, like I try to do when I can afford it. They might be Christmas cards for my Christmas-celebrating friends, or just "hi I like you, good job surviving the snow so far" cards for my non-Christmas friends, or whatever it is my loved ones find important about this time of year. Because yes, it's prompted by this outpouring of love and connection that this time of year seems to bring up in people, but mostly, it's a good excuse to go "HEY YOU, YES YOU...I like you, thanks for making it through another year with me."
And then today I realized...it's actually MORE FUN being a Baha'i this year! Because once Christmas is done and all the ornaments are packed up and the tree is gone and we've welcomed a new year....WE GET TO DO IT AGAIN. Kinda. Not quite the same, but still.
You see, the Baha'i calendar is...not the same as the "normal" calendar. Our calendar starts on Naw-Ruz which set on the vernal equinox (so March 21 ish). We have 19 months of 19 days, and there's always a few days that don't fit into that. Some people call them just the Intercalary Days, which okay yep, true, but they're also a festival! It's called Ayyam-i-Ha, and it's basically about socializing with people, being hospitable to people, sharing with the poor and needy, and just...getting your celebration and joy on before the month of fasting (which is the last month of the Baha'i year).
This year, Ayyam-i-Ha is from February 26-29. So right in that bit of winter where you're pretty convinced that Spring might just not make it here this year! I realized that there's nothing stopping me from also sending people cards for Ayyam-i-Ha, so this year, I'm gonna try. I figure most people I know will appreciate the bit of non-bills related mail, and it's a bit more unexpected joy, which the world is in much need of. I'm kinda excited for this - I like the idea that before I get into the fast, where I'm all comtemplative and recharging my spiritual batteries...I get to recharge my friendship and community batteries too.
I am probably going to try to make my own cards, because that sounds like fun (and I am pretty sure the dollar store won't have any Ayyam-i-Ha cards), so that will be a fun chance to be creative too.
I'm slowly figuring out how to integrate my Baha'i bits with the rest of my bits, and it's a fun adventure. Although I promise, I won't send lots of glitter on the cards. :)
It's cold, it's dark, it's not my favourite time of year. Coming home from work in the dark is hard, and I miss green and growing things. Sparkly snow is nice, but then I think about the sidewalks not being safe, and I lose my happy.
So, I am trying to focus on the things that...aren't dark cold misery slush gross. Like how people are getting excited about the holidays (whatever wintery ones you celebrate). This is my first holiday season since I declared, and it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately. How do I integrate my new Baha'i self, with all the holiday stuff around me?
I mean...mostly, it's not gonna change. I'm still excitedly finding Christmas gifts for my loved ones (I bought the BEST book for my nephew, and I can't wait to read it with him), planning events with my family and friends so we can see each other and eat delicious things (that reminds me, I should find my speculaas recipe...) and enjoy each other's company. I might not "do Christmas" in the same way my Christian family or friends do, as in it's not a Baha'i holy day or anything, but I still love the happy spirit of it, and the chances to remind people I like that oh hey, yes, it's dark, its cold, there's snow everywhere, but we can find the joy amidst all of that.
So, I'm starting my list of card-sending, like I try to do when I can afford it. They might be Christmas cards for my Christmas-celebrating friends, or just "hi I like you, good job surviving the snow so far" cards for my non-Christmas friends, or whatever it is my loved ones find important about this time of year. Because yes, it's prompted by this outpouring of love and connection that this time of year seems to bring up in people, but mostly, it's a good excuse to go "HEY YOU, YES YOU...I like you, thanks for making it through another year with me."
And then today I realized...it's actually MORE FUN being a Baha'i this year! Because once Christmas is done and all the ornaments are packed up and the tree is gone and we've welcomed a new year....WE GET TO DO IT AGAIN. Kinda. Not quite the same, but still.
You see, the Baha'i calendar is...not the same as the "normal" calendar. Our calendar starts on Naw-Ruz which set on the vernal equinox (so March 21 ish). We have 19 months of 19 days, and there's always a few days that don't fit into that. Some people call them just the Intercalary Days, which okay yep, true, but they're also a festival! It's called Ayyam-i-Ha, and it's basically about socializing with people, being hospitable to people, sharing with the poor and needy, and just...getting your celebration and joy on before the month of fasting (which is the last month of the Baha'i year).
This year, Ayyam-i-Ha is from February 26-29. So right in that bit of winter where you're pretty convinced that Spring might just not make it here this year! I realized that there's nothing stopping me from also sending people cards for Ayyam-i-Ha, so this year, I'm gonna try. I figure most people I know will appreciate the bit of non-bills related mail, and it's a bit more unexpected joy, which the world is in much need of. I'm kinda excited for this - I like the idea that before I get into the fast, where I'm all comtemplative and recharging my spiritual batteries...I get to recharge my friendship and community batteries too.
I am probably going to try to make my own cards, because that sounds like fun (and I am pretty sure the dollar store won't have any Ayyam-i-Ha cards), so that will be a fun chance to be creative too.
I'm slowly figuring out how to integrate my Baha'i bits with the rest of my bits, and it's a fun adventure. Although I promise, I won't send lots of glitter on the cards. :)
Wednesday, November 6, 2019
I Caught Wind and Hit the Road Runnin'
(This was originally supposed to be posted before the Bicentenary, but I got sick. I think there are still some good thoughts in here, though, so I am still posting it.)
In just a few short hours, I will be on vacation for 10 whole days. I'm super excited, and not just because it's a chance to step away from work for a little bit and reset my batteries, but because my time off is going to be FULL of adventures.
If you're not aware, next week marks a pretty big event in the Baha'i world - it's the Twin Holy Birthdays! We get to celebrate the birth of the Bab AND the birth of Baha'u'llah, one day after each other. That in and of itself is pretty cool, but on top of that, this year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of the Bab, so it's extra super special.
There are SO many things going on in my community in the coming days. We've got celebrations large and small (and trust me, if you have some free time and want to celebrate with us? There's lots of ways we can do that together, no matter if you're a Baha'i or not. We're excited, and we want to share that with everyone!) and it's going to be a time of joy and reverence and celebration and excitement and deep, deep faith. (Also snacks, because you gotta feed body AND soul. It's important.)
I've been thinking a lot lately about my place in all of that - how can I serve? How can I make my mark on this momentous occasion? What does service even look like?
Part of me REALLY wants it to be a big fancy thing. Bright lights, neon signs, big impact. Name goes down in history for doing huge things, changing the world. But...that's not really what I'm good at. If this was a video game, I'd be a support character. The healer, not the hero. The character with one or two moves that aren't useful except for like super specific circumstances when they shine, or one of a pile of minions that aren't super great on their own, but stick a bunch of them together and magic happens.
Is there room for me? Is that enough? Not just right now, as we move into the Bicentenary period, but other times, when there's not this great momentum moving us to this amazing moment? How can I serve Baha'u'llah, my community, the world...when I am just one me?
In just a few short hours, I will be on vacation for 10 whole days. I'm super excited, and not just because it's a chance to step away from work for a little bit and reset my batteries, but because my time off is going to be FULL of adventures.
If you're not aware, next week marks a pretty big event in the Baha'i world - it's the Twin Holy Birthdays! We get to celebrate the birth of the Bab AND the birth of Baha'u'llah, one day after each other. That in and of itself is pretty cool, but on top of that, this year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of the Bab, so it's extra super special.
There are SO many things going on in my community in the coming days. We've got celebrations large and small (and trust me, if you have some free time and want to celebrate with us? There's lots of ways we can do that together, no matter if you're a Baha'i or not. We're excited, and we want to share that with everyone!) and it's going to be a time of joy and reverence and celebration and excitement and deep, deep faith. (Also snacks, because you gotta feed body AND soul. It's important.)
I've been thinking a lot lately about my place in all of that - how can I serve? How can I make my mark on this momentous occasion? What does service even look like?
Part of me REALLY wants it to be a big fancy thing. Bright lights, neon signs, big impact. Name goes down in history for doing huge things, changing the world. But...that's not really what I'm good at. If this was a video game, I'd be a support character. The healer, not the hero. The character with one or two moves that aren't useful except for like super specific circumstances when they shine, or one of a pile of minions that aren't super great on their own, but stick a bunch of them together and magic happens.
Is there room for me? Is that enough? Not just right now, as we move into the Bicentenary period, but other times, when there's not this great momentum moving us to this amazing moment? How can I serve Baha'u'llah, my community, the world...when I am just one me?
(image courtesy of besw515@gmail.com, used with permission)
I think about this idea a lot - that anything I do in the spirit of service, is worship. So it doesn't matter if it is a big thing or a small thing, if I do it in the right mindset, it's an act of worship.
This has helped me reframe a lot of things in my life - I don't have to be necessarily the most bestest and brightest shining-est Baha'i who everyone knows is going out and doing the stuff in the best perfect-est way - I can keep living my life of small joys and small moments, of noticing and breathing into the quiet.
It's like how I do the newsletter every Baha'i month for my community. It's a small thing - just a page or two on what's going on locally and around the world, events that are coming up, stuff we want to celebrate, things we want to be aware of, anything that we want to share with the community as a whole. I love it because it's something I can do from my house, so no matter where my brain is at, I can get it done. And it's something that is helping my community be better connected to each other, and helping me be better connected to it. It's been changing my community in small subtle ways, and it's been really fun to see.
So I might not be at every event (my work schedule makes that tricky), I might not be out there teaching children's classes or working in obvious ways in my community, but this is my small way of sharing my skills with my Baha'i community.
And it's not just about doing "Baha'i" things either - anything counts! So hey, if you make REALLY GOOD bread and you put your whole self into that, and into sharing that with people? That's worship. Checking in on your friends who just had a baby and bringing them soup or other needed things? Totally counts. Do you make sure you show up at your job every day and do your best to do whatever it is you're asked to do? You've got it, that's worship too, if you do it all in a spirit of honest service.
To me, that's the hard bit - it's easy to do good things, but to do them as honest acts of service, instead of waiting for the praise and pat on the head or whatever sort of reward...that takes a bit more work. But, I'm trying my best, and every day, I try to do it a little better than the day before.
So I don't know what the bicentenary will look like. I don't know what my service will look like. But I will go in with my best most honest heart, and do whatever I can to show the love of Baha'u'llah to the world around me. It's all I can do.
Saturday, September 28, 2019
My Forever Echoes in the Dark
September has been...a tricky month. My heart has been sad, a lot. There's been a lot that has happened, especially in the last couple weeks, that has brought me to awful moments of tears and vulnerability, and I am just...exhausted.
There was lots of good in this month, weddings and birthdays and small joys like hockey games and packing boxes for my move and so on, but there's also been a lot of hard, sad stuff for me and for people I love very much.
It's hard, sometimes, to make room for hard sad awful feelings. It's so easy to just convince yourself that you can go and feel it later, that you have to shove it into a box and paste on a smile and keep going as if nothing is wrong and nothing hurts. After all, no one wants to sit with us in our sad, right?
One of the things I am really coming to value this week is the idea of just...sitting in the quiet with someone. Sometimes you don't need to have words. Sometimes, it's okay to not want to talk about things all the time, to just sit and know someone else is there, but that there's no expectations you *do* anything or solve anything or discuss anything.
There was lots of good in this month, weddings and birthdays and small joys like hockey games and packing boxes for my move and so on, but there's also been a lot of hard, sad stuff for me and for people I love very much.
It's hard, sometimes, to make room for hard sad awful feelings. It's so easy to just convince yourself that you can go and feel it later, that you have to shove it into a box and paste on a smile and keep going as if nothing is wrong and nothing hurts. After all, no one wants to sit with us in our sad, right?
One of the things I am really coming to value this week is the idea of just...sitting in the quiet with someone. Sometimes you don't need to have words. Sometimes, it's okay to not want to talk about things all the time, to just sit and know someone else is there, but that there's no expectations you *do* anything or solve anything or discuss anything.
'Abdu'l-Baha reminds us that "humanity is bowed down with trouble, sorrow and grief, no one escapes; the world is wet with tears; but, thank God, the remedy is at our doors. Let us turn our hearts away from the world of matter and live in the spiritual world! It alone can give us freedom! If we are hemmed in by difficulties we have only to call upon God, and by His great Mercy we shall be helped." (Paris Talks, pp. 109-110) So....maybe I can sit with God, quietly, and feel rested, too.
A lot of this week, I've been trying to reframe my prayer and contemplative time (where I read the Writings, or other Baha'i related books, etc) as just...me sitting quietly with God and Baha'u'llah. I don't always have to say stuff, They know what's in my heart, and why I'm feeling the way I do, but it's quiet, and contemplative, and I can just exist, quietly, and breathe for a bit. I know the world will come back full force and require my attention again, but for those moments, it's okay that everything's not okay.
My husband and I talk sometimes about how it's okay to just...need to be a lump in the blankets, to not be social so much and just want to cuddle quietly or just sit in the same room, doing our own things, knowing the other person is there if we need them. I've really come to value that, lately. It's not that we don't love each other enough that we're avoiding each other, it's that we love each other so much that we know that sometimes, we just need someone to sit with us, to let us be where we are and feel whatever we're feeling.
So, dear friends, I ask the same of you. Check in with the people you love and care for. Ask them if they'd like to talk, or do something, or if they'd just like to sit with a cup of tea in the silence with you. Lean on each other. Love each other. One of my favorite illustrations from a Frog and Toad book sums this up nicely:
Sometimes, that's all you need.
Tuesday, September 24, 2019
Could I Rise Above the Flood
The world lately seems so angry and frustrated. Heck, I'm angry and frustrated too. It's hard not to be, not to feel powerless when there's things you need that seem to be constantly dancing just out of reach, when it feels like you try so hard and so long and nothing comes of it. It's hard not to feel like Charlie Brown and the football, a little.
I've been working through one of the Junior Youth Empowerment Program (JYEP for short) books with a dear friend of mine lately - it's called Breezes of Confirmation, and it basically talks about the idea of putting in effort, and God confirming those efforts (framed mostly around growing up and figuring out what sort of career to follow, or what role you will play in your family and neighbourhood). It's aimed at 11-14 year olds, and honestly, I love it a lot. It takes this big scary idea of "how do I know I am on the right path", and makes it approachable.
So, in the midst of all this anger and frustration and not getting what you think you need, how do you sit with it? How do you stop from constantly feeling like every job rejection, every broken promise, every "we should hang out" that never actually results in seeing your friends, every time you try to do something nice and it falls flat, is like Lucy yanked that darn football away again?
Maybe you don't. Maybe you feel SUPER MAD about it for a bit, because, well, feelings are feelings, and it's okay to feel them. Maybe, if you're me, you ask your husband to go for a walk with you even though it's dark because you just want to get out of the house, out of the place that reminds you things aren't where you want them to be just yet. (We're moving in a few weeks, so things feel weirdly stuck and in-between right now.)
But then what? You have your anger squid moment, you get your ice cream, then what? How do you keep going? How do you know when God's saying "hey yo it's all good just wait a few" or "hey yes you are on the right path, it's just longer than you think" or "oh maybe you should turn left here at this stop sign"?
A lot of it comes down to trust. We are reminded to "[n]ever lose thy trust in God. Be thou ever hopeful, for the bounties of God never cease to flow upon man. If viewed from one perspective they seem to decrease, but from another they are full and complete. Man is under all conditions immersed in a sea of God’s blessings."(Abdu’l Baha, Selections from the Writings of Abdu’l-Baha, p. 205.) And sure, it's nice to know we're immersed in that sea, but sometimes those blessings are hard for us to see. It's hard to have trust, but isn't that what faith is all about?
We gotta start with putting in the effort. If we don't give God a place to start, He's got nothing to work with. It'd be nice if He just dropped things in our laps, but as Abdu'l-Baha reminds us, "Make thou an effort that thou mayest take thy place under the sun and receive an abundant share of its dazzling light." If we just sit at home in the dark with the blinds closed...God can shine all the light on us that He can possibly manage, but we'll never see it. It's like...God wants to rain good things down on us, but we've got to be ready. As a friend put it the other day, if we're just standing on our porch in a raincoat and boots with an umbrella up, the rain can come down forever, and we'll never feel it. We'll be dry, but trees don't really grow well in deserts.
Heck, Baha'u'llah himself reminds us of this, in one of the Hidden Words - "O SON OF BEING! Love Me, that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love can in no wise reach thee. Know this, O servant." So, we do our best. We live and love and try and wait and maybe sometimes we do have a temper tantrum or ice cream for dinner or whatever it is that we do when we are just our most vibrating anger squid full of feelings, but God sees us, He sees us trying, and one of these days, we'll kick that football so fast and so hard it'll bounce into the next neighbourhood.
I've been working through one of the Junior Youth Empowerment Program (JYEP for short) books with a dear friend of mine lately - it's called Breezes of Confirmation, and it basically talks about the idea of putting in effort, and God confirming those efforts (framed mostly around growing up and figuring out what sort of career to follow, or what role you will play in your family and neighbourhood). It's aimed at 11-14 year olds, and honestly, I love it a lot. It takes this big scary idea of "how do I know I am on the right path", and makes it approachable.
So, in the midst of all this anger and frustration and not getting what you think you need, how do you sit with it? How do you stop from constantly feeling like every job rejection, every broken promise, every "we should hang out" that never actually results in seeing your friends, every time you try to do something nice and it falls flat, is like Lucy yanked that darn football away again?
Maybe you don't. Maybe you feel SUPER MAD about it for a bit, because, well, feelings are feelings, and it's okay to feel them. Maybe, if you're me, you ask your husband to go for a walk with you even though it's dark because you just want to get out of the house, out of the place that reminds you things aren't where you want them to be just yet. (We're moving in a few weeks, so things feel weirdly stuck and in-between right now.)
But then what? You have your anger squid moment, you get your ice cream, then what? How do you keep going? How do you know when God's saying "hey yo it's all good just wait a few" or "hey yes you are on the right path, it's just longer than you think" or "oh maybe you should turn left here at this stop sign"?
A lot of it comes down to trust. We are reminded to "[n]ever lose thy trust in God. Be thou ever hopeful, for the bounties of God never cease to flow upon man. If viewed from one perspective they seem to decrease, but from another they are full and complete. Man is under all conditions immersed in a sea of God’s blessings."(Abdu’l Baha, Selections from the Writings of Abdu’l-Baha, p. 205.) And sure, it's nice to know we're immersed in that sea, but sometimes those blessings are hard for us to see. It's hard to have trust, but isn't that what faith is all about?
We gotta start with putting in the effort. If we don't give God a place to start, He's got nothing to work with. It'd be nice if He just dropped things in our laps, but as Abdu'l-Baha reminds us, "Make thou an effort that thou mayest take thy place under the sun and receive an abundant share of its dazzling light." If we just sit at home in the dark with the blinds closed...God can shine all the light on us that He can possibly manage, but we'll never see it. It's like...God wants to rain good things down on us, but we've got to be ready. As a friend put it the other day, if we're just standing on our porch in a raincoat and boots with an umbrella up, the rain can come down forever, and we'll never feel it. We'll be dry, but trees don't really grow well in deserts.
Heck, Baha'u'llah himself reminds us of this, in one of the Hidden Words - "O SON OF BEING! Love Me, that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love can in no wise reach thee. Know this, O servant." So, we do our best. We live and love and try and wait and maybe sometimes we do have a temper tantrum or ice cream for dinner or whatever it is that we do when we are just our most vibrating anger squid full of feelings, but God sees us, He sees us trying, and one of these days, we'll kick that football so fast and so hard it'll bounce into the next neighbourhood.
Saturday, September 7, 2019
Hope You Laugh More than You Cry
Summer's over, it's turning into fall, and it feels like everything is changing. The leaves are going to lose their colour, I'm starting to pack to move into a new apartment, my husband is looking for work (he immigrated here at the end of June)...so much is going to be different by the time the year ends. I've kinda been...swamped under it all. Work is tricky right now and it is taking a lot of my patience, and there are so many details to figure out with my move, and there are SO MANY boxes to pack. Plus, we're managing on one income right now (but God willing, not for much longer!). So much going on, and very few moments to squish it all into, let alone to just breathe and...not think about any of it.
Change is hard. I've lived in the same apartment in the basement of a house for almost 7 years, I know my neighbourhood inside and out. I know when the buses come and go, I know where the good bread is found, and the best spot to get coffee. Admittedly, I'm only moving 3 kilometers away, but still. New neighbourhood, different sector of my Baha'i community, different apartment (but no more laundromat trips! We will have on-site laundry!). New patterns of life, new struggles, new challenges, new joys and delights.
I'm trying to just sit with all of this change, and trust that God's going to see us through, as he always has. I might be saying Remover of Difficulties ("Is there any Remover of difficulties save God? Say: Praised be God! He is God! All are His servants, and all abide by His bidding!") over and over and over (it's a nice short prayer, and I find it helps even as just a mantra to keep me chill), but that's because I know He's got us, and is holding us and guiding us through this. Even if I am shaking in my boots most of the time and have cried from exhaustion and stress more than I want to admit.
There's a quote I found recently from Abdu'l-Baha that I really like - "Man must turn to the light and not think that the form of the lamp is essential, for the lamp may be changed; but he who longs for light welcomes it from whatever source it comes." (Divine Philosophy, p. 33). It reminds me that in the end, it doesn't much matter where I live or what's going on, as long as I know where to find my light. Maybe it's a flashlight and not a big fancy Tiffany lamp, or it's flickering firelight or a single leftover birthday candle - what matters is that I know where it is and I look to it. So I carry a bit of God's light with me in the prayers I know and the quotes from the Writings that float in my head, and I fill myself with light during my Ruhi circles or Nineteen Day Feast or reading all of the Baha'i books I can get my hands on. I spend time with my friends and my loved ones, I take time for myself when I need it, and I remind myself that even if I was the only Baha'i on an island somewhere, isolated and alone, I have God's love and Baha'u'llah's guidance written on my heart.
So I can face all this change. I'm not doing it alone, and maybe right now there's more tears than laughter, but I'm making my way.
Change is hard. I've lived in the same apartment in the basement of a house for almost 7 years, I know my neighbourhood inside and out. I know when the buses come and go, I know where the good bread is found, and the best spot to get coffee. Admittedly, I'm only moving 3 kilometers away, but still. New neighbourhood, different sector of my Baha'i community, different apartment (but no more laundromat trips! We will have on-site laundry!). New patterns of life, new struggles, new challenges, new joys and delights.
I'm trying to just sit with all of this change, and trust that God's going to see us through, as he always has. I might be saying Remover of Difficulties ("Is there any Remover of difficulties save God? Say: Praised be God! He is God! All are His servants, and all abide by His bidding!") over and over and over (it's a nice short prayer, and I find it helps even as just a mantra to keep me chill), but that's because I know He's got us, and is holding us and guiding us through this. Even if I am shaking in my boots most of the time and have cried from exhaustion and stress more than I want to admit.
There's a quote I found recently from Abdu'l-Baha that I really like - "Man must turn to the light and not think that the form of the lamp is essential, for the lamp may be changed; but he who longs for light welcomes it from whatever source it comes." (Divine Philosophy, p. 33). It reminds me that in the end, it doesn't much matter where I live or what's going on, as long as I know where to find my light. Maybe it's a flashlight and not a big fancy Tiffany lamp, or it's flickering firelight or a single leftover birthday candle - what matters is that I know where it is and I look to it. So I carry a bit of God's light with me in the prayers I know and the quotes from the Writings that float in my head, and I fill myself with light during my Ruhi circles or Nineteen Day Feast or reading all of the Baha'i books I can get my hands on. I spend time with my friends and my loved ones, I take time for myself when I need it, and I remind myself that even if I was the only Baha'i on an island somewhere, isolated and alone, I have God's love and Baha'u'llah's guidance written on my heart.
So I can face all this change. I'm not doing it alone, and maybe right now there's more tears than laughter, but I'm making my way.
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
You'll Always Follow the Voices Beneath
I read a lot. Like a lot a lot. As of earlier today, I've read 244 books since January 1st. My e-reader is always in my bag wherever I go, I read while I walk, I read on the bus, I read everywhere and I read super fast. It's just something I've always been able to do - I started reading really young, and I just...never stopped. I like books! They're my constant companions.
The only problem is, though, is that I read in my head. I very rarely have to read out loud in my day to day life, so I've never really thought about it - there've been a number of words where I am not always sure if how my brain reads them is how they should come out of my mouth, but I can mostly get by without worry. That is, until relatively recently, when I've been asked to read things as part of Ruhi circles, or during the devotional portion of Feast! All of a sudden I am tackling language out loud in a way that I've never really had to do before. And often, I'm reading things from the Writings, which means dealing with language patterns that are often unfamiliar to me - it's the language of revelation, modelled on the language patterns of the King James Bible, and sometimes my tongue gets tangled in the bigness of not only the words, but the concepts themselves.
Not only that, I'm doing this in front of a number of people - if it's my Ruhi circle, it might only be a small handful, but if it is a devotional, it's a bigger handful, and if it's Feast, it means a relatively big handful (or maybe even both my cupped hands). I know my community is just grateful for my willingness to do it, but it trips me up hard. I read in my head with so much ease, but suddenly I'm in front of people and my tongue and my brain just struggle with working together.
On top of all this - I'm a very anxious human. So I'm often trying to read, and also likely wiggling/stimming/twitching/flapping/moving some parts of me at the same time, and also probably giving up on the idea of making eye contact entirely. All of my focus goes to making sure I give the words I am reading the respect they so deserve. I manage pretty well (although words like quintessence and omnipotence never fail to tangle my tongue.)
It's one of the weird moments in my life where I can really notice some of my more neuroatypical traits, and it's kinda jarring sometimes. I mean yes, I often end up with my fidget cube in my fingers at some point during the longer bits of Feast so my brain can pay attention, or I handflap when I get really excited (come on, how could you not be excited by the phrase "That time has come." from the 2019 Ridvan message?), but those just feel like extensions of my emotions or an attempt to make sure I'm giving people my attention and focus. When I have to read out loud in front of people, there's a little voice in the back of my head going "NOT ONLY are we reading out loud BUT ALSO people are gonna notice you're twisting and rubbing your fingers or tapping your feet or or or or or".
So a lot of this is just me...learning in public, I guess, how to accept myself in all of myself, in all of my most imperfectnesses. I might need to practice reading out loud (my cat makes an excellent captive audience), I might not ever be able to properly look people in the eye as I read prayers or quotes from the Writings, I might always be a twitchy kinetic stimming bouncing joy bean - and that's okay. I'm Ash, and I'm always trying. As Baha'u'llah tells us, O SON OF BEING! Bring thyself to account each day ere thou art summoned to a reckoning" - which to me has always felt like a reminder that I should always think about my actions, and always strive to keep a humble posture of learning, no matter what. So, I will keep reading at Feast, I'll keep embracing my handflaps of joy and the way hearing about some aspects of pilgrimage or the history of the Baha'i Faith literally making me have to lie down on the floor flattened with my limbs stretched out like a starfish.
Saturday, August 3, 2019
On the Edge of the World, or Wherever We Are
Sometimes, I feel so grounded in my physical spot in the world. My house, the street I live on, my city, the people I see every day. the bus routes I take, that's my whole world. Other days, I delight in the joy that my world is SO much bigger than that - I have friends scattered all over the globe, in so many different time zones and countries and cities and towns and places. I spend a lot of time online - when I struggle with facing the outside world (it's gotten better, but sometimes, the world is still too big and I am still so very small), my pocket friends (they live in my phone, which fits in my pocket, mostly) were always there for me. Heck, they still are, all the time. We share our lives in a million ways, big and small.
If it wasn't for that sort of online existence, so much of my life would be different. I'd not have my fantastic husband (met him on Stack Exchange, in one of the Arqade chat rooms), or most of my best friends, I'd not have learned about the Baha'i Faith, I'd've probably struggled more with various aspects of my personality and identity, but here I am, as whole as I can make myself, with a pretty cool bunch of humans at my back.
I know the internet is so ubiquitous now that a lot of people don't blink at the idea of having pocket friends in countries they've never heard of (I've had to explain where Guam is a lot, and I've gotten a lot better at American and European geography, and time zone math!), but it still delights me endlessly that I can just...find these people. It's given me so many different perspectives and things to delight in.
It does make things uniquely complex, though - try getting friends together for some role-playing games when you've got up to a 14 hour time difference involved, or remembering who is sleeping and who is awake when you found the BEST comic that you just HAVE to share. That's not even mentioning the giant pile of immigration paperwork and time and money and prayers it took to get my husband here! Add in my meatspace localish friends who I *can* physically hang out with, and sometimes I am just very glad for things like my Google calendar to sort out when and where I gotta be.
I'd not change it for anything, though. My friends are some of the best people I could ever ask for. They've seen me through joys, and sorrows, through weddings and births and sicknesses and graduations and so many things in between.
I've been thinking about my friends a lot lately, as my life goes through all of this change. How I've come to realize that these people are still here, still supporting me through all of this chaos and magic and joy, and it's really been bringing home this idea of unity in diversity that happens to be one of the core tenets of the Baha'i Faith. As Baha'u'llah stated, in one of the Hidden Words, "O CHILDREN OF MEN! Know ye not why We created you all from the same dust? That no one should exalt himself over the other. Ponder at all times in your hearts how ye were created. Since We have created you all from one same substance it is incumbent on you to be even as one soul, to walk with the same feet, eat with the same mouth and dwell in the same land, that from your inmost being, by your deeds and actions, the signs of oneness and the essence of detachment may be made manifest."
We're all different - different places, different thoughts, different looks and hearts and wants and needs and experiences. Our relationships to each other aren't perfect, we still fight and argue and have impassioned discussions about how the world should be, but we're also lucky to be able to see outside ourselves, to understand that this tiny spot of ground we happen to put our feet isn't all the world is.
It seems like lately the world is convinced we need to be divided - along country lines, states/provinces, gender, sexuality, religion, whenever we can shove each other into neatly labelled boxes so we can have an us and a them, where the us is good and the them is bad, the world seems to delight in it. It breaks my heart.
Maybe you don't have a world-spanning online community, but I challenge you to start looking outside your boxes. It's not going to be easy (I still struggle with some of the challenges of the different perspectives and personalities I encounter, both online and in meatspace, every day), but I think it's worth doing. Maybe you'll just learn a new food you've not encountered, maybe you'll make a new friend, maybe it won't go perfectly at all - but if we are going to make the world better, maybe we can all try to stretch ourselves a little further, open our arms a little wider.
Thursday, July 25, 2019
The Way You Keep The World At Bay
Some days, it feels like the world is pressing in on every side, that it is all but impossible to see anything good in anything. It just feels like so much, too much, like it's better just to curl up in the darkest dark and not be.
I hate those days. I hate every last inch of them, and I spend so much of my life fighting against them, tooth and nail. The world needs more joy.
In my Ruhi 2 group this week, we were asked to rank things we liked according to how much joy they brought us. It was trying to make a point about how teaching the Baha'i Faith can bring us immeasurable joy, but I just ran face first into that question, and it was like my entire brain came to a screaming halt. How could I possibly *rank* joy? The joy of snuggling my cat and feeling his rumbliest whistle-y purrs when he is most content is COMPLETELY different than the joy of delving into a new romance novel by one of my favorite authors, and both of those are, again, COMPLETELY different than the joy of coming home and seeing my husband, still in my house. (I don't know if that will *ever* stop bringing me joy.)
I live my life by two things - starfishes and teaspoons. Starfishes remind me I can always make a difference, even if it is just a tiny one to one person, and teaspoons remind me of similar - emptying the ocean one teaspoon at a time will take a really long time, but it's very easy to hand people a spoon. Small things are my bread and butter. I love living by a paradigm that just seeks out small joy, because it means I get to experience joy more often.
A perfect example of small joy happened the other day - my husband and I were coming home from groceries after a long (but good) day - we'd done important government paperwork errands, we had gone to the splash pad with my sister, my nephew and my mom (chasing a toddler around the park is delightful and exhausting all at once), we had gotten my husband a new phone and set up banking for him here in Canada, and we'd gotten groceries and I was *tired*. I almost fell asleep on the bus home from Walmart, I was just *done*.
We get to our stop, and I manage to get the granny cart of groceries off the bus, and this little girl (less than ten for sure) comes rushing up to us, a fistful of daisies in her hand. I look over to her parent, who nods, and she brightly informs me one of these daisies is for me, and handed it over. It was *so* simple. A single tiny daisy, given freely and with much joy. I told her, emphatically, that she'd just made my day, and she beamed a bright happy smile at me before joining her parent on a nearby bench again.
I hate those days. I hate every last inch of them, and I spend so much of my life fighting against them, tooth and nail. The world needs more joy.
In my Ruhi 2 group this week, we were asked to rank things we liked according to how much joy they brought us. It was trying to make a point about how teaching the Baha'i Faith can bring us immeasurable joy, but I just ran face first into that question, and it was like my entire brain came to a screaming halt. How could I possibly *rank* joy? The joy of snuggling my cat and feeling his rumbliest whistle-y purrs when he is most content is COMPLETELY different than the joy of delving into a new romance novel by one of my favorite authors, and both of those are, again, COMPLETELY different than the joy of coming home and seeing my husband, still in my house. (I don't know if that will *ever* stop bringing me joy.)
I live my life by two things - starfishes and teaspoons. Starfishes remind me I can always make a difference, even if it is just a tiny one to one person, and teaspoons remind me of similar - emptying the ocean one teaspoon at a time will take a really long time, but it's very easy to hand people a spoon. Small things are my bread and butter. I love living by a paradigm that just seeks out small joy, because it means I get to experience joy more often.
A perfect example of small joy happened the other day - my husband and I were coming home from groceries after a long (but good) day - we'd done important government paperwork errands, we had gone to the splash pad with my sister, my nephew and my mom (chasing a toddler around the park is delightful and exhausting all at once), we had gotten my husband a new phone and set up banking for him here in Canada, and we'd gotten groceries and I was *tired*. I almost fell asleep on the bus home from Walmart, I was just *done*.
We get to our stop, and I manage to get the granny cart of groceries off the bus, and this little girl (less than ten for sure) comes rushing up to us, a fistful of daisies in her hand. I look over to her parent, who nods, and she brightly informs me one of these daisies is for me, and handed it over. It was *so* simple. A single tiny daisy, given freely and with much joy. I told her, emphatically, that she'd just made my day, and she beamed a bright happy smile at me before joining her parent on a nearby bench again.
It wasn't anything big or fancy, but it really did make my day - it was a reminder that even when I am tired, even when I think a good day couldn't get better (I mean there had already been toddler giggles and french fries and sliding down slides and the cool water of a wading pool against my toes, time spent with my family, reminders that my husband is really, really and truly, here to stay, all in just one day!), the world can still surprise me.
As Abdu'l-Baha reportedly said, ""Joy is the best cure for your illness. Joy is better than a hundred thousand medicines for a sick person. If there is a sick person and one wishes to cure him, let one cause joy and happiness in his heart."(Attributed to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, from the 1906 Pilgrim Notes of Ali Kuli Khan). So if joy is really all of these things, and can do these things, why wouldn't we want to experience it as often as possible?
When asked about what brings joy, we always seem to try to think of the most pure, the most holy, the most selfless giving acts humanity is able to do. Prayer, acts of sacrifice and service to those who have less or are in harder spots, acts of worship, all of those are things people will tell you bring them joy - as if we are afraid to say that a good cup of tea, or finishing a tricky puzzle, or finally making our grandma's gingerbread recipe turn out the way she did bring us joy, because that doesn't feel big enough.
Here's my challenge, dear and beloved friends - take time to feel joy. Find it in the way you feel when your favourite treat is on sale at the grocery store, the way it feels when you get not-bills in your mailbox, the way it feels when a baby laughs or someone you loves smiles in that secret way that reminds you they think the world of you. Find it in a pair of clean socks fresh from the dryer, in a perfectly made bed with your favourite sheets, in having perfectly timed transit that gets you to where you need to be when you need it.
Live, unafraid to seek the small joys with delight and abandon. It's not going to make every moment perfect, but you get little bits of happy for your soul more often, and I think that's it's own bit of magic.
Tuesday, July 9, 2019
God is Bigger than the Boogieman
I watched a LOT of Veggietales growing up. I still sing the hairbrush song when things go missing, I know that everyone needs a waterbuffalo, and I will still lament that I've never been to Boston in the fall. (Apologies if these songs are stuck in your head now too!)
I've been singing "God is Bigger than the Boogieman" a lot to myself lately. Partially because it reminds me God is also bigger than Godzilla, and I've been contemplating finally watching my first ever Godzilla movie on the advice of a friend who knows more about Godzilla than just about anyone else I've met. But if I had to be truthful (and I've done Ruhi 1, I know that "truthfulness is the foundation of all human virtues"!), it's also partially because I am being chased by the biggest anxiety dinosaurs right now.
I've been singing "God is Bigger than the Boogieman" a lot to myself lately. Partially because it reminds me God is also bigger than Godzilla, and I've been contemplating finally watching my first ever Godzilla movie on the advice of a friend who knows more about Godzilla than just about anyone else I've met. But if I had to be truthful (and I've done Ruhi 1, I know that "truthfulness is the foundation of all human virtues"!), it's also partially because I am being chased by the biggest anxiety dinosaurs right now.
It's not even that anything's wrong, per se - I've finally gotten to find out what living with my husband full time is like (IT IS AMAZING. Like even boring adulting like laundry is great.) and it's summer and work isn't too awful and I have an awesome Baha'i community I belong in and I have friends who I get to spend lots of time with as the world allows.
But that's the frustrating thing - like the anxiety dinosaur points out, none of this is logical. It's my brain being a tricksy tricksy meatpile. So what can help me feel better?
Abdu'l-Baha points out in his Paris Talks that "[t]he mind and spirit of man advance when he is tried by suffering. The more the ground is ploughed the better the seed will grow, the better the harvest will be. Just as the plough furrows the earth deeply, purifying it of weeds and thistles, so suffering and tribulation free man from the petty affairs of this worldly life until he arrives at a state of complete detachment. His attitude in this world will be that of divine happiness. Man is, so to speak, unripe: the heat of the fire of suffering will mature him." Basically, all this fear stuff is teaching me to let go. It's not easy! When my brain starts going in mad circles, remembering I am just a small sapling trying to reach the sky feels impossible. I feel like I can dig my roots in deep and stretch my branches as far as they'll go, but it still feels like I can't possibly be enough, do enough, feel enough, detach enough. I am too small, and the world feels too big. And I know that the Bab reminds me that God "maketh victorious whomsoever He pleaseth, through the potency of His behest" (and there's a REALLY good song version of that by Badasht, here, that I love singing), but sometimes even that feels hard for me to grasp, because I feel like I am too small to even be worth the notice.
Luckily, once again, I turn to the stuff I've been learning in the Ruhi Institute courses (which are AMAZING and I love them. Seriously. Even if you're not Baha'i, I bet you'd be able to learn some cool stuff out of some of this) and it's got an answer for me from the Writings about how it's perfectly fine, because God's got my back. "Take thou thy portion of the ocean of His grace, and deprive not thyself of the things that lie hidden in its depths. Be thou of them that have partaken of its treasure. A dewdrop out of this ocean would, if shed upon all that are in the heavens and on the earth, suffice to enrich them with the bounty of God" (Arising to Serve, page 8) I love this passage for two reasons - it reminds me that I am SUPPOSED to reach out for God's grace, that I am not supposed to deprive myself of it, and also that His grace is SO big and SO much and SO powerful, that I need just the teeny tiniest bit to be able to do great things.
So even if I am scared, even if I don't think I know what I'm doing, even if all I can hear is the roaring of the anxiety dinosaur, I can still rest assured that I'm not alone, that God's there, helping me grow and be strong and be the best tree in the garden that I possibly can, full of delicious fruit that I can share with everyone. And for me, that's enough.
x
Wednesday, June 26, 2019
Look at Where We Are, Look at Where We Started
What do you do when everything is changing? Right now, my life is undergoing massive change - I am finding my space in my Baha'i community, my husband is immigrating to Canada from the States soon (tomorrow!), everything feels full of promise and uncertainty and joy and confusion. It's intimidating, a little, not always knowing where to put your feet down or what your tomorrow might look like. It's a lot to take in, and a lot to adjust to.
I am this amazing mix of absolute joy and utter terror, all at once. I'm not great at change, I don't like when my routines are disrupted, I am worried that I won't be able to make everything work. And it's hard sometimes, to sit with that. I bounce from delight to shaking fear, and I have no answers. I can't tell myself how any of this is going to go.
So how do you cope? How do you find a space to breathe amid all of the changes life is so fond of throwing at us, both good and bad? As Abdu'l-Baha reminds us, "now the new age is here and creation is reborn. Humanity hath taken on new life. The autumn hath gone by, and the reviving spring is here. All things are now made new". Life is made of change. Flowers bloom and die, seasons change, change is everywhere.
Baha’u’llah urges us to “Let each morn be better than its eve and each morrow richer than its yesterday.” I try, now, to see if I can't frame my changes that way - how do they make the next day better? If they don't make the day better, because they're not good changes, how can I maybe make a tiny good change to make things a little better? Shoghi Effendi reminds us that "He urges you to persevere and add up your accomplishments, rather than to dwell on the dark side of things. Everyone's life has both a dark and bright side. " We just have to try to find the good stuff, however small, amid all the things that might seem impossible scary hard.
Tonight, it's easy. Tonight, I will (eventually, maybe, hopefully) get some sleep, and tomorrow my day will be better because for the first time, I will get to pick my husband up from the airport and I won't have to give him back for a long time. Tonight I am just sitting with this not knowing what the next day or the next day or the next day is going to look like, because I know some important things - I know the feel of my husband's arms around me as he hugs me tight, I know we will talk through the hard things and the simple things, I know that we have survived all of the days that have taken us to this point. It's not going to be perfect, but it will be ours - my husband and I will figure out what our lives look like together, one moment at at time. There will be love and joy and prayer and tears and questions and everything in between.
It's gonna be okay.
It's gonna be okay.
Tuesday, June 18, 2019
Whispering a Prayer in the Fury of a Storm
Full of mixed emotions tonight. Recently, I had to step back from an internet community I put a lot of love and tears and energy in for a long time, because I couldn't sustain the sheer demand on my spoons that it was requiring, with all the changes going on in my life. I'm not the same me that I was, and that's....kinda to be expected, but it's still hard when it's the community that gave me a large number of my friends, it's where I met my husband, it's indirectly responsible for me coming to find the Baha'i faith. So it was a hard thing to let go.
On top of my personal stuff, it meant that the leadership had to look for new humans to serve it, which is done through an election using the Single Transferable Vote model. It's not a perfect system. It never has been, and never will be. It's better than First Past the Post style stuff, but you've still got people campaigning and you've got politics and oh, it's a mess. But election went on, people nominated themselves, they declared their "platform" (such as it is), people voted, people were elected.
So here we sit, where I'd ideally be feeling like oh hey, cool, the community is safe in the hands of the best people that the site could find to lead itself. Except...the community is unhappy. The election was...messy, and while the people who were elected are good people, there's still a lot of upsetness and worry around what this means for the site/community now, because the approaches of the new moderators worry some of community, for a variety of reasons.
And honestly, this post isn't about my feelings on the issue in terms of the site itself - the election went how it went, the people that got elected know how things work, they know how to handle the things they need to handle. But it just has me thinking a lot about how election systems as a whole are kinda broken - this whole thing about campaigning and trying to convince people you are the best thing they need, and sometimes there's lies and sliding the truth just a little sideways, and I can't help it, all I see is how unhappy and confused the community is now. They thought they were getting what they needed, and now they're not sure, and everyone's kinda on edge as they try to figure out what is going to happen going forward.
That got *me* thinking about the other election I've been a part of recently-ish, my local community's yearly election for our Local Spiritual Assembly. (If you don't know how Baha'i elections work - any Baha'i in good standing over the age of 21 is eligible to both vote AND to be voted for. There's explicitly no campaigning, no nominations, you're really not even supposed to discuss who you're going to vote for with others (discussing the sorts of qualities or ideals etc that you might look for in the sorts of people that your community needs to lead them is a separate matter, however, and that is something you definitely should be trying to figure out together!). It's basically supposed to be between you and God to figure out who you feel are the nine people in your community best suited for this role.
We have some guidance, as Shoghi Effendi reminds us - "Hence it is incumbent upon the chosen delegates to consider without the least trace of passion and prejudice, and irrespective of any material consideration, the names of only those who can best combine the necessary qualities of unquestioned loyalty, of selfless devotion, of a well-trained mind, of recognized ability and mature experience... Nothing short of the all-encompassing, all-pervading power of His Guidance and Love can enable this newly enfolded order to gather strength and flourish amid the storm and stress of a turbulent age, and in the fullness of time vindicate its high claim to be universally recognized as the one Haven of abiding felicity and peace."
And yes, spiritual election is vastly different than internet community moderatorship election, but it just made me think about how different the election felt. Yes, we had far from a perfect turnout at our election, and yes, I am sure there are people who disagree with how it ultimately went, and I am sure you could poke holes in the logic of how it works if you wanted to . But it very much felt like my community was doing it's best to come together and find a group of people that represented all our needs, and who we felt could help guide us through the next year as we kept walking the path that Baha'u'llah has laid out for us.
So now I just kinda find myself sitting here, going "Okay, well, now what? How do I sit with all of this? How do I keep this weird guilt at bay that the unhappiness is my fault for saying I couldn't keep leading?" and I think the only real thing I can do, is remind myself that sometimes, saying you can't do something is the most important thing - knowing when you no longer have the same capacity to love/care/give of yourself as you used to is a very tricky thing. I can sit with the community, I can love on them, I can help remind them of their good bits, and maybe, we can talk about what we can do, regardless of our feelings about the leadership body, to both respect the position and role of those who are serving as moderators, but also keep making the internet a better, kinder, welcoming, supportive, useful place. It might feel like "All I ever do is try to empty the sea with this teaspoon; all I can do is keep trying to empty the sea with this teaspoon" style labour (h/t to Shakesville for that one) but if all of us have teaspoons, maybe it will not be so bad.
On top of my personal stuff, it meant that the leadership had to look for new humans to serve it, which is done through an election using the Single Transferable Vote model. It's not a perfect system. It never has been, and never will be. It's better than First Past the Post style stuff, but you've still got people campaigning and you've got politics and oh, it's a mess. But election went on, people nominated themselves, they declared their "platform" (such as it is), people voted, people were elected.
So here we sit, where I'd ideally be feeling like oh hey, cool, the community is safe in the hands of the best people that the site could find to lead itself. Except...the community is unhappy. The election was...messy, and while the people who were elected are good people, there's still a lot of upsetness and worry around what this means for the site/community now, because the approaches of the new moderators worry some of community, for a variety of reasons.
And honestly, this post isn't about my feelings on the issue in terms of the site itself - the election went how it went, the people that got elected know how things work, they know how to handle the things they need to handle. But it just has me thinking a lot about how election systems as a whole are kinda broken - this whole thing about campaigning and trying to convince people you are the best thing they need, and sometimes there's lies and sliding the truth just a little sideways, and I can't help it, all I see is how unhappy and confused the community is now. They thought they were getting what they needed, and now they're not sure, and everyone's kinda on edge as they try to figure out what is going to happen going forward.
That got *me* thinking about the other election I've been a part of recently-ish, my local community's yearly election for our Local Spiritual Assembly. (If you don't know how Baha'i elections work - any Baha'i in good standing over the age of 21 is eligible to both vote AND to be voted for. There's explicitly no campaigning, no nominations, you're really not even supposed to discuss who you're going to vote for with others (discussing the sorts of qualities or ideals etc that you might look for in the sorts of people that your community needs to lead them is a separate matter, however, and that is something you definitely should be trying to figure out together!). It's basically supposed to be between you and God to figure out who you feel are the nine people in your community best suited for this role.
We have some guidance, as Shoghi Effendi reminds us - "Hence it is incumbent upon the chosen delegates to consider without the least trace of passion and prejudice, and irrespective of any material consideration, the names of only those who can best combine the necessary qualities of unquestioned loyalty, of selfless devotion, of a well-trained mind, of recognized ability and mature experience... Nothing short of the all-encompassing, all-pervading power of His Guidance and Love can enable this newly enfolded order to gather strength and flourish amid the storm and stress of a turbulent age, and in the fullness of time vindicate its high claim to be universally recognized as the one Haven of abiding felicity and peace."
And yes, spiritual election is vastly different than internet community moderatorship election, but it just made me think about how different the election felt. Yes, we had far from a perfect turnout at our election, and yes, I am sure there are people who disagree with how it ultimately went, and I am sure you could poke holes in the logic of how it works if you wanted to . But it very much felt like my community was doing it's best to come together and find a group of people that represented all our needs, and who we felt could help guide us through the next year as we kept walking the path that Baha'u'llah has laid out for us.
So now I just kinda find myself sitting here, going "Okay, well, now what? How do I sit with all of this? How do I keep this weird guilt at bay that the unhappiness is my fault for saying I couldn't keep leading?" and I think the only real thing I can do, is remind myself that sometimes, saying you can't do something is the most important thing - knowing when you no longer have the same capacity to love/care/give of yourself as you used to is a very tricky thing. I can sit with the community, I can love on them, I can help remind them of their good bits, and maybe, we can talk about what we can do, regardless of our feelings about the leadership body, to both respect the position and role of those who are serving as moderators, but also keep making the internet a better, kinder, welcoming, supportive, useful place. It might feel like "All I ever do is try to empty the sea with this teaspoon; all I can do is keep trying to empty the sea with this teaspoon" style labour (h/t to Shakesville for that one) but if all of us have teaspoons, maybe it will not be so bad.
Saturday, June 15, 2019
Every Single Day, I Walk Down the Street
I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to truly love myself. It's something I struggle with a lot, and I know I'm not alone in that. The world tells us to love ourselves, to pamper ourselves, all of those messages about self-care and bubble baths and crushing that workout at the gym and treating yourself to that one thing that will make you feel better.
But what do you do when you don't have money for fancy pedicures or massages or trips away or bubble baths? What do you do when you work weird hours and have no tub and can't afford to take time off work? How do you love yourself when you are exhausted and stressed beyond all belief?
It's not easy. Some days I just feel like everything's impossible, that there's nothing good left in me. I can't summon up the energy to heat up a Cup Noodle, let alone anything else, and that mountain of cardboard that needs to go to the recycle is threatening to take over the kitchen again, and it all feels like it is just too much. I don't have the time or the wherewithal to do any of that "self-care" stuff, it's all I can do to just get home, curl up in bed, and hope the next day will be better (or at the very least, different).
Something I keep clinging to is this idea that it's okay to not love all of myself every day. Some days are easy - I put on my swishy black bellydance pants and I go out and I feel like I can conquer the world, or I pull on my patch covered denim jacket and dance my way through my errands. Other days, I might just love a tiny bit of myself. Other days, I have to trust that even if I can't see the good, it's still in there. And other days....other days I gotta turn to something outside myself.
One of my favourite Hidden Words is "O SON OF MAN! Veiled in My immemorial being and in the ancient eternity of My essence, I knew My love for thee; therefore I created thee, have engraved on thee Mine image and revealed to thee My beauty." I love holding onto that - this idea that God loved the idea of a me SO MUCH that He couldn't bear there not being a me in the world. So here I am, born out of such a great love. So how can I not love me, if He loved me enough to make me, just as I am, in all my awkward strange frustrating beautiful ridiculous miraculous wholeness? He knew I wasn't gonna be perfect, because none of us are, but He made me anyhow. Doesn't matter how many people barked or mooed at me as I walked down the street, or how many people told me I was too much or not enough or that I'd never or that I always - at the end of the day, there's something bigger than all that for me to hold onto.
It's not perfect - there are days where I sit and am like "Okay, God, but why did you create me just this way, with these problems or tricky bits?" And I probably won't ever know the answers to all that. But that's alright. I just put one foot in front of the other, and trust that God's holding onto me, and He'll see me through. (And maybe I also raid the change jar for enough money for ice cream, because that's good too.)
I've also given myself permission to find the things that feel good to me. I wear bright happy dresses because I like the way they look and feel, I wear pants that swish when I move because I like clothes that move as much as I do. I don't like socks, so I don't wear them (unless it's too cold). I figure that even if I can't fix everything, if I can at least feel good in the things I am wearing, it's a small step. And they might not always be the things that other people think I should wear (when you're tall and fat, people have LOADS of ideas of what you "should" wear), but it makes my heart bubble up with joy, so I figure that's good enough. The rest of the world can just deal with it - God knows, literally, that I am a bright joyful chaos bean of absolute love and delight, and if other people don't like handflaps of joy and holographic nail polish and clothes that make it clear I have a body that takes up space in the world, well, I can't help that.
So, sit with yourself. Find just one tiny thing you love. Think about how the universe put you together just so, so that one thing or three things or however many things could exist. I promise you, even in the darkest dark, when you can't find a thing to love about yourself, someone does. Maybe you don't see it as God loving on you, maybe it's just how your friend says they love your smile or your partner compliments your cooking or your kids tell you you are soft and good for hugs. Whatever it is, hold onto it. Write it down, somewhere you'll see it. Don't worry if you can't do the bubble baths and wine or the mani-pedis or the trips to faraway places or massages - there's plenty of room for small joys too.
But what do you do when you don't have money for fancy pedicures or massages or trips away or bubble baths? What do you do when you work weird hours and have no tub and can't afford to take time off work? How do you love yourself when you are exhausted and stressed beyond all belief?
It's not easy. Some days I just feel like everything's impossible, that there's nothing good left in me. I can't summon up the energy to heat up a Cup Noodle, let alone anything else, and that mountain of cardboard that needs to go to the recycle is threatening to take over the kitchen again, and it all feels like it is just too much. I don't have the time or the wherewithal to do any of that "self-care" stuff, it's all I can do to just get home, curl up in bed, and hope the next day will be better (or at the very least, different).
Something I keep clinging to is this idea that it's okay to not love all of myself every day. Some days are easy - I put on my swishy black bellydance pants and I go out and I feel like I can conquer the world, or I pull on my patch covered denim jacket and dance my way through my errands. Other days, I might just love a tiny bit of myself. Other days, I have to trust that even if I can't see the good, it's still in there. And other days....other days I gotta turn to something outside myself.
One of my favourite Hidden Words is "O SON OF MAN! Veiled in My immemorial being and in the ancient eternity of My essence, I knew My love for thee; therefore I created thee, have engraved on thee Mine image and revealed to thee My beauty." I love holding onto that - this idea that God loved the idea of a me SO MUCH that He couldn't bear there not being a me in the world. So here I am, born out of such a great love. So how can I not love me, if He loved me enough to make me, just as I am, in all my awkward strange frustrating beautiful ridiculous miraculous wholeness? He knew I wasn't gonna be perfect, because none of us are, but He made me anyhow. Doesn't matter how many people barked or mooed at me as I walked down the street, or how many people told me I was too much or not enough or that I'd never or that I always - at the end of the day, there's something bigger than all that for me to hold onto.
It's not perfect - there are days where I sit and am like "Okay, God, but why did you create me just this way, with these problems or tricky bits?" And I probably won't ever know the answers to all that. But that's alright. I just put one foot in front of the other, and trust that God's holding onto me, and He'll see me through. (And maybe I also raid the change jar for enough money for ice cream, because that's good too.)
I've also given myself permission to find the things that feel good to me. I wear bright happy dresses because I like the way they look and feel, I wear pants that swish when I move because I like clothes that move as much as I do. I don't like socks, so I don't wear them (unless it's too cold). I figure that even if I can't fix everything, if I can at least feel good in the things I am wearing, it's a small step. And they might not always be the things that other people think I should wear (when you're tall and fat, people have LOADS of ideas of what you "should" wear), but it makes my heart bubble up with joy, so I figure that's good enough. The rest of the world can just deal with it - God knows, literally, that I am a bright joyful chaos bean of absolute love and delight, and if other people don't like handflaps of joy and holographic nail polish and clothes that make it clear I have a body that takes up space in the world, well, I can't help that.
So, sit with yourself. Find just one tiny thing you love. Think about how the universe put you together just so, so that one thing or three things or however many things could exist. I promise you, even in the darkest dark, when you can't find a thing to love about yourself, someone does. Maybe you don't see it as God loving on you, maybe it's just how your friend says they love your smile or your partner compliments your cooking or your kids tell you you are soft and good for hugs. Whatever it is, hold onto it. Write it down, somewhere you'll see it. Don't worry if you can't do the bubble baths and wine or the mani-pedis or the trips to faraway places or massages - there's plenty of room for small joys too.
Thursday, June 6, 2019
Emotion, Devotion, to Causing a Commotion
Every day, a million million things yell for our attention. Buy this car, eat this sandwich, wear these clothes, put on this makeup, go to this vacation spot, and EVERYTHING WILL BE BETTER. Your skin will glow, your dog will stop using that corner of the living room as a bathroom, your kids will stop fighting over who gets the last Pop-Tart, you'll be happy and everything will be perfect.
We all know it doesn't work that way. It would be great if all my problems could be magically solved with some fancy cheese and the right pair of shoes, but...having consumed a lot of string cheese and walked right through a whole bunch of flip-flops, I'm still waiting for that magic moment.
So what now? What do I do to make the world better, to make myself better, to get even a tiny itty bitty fraction closer to whatever it is that we're supposed to be striving for?
Step one, I've found, is realizing that it's never gonna be instant. You'll fail, a LOT. You're gonna let people you love down, you're gonna let yourself down, the community that's supposed to love you and walk with you is gonna let you down too. Because oh hey, we're all just ridiculous meat people trying to figure out this giant cosmic mess. It's a pretty big thing to be trying to do while also making sure the kids are dressed and the cat's fed and oh hey did someone drink the last of the milk again?
The best part about this, for my Baha'i self, is that it's....kinda expected I'm gonna suck at stuff sometimes. Why else do we have loving Writings that tell us stuff like "Let each morn be better than its eve and each morrow richer than its yesterday."? Sure, fine, today sucked, you messed up, you tripped and fell on your face, but...hey, guess what, tomorrow is a brand new day. You can try again.
I think that's something we forget a lot, this sort of kindness. Obeying the rules (whatever they are to you and however they look) isn't easy. If it was easy, we'd not need them written down and laid out for us. There are "rules" of the Baha'i Faith that I know are a struggle for me. Like Baha'u'llah's reminder to " let your heart burn with loving kindness for all who may cross your path". Some days I don't want to be loving and kind! I want to be angry and stompy and knock over buildings like Godzilla. But He knows that, and He's made room for it, as long as I pick myself up, dust myself off and keep walking the path He's set for me.
Maybe we gotta do that for ourselves, too. It's so easy to compare ourselves to our family or friends or that stranger down the street who REALLY seems to have it all together. It's easy to think they've got it all sorted, that they're following all the rules and they're not spilling spaghetti down their shirt and ending up with mismatched socks. But maybe their yesterday sucked, and we're just seeing them in their much better morn. Even if we aren't, even if we are seeing them in their default state and we don't feel like we could ever measure up, we owe it to ourselves to remember that in the end, that's not what we're here for! We're here for such a short time, and we have so much to do and to learn and so many ways to grow and so many tiny little miracles to experience.
It's good to know what the rules are, what we're seeking to achieve. But it's also good, I think, to acknowledge that knowing and doing are vastly different things. After all, we're told "let deeds, not words, be your adorning," for a dang good reason I think. Words are easy, doing's the tricky part, and to keep doing and keep trying even when we have scraped our knees for the hundredth time (I have the scars to prove it, I can show you)? That's where the real love is.
That's the answer, I think. Find the love that drives you. For me, it's the love of God and Baha'u'llah, for you it might be something else entirely. But it's in there. Love yourself enough to keep trying, to keep doing the things out of that love that drives your very soul, and that's what obedience really looks like.
Wednesday, May 29, 2019
There Are Moments That the Words Don't Reach
Love is such a tricky word. It seems simple, we use it all the time. I love pizza, I love my cat, I love romance novels, I love my mom, my dad, Baha'u'llah, the smell of the air after a rainstorm, the colour purple, sparkly nail polish, love love love love love.
We *say* love all the time, and then sometimes we get REALLY weird about it. People can say they love their family, their partner, their pets, but the moment you say you love a friend (in that way that makes it clear that we are talking *love* love, not like *pizza* love), people start to slide sideways. (Double sliding if said friend is of the opposite sex and you are married or otherwise attached).
There doesn't seem to be room in the world for this idea of deep platonic love. People tend to think the only kind of love that *counts* is romantic love, and beyond that just being HORRIBLY reductive and erasing the aromantic humans of the world, it always sat SO awkward to me. Why can't I love my friends? Why can't I look them in the eye and tell them I love them and hug them so tight I think we both might implode? Why are we SO afraid to love?
In my experience, so much of it comes down to vulnerability. The more we love, deeply and unabashedly, the more we gotta sit with our own fractured shattery depths, the more we gotta let people in even when we aren't our best perfect-est selves. It's *terrifying* to think of what could happen. What if we trust, and then they drop us, and where does that leave us if we are just so....open all the time? It leaves us prone to having our tenderest selves poked and prodded and possibly bruised.
But....let's sit with that a moment.
Recently, I sat with a group of people I love (my Ruhi book 1 group) and we talked about some of the hardest bits of ourselves. It wasn't intentional - I had some past life context I thought was appropriate to share, and it just kinda exploded from there. There were tears and fear and a lot of messy bits, but then...then this happened.
I dunno if you can see all the love in this picture, but I sure as heck can. (For reference, I'm in the middle.) No one in this picture *had* to be here, had to sit with each other in the darkest dark, but we did, because we all took a chance on opening our hearts and just knew that we could, because of our shared context, love on each other. Maybe we didn't fix the world, but all of us breathe a little easier, because we know that we can be our most authentic, vulnerable selves, without fear.
As someone *much* wiser than me said,“ . . . If a small number of people gather lovingly together, with absolute purity and sanctity, with their hearts free of the world, experiencing the emotions of the Kingdom and the powerful magnetic forces of the Divine, and being at one in their happy fellowship, that gathering will exert its influence over all the earth.” (Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, p. 81)
Love is scary. Love is hard and terrifying and it is *hard work*. But it's not impossible, and it's *important*. We talk about how we have to love ourselves, this whole movement of self care and self love, and how we have to love our partners and our children, but...maybe, maybe there's more we gotta do. Maybe we gotta learn to love on each other, so we can share the things of our hearts and we can all move a little safer.
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