SACRIFICE
Thou seest me forbidden to speak forth:
Then from where will spring Thy Melodies,
O Nightingale of the world?
The words were with me constantly,
Repeating as I walked,
Slept and wakened.
“Forbidden to speak forth”
“Forbidden”
“then from where…………………..?”
………. Melodies”
I returned to the whole of the Fire Tablet
Breathing in its heat
Trying to feel what He felt…..
And then the painting
Appeared in my mind’s eye…..
And with it the word “Sacrifice”
“When the swords flash, go forward!
When the shafts fly, press onward!
O Thou Sacrifice of the worlds”
Dost thou wail, or shall I wail?
Rather shall I weep at the fewness of thy champions,
O Thou who hast caused the wailing of the worlds.
…. He hath risen up in faithfulness
At the place of sacrifice…..”
The bird of Holiness,
The manifestation is always the first sacrifice.
Witness Jesus, Mohammed,
And the Bab’s execution,
And Baha’u’llah’s life long imprisonment…
These Holy beings bring the change,
Illumine the ancient and eternal
patterns of life.
“Where ever ye look, there is the Face of God”
Affirming the movement toward the presence of God
and bringing a fresh measure of light
advancing the station of human kind.
Fire Bird…… Sacrifice ……………..
Flame of fire to the enemy,
Illumination to the lovers.
“Rather shall I weep at the fewness of thy champions…..”
We who …. Are believers
And who will dare to teach …..
We are not enough who dare to teach walking into the fire,
Walking under fire,
Daring to live
Baha’u’llah’s principals.
He has made this sacrifice…
A living kind of martyrdom…
“The bodies of thy chosen ones lie quivering
On distant sands………………”
The lovers of the Blessed Beauty
Gave their lives in Sacrifice…
died
So that their death
would illumine the world
their blood nurture the
Tree of Affirmation:
Allah’u’Abha
This ancient Primordial urge
to offer Human Sacrifice,
now transformed…….
The lover seeking the Beloved
the believer standing firm
And flame like
Absorbing the dark hatred
Death blows….
Physical eradication
transformed…. Into spiritual fusion…
the birth of millions of stars.
And those of us….
on the lower levels
striving through prayer
to overcome the ego….
prostrating,
beseeching,
meditating,
arising to serve…
we also move toward the Beloved,
increment by increment
sacrificing the ego.
“Consider the lives that have been,
and are still being sacrificed in a world
deluded by a mere phantom
which the vain imaginations
of its people have conceived.”
Another kind of sacrifice
to kill…….
or to die for….
transgression
or expansion of boundaries
a different kind of belief,
a different color of skin,
a difference of gender
requires oppression,
genocide,
a call to arms…………..
we teach our sons to war,
tell them to hold a gun
is to be a man….
or to throw a bomb……..
some women join the destruction
deluded sacrifice!
to what end?
to return to early days
of earth’s formation
when you and I dwelt in caves
or separate continents and did not know of
our mutual existence?
And from these illusions of separateness,
these multiple veils, obscuring unity
and their terrible wars,
is the most lamentable
level of Sacrifice…
the Children, the Women, the Aged,
the silenced Minorities…….
those dying of pollution,
nuclear radiation,
class discrimination,
racial hatred,
sickness,
starvation and thirst.
sacrifices to humankind’s dark face….
I paint them all with halos….
You and I
we, the collective peoples of the earth…
we feel the burden
carry the weight
of these collective sacrifices….
We must teach our Children,
Tell our Friends
That we are ONE PEOPLE
Gaze upon the patterns of Unity
the Messengers of God
have
illumined before our eyes.
Jalaliyyih
Quinn