The Sharing of Arts and Beauty

Naw-Ruz [March 21] was a good day. We washed dishes upstairs and down [in Enayat's house, i.e. former barn, there is now a kitchen upstairs, largely unheated and largely abandoned, once we established an apartment on the second floor and Enayat built a trailer-sized kitchen in that.] There were still dishes to be done from probably over a year ago. ! So I washed dishes on the third floor and Enayat washed dishes on the second floor, I baked some polenta and we came on to the Naw-Ruz breakfast, just about on time.

Finally Enayat met our friend Mink Fire, whose passion in life seems to be trees. Trees, the quality of lumber in the past, the lack of quality in lumber in the present, where and when to plant trees. We needed to connect with Mink. The area outside Eatonville where we live by Lake Ohop is basically a wetland. Also, in the areas south of Tacoma, there is considerable deforestation being done, in a most ugly manner, as people sell the trees off their property, and also in areas where Monopoly houses with no windows are put about ten feet from each other in housing developments. So we would like to enterprise in some "forestation" to offset this trend in a very small way. Mink will be the ideal consultant for which trees to plant where, that can thrive on all this wetness.

Our final destination was the lovely home of Fredric and Karen out past Purdy overlooking Puget Sound and Mount Rainier. This was a "Spiritual-i-tea", a "high tea" where people had been invited to bring their art forms, whether painting or poetry, stories, or fabric or culinary arts, and share them. [We also encountered some absolutely lovely mushroom-almond pate.]

What a rich sharing of paintings by Nuri, who shared her stories of making clothing and decorating them in the Caribbean for sale to tourists, until she could no longer paint another parrot, paradise flower or garish fish, and changed to painting people; paintings by Walter which always tell a story and have such a lively folk art feeling to them. Bonita shared some exquisite colored drawings accompanied by stories; she had been losing her eyesight due to cataracts at the time, and added sparkly colors and textures to her work. Someone else has been making custom-made greeting cards since long before there was Photoshop or cut-and-paste.

I showed my tatting, sewing, and the Mountain of the Lord tapestry I made in 2001 when the Terraces were completed on Mount Carmel and I had become saturated with bible prophecies concerning Mount Carmel, starting with one from Isaiah: Come ye, and let us go up to the Mountain of the Lord . . . And then I was induced to share my song about it. Argh. Ed read a nearly incomprehensible story, rich with historical allusions and connections, about Robin Hood. Karen read her poetry. Russ played his music and George played his IPod, which is his musical instrument.

As each person shared their arts, they also opened their hearts, and I could see so many people working alone over the years; in living rooms, on shag carpeting, on kitchen tables, developing their talents. The spirit in the room was shining, joyous. There was no sense of jealousy or competition. Just awe.

The Mountain of the Lord

Our dear friend Tony, who is very skilled and diligent in construction arts and does a lot of work for my husband on his properties, stopped by last evening. Enayat pulled out our photos from Pilgrimage to show him. Tony is a Seventh Day Adventist. Last year, when we mentioned that the World Center of the Baha'i Faith is on Mount Carmel [in my view, the Mountain of the Lord], Tony threw back his head with a hearty laugh, speaking about how Mount Carmel had been the site of idol worship and how Jehovah had had a contest with the god Baal in fire-starting, on Mount Carmel. The other day I thought about this and wanted to say, "Yeah, but Jehovah won."

Anyway, Tony was very impressed with the photos, thought the Shrine of the Bab and the terraces and Bahji were very beautiful. He was also interested, naturally, in Nazareth and Jerusalem. I was grateful I had taken some time to pull out my share of the photo copies before they were handed around and shuffled. I plan to put together an album illustrating the sites we visited in a historical and scriptural context. I hope, not too ambitious. Something to pray about.

Come on up, let us go up, come on up to the Mountain of the Lord . . .