The Voice of God

The Kitab-i-Iqan, Baha'u'llah's Book of Certitude, illuminates beautifully in many passages the dual station of the Manifestations of God, the Founders of the world's major religions.

To every discerning and illumined heart it is evident that God, the unknowable Essence, the divine Being, is immensely exalted beyond every human attribute, such as corporeal existence, ascent and descent, egress and regress. Far be it from His glory that human tongue should adequately recount His praise, or that human heart comprehend His fathomless mystery. He is and hath ever been veiled in the ancient eternity of His Essence, and will remain in His Reality everlastingly hidden from the sight of men.

The door of the knowledge of the Ancient of Days being thus closed in the face of all beings, the Source of infinite grace . . . hath caused those luminous Gems of Holiness to appear out of the realm of the spirit, in the noble form of the human temple, and be made manifest unto all men, that they may impart unto the world the mysteries of the unchangeable Being, and tell of the subtleties of His imperishable Essence. These sanctified Mirrors, these Day-springs of ancient glory are one and all Exponents on earth of Him Who is the central Orb of the universe, its Essence and ultimate Purpose. From Him proceed their knowledge and power; from Him is derived their sovereignty.

Baha'u'llah

The following sayings and writings are from some of these Gems of Holiness, speaking with the voice of God:

Say: I, verily, am the Path of God unto all who are in the heavens and all who are on the Earth; well is it with them that hasten thereunto!

I am, I am, I am the Promised One! I am the One Whose name you have for a thousand years invoked, at whose mention you have risen, whose advent you have longed to witness, and the hour of Whose Revelation you have prayed God to hasten. Verily, I say, it is incumbent upon the peoples of both the East and the West to obey My word and to pledge allegiance to My person.

I am the light of the world: he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

I am the Source of all spiritual and material worlds. Everything emanates from Me. The wise who perfectly know this engage in My devotional service and worship Me with all their hearts.

Howbeit when He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He shall guide you into all truth: for He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He hear, shall He speak: and He will shew you things to come.

There is one God, and there is none other but He.

He who knows Me as the Unborn, as the Beginningless, as the Supreme Lord of all the Worlds--he only, undeluded among men, is freed from all sins.

I am the Way, the Truth and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me.

Say: He is Allah, who is One, Allah, the eternal refuge. He neither begets nor is born, nor is there to Him any equivalent.

I am the generating seed of all existences. There is no being--moving or nonmoving-- that can exist without Me.

Naught is seen in My temple but the Temple of God, and in My beauty but His Beauty, and in My being but His Being, and in My self but His Self, and in My movement but His Movement, and in My acquiescence but His Acquiescence, and in My pen but His Pen, the Mighty, the All-Praised. There hath not been in My soul but the Truth, and in Myself naught could be seen but God.

The Iqan: Key to Understanding All Scripture

The Kitab-i-Iqan, The Book of Certitude, revealed by Baha'u'llah over about 48 hours in the middle of the 19th Century, holds the very simple key to understanding scriptures of this and all past Revelations from God.

From the Iqan I have learned that everything has an inner meaning and an outer meaning. People who have difficulty recognizing Baha'u'llah and the truth of this Revelation have mental, emotional, spiritual veils in between them and their own hearts, which block their receptivity and perception of the truth. For Christians and Muslims, especially, the Iqan examines some of those veils and reveals the hidden inner meanings of prophecies regarding the return of the Messiah and the End Times.

I was able to apply some of my learning from this yesterday when my husband and I were strolling along the walk above the beach at Titlow Park. We encountered a very focused and energetic man I'll call Mark [because that was his name] who was looking for converts to the Jehovah's Witnesses. I allowed my husband to take the lead in listening to Mark, not because my husband is a man and therefore a superior being, but because he is miles ahead of me in the qualities of sociability and patience. So I stood and listened and prayed.

Eventually I was able to interrupt and put in two points: Christ said, "I have many things to tell you, but ye cannot bear them yet. Howbeit when He who is the Spirit of Truth is come, He will guide you to all truth." [Roughly paraphrased.] I pointed out that Christ didn't say "I" will come, but "He" will come, indicating a different individual. Also, it is mentioned that Christ will come "with a new name." This also indicates a different actual individual from Jesus [the Personality] Christ [the Station.]

I'd love to say that Mark immediately stated he would study this with an open mind and an open heart. Actually he said he would look at the Baha'i Faith with a microscope, root, tree, and branch, to point out all the errors, as he has done with all other Faiths in the past.

The Iqan has helped me by seeing that all Religions really are part of the same Book of God, which makes it much easier to go to the heart of Scripture which illuminates the oneness of God and His Messengers. It has also helped me to realize the dual Station of God's Messengers: the human personality, and the selfless Station of the Manifestation of God, which is universal.

Say: naught is seen in My temple but the temple of God, and in My beauty but His Beauty, and in My being but His Being, and in My self but His Self, and in My movement but His Movement, and in My acquiescence but His Acquiescence, and in My pen but His Pen, the Mighty, the All-Praised. There hath not been in My soul but the truth, and in Myself, naught could be seen but God.

~Baha'u'llah

Vegetables!

Really craving vegetables today. Time is short, on my work schedule, for cooking.

This evening we were both craving vegetables so stopped at Cappy's Produce on the way home and bought lots of things, to the tune of some wonderful jazz.

Stir-Fried Vegetables

Slice &/or Dice:
1/2 eggplant
green pepper
red pepper
several mushrooms
onion
garlic cloves to taste
some ginger root
something else was in there but I can't remember what it was
fresh tomatoes sliced up
a little cilantro
squeeze in juice from half a lemon
stir-fry in grapeseed oil

Corn Tortilla Quesadillas

grate quite a bit of cheese [of choice]
open a can of pinto beans and drain
chop onions
slice tomatoes into wedges
peel and chop up an avocado
chop up some cilantro [yes, some of these ingredients overlap!]
for convenience, place all these ingredients into a bowl and use a soup spoon to ladle them out.

Heat up the skillet until the smoke detector goes off, then open some windows and cool down the skillet a little. Place corn tortilla on skillet for about 20 seconds, then flip. [Now it is finally flexible.] Add about 2 tablespoons grated cheese, a tablespoon of beans, some diced onions and avocado and a wedge of tomato, and a pinch of cilantro. Using flipper, fold tortilla over [if you tried to do this cold, it would just break.] Flip after 10 to 20 seconds. Rescue quesadilla and as many innards as you can scrape up from the skillet, before it blackens. Repeat as many times as you want &/or until ingredients are used up.

A terrible tragedy: too full for strawberries.

Kindness to Animals

Visiting a friend in Summit, who had young chickens running around her yard, I learned for the first time as I watched a flock of them flowing gracefully out of the hedge, that chickens are beautiful birds. They have individual personalities. They love to peck things from the grass and roll in the dust.

When I was in first grade we took a field trip to the chicken farm owned by the parents of one of my classmates. I was impressed by the mechanization, seeing thousands of chickens in individual cages, with little chutes to collect the eggs. I didn't notice at the time how clean and orderly it was. The chickens I saw looked healthy; they looked like chickens. These were the 1960's, in the early days of what has come to be known as factory farming. I should have been impressed with the openness of the farmer, inviting children to see his operation.

Factory farming has now "progressed" to meet the demands of the marketplace and create as much product with as little care and work as possible [the way of all factory-based industries.] Last night I forced myself to watch a horror movie, "Meet Your Meat", a much copied, and therefore in places inoperable, disc purveyed by PETA which I picked up at the Araya vegetarian Thai restaurant in Seattle. Among the horrors shown by hidden camera, such as workers brutalizing pigs, they show stealth films taken inside chicken sheds which hold up to 100,000 chickens. [Also, refer to the book, "Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran Foer.]

There are many birds inside each cage, the manure following the law of gravity creates mountains of filth below the lowest levels of cages, into which some chickens fall. Animals are debeaked [sans anesthesia] to prevent them from pecking each other; they become trapped in the wires or under the feeding troughs, to slowly starve to death; they become disease-ridden and disfigured by disease; they lose their feathers. Dead animals are left in the cages to rot. The atmosphere is filled with drifting feathers. Patterns of light and darkness are controlled to maximize egg production. Dumpsters are filled with the dead and nearly dead. These farms are closed to the public, the sheds locked. Not to prevent people from stealing birds. To prevent the public from seeing the contents.

I say to these "farmers": unlock the sheds. Open your doors to field trips. Proudly show how well you care for your livestock to everyone. Consumers have a right to know the source of the food they select from the market.

Then, O ye friends of God! Ye must not only have kind and merciful feelings for mankind, but ye should also exercise the utmost kindness towards every living creature. The physical sensibilities and instincts are common to animal and man. Man is, however, negligent of this reality and imagines that sensibility is peculiar to mankind, therefore he practices cruelty to the animal. In reality what difference is there in physical sensations! . . . The poor animal cannot speak, it can neither show its suffering nor is it able to appeal to the government. If it is harmed a thousand times by man it is not able to defend itself in words nor can it seek justice or retaliate. . . . Educate the children in their infancy in such a way that they may become exceedingly kind and merciful to the animals. If an animal is sick they should endeavor to cure it; if it is hungry, they should feed it; if it is thirsty, they should satisfy its thirst; if it is tired, they should give it rest.

~ 'Abdu'l-Baha

Soul: An Eternal Bird

O Thou kind Lord! . . . Thou hast invited the wandering birds to the rose garden of grace.

[The soul] is the first among all created things to declare the excellence of its Creator, the first to recognize His glory, to cleave to His truth, and to bow down in adoration before Him.

Know thou of a truth, that if the soul of any man hath walked in the ways of God, it will, assuredly, return and be gathered to the glory of the Beloved.

To consider that after the death of the body the spirit perishes is like imagining that a bird in a cage will be destroyed if the cage is broken, though the bird has nothing to fear from the destruction of the cage.

They that are the followers of the one true God, shall, the moment they depart out of this life, experience such joy and gladness as would be impossible to describe.

Blessed is the man that hath turned his face towards God, and walked steadfastly in His love, until his soul hath winged its flight unto God, the Sovereign Lord of all, the Most Powerful, the Ever-Forgiving, the All-Merciful.

O Thou Forgiver of Sins! Open Thou the way for this awakened soul to enter Thy Kingdom, and enable this bird, trained by Thy hand, to soar in the eternal rose garden.

Ten Things I Learned From Mom

1. Go potty before any expedition.
2. Wear sensible shoes.
3. Cook whole foods from scratch.
4. Every object has some kind of use.
5. I'll get organized some day.
6. When you hit a "sprague", it's time to take a break.
7. Making things is fun, useful and satisfying.
8. If I knew what it cost beforehand, I wouldn't have taken that cat to the vet.
9. If people really want to see us, they can deal with the house the way it is.
10. I usually have time for you.

A Different Run; Or How Not to Do A Medication Pass

Yesterday I came to work with the goal of becoming more organized on my run, and was beginning to settle in for the day when one of the nursing assistants looked at the schedule and said, "you're on South today, Arlene." I looked at the schedule, which had many entries crossed out, in disbelief. That horrible sinking feeling when you know that you are going to be far out of your comfortable and familiar routine. New "on the floor", I can barely do my own med run in an organized manner. Because of a severe staffing shortage of nurses, I and another nurse from the long-term care side had been moved to the more active Medicare side of the building, where neither of us had ever practiced. Although we recognized that our assignments were the best solutions to a difficult problem, we felt as if we had been hijacked. I was assigned to a very active and challenging run, and the other nurse not only had an unfamiliar run, but had to split a run with another nurse, taking 30 instead of 20 patients, mostly "tube feeders" and very time-consuming.

We met with the Director of Nursing to clarify our assignments, and I helped the other nurse accept our difficult situation. Later it turned out that, like staff who work double shifts, a meal tray was provided for us, in recognition for accepting a difficult assignment. This was welcome, as I knew there was no way we would have time for a lunch break.

As it turned out, I had three tube feedings to start at a specific time, one person with one IV antibiotic to run and another person who had two IV's during the shift, as well as seven people who needed their blood sugars checked before dinner and at bedtime.

Despite an excellent report from the outgoing nurse, the day immediately went to chaos trying to relieve "Lucinda" of her horrible pain from back abcesses. One of her as-needed medications, oxycodone, had been allowed to run out, and she was screaming that she needed relief NOW. I phoned the pharmacy and learned that, since this was not a new prescription, they would not allow taking it from the emergency "E-Kit." Fortunately there is a team of two doctors who take turns every week visiting the facility every day, so the doctor wrote a prescription for Dilaudid. More time on the phone with the pharmacy, obtaining permission to pull the Dilaudid. Unfortunately, only one med cart set of keys had the key to the narcotics E-Kit, and none of the nurses assigned to those carts knew which set of keys had the narcotics key, or what it looked like. I went from one to another nurse, borrowing their keys and trying them in the locked cupboard. Finally I phoned the Director of Nursing, who was still in the building, who found the appropriate key and obtained the Dilaudid for me. It was well after 4 PM and I hadn't done any of the seven before-dinner blood sugar tests on that hall, or delivered more than a few medications.

For the next seven hours I had three interruptions for every patient I visited. I discovered that multiple family members come in the back door every evening at different times, setting off the alarm. Lucinda's bariatric bed broke and the maintenance man came in, who ended up waiting for someone else to come in who could help him repair the bed; the repairman had to come down from Lynnwood to Puyallup on a Friday evening, completing his regular route as he came. Lucinda was transferred from her bed to a "shower bed" constructed of giant-bore PVC pipe, to a regular bed; then ultimately back to her own bed after it was repaired. None of this could have been comfortable.

Later in the evening, personnel from a mortuary came in the back door, with business on another hall, setting off the alarm every time they entered or left. I kept receiving phone calls about residents I knew nothing about. The entire shift was total chaos. When the night nurse came in, I enlisted her help to finish up the medication pass [fortunately I only had about two people left to see.] As a crowning touch to the evening, the night nurse placed the cart keys in the top drawer, and one of us locked the keys inside the cart. Fortunately, on another set of keys there was a key to the business office suite. By some miracle, the DNS' office was unlocked, which had a spare key to the cart.

It was a horrible feeling to scrape by, just barely getting the medications delivered and blood sugars and insulins done, feeling so frustrated and incompetent. I have to say that everyone was alive at the end of the shift, and I did not make medication errors, and the evening came to an end eventually. I would not want to repeat it.

There is a reason they call it a medication "run."

Epilogue: When I turned on my phone after I came home, I learned that while I was at work, my mother had died.