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One day in London the Master [`Abdu’l-Bahá] gave His listeners an unusual, imaginative, yet realistic dialogue between the Prophets and men: ‘Always, man has confronted the Prophets with this: “We were enjoying ourselves, and living according to our own opinions and desires. We ate; we slept; we sang; we danced. We had no fear of God, no hope of Heaven; we liked what we were doing, we had our own way. And then you came. You took away our pleasures. You told us now of the wrath of God, again of the fear of punishment and the hope of reward. You upset our good way of life.”

The Prophets of God have always replied: “You were content to stay in the animal world, We wanted to make you human beings. You were dark, We wanted you illumined; you were dead, We wanted you alive. You were earthly, We wanted you heavenly.”
- p. 141 in Vignettes from the Life of `Abdu’l-Bahá

Tags: abdulbaha, london, prophets

O SON OF SPIRIT!
The bird seeketh its nest; the nightingale the charm of the rose; whilst those birds, the hearts of men, content with transient dust, have strayed far from their eternal nest, and with eyes turned towards the slough of heedlessness are bereft of the glory of the divine presence. Alas! How strange and pitiful; for a mere cupful, they have turned away from the billowing seas of the Most High, and remained far from the most effulgent horizon.

The other day some some friends and I were talking about the nightingale, and wondering what it sounds like. The following are some of the results of googling the subject.

According to the wikipedia entry on Nightingale:

Nightingales are named so because they frequently sing at night as well as during the day.
Early writers assumed the female sang; in fact, it is the male.
The song is loud, with an impressive range of whistles, trills and gurgles.

Picture from wikipedia:

Found some sound clips of nightingales on the freesoundproject - here’s one by reinsamba:

In the Conference of the Birds by Attar, one of the birds mentioned is the Nightingale, and here’s how his part of the story starts:

The nightingale raises his head, drugged with passion,
Pouring the oil of earthly love in such a fashion
That the other birds shaded with his song, grow mute.
The leaping mysteries of his melodies are acute.
‘I know the secrets of Love, I am their piper,’
He sings, ‘I seek a David with broken heart to decipher
Their plaintive barbs, I inspire the yearning flute,
The daemon of the plucked conversation of the lute.
The roses are dissolved into fragrance by my song,
Hearts are torn with its sobbing tone, broken along
The fault lines of longing filled with desire’s wrong.

There is a poem by John Keats in 1819 called Ode to a Nightingale. It talks about the immortal nightingale and mortal man. Apparently spring came early in 1819.

There is also a fairy tale written by Danish author and poet Hans Christian Andersen in 1844 called The Nightingale:

The Emperor of China hears that one of the most beautiful things in his own land is the song of the nightingale. He sends his courtiers to take a nightingale from the nearby forest and present her as a guest at court. The bird can communicate with the humans and agrees to come, but when the Emperor is given a mechanical nightingale covered with jewels, he loses interest in the real bird, which flies back to its home. The mechanical bird breaks down. When the Emperor is taken ill, only the song of the true nightingale can heal him.

Here’s an adaptation of the play, by Faerie Tale Theatre:

Then, see Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6

Finally, a song of Yanni, inspired by a Nightingale:

Tags: attar, bird, john keats, nightingale, poetry, yanni

Salutation and praise, blessing and glory rest upon that primal branch of the Divine and Sacred Lote-Tree, grown out, blest, tender, verdant and flourishing from the Twin Holy Trees; the most wondrous, unique and priceless pearl that doth gleam from out the Twin Surging Seas.

March 3rd, 1896-November 4th, 1957

In a few hours, it will have been exactly 50 years since the Guardian passed away. It is even more special to remember the occasion while serving at the Baha’i World Centre, where one can directly see the physical evidence of the Guardian’s life work. It is hard to believe that just 50 years ago, Shoghi Effendi walked the same streets we are walking today, ate the same food, talked to the same locals (literally, in some cases), sat in the same chair in the Pilgrim House, said prayers at the same spot in the Shrines, talked to the pilgrims and was part of making their experience such a profoundly spiritual one, just as the staff here try to do today.

His spirit lives on among us, in the example he left us of how to live a life dedicated to service, in the copious writings and guidance he left us, which by themselves extend the institution of the Guardianship forward to the end of this dispensation, in the gardens we walk around every day, which serve as an enduring tribute to their creator and as a pattern for future development, in the buildings and monuments we work in and around every day, which are a symbol of the global administrative order laid out in detail and brought into being by him, and on a more personal level, as a worthy figure to heroize (something which is sorely lacking in the world today), along with all the other saintly figures he writes about in his book God Passes By.

From his wife Ruhiyyih Khanum, on his passing: “He was our Guardian, King of the world. We know he was noble because he was our Guardian. We know that God gave him peace in the end. But as I looked at him all I could think of was — how beautiful he is, how beautiful! A celestial beauty seemed to be poured over him and to rest on him and stream from him like a mighty benediction from on high. And the wonderful hands, so like the hands of Baha’u'llah, lay softly by his side; it seemed impossible the life had gone from them — or from that radiant face.“

I just got back a book which I had lent to a friend - I’ve really missed it. It’s The Conference of the Birds by Attar. At this stage I think it’s my all-time favorite book.

I much prefer Attar to Rumi and the other poets I’ve read, probably because I understand what he’s saying the most (I just don’t get Rumi, most of the time). I’m reading all of this in English of course, so the quality of the translation probably has a lot to do with it.

Whoever drinks the mystics’ wine is king
Of all the world can show, of everything -
Its realms are specks of his authority,
The heavens but a ship on his wide sea;
If all the sultans of the world could know
That shoreless sea, its mighty ebb and flow,
They’d sit and mourn their wretched impotence
With eyes ashamed to meet each other’s glance