Confirmation

It often amazes me, the forms that God’s confirmations can take. How something can go wrong and through it, wonderful and amazing things can go right. How you can be thinking or worrying about something and then something will happen or someone will say something that pulls everything together. I was guiding at the shrine tonight and a friend came, and as she left I had this urge deep in my heart to beg her for a hug. Here sometimes I yearn so deeply for hugs, but I often don’t feel comfortable asking for them for some reason. And so I watched her leave, wishing I’d said something. Literally maybe a minute and a half later a lady walked past me, and then turned around and asked me if she could give me a hug. I was so startled, but I gave her a warm hug and then she went into the shrine and I started nearly crying feeling as if ‘Abdu'l-Bahá had seen what was in my heart and answered my prayers, prayers that I hadn’t even really said yet. I was standing there still in shock, awe, ecstasy, whatever you want to call it, for maybe ten minutes when another lady came out of the shrine, walked up to me and gave me a warm beautiful hug, then touched her cheeks to my cheeks three times, held my arms for a minute, smiled at me and walked away. Then at the end of the night after I had stayed about thirty minutes longer than I had thought I was supposed to, but hadn’t been bothered at all by it, the lady who came to relieve me, who I don’t think I had ever met before, gave me the warmest smile and a huge hug. I can’t even explain how much deeper my love for ‘Abdu'l-Bahá is now, Whose shrine I was standing outside of when all of this happened, Whose confirmations bring tears to my eyes, Whose love I could never live without. Interestingly enough, I have been realizing recently that if I really wish to cultivate in the children in my children’s class a deep love for ‘Abdu'l-Bahá, that I need to do the same. And I spent a lot of this week praying to ‘Abdu'l-Bahá to help me to do exactly this. Thus not only was this a small confirmation of the fact that He can see what is deep inside our hearts and loves us and will always provide what we need, but it was also a huge confirmation at the same time, that hopefully I am heading in the right direction, that little-by-little, day-by-day I am strengthening the love I have for ‘Abdu'l-Bahá. What a wonderful confirmation to have been given.

Powerless

I wish I had the power to go back in time and change the past. Not for me... I'm sure there are reasons for everything that has happened in my life, regardless of whether I understand it right now or not. But for a few other people in my life, who's souls were fractured by the disgusting and cruel actions of other people. People in their lives who they trusted. People who they thought they knew. People who manipulated them and stole from them and hurt them deeper then any of us could ever wish on anyone. Who stole their childhoods. I wish I could take away their pain. Take away not only the actions of those people who did it to them, but also the actions of the other people in their lives. Their family, their friends, their peers. The people who turned on them. Who blamed them, who didn't believe them, who pretended not to understand, who felt they had to take sides, who ridiculed them, who alienated them. When they needed compassion and help and trust and understanding and most importantly love, instead they received cold shoulders, ridicule and fear. I wish I could hug them and hold them and tell them that I had the power to give them back what was stolen. To unfracture their souls, to heal their hurts. I wish I could spare them the anguish and pain they feel every day trying to make sense of something that has no rhyme or reason. Trying to make sense of something that doesn't make sense.

But instead I sit here powerless.

You Were Never to Blame

I live my life carrying around a weight of my own making.
Shouldering a burden that doesn’t exist.
Wearing a mask that hides what I feel.
Afraid.
Unworthy.
Incapable.
Young.
Yearning for compassion, friendship and love
but afraid of interaction.
Constantly second guessing myself.
I hide.
Inside my mind.
Inside my heart.
Behind a smile and a calm exterior.
My fear kept under a tight lock.
My inexperience and cowardice fed by my silence.
A silence so deep I forget it is there.
It feeds on itself, ensnaring me deeper in its web.
I get lost in the echoes of nothing and everything.
The echoes of conversations that could have been if I was more capable,
of friendships that would have been if I were less afraid,
of a life I wish I knew how to lead,
a lack of acceptance of who I am,
constant judgment of who I should be,
And Fear.
Outrageous amounts of fear.
Has left me in a world of written words, poems & lyrics
A world of silence.

How Can Poetry Be a Force for Change?

I asked myself this question a few months ago and at the time I really didn’t have an answer. Truthfully I still don’t have an answer, but I have some ideas that I thought I’d share. Hopefully they’ll provoke further discussion and a deeper understanding, as all meaningful discussion should!

In the culture I grew up in, poetry is often seen as a stream of meaningless words that are depressing, elusive, boring and, while they may have fleeting significance, they generally don’t have any real purpose, any use in the world. Poets are viewed as emo, depressed, suicidal, socially awkward or English fanatics and the purpose of poetry is to serve as a tool for sharing one’s own feelings with others or dealing with negative emotions—both selfish, ego-focused reasons for writing.

As someone who has written poetry for many years but had never actually called herself a “poet”, the realization that I in fact am a poet was shocking. With this discovery came the question that is the title of this article. How can poetry be a force for change? Why do I write? If this is something that I would like to do throughout my life, how can I be sure that what I am doing is contributing to the betterment of the world? How can I be sure that I don’t fall into the same pits that many poets before me have fallen into? How do I make sure that my poetry helps me and those who read it to develop spiritually and to become agents of change, without promoting myself or focusing my thoughts too much on my own success or artistic ability?

I think the first experience I had that led me to think about this subject was a class I took in which we studied a tablet by Bahá’u'lláh, the prophet-founder of the Bahá’í Faith, called the “Fire Tablet“. In this tablet Bahá’u'lláh begins by sharing, in very poetic and beautiful language, all the anguish and pain He experienced on behalf of His followers who were persecuted and imprisoned for their beliefs. It leaves you feeling quite despondent, but halfway through the tablet the language shifts: it is as if Bahá’u'lláh’s higher Self, His soul (the part of Him that conveys God’s message to humanity) speaks to His lower self (the part manifested as a Man on earth), making sense of all that has passed and giving Him hope for the future.

When we sit down to write poetry today, it is often to “get something out” to, “clear our channel” of all the negative emotions and anguish that we are experiencing—and we tend to stop when we’ve reached this point. We feel we’ve let out all we needed to say and we stop, having created a piece of artwork that leaves the reader with many questions and frustrations—but no answers. This trend can be seen in quite a lot of art today: there is a need to show and share the problems of the world, yet we don’t give much thought for how these problems can be corrected. Thus our creations provoke feelings of despair, a lack of control, and a belief that one person cannot make a difference in this world.

One day I kept going after I had reached that point. I had cleared my channel of all the negative emotions and realized that I wasn’t finished. The voice inside me that always has the answers (which I typically shut off and don’t listen to)—you could call it your soul, your higher self, your inner voice or even your connection to God—had something to share with me, some wisdom that could help me see beyond my pain and hurt. So I kept going. Before I would have ended the poem feeling lonely but satisfied, but I finished the poem feeling loved and not alone.

What would happen if every creative person on this earth began asking themselves this question “How can [insert art form here] be a force for change?” We all recognize that in some way or another art moves the soul, stirs something inside us. How much more would our souls be moved and our actions changed if people tried to make their art form a force for good in the world rather than just an outlet for self?

Poetry - A Force for Change?

I can’t stop wondering, how can poetry truly be a force for change in the world (which in essence is the purpose of art right)? I feel like poetry is mostly seen as a way of sharing your own feelings with others, which is quite a selfish, ego focused purpose… Is it possible to change that, and if so how??? How can one be a poet and really make an effort to touch people’s hearts without at the same time trying to promote themselves, or focusing their thoughts too much on the self?

I had an epiphany about this, it’s not really an answer, but maybe somewhere to start from???? I was really frustrated one day and figured okay I just need to put these negative emotions into words, and so I did, but as I was writing it, it was like my channel was cleared and I was able to see a way to take the negative and pull God into it, and I realized that maybe that in itself is a skill to cultivate… If poetry is often an outlet to vent frustrations and negative emotions, why not create a new pattern, where the negative emotions come out and then the solution does as well (like the Fire Tablet, how Baha’u’llah’s lower self is sharing all His struggles and pain and anguish, and then His Higher Self takes over and finds meaning in all of it). It seems like it could be an interesting skill to try to cultivate… While it could come out with wonderful and meaningful poetry that would move others' hearts I think even more, it is definitely a method for writing poetry that could be taught. Is it possible for Poetry to be a force for change?

Wanderers

She wandered. Lost. Confused. Alone. She ached from the cold. It chilled her to the bone. Her eyes could see no color, her heart had stopped feeling what felt like years before. In the scenery surrounding her, she saw nothing. She put one foot in front of the other and that is all she could think of. Move forward, just keep moving forward. She couldn’t stop to look behind her and see how far she had come. She couldn’t glance around her to see the joy of what was, she could barely make out the path ahead. The elements had beaten her down. All she saw was the ground beneath her feat. All she felt was the hollow, bone chilling cold, all she thought was “keep moving forward, just keep moving.” So many people in our world live their lives this way. Walking alone, not seeing how far they’ve come, not looking up to enjoy their present, not feeling they have any choice but to keep moving. Unaware of where they are going or why. Feeling like every step is a struggle, every day meaningless, every step forward, feels like three steps backwards because they aren’t really moving. Their bodies move like drones coming from somewhere unknown, going to somewhere unknown. But their souls, their spirits, their hearts lay dormant. Waiting for someone to walk beside them, to guide them towards a path that has meaning. To teach them to see in color. To feel emotion. To speak. To awaken their hearts and give their lives meaning. It is our job to find these souls, these wanderers, moving through life without hope or meaning. To open their hearts and invite them to feel. To help them walk a path towards spirituality. Without God, we are all wanderers. All going different directions for different reasons. Invite them to walk your path with you for if we all walk towards God, this loneliness and desperation we feel will disappear. Colors will enter our vision, our chins will lift up and see the world and beauty surrounding us, see that we aren’t and never have been alone, see that life can have meaning.

Ignorance Isn't Bliss

You live in a world of “what you don’t know can’t hurt you.” Where horror and tragedy happen every day but nothing is done to correct it. Where babies are addicted to drugs before they are even born, toddlers are beaten to death for crying too much, four year olds get labeled and segregated from their friends, five year olds learn they will never succeed in life, six year olds bring guns to school and shoot their classmates, seven year olds feel so hopeless that they hang themselves in closets, eleven year olds put guns to their heads because they can’t take the ridicule, twelve year olds have sex and become parents, thirteen year olds experiment with drugs and die because of it, fourteen year olds light their friends on fire and laugh, fifteen year olds get raped while people stand and watch, sixteen year olds get drunk, drive and kill other sixteen year olds, seventeen year olds join gangs and get sent to prison and we wonder why at eighteen they believe life has no meaning or purpose.

However none of this matters because you live in a world of “what you don’t know can’t hurt you.” The environment may be slowly dying but if the trees behind your house are still green and flourishing then it can’t hurt you. The lakes and rivers may be drying up and people may have to walk for days to get fresh water, but if there is water coming from your tap then it can’t hurt you. Children on the other side of the world may be dying every minute from hunger but if your children are alive and healthy then it can’t hurt you. Governments may be depriving their citizens of freedom and knowledge but if your country is free and your family is educated then it can’t hurt you.

However, in reality, you live in a world where what you don’t know is hurting you, and not just you, it is hurting your future, and your children’s futures. The world affects everything and everything you do affects the world. I see a completely different world then you.

I live in a world where “God is the source of all Knowledge and with this knowledge come the tools for transformation.” Where horror and tragedy happen every day but people try to correct it. Where babies are loved and cherished, abuse is not accepted and a child’s death, regardless of circumstances, is mourned, where four year olds are encouraged to be independent and learn, five year olds have the world at their fingertips, six year olds say prayers and show love to one another, seven year olds feel God’s love and understand that they have a purpose in life, eleven year olds are encouraged and taught to care for one another, twelve year olds are taught to resist the temptations that are shoved in their faces every day, thirteen year olds offer service to humanity and show love to those around them, fourteen year olds fight against injustice and are empowered to change their world, fifteen year olds are treated as adults with respect for their opinions and love for their individuality, sixteen year olds are responsible, caring and amazing examples of how we should all act, seventeen year olds push the boundaries which society places on the mind and people wonder how it is possible that at eighteen these youth are so different from those around them and how they are able to change the lives of everyone who crosses their paths.

They live in a world where “God is the source of all Knowledge and with this knowledge come the tools for transformation.” This is the power of the Divine Educator, the power of God to transform and reshape the world we live in. When we give up our ignorance and embrace the knowledge that He entrusts to us, when we embrace His Cause and His Message, we become channels through which He can transform the world.