Day 6 - Some kind of insight

A couple of days ago I explained how the Baha'i Faith has protected me from myself. 

Don't get me wrong, I have many personal issues that I am dealing with, and I forget to use the Baha'i Faith as a tool to deal with those issues.

I'm not saying all the answers are apparent in the writings of the faith but it's almost like having a map to the stars in the sky; a wise man once told me that and I feel it makes sense. One of the those aspects that have inspired me is to be grateful for having a test. 

For me, it's a mind-boggling way to look my trials.When bad stuff happens every part of me wants to complain and protest. I find myself asking, 'Why? What did I do to deserve this?"

But when you go against every fibre of your being and try to be grateful, it's a whole other level of thinking. I want it clear that this is something I am working on and each person's test is different. Some mental and spiritual tests I am going through right now have proved a challenge for me and my family. It's been tough to say the least and in writing a little about it I hope to grow from these tests.

A story by Baha'u'llah from a book called the Seven Valleys and Four Valleys was the first time I was introduced to that. It's a bit long for a blog but worth the read: 

There was once a lover who had sighed for long years in separation from his beloved, and wasted in the fire of remoteness. From the rule of love, his heart was empty of patience, and his body weary of his spirit; he reckoned life without her as a mockery, and time consumed him away. How many a day he found no rest in longing for her; how many a night the pain of her kept him from sleep; his body was worn to a sigh, his heart’s wound had turned him to a cry of sorrow. He had given a thousand lives for one taste of the cup of her presence, but it availed him not. The doctors knew no cure for him, and companions avoided his company; yea, physicians have no medicine for one sick of love, unless the favor of the beloved one deliver him.

At last, the tree of his longing yielded the fruit of despair, and the fire of his hope fell to ashes. Then one night he could live no more, and he went out of his house and made for the marketplace. On a sudden, a watchman followed after him. He broke into a run, with the watchman following; then other watchmen came together, and barred every passage to the weary one. And the wretched one cried from his heart, and ran here and there, and moaned to himself: “Surely this watchman is Izrá’íl, my angel of death, following so fast upon me; or he is a tyrant of men, seeking to harm me.” His feet carried him on, the one bleeding with the arrow of love, and his heart lamented. Then he came to a garden wall, and with untold pain he scaled it, for it proved very high; and forgetting his life, he threw himself down to the garden.

And there he beheld his beloved with a lamp in her hand, searching for a ring she had lost. When the heart-surrendered lover looked on his ravishing love, he drew a great breath and raised up his hands in prayer, crying: “O God! Give Thou glory to the watchman, and riches and long life. For the watchman was Gabriel, guiding this poor one; or he was Isráfíl, bringing life to this wretched one!”

Indeed, his words were true, for he had found many a secret justice in this seeming tyranny of the watchman, and seen how many a mercy lay hid behind the veil. Out of wrath, the guard had led him who was athirst in love’s desert to the sea of his loved one, and lit up the dark night of absence with the light of reunion. He had driven one who was afar, into the garden of nearness, had guided an ailing soul to the heart’s physician.

Now if the lover could have looked ahead, he would have blessed the watchman at the start, and prayed on his behalf, and he would have seen that tyranny as justice; but since the end was veiled to him, he moaned and made his plaint in the beginning. Yet those who journey in the garden land of knowledge, because they see the end in the beginning, see peace in war and friendliness in anger. I am still sick so have not been physically fasting. In the mean time I'm trying to be moderate in my eating and refrain from eating junk food, which is the way I was eating before the fast. More on that tomorrow.

Motion action and sports. I'm a fan of shooting like this but it doesn't always work out. It was fun to experiment with delayed shutter and flash during this hockey game.