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We Bahá’ís are lucky to have a huge library of prayers revealed to us by the Báb, Bahá’u’lláh, and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. We use them all the time, and we love them. But frequently when I pray, I find my thoughts turning to other prayers, written by average folks like you and me. OK, so most of them were saints, and some of them are the greatest figures Christianity has ever known, but they’re sort of “you-and-me” prayers. Prayers that were composed, not by the Great Lights, but by people who, like you and me, daily sought God, occasionally got lost, and wept more often than Jesus did.
People sometimes wrote to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, including prayers they themselves had written. To one Bahá’í, He responded:
The brief prayer which thou didst write at the close of thy letter was indeed original, touching and beautiful. Recite thou this prayer at all times.
(‘Abdu'l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu'l-Bahá, p. 66)
To a believer who asked about the form prayer should take, Shoghi Effendi wrote:
In regard to your question: we must not be rigid about praying; there is not a set of rules governing it; the main thing is we must start out with the right concept of God, the Manifestation, the Master, the Guardian -- we can turn, in thought, to any one of them when we pray. For instance you can ask Bahá'u'lláh for something, or, thinking of Him, ask God for it. The same is true of the Master or the Guardian. You can turn in thought to either of them and then ask their intercession, or pray direct to God. As long as you don't confuse their stations, and make them all equal, it does not matter much how you orient your thoughts.
(from a letter dated 24 July 1946 to an individual believer, The Compilation of Compilations, vol. II, p. 241)
I’ve been thrilled to see prayers written by Bahíyyih Khánum included in some of the recent women’s prayer books. I suppose I should hesitate in calling a member of the Holy Family “average folks”, but Bahíyyih Khánum has a lot more in common with most women than does, say, her big brother. This prayer, which is almost lovely beyond words, was part of a letter written to the Spiritual Assembly of Tabríz the spring after His passing:
O God, my God!Thou seest me immersed in the depths of grief, drowned in my sorrow, my heart on fire with the agony of parting, my inmost self aflame with longing. Thou seest my tears streaming down, hearest my sighs rising up like smoke, my never-ceasing groans, my cries, my shouts that will not be stilled, the useless wailing of my heart.
For the sun of joy has set, has sunk below the horizon of this world, and in the hearts of the righteous the lights of courage and consolation have gone out. So grave this catastrophe, so dire this disaster, that the inner being crumbles away to dust, and the heart blazes up, and nothing remains save only despair and anguish.
Thou seest, O my God, in the midmost of this terrible event, this ultimate calamity, when the devoted never put aside their mourning dress, and the moaning and the tears never cease -- how that malevolent band have, with all their powers, mounted an attack against Thy loved ones who are loyal to the Covenant, even as the assault of wolves upon the flock. They are striving, with all their strength, to bring down the mighty structure of Thy Covenant in ruins, and level Thy strong citadel to the ground, and turn away from Thy straight and clearly-marked path those Thou hast guided aright. O my Lord, I voice my complaint before Thee, and lay bare my griefs and sorrows, and supplicate at the door of Thy oneness, and whisper unto Thee, and weep and cry out.
O my kind Lord! Thou didst make a clear compact and a Covenant explicit and firm, not in veiled and allusive language, that all should turn unto the Centre of Thy Covenant and the Protector of Thy Cause -- so that no doubts whatever would remain for the hostile and the suspicious to exploit; and then Thy lone Servant rose up to lift Thy banner high, and carry the day for Thy Faith. For thirty years He summoned the people unto Thee, publicly, privately, and spread Thy Teachings and Thy principles to every corner, every country of the earth. Night and day, He fostered Thy loved ones in the cradle of divine knowledge and wisdom, and endowed them with the qualities of the spirit. And all this time He bore, at the hands of that evil crew, not once but over and over again, every kind of outrage, and calumny, and oppression. For they were forever lying in wait for Him, were spying on Him at all times from their ambush, attacking Him in whatever manner they chose, swelling with their insolence and pride. And yet, through Thy strong support, Thine overwhelming confirmations, they were the losers in the end, and their strivings came to nothing in this world's life, and all they gained was their own ruin.
Then, O my Lord, Thou didst make Him to ascend unto Thee, to place Him at Thy side, and by this the pillars of joy were shaken to their base, and the hearts of the devoted were terrified, and the smoke of their sorrow overspread the earth. At such a time that hate-filled band, seeing their advantage in the dire event, came in from every highway and byway, advancing on every side to topple over the throne of Thy Covenant, and lead Thy loved ones to perdition. They have laid their very being in ruins and they know not. How far, how very far have they gone in their ignorance!
But the Centre of Thy complete and flawless Covenant, He Who occupies the seat of servitude to Thee in Thine exalted and all-glorious Cause, had written by Thy will and Thy power a Book that shall never be lost nor ever forgotten. Within it by Thy predestinating knowledge and might, He had set forth all that is essential and obligatory for the upraising of Thy Cause in this world below. It is a book in which all things are explained in minute detail, in such wise that no matters whether small or great have been left out. And by Thy will and pleasure He designated therein, in place of His own Person, a Branch grown out from the Tree of Thy holiness, one fresh and tender, verdant and flourishing, arising to serve Thee, dwelling in the groves of Thine eternity, and Thine immortal gardens. And he, after turning to Thy gracious countenance and through Thine ancient succour, is inviting the people unto Thee and unto Thy Covenant, sound and firmly-established, and is spreading Thy commandments and Thy doctrines throughout Thy land, and guiding Thy servants to the path that leads aright.
O my God, I beg of Thee by all the days which Thy Light, the Centre of Thy Covenant, did spend in scattering Thy sweet scents abroad, and by all the nights when that delicate and fragile Being rested not, but kept the long vigils, crying out unto Thee, expending His efforts to guard Thy Cause and Thy dear ones, exerting His utmost to spread out Thy bounties and bestowals -- while the malevolent, comfortable against their pillows, rested in their beds -- I entreat Thee, by the ordeals He endured, for the sake of exalting Thy Word, at the hands of those who join partners to God, and the deniers, and the deserters, to keep Thy loved ones safe from the arrows of the calumniators, and the doubts of those who mislead and betray. Hold them fast, then, in the gardens and groves of Thy Covenant and Testament, and make them to enter the pavilions of Thy good pleasure, and shelter them in the refuge of Thy protection, and cast upon them the glance of Thy mercy's eye, and guard them from deviation and schism. Make them to live in unity and harmony, one with the others, and aid them to serve Thy Faith and to spread Thy Teachings far and wide.
Verily Thou art the Living, the Eternal, the Watchful, the All-Powerful, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise.
(Bahíyyih Khánum: The Greatest Holy Leaf, p. 125)
Overwhelming. I hear in this prayer not only the love of a human being for her brother but the weeping of the Maid of Heaven. I’m looking forward to listening to more of Bahíyyih Khánum’s words, whenever we get them, although I’ve become resigned to the likelihood that most of them were spoken to other women who may or may not have made note of them; their fragrance long ago vanished on the breeze.
When I think of the long and painful roads that some of us travel before we reach a home in the Faith, this prayer of St. Augustine comes to mind. Augustine was a wild and crazy youth who was the despair of his Christian mother, Monica, who nevertheless prayed constantly for him. Eventually Augustine had his moment of clarity, and the rest is history. In his Confessions, written around the year 400 C.E., he wrote this prayer, which has become a classic:
Late have I loved Thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new; late have I loved Thee: for behold Thou wert within me, and I outside; and I sought Thee outside and in my unloveliness fell upon those lovely things that Thou hast made. Thou wert with me, and I was not with Thee. I was kept from Thee by those things, yet had they not been in Thee, they would not have been at all. Thou didst call and cry to me to break open my deafness: and Thou didst send forth Thy beams and shine upon me and chase away my blindness: Thou didst breathe fragrance upon me, and I drew in my breath and do now pant for Thee: I tasted Thee, and now hunger and thirst for Thee: Thou didst touch me, and I have burned for Thy peace.
(Augustine of Hippo, Confessions)
Hmm, there’s something familiar about that “ancient Beauty”!
St. Francis of Assisi, who lived from 1181 to 1226 (and whose memory is perpetuated in stone and bronze in gardens ‘round the world), composed prayers of exquisite simplicity. The prayer usually called the Canticle thanks God for the material world—fire, water, the sun, moon, and stars, air and wind, death, and so forth—and inspired the movie Brother Sun, Sister Moon. My favorite prayer of St. Francis’s is this one:
Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled, as to console,
To be understood, as to understand,
To be loved, as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
You might have seen that prayer; it’s popular and appears in many places. If only more people would pay attention!
St. Patrick, who lived in the fourth and fifth centuries C.E., had the right attitude toward the Manifestation:
Christ, be with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ where I lie, Christ where I sit, Christ where I arise,
Christ in the heart of every one who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every one who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
Salvation is of the Lord,
Salvation is of the Lord,
Salvation is of the Christ,
May your salvation, O Lord, be ever with us.
This prayer of Patrick’s always makes me think of the long prayer of the Báb invoking God’s protection “from what lieth in front of us and behind us, above our heads, on our right, on our left, below our feet and every other side to which we are exposed”. It’s also quite a teaching challenge to be “Christ in every eye that sees me” and “Christ in every ear that hears me”. While we want the Manifestation to go with us, we also need to remember that we are representing Him to others. We don’t want to appear anything less than (in Patrick’s day, anyway) Christlike.
Interfaith prayer books are now beginning to appear with some regularity, and I think they’re great. They should be in every Bahá’í library. The words we use in approaching God are universal. And there are marvelous prayers that people have written over the ages.
I’d like to leave with this one. It was turned into the song “Day By Day” in the musical Godspell; a catchy tune contemporary with a rock version of the Lord’s Prayer and Jesus Christ Superstar, during the ecumenical revival of the early 1970s. The prayer, however, was composed in the thirteenth century C.E. by St. Richard of Chichester. St. Richard, of course, writes of Christ, but you are free to substitute a different Manifestation.
Thanks be to Thee, O Lord Jesus Christ, for all the benefits which Thou hast given us; for all the pains and insults which Thou hast borne for us. O most merciful Redeemer, friend and brother, may we know Thee more clearly, love Thee more dearly, and follow Thee more nearly; for Thine own sake.
Amen. So be it.
http://www.planetbahai.org/cgi-bin/articles.pl?article=326
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