Hear Me, ye mortal birds!

Baha’u'llah wrote:

“Hear Me, ye mortal birds! In the Rose Garden of changeless splendor a Flower hath begun to bloom, compared to which every other flower is but a thorn, and before the brightness of Whose glory the very essence of beauty must pale and wither. Arise, therefore, and, with the whole enthusiasm of your hearts, with all the eagerness of your souls, the full fervor of your will, and the concentrated efforts of your entire being, strive to attain the paradise of His presence, and endeavor to inhale the fragrance of the incorruptible Flower, to breathe the sweet savors of holiness, and to obtain a portion of this perfume of celestial glory. Whoso followeth this counsel will break his chains asunder, will taste the abandonment of enraptured love, will attain unto his heart’s desire, and will surrender his soul into the hands of his Beloved. Bursting through his cage, he will, even as the bird of the spirit, wing his flight to his holy and everlasting nest. — Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh

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. Our body is like the cage, and the spirit is like the bird. We see that without the cage this bird flies in the world of sleep; therefore, if the cage becomes broken, the bird will continue and exist. Its feelings will be even more powerful, its perceptions greater, and its happiness increased. In truth, from hell it reaches a paradise of delights because for the thankful birds there is no paradise greater than freedom from the cage. — ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions

Thankful, the birds of the spirit seek only to fly in the high heavens and to sing out their songs with wondrous art. — ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá

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Blessed Is The Spot

Blessed is the spot, and the house, and the place, and the city, and the heart, and the mountain, and the refuge, and the cave, and the valley, and the land, and the sea, and the island, and the meadow where mention of God hath been made, and His praise glorified. — Baha’u'llah

Bahá’u'lláh has portrayed a fascinating spectacle in the spiritual worlds of God where the holy souls and the Concourse on High are circling around any spot on this earth where the believers are engaged in praise and glorification of God. — Adib Taherzadeh, The Revelation of Baha’u'llah

My second video, Land and Seascapes has been uploaded to YouTube. It celebrates a beautiful metaphor written by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. I used photographs that I made in Northern California when I lived there. Scenes include Golden Gate Park, Crystal Springs Lake in San Mateo County, Big Sur, and Carmel. Click here to watch it. The background music is Sheep May Safely Graze by J.S. Bach. I found a page on Wikipedia where you can download public domain performances.

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Ridvan Means Paradise

Arise, and proclaim unto the entire creation the tidings that He Who is the All-Merciful hath directed His steps towards the Ridván and entered it. Guide, then, the people unto the garden of delight which God hath made the Throne of His Paradise. We have chosen thee to be our most mighty Trumpet, whose blast is to signalize the resurrection of all mankind.
Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh

Behold how within all things the portals of the Ridvan of God are opened, that seekers may attain the cities of understanding and wisdom, and enter the gardens of knowledge and power. Within every garden they will behold the mystic bride of inner meaning enshrined within the chambers of utterance in the utmost grace and fullest adornment.
– Baha’u'llah, The Kitab-i-Iqan

Today is the first day of the Festival of Ridván. Bahá’ís around the world celebrate this festival:

“Ridván is a twelve-day festival in the Bahá’í Faith, commemorating the commencement of Bahá’u'lláh´s prophethood. It begins at sunset on April 20 and continues until sunset, May 2. On the first April 21st, ninth April 29th and twelfth days of Ridván May 2nd, work and schooling is suspended. … It is the most holy Bahá’í festival, and is also referred to as the ‘Most Great Festival’ and the ‘King of Festivals.’”
(from the Wikipedia article about Ridvan)

Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith, described it as “the holiest and most significant of all Bahá’í festivals.” The event that the Ridván festival commemorates took place in 1863 in Baghdad. Above is a photograph (which I colorized for this page) of the original Garden of Ridván.

The Garden of Ridván near Akká, Israel was named in its honor.

Download a document from the Bahá’í Writings and other sources about the broader symbolic significance of Ridván’s meanings as paradise and reunion with God (seven pages) including a brief historical background of the festival (two pages).

Another page on the significance of sacred gardens and their symbolic meanings.

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A New Tree May Grow Therefrom

From the seed of reality, religion has grown into a tree which has put forth leaves and branches, blossoms and fruit. After a time this tree has fallen into a condition of decay.

The leaves and blossoms have withered and perished; the tree has become stricken and fruitless. It is not reasonable that man should hold to the old tree, claiming that its life forces are undiminished, its fruit unequalled, its existence eternal.

The seed of reality must be sown again in human hearts in order that a new tree may grow therefrom and new divine fruits refresh the world. By this means the nations and peoples now divergent in religion will be brought into unity, imitations will be forsaken and a universal brotherhood in the reality itself will be established. Warfare and strife will cease among mankind; all will be reconciled as servants of God.

For all are sheltered beneath the tree of His providence and mercy. God is kind to all; He is the giver of bounty to all alike, even as His Holiness Jesus Christ has declared that God “sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust”; that is to say, the mercy of God is universal. All humanity is under the protection of His love and favor, and unto all He has pointed the way of guidance and progress. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Baha’i World Faith - ‘Abdu’l-Bahá Section, p. 226

“For all are sheltered beneath the tree of His providence and mercy.”

A Compilation About “Trees” Selections from the Bahá’í Writings that refer to trees in symbolic terms.

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The New Bahá’í Poets Blog

‘Abdu’l-Bahá said…: “All Art is a gift of the Holy Spirit. When this light shines through the mind of a musician, it manifests itself in beautiful harmonies. Again, shining through the mind of a poet, it is seen in fine poetry and poetic prose. When the Light of the Sun of Truth inspires the mind of a painter, he produces marvellous pictures. These gifts are fulfilling their highest purpose, when showing forth the praise of God.”

A new blog for Bahá’í Poets began yesterday. it sprang from a dialog on the Bahai-Writers list. The blog will accept poems and poetic prose from Bahá’í poets and writers. The blog will include many features and topic headings. So far the new Downloads page has three offerings available: Guidance to Poets, A Compilation of Use to Writers, and a brand new compilation not previously published, Poets… Poetic… Poetry. The About page that explains its purpose and reason for being hasn’t been written yet.

Please visit this new blog and share your thoughts.

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Light Birds (video)

Sanctify thy heart, illumine thy soul, and sharpen thy sight, that thou mayest perceive the sweet accents of the Birds of Heaven and the melodies of the Doves of Holiness warbling in the Kingdom of eternity, and perchance apprehend the inner meaning of these utterances and their hidden mysteries.
– Bahá’u’lláh, Gems of Divine Mysteries

Those evocative words superimposed on one of my bird photographs from Golden Gate Park open my first ever video. The images are set to music with “Bird,” a track from Susan Lewis Wright’s album of the same name. I provided the photographs for the album’s first and back covers. You can find the album here.

View my four-minute video on YouTube. My purpose in making this short video was the same as my purpose in making all my photographs and digital media paintings. The Purpose is always to point to the ultimate Creative Word as revealed by a Manifestation of God. In this age that Manifestation is Bahá’u’lláh.

In the words of Joseph Campbell:
Behind all these manifestations is the one radiance, which shines through all things. The function of art is to reveal this radiance through the created object.

I rejoice to hear that thou takest pains with thine art, for in this wonderful new age, art is worship. The more thou strivest to perfect it, the closer wilt thou come to God. What bestowal greater than this, that one’s art should be even as the act of worshipping the Lord? That is to say, when thy fingers grasp the paint brush, it is as if thou wert at prayer in the Temple. – ‘Abdu’l-Bahá

Light Bird’s web page.

Color is all. When color is right, form is right. Color is everything, color is vibration like music; everything is vibration. — Marc Chagall

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The Abstract Third Reality - Part 1 of a Series

The mind comprehendeth the abstract by the aid of the concrete, but the soul hath limitless manifestations of its own.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Tablet to August Forel

‘Abdu’l-Bahá wrote: Man is endowed with an outer or physical reality. It belongs to the material realm, the animal kingdom, because it has sprung from the material world. This animalistic reality of man he shares in common with the animals.

The human body is like animals subject to nature’s laws. But man is endowed with a second reality, the rational or intellectual reality; and the intellectual reality of man predominates over nature.

Yet there is a third reality in man, the spiritual reality. Through its medium one discovers spiritual revelations, a celestial faculty which is infinite as regards the intellectual as well as physical realms. That power is conferred upon man through the breath of the Holy Spirit. It is an eternal reality, an indestructible reality, a reality belonging to the divine, supernatural kingdom; a reality whereby the world is illumined, a reality which grants unto man eternal life. This third, spiritual reality it is which discovers past events and looks along the vistas of the future. It is the ray of the Sun of Reality. The spiritual world is enlightened through it, the whole of the Kingdom is being illumined by it. It enjoys the world of beatitude, a world which had not beginning and which shall have no end.

That celestial reality, the third reality of the microcosm, delivers man from the material world. Its power causes man to escape from nature’s world. Escaping, he will find an illuminating reality, transcending the limited reality of man and causing him to attain to the infinitude of God, abstracting him from the world of superstitions and imaginations, and submerging him in the sea of the rays of the Sun of Reality.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Foundations of World Unity

This series will proceed to discuss abstraction in four different ways:

1) an overview of abstract artist Vassily Kandinsky and his views from his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art.

2) abstract art in the light of this quotation from Joseph Campbell: Behind all these manifestations is the one radiance, which shines through all things. The function of art is to reveal this radiance through the created object.

3) the Prophets or Manifestations of God considered as Artists.

4) The Prophets or Manifestations of God as “abstracted essences”, a recurring theme in Bahá’í sacred text.

Download a nine-page compilation on the terms abstract and abstraction from the Bahá’í writings.

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enochsvision.com Makeover

Strain every nerve to acquire both inner and outer perfections, for the fruit of the human tree hath ever been and will ever be perfections both within and without. It is not desirable that a man be left without knowledge or skills, for he is then but a barren tree. Then, so much as capacity and capability allow, ye needs must deck the tree of being with fruits such as knowledge, wisdom, spiritual perception and eloquent speech. — Bahá’u’lláh

I have almost completed a makeover of my primary website, enochsvision.com. The previous design was five years old. I felt that it had a few problems. One problem was the design’s image pop-ups. Firefox with the popular Tab-Mix add-in displayed the enlarged images in a new tab. Thus the navigation graphics disappeared and the image itself looked out of place. Some versions of Internet Explorer failed to show the image pop-ups at all. I also felt that there was too much black on the image pages. Many photographers use black backgrounds –as I continue to do– because black makes a photograph’s colors appear more vivid by contrast.

“Color is all. When color is right, form is right. Color is everything, color is vibration like music; everything is vibration.” — Marc Chagall

I have also added new images that weren’t included in the previous design and an entirely new media, collages. There are also two newly scanned portraits of my favorite fictional character, Hannah Moon Light, who is the heroine of some of my stories.

The enochsvision.com domain has been in existence since the 1980s. I began using the The name “enochsvision” long before there was an Internet back in 1970. Prior to that I used the trade name “Enoch’s Eye.”

See my page about the name The name Enoch and Portraits of the Artist (who is enochsvision?).

I will soon add two animated Flash movies of many of my bird images and a new section called Meditations. Many of the meditations are drawn from this blog but are considerably expanded.

Please use the Feedback form on my website to let me know what you think of it and to offer any suggestions on how I might improve the user experience. I thoughtfully consider all constructive suggestions.

enochsvision.com is what I call a Bahá’í-inspired or Bahá’í-themed presentation. It is purely a personal site maintained by me, an individual, whose purpose is to teach people about the faith that gives meaning and purpose to his life. Bahá’u’lláh, the Prophet-Founder of my faith, inspired believers to strive for excellence in all things. I have not achieved excellence yet but always continue to strive for it.

Wherefore, O ye friends of God, redouble your efforts, strain every nerve, till ye triumph in your servitude to the Ancient Beauty, the Manifest Light, and become the cause of spreading far and wide the rays of the Day-Star of Truth. Breathe ye into the world’s worn and wasted body the fresh breath of life, and in the furrows of every region sow ye holy seed. Rise up to champion this Cause; open your lips and teach. In the meeting place of life be ye a guiding candle; in the skies of this world be dazzling stars; in the gardens of unity be birds of the spirit, singing of inner truths and mysteries.– ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá

Download a document in PDF format titled “excellence-in-all-things” which was compiled from the Bahá’í Writings by the Universal house of Justice in Haifa.

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Hey, Little Bird, I Remember You

Earlier this month while I was designing the page “Little Bird Becomes a Great Eagle” a song I heard many years ago began to play in my head. It was Hey, Little Bird, I Remember You written and sung by Buffy St. Marie. I searched long and hard for the lyrics online but failed to find them. So I transcribed a verse from my iTunes library. I had the great pleasure of seeing her perform live in San Francisco almost 30 years ago.

From Wikipedia: “She became an active friend of the Bahá’í Faith by the mid-1970s when she is said to have appeared in the 1973 Third National Baha’i Youth Conference at the Oklahoma State Fairgrounds, Oklahoma City, OK, with several artists including Seals & Crofts and has continued to appear at concerts, conferences and conventions of that religion since then. In 1992 Sainte-Marie appeared in the musical event prelude to the Bahá’í World Congress; a double concert “Live Unity: The Sound of the World” in 1992 with video broadcast and documentary. In the video documentary of the event Sainte-Marie is seen on the Dini Petty Show explaining the Bahá’í Faith teaching of Progressive Revelation.

In 1996 she received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Regina. In 2007 she received an honorary Doctor of Letters from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.”

The song Hey, Little Bird, I Remember You appears on her 1967 album, Fire and Fleet and Candlelight. This is the link to the Wikipedia overview of Buffy St. Marie’s life. You’ll find the section of Censorship very interesting as it reflects what happened to Native North American artists in the United States.

One of the song’s most beautiful verses is overlayed on my photograph above. Fair Use applies. Buy some of her albums! Here’s a six second clip from the song. Right-click on the link and select Save Target (IE) or Save Link As (Firefox) to download it.

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Bridges to Reality

O concourse of divines! Fear God from this day onwards in the views ye advance, for He Who is Our Remembrance in your midst, and Who cometh from Us, is, in very truth, the Judge and Witness. Turn away from that which ye lay hold of, and which the Book of God, the True One, hath not sanctioned, for on the Day of Resurrection ye shall, upon the Bridge, be, in very truth, held answerable for the position ye occupied…. And unto you We have sent down this Book which truly none can mistake…
– The Báb, Selections from the Writings of The Báb, p. 43

Take thou good heed that ye may all, under the leadership of Him Who is the Source of Divine Guidance, be enabled to direct thy steps aright upon the Bridge, which is sharper than the sword and finer than a hair, so that perchance the things which from the beginning of thy life till the end thou hast performed for the love of God, may not, all at once and unrealized by thyself, be turned to acts not acceptable in the sight of God. Verily God guideth whom He will into the path of absolute certitude. VII, 2.
– The Báb, Selections from the Writings of The Báb, p. 96

The sciences of today are bridges to reality; if then they lead not to reality, naught remains but fruitless illusion. By the one true God! If learning be not a means of access to Him, the Most Manifest, it is nothing but evident loss.

It is incumbent upon thee to acquire the various branches of knowledge, and to turn thy face toward the beauty of the Manifest Beauty, that thou mayest be a sign of saving guidance amongst the peoples of the world, and a focal centre of understanding in this sphere from which the wise and their wisdom are shut out, except for those who set foot in the Kingdom of lights and become informed of the veiled and hidden mystery, the well-guarded secret.
– ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, p. 110)

Download a short and very diverse compilation of references to Bridges in the Bahá’í Writings and in some books about the Bahá’í faith.

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The bridge in my photograph (above) is I-280 south of San Francisco high above Crystal Springs Road. I learned to drive on that twisting mountain road.