Transcription
So now we're on to the fourth quality about the Baháʼí Faith. So far, we've got what? Joy and radiance, see only the good in people, and three, to forgive. And now we come to the fourth quality, and I don't think anyone has guessed it yet. Would you like to try one more time?
Okay, service. You think of service? No, it's not. Anyone have any other guesses? Perseverance. You keep saying that. Any other qualities? Acquiescence to the will of God. We were just talking about that already with happiness, isn't that right? Yes. Any other one? Suffering. That's what I'm doing right now. Humility. Yeah, these are all good.
I'll tell you what, I'll read you a story. I'll read you a story, and maybe we can figure out what it is from this story. This comes from a pilgrim who visited ʻAbdu'l-Bahá in 1909. Before his travels, her name was May Woodcock, and she came to the Holy Land in 1909. And she was fortunate enough to witness some of the most momentous events in the history of the Faith, because that was the time in which ʻAbdu'l-Bahá entered the remains of the Báb. And so it was a wonderful pilgrimage in 1909, and it coincided with the establishment of the House of Worship Committee being set up in 1909.
But she said that the thing that struck her the most when they got to walk on pilgrimage is that they found ʻAbdu'l-Bahá was under tremendous burdens. She said, "ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, a stupendous burden had not been realized by us until our visit." And so she asked him, "How could we lighten his burden?" And he said, "There is one way that you can lighten my burden." And he said, "If you do this, you can lighten my burden." What do you think that way was? Teach the Faith. Teach the Cause. What else do you think? Obedience. Love the friends. He said this. He said, "The only way that we could lighten ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's burden was by being in perfect unity amongst ourselves." To be in unity. This was the only thing we could do to lighten ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's burden.
And so she went back to the United States in 1909, and in 1910, ʻAbdu'l-Bahá finally became free, and he traveled to Egypt. And when ʻAbdu'l-Bahá traveled to Egypt, first time in his life, he was able to travel and not be an exile or a prisoner. The Baháʼís in America got very excited because they realized that if ʻAbdu'l-Bahá could come out of Palestine, well, maybe he could come to the United States. So they got together, and they sent a letter to ʻAbdu'l-Bahá inviting him to the United States. And what they did was they agreed that one local assembly, the local assembly of Chicago, would write this letter to ʻAbdu'l-Bahá inviting him to come.
And in December of 1910, ʻAbdu'l-Bahá wrote a response back to that letter, and I want to read that to you. He says, "To the members of the Assemblies of the Baháʼís in America, to the beloved ones and maidservants of the Merciful. He is God. Oh, you dear friends and maidservants of God, your epistle was received. You have expressed joy and happiness because of the trip of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá from the center of prison, ʻAkká, to the land of divine Joseph, Egypt. There are divine wisdoms in this journey. I am hopeful that it will be productive of results. Now, praise be to God, some time has passed with the utmost of spirit and fragrance in this country, and we are occupied with the service of the Cause of God and the servitude to the holy threshold. When the service, which is our present purpose, is realized for the Kingdom of God, perhaps we shall journey to other parts."
This seems like rather strange answer. The Americans write to him and they invite him to come to America, and he says, "Well, in Egypt right now, and when my work is finished, perhaps I'll go." A very nice response, perhaps. And he goes on to say this. He says, "If the beloved of God in all America strive for unity and harmony, attained perfect love and accord, and act according to the divine teachings and the precepts of the Blessed Perfection, this will prove a magnet attracting ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, so that perchance he may journey to America. But until the light of oneness, unity, and love shine forth from the lamp of America, and the beloved act in accordance with the divine teachings and precepts of the Blessed Perfection, and all the believers in America become united and harmonious, my coming to America will be hindered, nay, impossible."
And this must have been shocking to the Baháʼís. They wrote him and said, "Please come." He said, "Maybe I'll come if you're united. I may come if you're just united. It's impossible for me to come." And I would have thought, "Well, hold on. If we're just united, he would come quicker to to unite us." And so then he goes on and says, "Therefore, strive ye that ye may become the embodied teachings of the Blessed Perfection, confirmed in the divine precepts, resurrected in holiness and purity, severance, humility and meekness, set aglow with the fire of divine love, and loosen your tongues with the praises and commendations of the heavenly kingdom. Thus may the great attainment be realized upon you." ʻAbdu'l-Bahá ʻAbbás.
And I was thinking, what would it have been like to receive that letter? We invited him, and he said, "Well, maybe I'm coming. I'm not. Let me know when you're united." And then in 1911, he travels to Europe. You know, he traveled in 1911, and he went to Geneva, and then he went to London, and so on. And so one of the American believers got on a boat, sailed across to go and see him. Still, they didn't know his answer about coming to America. And this believer was Juliet Thompson, and she spent time with him in France and in Switzerland. And she writes in her diary about this first arrival of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá to the West.
And she talks about how when they were traveling through Switzerland, they came to a beautiful waterfall. She says, "They came to this spectacular waterfall, and ʻAbdu'l-Bahá had to just get out and stop and go and sit at the waterfall and stare at it." Can you imagine the first time he was a free man, and he's seeing this beautiful waterfall in Switzerland? And she describes this scene. She says, "Driving home, we came to the most spectacular waterfall, foaming down a black precipice. The Master stopped the car, and with a sort of excitement, got out, then walked the very edge of the precipice. After standing there for some time, his eyes fixed on that long, shining torrent, which seemed to be shaking off diamonds in a fury, he seated himself on a rock hanging over the deep abyss." Can you just see ʻAbdu'l-Bahá sitting there on the rock, staring at the waterfall?
And she says, "It was just after we left the waterfall that the Master turned to me, and smiled and said, 'If I come to America, Juliette, will you invite me to see such waterfalls?'" She said, "I will invite you to Niagara if you will come to America. But surely, my Lord, your coming doesn't depend on my invitation." "No," he said, "my invitation to America will be the unity of the believers." She said, "Louise asked me to give you her love and beg you to come and unite us, otherwise," she said, "we will never be united." "No, you must do that yourselves." See, in what perfect harmony we are in right now. You are not complaining of one another. But if I should go to America, they would all be complaining of one another." And then he laughed and made a lively gesture, and "I would fly away." And he did that. He said, "I would fly away." I want you all to do that right now. This is... he said, "If people start complaining of one another, he would fly away."
And so I'm thinking, this is so interesting that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá made it a condition for coming to America that they were united first. He would not come if they weren't united. He said, "My invitation to America will be the unity of the believers. Don't send me a written invitation. My invitation is your unity." And so I'm wondering when he finally decided to come to America. I don't know exactly when he announced it, but I want to skip to when he was leaving America. Because now we know what he said before coming. This is his farewell address to the Baháʼís of Chicago on May 5th of 1912. He says, "I am going away, but you must arise to serve the Word of God. Be in perfect unity." Before coming, he wants them in unity. And as he's leaving, his final words are, "Be in perfect unity." He says, "Never become angry with one another. Let your eyes be directed toward the kingdom of truth, and not toward the world of creation. Love the creatures for the sake of God, and not for themselves. Humanity is not perfect. There are imperfections in every human being, and you will always become unhappy if you look towards the people themselves. But if you look toward God, you will love them and be kind to them, for the world of God is the world of perfection and complete mercy. Therefore, do not look at the shortcomings of anybody. See with the sight of forgiveness."
You noticed all the things he's saying right here. He's talking about unity, he's talking about happiness, he's talking about forgiveness, he's talking about not seeing the shortcomings of people. And these are the first four things we've talked about. Now, I can't read the rest of this because then you'll know what the rest is, so we'll continue this tomorrow. But you see, ʻAbdu'l-Bahá knew what we needed. He knew we needed to be happy. He knew we needed to not look at the shortcomings of people. He knew we needed to act with forgiveness. But most of all, he wanted us to be united.
And when he was in America, he explained unity in such a way that completely changed our consciousness of what unity is. A lot of us think that unity is kind of like holding hands and singing Kumbaya. It's some kind of happy little thing where we all hug and so on. But to ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, unity was the most important power in all of creation. In fact, he even went so far as to say that love, unity, cohesion was the source of creation. And that you can see the power of love and the power of unity in every part of creation, from the tiniest atom to the way it clings together with the atomic forces, to atoms bonding to becoming molecules, to the earth, and to the stars and nebulae and galaxies. Everything, he said, in creation is held together by love.
But the way he describes love is that love is synonymous with life and synonymous with unity. They're all one and the same thing. To ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, because ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, love, cohesion, unity, and life, all of these things are one and the same thing. And last year, I told you I learned that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá was right from my cat. Remember I told you what my cat died? And when my cat died, I went to bury her, and she had completely decomposed within a day. And I thought, this was very strange. How could it be that this cat that has all these atoms that are clinging together for 18 years of her life, then as soon as life goes away, she decomposes? And ʻAbdu'l-Bahá said this. He said, "Where there is life, there is cohesion and attraction. And where there is death, there's decomposition." Because ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, anytime you see unity, you're seeing life. If you see a united family, you're seeing life. If you see a united community, or united marriage, united workplace, united city, you're seeing life. But if you see a marriage falling apart, you're seeing death. If you see a community that is disunited, it is death. And to ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, these things were one and the same thing.
And so he knew that America was a lifeless body of Baháʼís until such time as they united. And to ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, unity was the single most important thing. It was the most important thing. If a baby is dying on the operating table, the first thing you do is keep it alive, because that's a... you don't care about what clothes it's wearing or or or anything else, because this takes priority. And to ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, unity took priority.
Now, we know in the physical world that unity has strange powers. We know scientists know this in chemistry. We know this in physics. We know this in biology, molecular biology, and so on. For example, I told you a story a few years ago here at this school about how humans first discovered metals. You know, metals are often compared to humans. The way God often refers to us as metals, because metals have certain qualities like humans. They can be shaped into any shape, and various other qualities. And if so happens, there's a very soft metal called copper. And it's so soft that you can bend it easily. If you take copper wire, you can pull it like a rubber band. It's not very useful for very many things. If you make an axe out of copper and chop something, it ends up having the shape of the thing you... you chopped. You can't make a knife out of it. You can't make tools out of it. You can only pretty much make artwork and some bowls out of it. But because it's so soft, it was one of the first metals that humans discovered, because they could easily extract it from rocks. And then later, they discovered an even softer metal called tin. And pure tin is just like paper. It's... it's considerably weaker than copper. And somebody got a brilliant idea around 3,500 BC to melt some copper and to melt some tin and mix them together. This is a pretty stupid idea, if you ask me. You've got this weak substance, and you put it to a weaker thing, and it created something called bronze, which is many times stronger than copper. And this makes no sense. How can you take a weak metal, combine it and unite it with something that's weaker, and it creates something that's stronger than both of them?
But this is a principle that science knows is the power of unity and diversity. We know it now as the metallic bonding is a very special bond, and we actually know the reasons for it. But it so happens that unity and diversity creating strength even exists in the physical world. Now, you say to me, "Well, that's a nice talk. Why are you telling me that?" I'll tell you why I'm telling you, because we mark all of human history by this discovery. All of human history. In fact, we mark prehistory of human beings into three ages: the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and then the Iron Age. And why do we do that? Because this one discovery of unity and diversity in the metallurgic realm, this one discovery completely changed every aspect of human civilization. Everything changed. Architecture, agriculture, everything changed because things that could not have been done before were suddenly possible by this one discovery.
Now, may not also be the same that when we discovered the power of unity and diversity in the human realm, that also a new age in human history will come? That things that were not possible before will suddenly become possible because we realize that there is strength in diversity. That the physical world teaches us. And I told you last year that we also found in the physical sciences that unity creates transformation. For some reason, atoms decide to bond with other atoms. And you can look in a microscope, and you can see that there are tens of thousands of different ways in which atoms bond, and they create molecules. And every one of them is a beautiful bond. And when they bond, the atoms suddenly acquire powers that they didn't have before.
For example, the simplest atom, the lightest atom in the universe, hydrogen. Everyone knows hydrogen is the first atom, and it's out there, and it's primarily an atom we associate with fire, because it burns. It's all... it doesn't look at the sun, it's just burning hydrogen. Hydrogen is the mother of all fires, and that's what hydrogen is. And we have this other atom called oxygen. The oxygen atom. And also that's associated with fire. In fact, fire cannot live without oxygen here on earth. You take oxygen away, and the fire goes out. Look at the space shuttle when it's taking off, its liquid oxygen because it's so flammable. Ask me, I'd say never put those two together. But every now and then, in physical creation, the hydrogen atom and the oxygen atom, they kind of get together, and they unite, and they bond, and they create a substance called water. Water, which puts out fire, and is life-giving, and has qualities which neither hydrogen nor oxygen have. Isn't this remarkable?
And it's the same thing with human beings. That when we unite, we transform, and we acquire qualities which none of us would have without unity. Because the physical world is teaching us over and over and over again that unity has power. And in molecular biology, we find that if unity gets to a certain point, it creates life. That life itself is created out of unity. If you look at plants, you can see that they're taking the disparate elements that are disintegrating in it, they bring them up through the power of water and the sun and and various other forces, and somehow they create unity. And this is what ʻAbdu'l-Bahá wanted to bring to the world. Unity is the force that will unite the world. This is why Baháʼu'lláh says, "So powerful is the light of unity that it can develop the earth."
And when he says that, "so powerful is the light of unity," it really struck me because I do not associate unity with light. If you asked me to make a symbol for unity, I would not have intuitively picked light. Yeah, I would say glue. You know, they're... you know, "so powerful is the glue of unity that it can stick together the earth," or something. If I... But why is it light? And that is because unity has certain powers, according to ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, that we don't really understand.
It so happens that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá told us how we could unite. He told us what would be conducive to unity, what do you think that would be? What is can do? He said something. He said, "I suggest to you that if you do this thing, it will be greatly conducive to your unity, to the harmony of your association." What do you think that thing was that would create unity? Consultation. Yeah, that's... You might have said that to love each other. But how do you love each other? Just to say love? What does that really mean? What does love really mean? Love God? Maybe you want me to tell you what he said. Says here, "One day ʻAbdu'l-Bahá was with a group of friends under a grove tree near Lake Michigan." Don't you love it? Every time ʻAbdu'l-Bahá was under a waterfall or a tree, and the grove tree. And he says he was under a grove tree near Lake Michigan, and he suddenly turned to the friends and he said, "Some of you may have observed that I have not called attention to any of your individual shortcomings. Have you noticed? I never called any attention to any of your individual shortcomings." He said, "I would suggest to you that if you shall be similarly considerate in your treatment of each other, it will be greatly conducive to the harmony of your association with each other." Just don't call attention to their shortcomings. Isn't that so simple?
Now, the interesting thing about ʻAbdu'l-Bahá is that to him, he valued unity over being right. But most Americans, I know, we value being right over unity. And this is a very interesting difference that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá had. We think that it is our right to express ourselves, and if we think we are right, we must push that and push that and push that, because that is something we have been brought up and trained to do. And ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, he said, "No, no, no, no, no. Do not value anything over unity." And certainly, do not value being right over unity. And so he tried to discuss, as you said, consultation with the Baháʼís. And he said, "If we agree on subjects in consultation, even though it's wrong, that is better than to disagree and be right, because one will be the cause of a thousand wrongs, and the other, if we're in unity, the right way will be found." And he emphasized this over and over again, that we should not value being right over unity. Unity has the highest place in ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's hierarchy of importance. It's the highest thing. It's more important than anything else.
He told a story to the American Baháʼís about some Persian believers in the time of Baháʼu'lláh who were arguing and disputing over the station of the Blessed Beauty. And he said, "Some thought that Baháʼu'lláh was this, and some thought Baháʼu'lláh was that, and they had a dispute." And I was shocked when I heard this, because I can't imagine two Persians ever arguing or disputing with each other. It's... I've never seen it before. But apparently, it happened in our last time. And so they wrote to Baháʼu'lláh, and they said, "This is what they believe, and this is what they believe. Whose is right?" And Baháʼu'lláh writes back and says, "If you both agree, you're both right. And if you disagree, you're both wrong." Read that with my American upbringing, and I was furious because it made no sense. "Come on, Baháʼu'lláh, take a stand. Who's right? Who's right? Somebody's got to be right, somebody's got to be wrong." Because that's how I think. That's how my brain thinks. Somebody's right. And then finally, it hit me. This is the most profound concept. Unity is right. Unity is right. And this actually is the whole purpose of the Baháʼí Revelation. That Baháʼu'lláh came to bring life to the world by bringing unity to the world. And this is why ʻAbdu'l-Bahá saw it is important.
In fact, Baháʼu'lláh himself even said this, you know. He wrote to all the kings and rulers. And hardly any of them wrote back. But one of them wrote back. It was the Queen of England. And she wrote back and she said, "If this be of God, it shall surely prevail. And if not, it can do no harm." Which is terribly British of her, don't you think? Yeah. Plus, so interesting. And she asked him some advice, political advice of the day. And Shoghi Effendi pointed out that because she responded to Baháʼu'lláh, that he blessed her family. And of course, her granddaughter, Queen Marie of Romania, was the first monarch to become a Baháʼí. For a thousand years, she's blessed now with a family member, a direct descendant, who's a Baháʼí.
But Baháʼu'lláh wrote back to her, and he told her, he said, "That which the Lord hath ordained as the sovereign remedy and the mightiest instrument for the healing of the world and His peoples is unity." Is unity. He basically said this. And this is the exact opposite to what a lot of us might think. We might think, "Let's solve all the world's problems. Let's solve hunger, let's solve economic problems, let's solve warfare, let's solve the environmental problems." And maybe, down the end of the line, we'll unite. And Baháʼu'lláh says, "No, it's the other way around. Unite first, and then you can easily solve these problems." Because he said, "God is like a doctor that has his finger on the pulse of humanity, and he diagnoses the disease and prescribes the remedy." Says, "Be concerned, be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age in which you live." And the needs of the age in which we live is unity.
So this is why ʻAbdu'l-Bahá wanted us to bring unity. And if we cannot bring unity to our Baháʼí communities, we cannot transform the world. We cannot bring life to the world. We cannot change the world. And this is the primary goal of the Baháʼí Faith. That you need to go home and say, "Unity is more important than anything else. There is nothing more important than that." Because if I value being right over unity, you know, when people, they really push, you know, that they're right. I'd like to say, "You're dead right." So I'd like to say, "I'd like to say, 'Yep, you're right. All right, you're dead right.' Because you're so right that you're causing death. You're so right that you're causing death." This is really what ʻAbdu'l-Bahá was looking for.
So he couldn't come to America. How could he possibly come to America if they weren't united? And he even said to Juliet Thompson, he said, "Behold, I was in a prison this big." He said, "A cell this big, just so the Baháʼís unite." And he says, "If they cannot unite themselves, how can they unite the world?" This is what he said. He almost sounded angry, the way she talked about it. And I realized that to ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, this was something far more important than we realized. It broke his heart when Baháʼís were not united. It broke his heart when there was disunity. This is all he wanted for the Baháʼís.
And now, as I see what the House of Justice is talking about, what we're trying to do in the five-year plan, if you read it very carefully, you realize that they're trying to get us to create life itself in the world, to create life by creating unity amongst ourselves. Because if you have physical life, you'll find that it attracts. It attracts. But what is soil? Soil is just dead, decomposed former life that's decomposing. And what are plants? They're alive. And plants attract the soil. They attract the minerals. And so also will our unity attract all of the elements of society that are decomposing. This is the solution to the world's problems.
And so we need to find a way to have absolute love and affection between assemblies and individuals. We need to have love and affection between individuals and assemblies and communities. This is the work that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá wanted. This is the primary teaching of the Baháʼí Faith. In fact, Shoghi Effendi said that unity is the pivotal principle of the Baháʼí Faith. What does pivotal mean? It means everything else revolves around it. So everything is part of this principle. Whether we talk about love, whether we talk about forgiveness, whether we talk about not seeing anything but good in people, or not seeing that... all of these things are... they surround unity.
And so Baháʼu'lláh wrote a tablet, and I want to read this to you. It's a tablet about unity. And he says this: "The Most Great Name beareth me witness. How sad if any man were in this day to rest his heart on the transitory things of this world! Arise and cling firmly to the Cause of God. Be most loving to one another. Burn away wholly for the sake of the Well-Beloved the veil of self with the flame of the undying fire, and with faces joyous and beaming with light, associate with your neighbor." Do you notice how Baháʼu'lláh is now saying all the same things that we talked about? Faces joyous, associating with your neighbor, burning away the veil of self, and being united.
And then he goes on to say this: "Ye have well observed in all its aspects the behavior of Him Who is the Word of Truth amidst you. Ye know full well how hard it is for this Youth to allow, though it be for one night, the heart of any one of the beloved of God to be saddened by Him." But Baháʼu'lláh says he can't bear even one night, one heart to be saddened by him. Then he says, "The Word of God hath set the heart of the world afire. How regrettable if ye fail to be kindled with its flame! Please God, ye will regard this blessed night as the night of unity, will knit your souls together." Isn't that beautiful? What is knitting? What is knitting? Exactly. When you knit, what do you do? You weave things in and out. And anew. Isn't it amazing? And he wants us to knit our souls together. He says, "Please God, ye will regard this blessed night as the night of unity, will knit your souls together, and resolve to adorn yourselves with an ornament of a goodly and praiseworthy character. Your behavior toward your neighbor should be such as to manifest clearly the signs of the One True God, for ye are the first among men to be recreated by His guarantee."
And then I couldn't believe this when he said this, because now he turns to us and he says, "You are the first." And every time I read this passage, it seems to remind me of roosters. I don't know why it reminds me of roosters, but I do know why. Because I lived for many months at a time up in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, in a place where they have no electricity. And so, consequently, you have to live by the sun. You go to sleep when the sun goes down, and you wake up when the sun rises. But every time in the morning, that rooster crows, it is dead black. I cannot figure it out. You... you're sleeping, and you hear that darn rooster, and he's crowing right near the hut, and you look out, and it's completely black. Of course, you know, in 15 or 20 minutes, it's going to be. But you say, "How does that rooster know?" How does he know? It's an amazing thing, as anyone who has experienced it. It's amazing the quality of the rooster, because there's no light there at all, but somehow it detects it. It detects it.
And we are in a darkened world. And by Baháʼu'lláh was saying, we are like spiritual roosters that we somehow, in this darkened world, when everybody else can't see it, we do this. And what does a rooster do? He crows, and he tells everybody, and he wakes the world up, because he's a head... he's a head. Dawn is an interesting time. When he talks about the Dawnbreakers, I like to think about those periods with the rooster crowing, because in dawn, it's completely dark. And so Baháʼu'lláh is referring to us as spiritual roosters. He says here, "Ye are the first among men to be recreated by His spirit, the first to adorn and bow the knee before Him, the first to circle around His throne of glory. I swear by Him Who hath caused Me to reveal whatever hath pleased Him, ye are better known to the inmates of the Kingdom on high than ye are known to your own self."
And when I read that, I think, "Is Baháʼu'lláh exaggerating here? Am I no better to the Kingdom on high than I know myself?" And then Baháʼu'lláh answers my question. Says, "Think ye these words to be vain and empty?" He says, "Would that ye had the power to perceive the things your Lord, the All-Merciful, doth see! Things that attest the excellence of your rank, that bear witness to the greatness of your worth, that proclaim the sublimity of your station." God grant that your desires and unmodified passions may not hinder you from that which hath been ordained for you.
And so Baháʼu'lláh is calling upon us to realize our special destiny. The destiny that He has raised us up and led us unto Him. Do not think for a moment that you're a Baháʼí because of your own doings, because Baháʼu'lláh himself has said that the definition of grace is that He himself has raised you up and led you on Him. It says that in the Long Healing Prayer: "Thy grace hath raised me up and led me unto Thee." Who otherwise am I that I should dare to stand at the gate of the city of Thine unity? In the Long Healing Prayer, he says, "His mercy is that He lays a table out before us." He says, "By Thy mercy, whereby Thou didst invite all created things unto the table of Thy bounties and bestow us." That's His mercy, that He invites us to His table. But then he says, "By Thy grace, whereby Thou didst respond in Thine own self with Thy word, 'Yea,' on behalf of all in heaven and on earth." In other words, God lays out the table and then says, "On your behalf, I accept." That's what He says. By His grace, He accepts. Those who have been able to eat from this table are doing so because God has chosen you. He's chosen you and made you the first.
And what He wants you to do is to knit your souls together. He says, "to knit your souls together." Just like that. Everyone, let's knit right now. Just take the... and just knit yourselves together. And he says, "to regard this night, this blessed night, as the night of unity." Because this is why He came, to create life. And so ʻAbdu'l-Bahá had to value unity over everything else. This is the pivotal principle of the Baháʼí Faith. This is the whole purpose why God has come.
And so I guess the Baháʼís were united enough for Him to come. But as He left, He also told them to be united, to forgive one another, to never see the faults or shortcomings of each other, and to do two other things, and to do two other things, which we're going to talk about in the next two days. But how many of you feel that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's priority on unity may be a little higher than what some of us have been raised to believe? How many of you feel that perhaps unity has a higher goal? I remember someone telling me that Mr. Puritan, who is also such a gentle soul, whenever someone said something that he disagreed with, he would smile and look down, and he would say, he says, "You know, my friendship and love for you is worth much more than my disagreement with you." And so he wouldn't even disagree, because to him, what does it matter? First of all, how do you know that your opinion is right anyway? You know, we can be wrong. People are often wrong. Yeah, I've been wrong once or twice. Okay. So why should we be so attached to our own ideas when unity is far, far more important? It's way up there. And our ideas, what does it really matter?
So this is the fourth quality that we have of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, the quality of valuing unity higher than anything else. When you go back to your communities right now, I want you to value the unifiers. The unifiers in the universe. We may go to Baháʼí meetings, and we may think, "Such and such a person is important." Maybe they're giving the talk, or maybe they're on the committee or the assembly, or some important person. But to me, the most important people are maybe the hosts that greet you with a smile and serve you the food with such love and such compassion that you feel something in your heart that is really life itself. I don't care what you do for the Faith. If you are not a unifier, you're not serving the Faith at all. And every time we open our mouths, if we're on an assembly and we're speaking to the community, we have to think, "Is this creating unity?" Is the manner in which I speak it? Is it creating unity? I don't care if it's right or not. It could be right, but am I doing it in a loving way that's creating unity? And when I'm speaking to my assembly, the same thing. Does it matter if I'm right? That's good to be right, but it doesn't matter if I'm not creating unity. In other words, everything we do, every action we take in our Baháʼí communities, the first thing we should ask ourselves is, "Is this conducive to unity?" And if there's disunity in a room, what should we do? You know that song, "I'll fly away"? The Baháʼís should have sung that to Juliet Thompson. He should have sung that to Juliet Thompson, because this is the work for us. We have been called upon to unite the world.
So I don't think I'll speak too much longer on this subject because I know it's late, and some people had some questions. So we may take a few questions. But now we have four qualities of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, and I think that each one of them are kind of interrelated. They're all kind of interrelated. They are: happiness, joy, and radiance at all times and under all conditions. They are: seeing only the good in people, and knowing that when we see the good in a person, we're seeing God. And they are: being forgiving of all people at all times. And now, they are: the valuing of unity over and above every other thing. Those four qualities, I had to pick as the first four. Would you agree? Would you agree? I couldn't think... I know you like your, you know, perseverance and patience and so on. I know you like them, and they're all good qualities, but these are the ones that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá himself, in his farewell address to the Baháʼís in Chicago and in other cities, these are the things that he stressed. So these are why I felt we need to talk about them. So unity, then, is the fourth quality.
Tomorrow, we're going to talk about... in my opinion, it's the best. But of course, they're all the best. Okay. It's like, you know, who's your favorite child? You know, in my case, it happens to be... but I'll tell you later. But tomorrow, I'm really excited because we're going to talk about the fifth quality, and then on Monday, we'll talk about the sixth one. So we have a little bit of time, maybe just five or ten minutes. So if anybody wants to make a comment on unity or this afternoon, forgiveness, you can make a comment now or a question, and we'll break in about ten minutes.
What about forgiveness of self? Well, yes, we need to be forgiving of ourselves. In other words, we shouldn't be so hard on ourselves. And really, that's what the House of Justice was getting at in that letter. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá says that when you have done something wrong yesterday, and now you're not good today, remember we talked about this, that every day you compare yourself to yesterday. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá says, and he said that if you did well today, then thank God and ask Him and pray to Him for an increase of that quality. So let's say that you were quite unifying today. You say, "Thank you, God. You helped me be unified." Or you smiled at your neighbor today. "Thank you, God. I smiled. Now can you help me to smile a little more tomorrow?" ʻAbdu'l-Bahá. But he says, "What if you did the wrong thing?" And he says, "Then ask God for forgiveness. Ask God for forgiveness." Because sometimes you do mess up. Sometimes you... you don't do so well. But remember, when you mess up, don't let it get you down, because it's just going to make tomorrow easy, because it makes today very easy to beat. You see? So... so... so it's... it's not so bad. And God is the ever-forgiving. We talked about the ocean of God's forgiveness. An ocean is pretty big. So, yes, absolutely. But the path to forgiveness is to turn to God and ask Him for forgiveness. Not just, "Oh, I did that wrong. I forgive myself." No, rather, "I did that wrong. God, please forgive me." Yes. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Sure.
In my opinion, unity is a word that will acquire much greater meaning in the future. Right now, we have a fairly limited concept of unity. Unity will become... up there. It'll be like love, or even higher, because it's the pivotal principle, and everything revolves around unity. Unity will become synonymous with life. It will become synonymous with love. It will become synonymous with many things, because this is the age we live in. This is the day of unity. And so it's almost impossible for me to separate any teaching from unity, and therefore from love, because Shoghi Effendi himself said it's the pivotal principle. Everything revolves around it. But ʻAbdu'l-Bahá said there are ways to unite. In other words, I just... just say unity, and we all say unity, and we have fun, and we shake hands and drink some tea, you know? That's not unity. You have to do things to be united. And one of the things you have to do is completely ignore the shortcomings of other people. As long as you see a shortcoming in another person, you cannot love that person, and there cannot be unity. And that's what ʻAbdu'l-Bahá said under the trees, shores of Lake Michigan. Okay.
So now we have four qualities. And can anyone guess what tomorrow will be? Perseverance. There's only two more. Uh, tomorrow, it's the most complex one. So it may take all of tomorrow morning and even tomorrow afternoon just to discuss the fourth one, or the fifth one. It's going to be the most complex. But it's going to be a lot of fun. And so I want you to sleep tonight and think, "What is it going to be? What is it going to be, the fifth quality?" So thank you all very much, and see you tomorrow.
[Applause]