Ave Maria

Recently my only flute student here in Honduras was forbidden from performing Schubert ‘s “Ave Maria” at a church Christmas presentation on the grounds that it is “Catholic” and therfore not allowed in that Evangelical hall. This is reminiscent of an experience of mine a couple of dcecades back. I was playing the flute at a wedding in Mississauga, Ontario with a harpist, and because of unclear directions, we uncharacteristically arrived only minutes before the ceremony was about to begin. As we were hurriedly setting up, the minister came over and enquired about the music we were planning to play, and I gave him a quick run-down. When I mentioned the Schubert “Ave Maria,” he stated flatly that I couldn’t play that.

“Why not?”
“It’s Catholic.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Well, you can’t play it.”
“The bride and groom have requested it.”
“I don’t care. You’re not going to play that in my church.”
“I believe this is the Lord’s church.”

He went off in a huff; I wasn’t trying to be insolent, it was that everybody was ready and waiting for the wedding march to begin and I it wasn’t the time or place to get into an argument.

A few readers may know what he was talking about, but most, I venture, are baffled or see this as a silly sectarian view, akin to the Communist Chinese government banning the music of Beethoven because he was “bourgeois.” The crux of the matter is that in churches, the Latin words that are usually sung are the prayer, “Hail Mary, full of grace . . .” The Catholics have a cult of the worship of the Virgin Mary not shared by most Protestant sects. To inflict this doctrinal squabble on a defenseless little musical masterpiece, even when it is played instrumentally, without the words, is a tiny example of the myriad walls religion has erected in the seamless Faith of God, the removal of which is the avowed thousand-year mission of the Bahá’ís.

The original lyric that Franz Schubert (pictured above) selected for his song was a German translation (made by one Adam Storck) of an excerpt from Canto XXIX of Sir Walter Scott’s epic poem Lady of the Lake. The heroine, Ellen Douglas, is on the run, and prays to the Virgin Mary. It begins thus:

Ave Maria! maiden mild!

Listen to a maiden's prayer!

Thou canst hear though from the wild,

Thou canst save amid despair.

Safe may we sleep beneath thy care,

Though banished, outcast, and reviled--

Maiden! hear a maiden's prayer;

Mother, hear a suppliant child!

Ave Maria!

Schubert set this to music around 1825, at age 28. He wrote over 600 songs, and introduced them to his circle at musical parties which came to be known as Schubertiads. He wrote to his parents about this song, mentioning that the listeners were surprised at the piety in the song, which was not something he was known for. His own title for this song was “Ellen’s Third Song.” It occurred to an unknown person at a later date that the Latin prayer to Mary could be moulded to Schubert’s sublime melody, and I wonder whether the soul of that meddler in is a place arrived at via a road paved with good intentions.

In For a New Experience

In Chicago one of the many Bahá’í hats I wore was “Pioneer Resource Person,” a representative of the Office of International Pioneering at the community level, making presentations at Feasts and encouraging those who could and especially those who believed they couldn’t to forsake their homes and go to distant lands to serve the Faith. But not for a moment during this time did I think I would actually go myself. After all, I was serving here. I was needed here. But, like a traffic accident which happens suddenly without warning, events in a plodding existence took a precipitous turn, and my thoughts turned to pioneering, and also to learning a new language. Where would I go? Hungary is in dire need of pioneers who can speak the native language; this was brought home to me by the royal treatment I received on a travel-teaching trip in 2003. What language would I learn? Why, Arabic, of course. And then the call came to go to Honduras, and I answered without question, for I perceived it as the call of the very voice I could not ignore. At a gathering on the night before I left, a friend quipped that I must have been mumbling my prayers, and God heard “Honduras” instead of “Hungary.” And the new language must needs be Spanish.

But there was no turning back. Who should I meet in the waiting lounge at Pearson Airport in Toronto reading a Bahá’í prayer book but a Canadian on her way to Honduras to serve as an Auxiliary Board Member? She had been there many years and gave me much advice on the flight. Yet as someone who had lived for half a century in sophisticated metropolises in the privileged part of the world, on the mango- and poverty-lined road up the mountains which Christopher Columbus had called “the depths,” I was in for more jolts and jabs than Mike Tyson could have inflicted upon me.

On the very day I arrived, I overheard a telephone conversation which included the following sentence: “Bring the machetes to the devotional gathering.” I knew I was in for a new experience. The machetes were used to cut the grass, prune the trees, and clear the weeds at the local Bahá’í Centre that had fallen into neglect over the summer, and fixed in my memory is the image of elderly Doña Julia in her formal black dress and high-heeled shoes stooped down and wielding the machete like the blades of a helicopter over the screaming weeds. Lesson #1 in Honduran culture.

I’ve heard of mobile book units before, but where else is the Bahá’í library located under the seat of a motorcycle, wending its way up gnarled rocky mountain roads? That is where Joycelyn Jolly, a striking black American woman who was an accomplished cellist and Suzuki teacher who adopted an orphaned girl in Brazil kept the books as she provided this service amidst her struggle to be a single mother and obedient servant of the Five Year Plan. Her struggles were causing her to look elsewhere, and she suddenly got a marriage proposal from a musical colleague stretching back over a quarter of century who began scouring the planet for her after he had lost his wife. Since she left for Baltimore, I have been performing this function, keeping all the books under lock and key, and bringing them out for display carefully and gently at every Feast.

There are many other singular events, but probably the most astonishing was watching a one-legged man during prayers at a Feast methodically chase down a spider on a wall, leaning to the point where surely he was going to topple over first this way and then that, reaching and contorting, until finally at an angle Olympic gymnasts the world over must envy, whacked the spider -- with a Bahá’í prayer book! -- all while the prayer continued unabated and unconcerned. I admit at the time what I felt was shame, but now I regard as one of the more bizarre scenes in a community that spearheads an “A Cluster” (designated as being at an advanced stage of organization) but is still in the infant stages of love and reverence for Bahá’u’lláh.

My experiences in Honduras are posted as a series of updates on a separate blog, siguahon.blogspot.com.

On the Ninth Day of Ridván, My True Love . . .

The Festival of Ridván, the “King of Festivals” is celebrated by the Bahá’ís from April 21 to May 2. It was during those twelve days in 1863 that Bahá’u’lláh received visitors in the Najibiyyih Garden outside Baghdad, and made the stupendous announcement to at least four of His closest followers that He was in fact the Promised One prophesied and awaited by all the major religious traditions and scriptures.

Furthermore, three of these days have been designated as Holy Days. The first and last are understood easily enough, but what about the ninth? We read so often that His family visited Him on the Ninth Day that we can get the idea that it is because of their arrival that that particular day is celebrated. Except for Naw-Rúz (New Year, March 21), the Bahá’í Holy Days are all associated with the Twin Manifestations, the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh. We do not know who these family members were or how many (they did not include ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, who was there from the First Day); for all we know they may have been future Covenant-breakers, and it would be inconceivable to have a Holy Day associated with covenant-breaking. And it was likely that their arrival would have been earlier had it not been for high rushing waters of the Tigris River (The Najibiyyih Garden was on an island) imperiling any crossing.

We have a direct if rather prosaic explanation from the writings themselves:
“. . . the reason we commemorate the 1st, 9th and 12th days of Ridván as Holidays (Holy Days) is because one is the first day, one is the last day, and the third one is the ninth day, which of course is associated with the number 9. All 12 days could not be holidays, therefore these three were chosen.”
Letter written on behalf of the Guardian, dated June 8, 1952, to an individual believer, in Lights of Guidance, pg. 230
(Compilations, NSA USA - Developing Distinctive Baha'i Communities)

Alas, I do not read either Arabic or Persian, but I have been told by more than one Persian believer that there exists an untranslated Tablet in which Bahá’u’lláh answers questions about the various Holy Days, and in which He purportedly explains that the Ninth Day of Ridván is associated with the Most Great Name (via the abjad system of numerology that was still in use in the nineteenth century). I shall be writing the Research Department about this matter, and may have an update to this post before long.

A note of caution regarding the above photograph of the Ridván Garden. This, and every other photo is of the one outside ‘Akká in the Holy Land, and was called that name by Bahá’u’lláh Himself. It is NOT the one associated with the “King of Festivals.” The Ridván Garden outside of Baghdad is at present a hospital parking lot. May the All-Powerful Lord restore it to the condition in which roses could be piled so high in Bahá’u’lláh’s tent that one could not see over them.

Unity in Diversity

The concept of Unity in Diversity has been described in the Bahá’í writings as the “flowers of one garden”; humanity has also been described as “the leaves of one branch,” “the waves of one ocean,” and with various other images, but perhaps the first one is the most potent, because of the fact that the flowers of one garden are not all the same -- their pleasing effect is largely because they are not the same, but present a harmonious whole. Surely a garden consisting exclusively of red roses would be impressive, but throw in a variety of colours, and the delight is increased tenfold.

But there is another phenomenon that brings the concept of unity in diversity home to me in a robust way: when one attends a concert, be the audience comprised of twenty or twenty thousand souls, every single person in that audience experiences the music in a personal way that is different from every other person. Forty years of performing and teaching music have taught me that this is absolutely true and not just some sentimental statement. How miraculous is this? How can the same piece of music have a different effect on everyone? The answer is not in the music itself, but in the receptacle, the filter of the human mind and heart. Everyone at that concert brings to bear upon their listening the wealth of their own heritage and experience, their tastes, their prejudices, their reactions, their sensitivities. Music is not heard with a single part of the brain but is actually synthesized in various locations of our mysterious grey matter; the intellectual, emotional, psychological, and every other aspect of the brain is engaged. Memory is a powerful factor, which not only helps us understand the language of music, determines our reaction to music heard before, and is even the basis of apprehending what is new to our ears. How often has a song, not heard for years or decades, instantly unlocked a flood of memories and emotions? Even more powerful, perhaps, is the spiritual realm which is invoked and in which we partake, recognizing the true voice of music reaching us from a world beyond.

Not convinced? Can any of us say that our experience of listening to the selfsame recording is ever exactly the same twice? Was any time exactly the same as the first time? Our mood, our environment, our level of concentration or distraction, our age, our company, biorhythm, a myriad other factors all affect the result. How often have we been disappointed when a favourite piece of music does not produce the same wonderful effect we remember and anticipate? All experience is unique and unrepeatable, even the repetition of drudgery, and we cannot press a button to get an exact replica of one, much though we may be led to believe this is possible.

Yet, yet . . . at a concert there IS a communal experience. We all experience it together, and there is a general consensus about the quality and effect of the performance and presentation. We feel the buildup of excitement together and are transported to bliss together. We feel the climax together and we respond as one. Some concerts even become legendary for creating a special moment in time that all who had attended agree upon. And it is that harmonious whole that is our Unity in Diversity. Imagine if there were no unity, that life and experience were not shared, how unutterable lonely the cosmos would be. And though we do, at times, feel alone, isolated, and misunderstood, our greatest desire at those moments is to return to that blessed unity that brings us peace and love. Uniquely and together.