Confession #3: "I'm like"

One of the principles of the Bahá’í Faith is the elimination of prejudice.  And that means prejudice of all kinds.  I’m not racist, never have been, not even on my radar.  Though I love knowledge, I don’t see the superiority of the educated over the un.

So am I free of prejudice?  Can I start dancing the samba in celebration of my pristine prejudicelessness?  Hardly.  If I know a person’s name before I meet them, I’m predisposed to like them or not.  Moses or Mandrake makes me prick my ears up.  Mortimer or Ahmedinijad, not so much.  Say Helen, I’m in heaven.  Say Hepzibah or Henryk, I turn the other cheek.

Don’t get me started.  Oops, you already have.  I am prejudiced against the wearing of baseball hats backward, bad spelling, gum chewing, cigarette smoking, saying “I’m like,” loudmouths, cellphone/videogame addiction, talking down to children, berating other drivers, ugly shoes, bad service, restaurants with tvs blaring, businesses with their unwashed urchins running around in front of their customers. Now there’s no stopping.  In fact, don’t come near me, I’m the biggest bigot and hypocrite around.  Don’t say you weren’t warned.

The Seven Words You Can't Say

            In His Will and Testament, Bahá’u’lláh wrote:  “The tongue is for mentioning what is good.  Defile it not with unseemly talk.”  A few weeks ago, my sister and brother-in-law came back from a golfing trip complaining about the foulmouthed boors, both male and female, out on the links.  Being no strangers to colourful descriptive adjectives themselves, I tried listening to what their actual beef was.  They set out the perameters of when and how much was appropriate for one to swear.  One of my brother-in-law’s arguments was that one is entitled to use purple prose when angry or outraged for emphasis, but in casual conversation it is just bad manners. A delicate distinction to be sure.  It reminded me of the late comedian George Carlin’s query:  “Why is everyone who drives faster than me a maniac, and everyone who drives slower an idiot?”

            (I once listened to George Carlin deliver the exact same routine on cable television that I had once heard him do on network.  Exactly the same, that is, except that the cable one was spiced and seasoned with an absurd amount of superfluous obscenity, which didn’t make it one whit the funnier.)

            But I have a reason to be indulgent with salty parlance.  In the summer of 1976 I was working a summer job at the pulp and paper mill where my father worked for a quarter of a century.  We went together early, before sunrise, but since his shift started half an hour before mine, I would go a corner of the lunch room with my copy of Will Durant’s The Story of Philosophy, turn on the light, and read.  There were grumblings from grizzled overalls hunched over their coffees, and one morning one ursine growl wasn’t taking it any more, rose up and rumbled my way.  Suddenly out of nowhere Paddy Smith, at once the most gregarious, glossolarily challenged and unimaginative of men, swept in and grabbed the Kodiak by the arm, and shouted (and I quote) “Sit your effing a** down!  That’s effing education, man!  He’s not going to effing be an effing bum like us!  He’s going to effing do something with his effing life!”  Not only was his heart in the right place, his courageous speech is engraved in my memory much more clearly than any but the opening lines of Richard III and five out of the six soliloquies of Hamlet.

Confession #2: Allah’u-‘Abhá

            For fifteen years I was a disciple of Swami Dayananda Saraswati, and studied Vedanta for some years before that.  In early morning and late-night meditations I had used the incantation “Om,” which transported me immediately into the realm of communion with the Infinite Divine.  It automatically shut out the busy world and enfolded me in the Sublime Serenity.  Upon accepting the Bahá’í Faith, “Om” (which is only a sound symbol after all, however dripping with spiritual purport) was naturally to be replaced by “Alláh’u-Abhá,” an Arabic phrase roughly meaning “God, the All-Glorious,” but more importantly the Name of God, the Most Great Name, hidden from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim devotees, as well as all other previous seekers of His hidden name.  

            Naturally, I say, but it didn’t take.  Seventeen years later, after at least ninety-five fervent daily repetitions, it doesn’t reverberate in my inner chambers with anything like devotion or conviction, to no small sense of frustration and even a tincture of guilt.  This phenomenon has engendered its own soul-searching:  is there a cause for this recalcitrance that must needs be expunged or exorcised, or is it merely a papadum to be assigned no importance whatever in the face of what matters?  Is it rooted in any prejudice against or resistance to Arabic culture or language?  Do I cling to any residual notion of the superiority of the Hindu rishis or avatars?  I am inclined to dismiss it, except that I want to love it as much and more as I did, and do, Om.

            It is used as a greeting by Bahá’ís, about which I can’t complain as it was mandated thus by a Manifestation of God, even though my personal preference would have been to reserve it to accompany more exalted utterance.   But where I do inwardly cringe is when it is used casually, as a common coin, from off-handedly tossing it about to singing it to trivial melodies to the accompaniment of indifferent strumming and whacking, especially amid a general babble. “Approach Me not with lifeless hearts,” Bahá’u’lláh has admonished us.

            For some reason, another form of The Most Great Name, “Yá Bahá’u’l-Abhá,” (O Thou the Glory of the All-Glorious) which doesn’t look or sound categorically different from “Alláh’u-Abhá,” thrills my soul like nineteen times nineteen “Hallelujas” cannot.  Go figure.  Perhaps in it lies my potential salvation.