Let your vision be world embracing
Bahá'u'lláh

One of the highlights of the trip for everyone is the Archives
building. In this lovely replica of the Parthenon are stored in archival conditions of humidity and temp control, artifacts from the lives of the Bab, Baha'u'llah and the Holy Family. I think for me, and I suspect for lots of us, the pictures of the Bab and Baha'u'llah were central to the visit. There is one photograph of each of them. What faces they had.

The Bab is young, with a lovely oval face and classic Persian almond eyes. He is stern and forbidding looking, or He was to me.

Baha'u'llah, on the other hand, was photographed shortly after he had been poisoned by his half brother and nearly died from it. He is regal and handsome and his face is the face of suffering. I had less of the feeling of being totally vulnerable to His insight there than I had in the Shrine. In the Shrine, I felt stripped naked to the center of my soul. But here, I felt a different connection, one of compassion and love for Him. Here was a being not only ravaged by poison at the hand of a family member, but One who had been stripped of titles and property, permanently exiled from His homeland and sentenced to prison for the rest of His life. Not only was He imprisoned, but His family, His wife and small children were exiled and kept in the worst jails of the Ottoman Empire with him.

Such suffering and such nobility constucted that face that I was less concerned with how He might have seen me that with my visceral understanding of what He had written about HImself--"The Ancient Beauty hath consented to be bound with chains that mankind may be released from its bondage, and hath accepted to be made a prisoner within this most mighty Stronghold that the whole world may attain unto true liberty. He hath drained to its dregs the cup of sorrow, that all the peoples of the earth may attain unto abiding joy, and be filled with gladness."

After we viewed the pictures, we were shown various things that
belonged to them. I loved the clothes. The Bab, who was a merchant, was also a most elegant dresser. He had, before He was thrown into prison, lovely clothes. I was taken so aback by this, because I never thought of His life before the terrible years of persecution.

And the purpose of the archives, I think, is to connect us to the human side of these men who occupy such a special position between us and the Unmade. I grew up vaguely Methodist and had a spell of serious Christianity in early adolescence, and I kept thinking "What if we had a robe from Jesus, or one from Mohammad or the Buddha." Of course we couldn't touch anything. I wanted to, on one level, just to stroke the fabric of the shirts or the coats. On another level, I doubt I would have been able to make myself do it, even if we could.

The artifacts are marvelous, but the true wonder of the Archives
is the tablets, the letters and essays written in the actual hand of the Bab or Baha'u'llah. Neither of them went to any kind of formal school and each has calligraphy adjudged exquisite by experts in their own country. The manuscripts have been preserved, as many as can be found. The ones in the Archives have also been illuminated in the style of Persian and Arabic
masters. They are gorgeous with gold and red and blue ink, flawlessly joined to illuminated borders. Some are important prayers or letters, others are as simple and touching as note from Bab, when he was travelling, to his wife promising her a present.

One of the things preserved there is the text of the entire Qu'ran
written by an early Baha'i calligrapher. The tablet is the opening
invocation of the Qu'ran written in large open letters. Within those letters, in tiny calligraphy done with one horsehair, is the entire text of the Qu'ran. Our guide told us that the manuscript had been examined and confirmed accurate. The page is astonishing. I gaped in awe at the accomplishment, and I must admit, at the idea of doing it at all.

It made me think seriously about books again, about the wonder of them and the spirituality of creating them. Artists reflect the creative attributes of God, the arch-creator. It is easy to think of art as unimportant or simply commercial, when in reality the artist partakes of one of the qualities of God and allows others to understand that reality.