I am taking pleasure in small things, as the summer winds down; on Monday we visited with friends near Montreal, and I thought this photo of their boys really illustrated the joys of youthfulness!

The house is decorated in flowers: yellow and orange-red gladiolas, not that I grew but which were very inexpensive ('tis the season) and the yellow wildflowers that proliferate against our side fence. They don't last long once you cut them but they bloom so vigorously, spreading every year, that I am happy to bring in a few to put in my special 'Saskatchewan' vase, collected two summers ago at a coffee shop at Manitou Lake, while travelling with a good friend.

It is also corn season, and fruits in abundance: peach, plum, watermelon and honeydew. But mostly there is the delight of going out to gather tomatoes. This year I do not have really big ones but we are enjoying the little Romas in our salads. Hot and sweet from the garden, they have been plenteous: my eldest daughter even used some for spaghetti sauce, rather than the usual canned variety, and how lovely it was to know that the richness was from the ground in the backyard. If ever Bernie and I are able to have a small acreage, I think my gardening skills will increase. I like being out there so much, unless the weeds get out of hand, and even then, I pull away at them with a certain energy.

The rain has refreshed us, it is still very warm, and it is the weekend. This does not mean much to me, since I work at home, but it means I will have more companions here, and we are expecting a good friend on Sunday, so I am again counting blessings.

I haven't had a humdrum day in quite a while, but this one's got me down. Grey, end of August, leaves just hinting at turning, the garden almost finished. I like fall, but today is a day in no-one's land, not really summery, not really autumn, just...rain. It's also a day when I am thinking about the tests in people's lives: my sister, Andrea, just diagnosed with West Nile disease, another friend, Craig Farnsworth, coping, along with his wife Susanne Alexander, with cancer (and sharing the journey in a very public manner in his blog)...

We have lots to be thankful for, not the least of which visits from an old friend, Don Todd, and one coming up, Mark Visocky, home on leave from his posting in Malawi. My sister Laurel happily has a new job and is moving to the Vancouver region to take it up. My parents spent some time at Sylvan Lake Baha'i School (in Alberta, for those who don't know) this summer along with 15 grandchildren (well, technically 13 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren) which Mom said was pretty delightful. Perhaps my sister Coral will soon send me some pictures of that event so that I may share them. Dad mentioned that the gathered friends asked for some stories, and that he and Mom were able to oblige on a couple of evenings with pioneer stories from their almost three decades in Belize.

Maybe it's just because this summer has been such a marvellous one, with great times with our kids, our pilgrimage, the release of my second book, and relaxing times at home. There's always a little reflection, for me, as the seasons change, but we live in a place in the world where the leaves become the annual Ottawa-Gatineau "Fall Rhapsody" and the winter can be relatively gentle.

Wishing you joy and lovely meditations as dusk falls here in the Valley.

I have added a new link today, to the blog by Child-of-Africa. She had left me a comment and I thought I would take a look at her blogging...and discovered how much I enjoyed it. So I have added it to my list of favourites. I suspect there are just too many favourites for me (luckybeans, baha'i views being among them) but it's still worth tuning you in to some of the ones I enjoy reading the most.

From time to time, a book comes your way that makes everything different. Today is a day like that for me. I had heard of Three Cups of Tea, and I ordered it, and read it. It's hard to read without weeping but if I did nothing else with my day, it would make it worthwhile to mention this book to you. You must read it. It's worth every minute and every word, for hopefulness, for inspiration, for celebration of what one person can do with a life, for gladness that such a difference can be made, in unity, with a spot on the earth. Baha'u'llah tells us that if a choice is to be made between educating a boy or a girl, we should prefer girls, and Three Cups of Tea, a book telling the story of schools for girls being built in Pakistan and Afghanistan, tells us why. Read it, weep, and wonder, and give generously from your hearts.

My book arrived in the mail today.

There's not much better in life: marriage, birthing children, epiphanies, to be sure, but to hold a book in your hands that you have written, collected, worked over four years to produce...it's pretty great.
I like it a lot, and hope some of you will too. You can pick it up from George Ronald Publishers in the U.K.

To finish up today's postings, I have added two new links. One is to the Canadian Baha'i News publication, which is now online and the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Canada have invited Baha'i bloggers to link it. I am happy to do so.

The other link is to my cousin's blog. Jack McLean is my first cousin on my mother's side. He is a former teacher, a prolific author, and a fine writer and poet. Take some time to read his work, if you are interested in Baha'i theology and any number of other subjects...you'll be glad you did. He has another page, which for some reason I can't get to a permanent link, in which he has made available a lot of his scholarship, both previously published and some unpublished, and which makes for deep reading. Access it at http://mclean.titles.googlepages.com/home.

Accompanying this announcement is a glimpse of the Land Gate of the city of Akka, an historic portal which surrounds the ancient walls at the point of meeting the Mediterranean Sea. Jack and I both felt an affinity with Akka, somehow...both of us, despite being wordsmiths, have struggled to express the connection we felt with the Revelation, in this ancient city, but it is a site of transformative power, tremendous symbolism, and the heat of the sacred words of the past. I counted the waves at Akka, according to the Muslim hadith, or tradition...and still am praying, Insh'allah, for His mercy.

Our pilgrim group at a house where Baha'u'llah was able to come to His beloved countryside and enjoy the gardens.

My lovely daughters at the Terraces leading to the Shrine of the Bab,
Holy Land, Israel, July 2007

In the continuing reflections from pilgrimage, I am borrowing a couple of my daughters' pictures. This was taken by our second daughter while walking on Ben Gurion Avenue. I like it.

It's been a good day. This morning's bike ride brought glimpses of bird life, including a tiny yellow one which likes my sunflowers, and a hummingbird! Then when I went for my swim, I was the only one in the pool for much of the time and was able to spend forty luxurious minutes just backstroke and crawl, backstroke and crawl to my heart's content. It's very meditative when done like that...

Now daughter-number-one wants to go and see a chick flick. Sometimes I wonder what will ever happen if I get a 'real' job. In the meantime, I have a new book available, and three more coming along nicely.

I am very thankful to my Lord.

More on Pilgrimage: So many impressions remain, and will no doubt continue. Last night I was dreaming I was back there, and I half-woke to tell Bernie, "I was dreaming I was in the Holy Land." He murmured, "So was I."

Here, I am choosing to share pictures which anyone may see: a minaret in Akka, the posted doorplate outside the house of 'Abdu'l-Baha in almost-downtown Haifa, near Ben Gurion Avenue and the famous rise of the sculptured terraces to the Mountain of Carmel. In Akka, as we were listening to our guide one day, I heard, in the distance, through a window, the call to prayer, and our son was amazed to learn that Muslims are called to prayer five times daily...where Baha'is have Obligatory Prayer, our time for prayer is private. I liked being in a place where the call to prayer resounded; it was somehow reassuring to know that we were not alone as a band of pilgrims come on a journey of faith, and that many others from every religious tradition share this deep connection with prayer and land and the spiritual heart of the planet.

At the house of 'Abdu'l-Baha, we were blessed to spend some time in the room where He had passed to the next world, and also where his beloved grandson, Shoghi Effendi, had done so. I found myself lost in prayer, there, completely oblivious to the world, for a short period of time, alone in a room where spirit danced, I fancied, all about me as though my heart, for a short time, had become a bird. An overwhelming impression, everywhere, is of light and space, due to the architecture of soaring ceilings and arcs, not small rectangular boxes like the houses where we live. These homes reminded me of the Spanish architecture I like, of the Latin American countries and of the United States' Southwest, and I recalled a friend in San Diego, who had lived in Israel, telling me that I would be reminded of the area in its flora and fauna. I was, and another pilgrim, raised in India but now living in San Diego, said that the cacti, aloes and great branches almost like air-borne coral, reminded her of where she had grown up.

The very earth brings forth praise, and the seeds become mighty trees, and the olives will yield the fruit of peace, Insh'allah.

One of the pleasures of our pilgrimage was to meet old friends. Here are Rocky, Bernie, and Rocky's wife Lynda, with their daughter Lua in the background. I first met Rocky when I was about 21 and he was 16 or 17, living in Asquith, Saskatchewan~and he and Lynda married when she was 17. They have lived in British Columbia for many years and we visited a few times when we were at Maxwell School. They also serve on a Local Spiritual Assembly along with my aunt, uncle, and cousin at Qualicum Beach. We were delighted to share pilgrimage with them (and one evening, a felafel at the Merkatz at the top of Hazionut Avenue with Rocky.)

Reflections on a Baha'i Pilgrimage

Here we are in front of the Shrine of the Bab in Haifa, lit like a beacon above the port city of Haifa, Israel, three believers and two loved ones coming along for company. Our vegetarian daughter is delighted to discover that meat/milk restaurants are split in Israel, so that the salads and cheeses in milk restaurants provide wonderful food: she eats Hallumi cheese salads often, in between all our stops at felafel stands. She and her sister go another day to the beach, despite jellyfish warnings, and have a delightful time. A small fish stings her below the knee but she has too much fun to really feel the pain.

All of us feel the heat: Haifa has a heat-wave which our server on Ben Gurion Avenue tells us is breaking records, even for Israel. I believe it, and toil up the hills of Mount Carmel with a willing spirit but knees and ankles which remind me that I'm a swimmer, not a runner. I am slow but steady, which has its advantages and disadvantages: it takes me longer to climb the mountain, and I need to drink more water than ever before in my life, but I have time to stop and literally smell the roses, and more importantly for me, the frangipani.

I am, as you know, a lover of gardens, and here it would be impossible to be anything but heaven-bound in the gardens of the Baha'i Holy Places. The terraces of the Shrine of the Bab are not simply places of Baha'i pilgrimage: they are also visited by tourists who revel in the green spaces, the beauteous spills of bougainvillea, the astonishing trees of bright red flame, the stone pathways, and the memorials to a figure they, and we, only dimly comprehend. The bright dome shines above the Divine gravesites in the light of hope.

I am astonished by the numbers of people who visit this site: I hear, from time to time, the numbers of you who drop in to read a line or two, to share in pictures. At this time, I am afraid that no expression is available to me but rhapsody. Despite the difficulty of heat, despite the almost 300 pilgrims, despite the hills, despite the sometimes-disinterest of my two youngest children, the opportunity to be Baha'i pilgrims is an event of magnitude in my life, and I find myself searching for superlatives. I do not believe it is possible to communicate belief, in any real way, and I do not know if it is possible to share the essentially private nature of a pilgrimage: why do we go as pilgrims, anyway?

Part of the reason, for me, stems from the words of 'Abdu'l-Baha, before Whose grave I kneel, on the Persian carpet, and in Whose spiritual presence I recite the words of the Tablet of Visitation, which He has written and which I know by memory so can close my eyes, not distracted by a text or any others in the small space. In my mind, I recite the words, "He is the All-Glorious! O God, lowly and tearful, I raise my suppliant hands to Thee..." and I think of how difficult it is for me to cry, yet I have done so at the grave of Shoghi Effendi in London, and I am able to weep beside the grave of Navvab, 'Abdu'l-Baha's saintly mother, and I am able to cry on the steps of the International Teaching Centre one morning, looking out over the magnificent Arc. It is good to be able to be tearful, to feel the emotions of these moments, to rekindle the passion of belief in the words of Baha'u'llah, Who said, in the 19th Century, to the historian E.G. Browne, that He had come for the good of mankind. It is good to be reminded, as I visit with Baha'is from all over the world, from Malaysia, the Phillipines, Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Togo, Honduras, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, Russia...that I am here in this spot because of the Divine hope for unity. I find myself humbled, wishing to listen, hoping for the gift of response to prayer.

In the deep mystery of Akka, the prison city, the old stones, the site of the incarceration of the Holy Family, there is something profound in being in a place so old, in touching the rock, in feeling the water's shimmer and counting the waves rolling in, in viewing the Land Gate where resides the needle's eye of Christian prophecy. The sound of a living city is all around, interspersed with the ultimate modernisms, Coke signs and advertisements, in Hebrew, for the latest Harry Potter movie. I smile at the sights and sounds of the city of Akka, old and new, imbibe history and the lap of water. The Mediterranean is beautiful, covered in a heat haze, and I watch through a room where 'Abdu'l-Baha lived and welcome Western pilgrims a century ago, and think, they are the same waves, and "We are the waves of one sea."

The joy is also alive as I share moments with my husband that we could not otherwise have known; he is full of laughter, an enthusiasm that sends him to seek the beauty of the terraces below and above the Shrine of the Bab, a joy of discovery which has him enjoying felafel and salads. He tells me, in some reflective times, of how he feels, coming into the Shrine of the Bab for the first time, that he has arrived home. Bernie became a Baha'i in Saskatoon in the early '80s, after reading the book, Release the Sun, by William Sears. He told Gordon Epp that he wanted to be a Babi, and accepted instantly that the Babis had become Baha'is, at the advent of "He Whom God shall make manifest." He fell in love with faith through the Bab, and now he falls in love with this land which holds the Bab's remains. Yet it is I, when we visit the Archives as a family, who find myself drawn to the Beauty of the Bab as conveyed in his portrait. He was so young, so pure, and so loved: a Christ-like figure in the middle of Persia, and His declaration that He is but a ring on the finger of Baha'u'llah strikes me with force. There is so much Grandeur here, and we human beings are no longer accustomed to such overwhelming Grandeur.

'Abdu'l-Baha tells us, “There can be conceived no greater manifestation of love and kindness in the existent world today than this, that one should call to mind a loved one at the Sacred Threshold of Bahá’u’lláh, occupy oneself with his remembrance, and offer prayers for his well-being. This is the greatest blessing and favour, the most perfect bounty and bestowal.”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, excerpt from a tablet Jináb-i-Muhammad Ali. (provisional translation).

Here, I offer prayers for a litany of loved ones, and feel the blessings of doing this in the beauty and heat of Haifa in summertime. I leave my cynical self at the gate of this garden, and return to a sense of all that is holy.

My daughter posted this picture and since I haven't downloaded mine I thought it was as good a place as any to start documenting these last two wonderful weeks. We had three days in London and nine on Baha'i pilgrimage in Haifa. I will write about this at length, soon, but sometimes the picture says a lot all by itself.