In spite of some unseasonably warm weather preceding it Spring still has its own unique, unparalleled beauty. The budding of forsythia and japonica bushes and Red-bud trees are all, like the robin, official harbingers of Spring. It also generates a spirit of rejuvenation new life and new hope unequaled at any other season.
If a new springtime failed to appear the earth would become desolate and life extinct, for with it comes the clearing away of dead and other accumulated debris from the past. Therefrom derives the common thought of Spring cleaning, when the urge to follow nature’s lead is most prevalent.
There is also the need for Spring cleaning in the world of the minds and morals of men, so adversely affected by perpetual poisoning through the dehumanization of society, replaced by uncontrollable “social media” coupled with profane, sexually explicit and criminal oriented public viewing on prime-time television. This represents but a minuscule fragment of right discoveries, through the quantum leap in science and technology over the past century and a half, being used instead for all the wrong reasons.
As the character of any community, state or nation can never be better than that of the individuals who comprise it, it would behoove each of us to seriously engage in the personal spring cleaning of the debris of those actions and attitudes that impede our mental and spiritual progress. It requires daily prayer and meditation, as we cannot lift ourselves by our own proverbial bootstraps.
Among the innumerable Baha’i Prayers passed on to us from the Manifestations themselves of this New Day endowed with special potency, there is one in particular which begins: “O God, refresh and gladden my spirit, purify my heart, illuminate my powers. I lay all my affairs in thy hand…” I always think of the friend who reminded me to be mindful of what you pray for, as purification is usually a painful process. I have certainly found that to be true. But that pain modified by progress (and intermittent lack of it) is all rooted in “the prison of self.”
For many decades I have attempted to perfect the art of what I termed “hating without hurting,” only to finally come to grips with the fact, there is no such thing! Now, putting this into proper perspective with the realization that hate is primarily “acid that does more damage to the vessel in which it is stored, than to the object on which it is poured,” I can now finally put new impetus into purifying myself of that poison as “love and hate cannot abide in the same abode.”
O friends, “This century is verily, the Spring season when the intellectual world, like the world of the soul become verdant, thereby resuscitating the entire world of existence! The day when international peace, like the true morning, is flooding the world with its light.”
Arise, then for this special “Spring-cleaning season!
