The Gateway

The following poem explores the spiritual qualities that the House of Justice drew attention to in its recent Naw Rúz and Ridván messages, required to navigate the current crisis and help guide our villages, cities and countries one step closer to the Greater Peace envisioned by Bahá’u’lláh.

The Gateway

This gateway may look like a wall

To those whose eyes are wide with fear, despair and confusion.

But behind the tiny world of our masks lie

Smiles we have never shown,

Laughter yet to be released,

Endurance and firmness to be tested,

Mercy and generosity to be shared,

Nods we have yet to exchange,

Resilience and hope to be celebrated,

Sympathy and love ready to be discovered,

A community waiting to be built.

For tragedy, too, brings its lesson:

That the gift of survival bears responsibility

To grasp and carry forward the human covenant.

We must each seek our role with

Clarity, conviction and creativity,

Without which a life, though lived, is wasted.

Inevitably, we shall pass through that gate

Treading the path of service

To the sun-bathed rose garden

Of kindness, concern, and consultation, where

Words are sweet

Listening is patient

Advice is inspiring

Generosity is humble,

Speech is honest

Virtues are genderless

Service is selfless

Hope is buoyant and

Knowledge is shared.

Only then may we transform

Estranged souls into a human family,

Intolerance into celebration of diversity,

Calumny into praise, ill will into good,

Destruction into stewardship

And failed ceasefires into a greater Peace

Than we have ever known.

— Peter Calkins, St-Augustin-de-Desmaures, Québec, May 2020