Remembering Meredith Magoosh Begay

 

Being with Meredith Magoosh Begay

 For my sharing this week, I came across this short video of my dear friend and mentor, Meredith Begay, who was the first "documented" member of the Mescalero Apache Tribe to embrace Baha'u'llah.  As a new Baha'i youth, I had the bounty to stay with her and her family in Mescalero a few times.  She shared a number of native prophecies that talked about a promised time of unity that corresponded to the time of the Baha'i Faith.  In her later years, she suffered from kidney disease and was on dialysis, but still cheerful as always.  Attached is a photo of my last visit to her with my parents and Roshan. And her dear husband, Keith, is in the photo, too.  Keith as Dineh (Navajo).  

The first morning after a restful night sleep, I had some coffee and fried bread, then went out to check out the area.  Meredith told me that there was a fairly new Baha'i living near her and suggested I might want to visit her and her family, which I did.  Then I found a nice flat rock in front of Meredith's house that had a nice view of the area all the way to White Sands in the desert far below.  Out of nowhere a man jumped out in front of me and exclaimed, "I'm Apache, aren't you afraid of me?"  Before I could answer, he was already laughing, and we had a nice visit.  He was a neighbor of Meredith, and, yes, she had told him about Baha'i. 

 On another visit in 1970 I was invited to accompany her family to search for trees to be used to make a tepee.  The tepee was to be used at the 1st Mescalero Baha'i Council Fire in the early 1970s. The choice of the trees had to be fairly perfect for straightness, height, etcetera. I was impressed how quickly the right trees were found in the forest, cut down, branches removed, and the trees loaded into a truck and taken to Head Springs where the tribe had given permission for the Council Fire to take place.  Later we went to a special site in the mountains for a healing ceremony for tribal members who were serving in the military in Vietnam.  It was held after sunset on a clear, starry night, as the Mountain Spirit Dancers moved and chanted around the large fire. Sparks shot upwards from the flames in the crackles of the fire.  

 A young Mescalero man stood by me and told me to look at the incredibly old woman who was dancing alone by the fire very solemnly.  He told me that that old woman remembered Geronimo and others from when she was young.  He said she knew many things about the culture that were being lost, but she was not sharing them because she felt that her people had lost respect for the old ways.  

 He told me also that there is a belief that an old Apache spirit couple still roams the area, and sometimes people feel them close by. That gave me chills, because a few weeks earlier I had been returning from a trip to Arizona to visit Baha'i friends. I used crutches back then and I was hitchhiking and made it to Carrizozo having been lucky to have caught a couple of rides. One was with a Christian youth worker who took me from Mesa, Arizona to Socorro, NM.  Then a guy in the Air Force offered to take me to Carrizozo with a stop at the Stallion Missile Range near White Sands (that he emphasized was off limits to civilians like myself).  At Carrizozo, my driver dropped me off at an all-night truck stop at the south end of town on the highway that went to Alamogordo where I was staying at the time.  I had a poncho and a shoulder bag with a change of clothes, and essential bathroom supplies and a few Baha'i pamphlets to give out along the way. 

 It was in the middle of the night when I left the truck stop to catch a ride on the highway, but seldom did a car pass, and I kept walking until the lights of Carrizozo were far behind me.  The sky was so clear that night with enough moonlight to make the land seem to glow. I must have walked several miles and only 2 or 3 vehicles had passed either way, none stopping for me.

 I was not worried, yet I did not want to think about walking the entire 59 miles to Alamogordo. The highway went along the western edge of the Mescalero Apache Reservation. At one point I heard what sounded like a baby crying and after listening intently realized it must have been the moan of a cow.  The highway crossed a dry culvert, and it was there I had a strong and strange sensation that an old Apache couple was nearby.  I stopped on the bridge over the culvert listening. I got brave enough to bend over the guard rails on the bridge and look below to the gulch. No sounds, just a very real feeling of this couple close by.  I may have called out; I don't remember.  I prayed silently and then started walking again.  It seemed the couple was gradually drifting toward the mountains.  It was eerie, but not in a fearful way. 

 When I could no longer feel the couple nearby, a car coming fast from Carizozo sped by me and then stopped, backed up and asked me to get in.  He had been at a party and had been drinking and his driving felt a bit too fast for comfort, but I had a ride home and felt relieved.

 I kept the story of the old Apache couple to myself, dismissing it as my imagination.... until that night in Mescalero around the fire with the Mountain Spirit dancers dancing to protect Apaches fighting in Vietnam, and the old woman keeping the secrets of her people, and the young man next to me by the fire telling me that there is a belief that an old Apache spirit couple still roams the area, and sometimes people feel them close by.

 Mescalero Head Springs Council Fire 1970
            Holy people from the mountain, Spirit people
          Coming near the fire where we pray and talk.
          Mountain people, Holy people from before the horses’ time
          Approach like vapors, like lucent spirits touching us.
          Holy people, Medicine people from legend days
          Who live with shadows amongst the pine.
          Two spirits, one old couple, who knew streams
          Now dried to gulches, watch from the shadows
          Of piñon and Ponderosa pine

 

 

Meet Mr. C, an unexceptional, run-0f-the-mill common man whose life is mostly behind him. His usually tedious life has been one of working hard only when he had to for the shortest time possible and daydreaming what could be if he only had the guts to act. Mr. C has been fortunate to have a wife who keeps him well fed and appears to listen to his routine complaints about the world.  Now retired, Mr. C has reached a point in his life when he realizes it is now or never to break out of his ordinary, ho-hum existence while he still can and experience life from a different perspective. He has taken two years of pondering the pros and cons of exploring a new life from a new place, before finally filling up his mobility van with a few belongings and a full tank of gas. And on a particularly unspectacular day, Mr. C heads out with his loyal, but skeptical, wife in their rusty mobility van through the canyons of Colorado to the warmer deserts of southern Arizona.  What Mr. C does not know and cannot begin to understand is that in his new surroundings something has changed: he enters a world where few cars and trucks move along the streets; a world where jets and the vapor trails behind them no longer stream across the almost too blue sky above him; where the seldom seen pedestrians wear garments that must have come from a 1950 Sci-Fi film. The birds and the eerie breeze break the silence with their own private conversations.  As Mr. C arrives upon his new landscape, he still believes his new life will be his long-awaited well-deserved and comfortable holiday he has always hoped for.  What Mr. C will soon realize, even if it is beyond his capacity to apprehend, is that the days that await him are not taking him to a relaxing vacation but are towing him into the Skylight Zone.

During the pandemic sometime in April 2020

 

By the Sea of Galilee

Father, son, and daughter
sit by water; the Sea of Galilee.
She strains her father's string of thought
with talk of agorot.
and though the dad gives him
his last shekel,
the son still wants to heckle.

Palms by the sea
calm the sight with tranquility
As shadows cross the Golan heights.
Gulls escort the boat to shore.
For mere morsels
they show off for
tourists who gladly give them more.

                        C.S. Cholas, March 17, 1996

 

THE PRIEST CALLS THE NUN TO RING THE BELLS

                         Sarah, Sarah

                         Ring the bells, ring the bells.
                        I am dying and cannot patch the walls.
                        Ring the bells, ring the bells.
                        They are dying and the land is weary.

                        The sanctuary is hollow and empty;
                        The nave with its vacant pews lies jutted like a lizard.
                        The tower is hollow and blistered.
                        The bells are hollow and dull.
                        I hide in hollow walls,
                        My soul, like a clapper, pounds them thinner.

                        Sarah, Sarah,
                        Ring the bells so that I may remember
                        The eyes of youth turned toward the tower
                        To hear the bells;
                        Their tongues like clappers
                        Sang the Angelus and the Magnificat.
                        But they are old now and their head bent downward--
                        They see only dust and think of death,
                        And I, much older, am dying.

                         Sarah, ring the bells for me
                        This last day and take them down.
                        They are dying and I am dying,
                        And together we will rest;
                        They will be my gravestone silent with the daisies
                        Swaying in the breeze of dusk.
                        We will rest together.
                        My soul like a clapper
                        Bounced within my hollow walls
                        Will rest.

                         Ring the bells, ring the bells.
                         I am dying and cannot patch the walls.
                        Sarah, ring the bells
                        This last day.
                        The land is weary of us both.

                                                -- C.S. Cholas
                                            1971, Durango, Colorado

 TANGLE OF DAWN

 

My hopes cling to the first hint of sun:

The wetness of dew damp on my shoes;

Above, the mosaic of bird songs that daylight has spun;

The eastern horizon sprays out flashes of news;

The day spreads over the land like gazelles on the run;

Like a prayer that the heart must peruse.

 

                   --C. S. Cholas

             Edinburg, Texas, August 1994                 

Not Really Interested in the Kingdom of God on Earth?

I’ve become convinced that most people are not looking for the Scriptural Promised Kingdom of God on earth, regardless of what the Lord’s Prayer mentions about “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  I think so-called religious people of whatever past religion they profess to follow are not seeking nor waiting for that Promised Time.  Unless one can make it a custom design to fit one’s own whims and fancies, adhering to a world civilization built on God’s Divine Order would be a burden and require giving up one’s personal freedoms and “tribal” affiliations.  We are, for the most part attached, nay addicted, to our “us” and “them” dichotomies, which we live by, whether it be race, nation, religion, social class, or political ideology, as well as to our materialistic habits and practices. 

All of the major World Religions have told us that Bahá’u’lláh is coming to establish justice and unity among all of humanity. The Hindus promised Avatars who appear in every age to re-establish order in the world; Buddhist promised the Maitreya, the future Buddha, presently a bodhisattva residing in the Tushita heaven, who will descend to earth to preach anew the dharma (“law”) when the teachings of Gautama Buddha have completely decayed. (How much more decay are we looking for?)  The Jewish religion promised the Lord of Hosts and numerous Israeli prophets gave more specific promises of time and place. Isaiah, for example, said that Mount Carmel and the Plain of Sharon would see the Glory of God; Daniel game numerical prophecies that, according, to many Biblical scholars, pointed to the years of 1843-44.  Christ promised His return as the Glory of God, which is what Bahá’u’lláh means in Arabic. When His disciples inquired from Him as to when that would be, Christ pointed them to the prophecies of Daniel, warned them about false prophets who are like wolves dressed like sheep, and to distinguish truth from falsehood, they should look for good fruits, because good fruit comes only from a good tree.  In the Quran are promises, too, of the Great Announcement, among others.

As promised, Bahá’u’lláh, did arrive two hundred years ago in 1863, fulfilling Daniel’s prophecies and those of all the religions. He was met by persecution and imprisonment, and then was banishment from His homeland by the Islamic leaders, who apparently did not take to a Great Announcement that would turn their corrupt and selfish world upside down.  Whether in house arrest or chained in prison, Bahá’u’lláh began informing the world that the One promised throughout the centuries, was actually on earth with a Divine Mission to build the world anew with a spiritual civilization never before seen. He addressed mystics and religious leaders, Kings and Rulers, sharing Glad-Tidings and Warnings. Then His Pen flowed with hundreds of letters and Tablets to the people of the world. “Great indeed is this Day!,” He announced, “The allusions made to it in all the sacred Scriptures as the Day of God attest its greatness. The soul of every Prophet of God, of every Divine Messenger, hath thirsted for this wondrous Day. All the divers kindreds of the earth have, likewise, yearned to attain it. No sooner, however, had the Day Star of His Revelation manifested itself in the heaven of God's Will, than all, except those whom the Almighty was pleased to guide, were found dumbfounded and heedless.  - Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 10)

His Teachings renew the Eternal Covenant between God and Man, renew both the essential verities and laws to guide the human race, and provide the principles required to have a world order that functions locally, nationally, and internationally. His Writings include explanations of material and spiritual reality, universal principles such as the equality of women and men, economic and racial justice, and guidelines for the running of governments based on justice and consultation.  

To give the religious and political leaders of the world a chance to consider and adopt these Teachings, Bahá’u’lláh gave them a hundred-year respite before the warning of the Promised Day would begin to unfold rapidly upon the nations of the earth.  That respite ended in 1967 as the Divine Institutions incorporated in Bahá’u’lláh’s Revelation were already being established throughout the world, starting with the Universal House of Justice which guides the Bahá’í Faith. That marvelous institution arranged for a volume of Baha’u’llah’s Messages to the Rulers of the world to be shared with the Heads of States around the globe, again calling the leaders to this Divine Springtime. Most of the leaders were visited personally by a representative of the Bahá’i Faith and most of them cordially praised the Bahá’í Teachings, but only one King, the Malietoa Tanumafili II of Samoa officially accepted Baha’u’llah as the Divine Manifestation of this new age. 

Look around yourselves to witness what it happening in the world; dozens and dozens of political, racial, religious, and economic uprisings increasing in every part of the globe; a global health pandemic, racial injustices, and economic disparities worse than ever. Women still denied equal rights in almost every aspect of life, economic, health, and education. In many places, large numbers of citizens are turning to nationalistic leaders for guidance and drifting from leadership that seeks cooperation and solidarity for the well-being of the planet. 

Can we honestly say that the Hindus and Buddhists are working together for unity, respect, and peace?  Are the Christian churches united in alleviating suffering in the world? Do we expect that to ever happen?  And can the various sects of Islam ever stop fighting and killing one another long enough to say that enough is enough?  

Do we really believe that millions of people believing in justice and love and striving to be good people themselves, without local and international institutions born of God’s Divine Revelation can ever create and establish the systems necessary to guide the entire human race?  So… do we really not believe the Kingdom of God on earth is possible.  Or are we not really interested in having a Kingdom of God on earth?  

Well, maybe this current global pandemic is just the beginning of trials and tribulations more drastic and brutal than what we are experiencing now.  Maybe the old-world order has not completely decayed yet. Stay tuned. 

“The peoples of the world are fast asleep. Were they to wake from their slumber, they would hasten with eagerness unto God, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise. They would cast away everything they possess, be it all the treasures of the earth, that their Lord may remember them to the extent of addressing to them but one word.”

“The world's equilibrium hath been upset through the vibrating influence of this most great, this new World Order. Mankind's ordered life hath been revolutionized through the agency of this unique, this wondrous System -- the like of which mortal eyes have never witnessed.”

“Immerse yourselves in the ocean of My words, that ye may unravel its secrets, and discover all the pearls of wisdom that lie hid in its depths. Take heed that ye do not vacillate in your determination to embrace the truth of this Cause -- a Cause through which the potentialities of the might of God have been revealed, and His sovereignty established.” -- Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 136)

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Reflections on a Day of Fasting

 

            The fasting season began this week, just in time.  My inner energy on low, this cycle of 19 days will help me recharge it.

            Yesterday Roshan and I accompanied a friend for a drive up near the summit of Mauna Kea (13,796 ft.) to watch the sunset, have prayers and break the fast together.  As we ascended, we drove in rain and a dismal cloud cover, but at around 7,000 feet we suddenly rose above the clouds, which spread out like a fluffy tablecloth across the Valley extending to the other high peak, Mauna Loa at 13,677 ft. and behind us far out over the Ocean beyond Hilo.  Gnarled trees spotted the pasture-slopes of Mauna Kea where a few obscure cows fed, content with their lonely dining on the green landscape.  The sparse trees with their bent and twisted limbs looked like figure skaters frozen on one foot; or like old, hunchbacked souls doing Tai chi.  We were passing through the landscape of the strange and eerie, where ghost-like fingers of the tops of clouds rested between the stubby, stoic trees.

            At 9,000 feet we passed the visitor center and plodded up the steep, supposed-to-be-4-wheel-drive-only road to maybe 11,000 feet, where we pulled onto a ledge that gave us a panorama of the sun's rays streaking across the top of the world.  The temperature had dropped from the mid-70's in Hilo to cold at the heights.  Once parked the three of us put on sweaters and coats before stepping out into the crisp, thin air to watch the last flares of sunlight give way to the fast-growing shadows weaving their way up the mountainsides, ‘til just enough day light remained to read from our prayer books... "I beseech Thee by this Revelation whereby darkness hath been turned into light..."

            As night settled across the Pacific, a nippy wind stirred about us, sending us back into the car for warmth and a dinner of Subway sandwiches, fried potatoes (which we ate with chopsticks), homemade cookies and plenty of water. 

            Descending to the visitor center, we joined a small group of tourists who had gathered to watch the vivid night sky through a telescope. Tonight, Saturn and Venus took the main stage.  Being able to see the rings of Saturn through a telescope amazed me, but the frosty air forced me inside the visitor center for hot chocolate mixed with coffee crystals, as I waited for the cold numbness to leave my hands.  Such centers of learning pour out scientific knowledge in large quantities, too much to remember in one setting; the videos, display panels and computer terminals together become a bombardment.  I did learn that an explorer named Vancouver introduced mountain goats to Hawaii in the late 1780's, animals that quickly destroyed much of the natural plant life on the slopes of Mauna Kea.  I thought to myself, "What was the guy thinking? And to think that a whole metropolitan city in Canada has been named after him!"

            Having our fill of stars, hot chocolate and cold air, we left the visitor center as a ridge of clouds, like an invading battalion of infantrymen, moved in, gradually blocking out more and more of the 100 billion stars of the Milky way from our sight as well as the entire Andromeda galaxy (with an estimated 200 billion stars), which before being hidden by the dark invaders had been a fuzzy smudge of light below two stars on the lower eastern edge of night.

            During the 45-minute descent back to Hilo in clouds and rain, we spoke of the need for a language that expressed the spiritual and abstract wonders of experience:  We say "Wonderful", but the word doesn't say enough.  All of our superlatives fail to convey more than a nebulous sense of awe, a vague description of the mystical feeling.  Our friend who drove us up said that the "Quietness" that he felt close to the summit stays in his mind.  We had been sitting on top of the world.

             A couple weeks ago, when our oldest son, Aman, was visiting us from that place named for the explorer who almost ruined the flora and fauna of Mauna Kea with his idea of importing goats, I noticed in the local Mall that the music store had a clearance sale on pre-recorded cassette tapes.  I found several tapes of Keith Jarrett at $2.99 each, a sale I could not pass up, as I had recently been listening to some Keith Jarrett piano concerts with renewed fascination. 

            One of the recordings, "Changeless," which features improvised pieces from live concerts with Gary Peacock on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums, is almost other worldly, like being on top of Mauna Kea at sunset. 

            I am there now.

                         -- C. S. Cholas
March 5, 1999
Hilo, Hawai'i