'"O my God," Baha'u'llah says again, "But for the tribulations which are sustained in Thy path, how could Thy true lovers be recognized . . .? The companions of all who adore Thee are the tears they shed, and the comforters of such as seek Thee are the groans they utter, and the food of them who haste to meet Thee is the fragments of their broken hearts."'
TWENTY-EIGHT
Now Is Not Their Time
Lidia's voyage across the Atlantic, which had begun smoothly, began to get rougher. For several days the Pilsudski was tossed mercilessly by terrible storms. Two days before the ship was to arrive in Poland, Lidia began a letter to Shoghi EfFendi. She explained to him what had happened in America and why she had been forced to leave. She told him that, whatever the future might bring, she had confidence she would be guided by Baha'u'llah.
Lidia had nearly completed her Polish translation of Bahd'u'llah and the New Era\ she asked Shoghi Effendi what to do with it as well as her other translations once the war began. Lidia also told the Guardian that she intended to remain in Poland for only a few weeks, then she would try to leave for France or some other country.
When the ship docked at the Polish port ofGdynia, around the ninth ofDecember, Lidia was so fatigued that she had to take a hotel there for the night, instead of going on by train to Warsaw. When she finally arrived home, she wias too weak to get out of bed for two days.
Warsaw seemed strange to Lidia after New York City, and it took her some time to get used to the conditions there again. To her surprise, Lidia found that some Warsaw streets even had new traffic lights, as in America, but they worked only until ten p.m., 'and on Sunday', she wrote a friend, 'they rest'. 'The highest skyscraper in Warsaw, of which the city is so proud, because it has seventeen stories, cannot impress me anymore. In America I was always "short" - here I am "medium height" again. And even the taxis seem somehow Lilliputian.'
Christmas was coming, but to Lidia it seemed 'a spiritually dead time when it is hard to do anything'. She explained to Della: 'Each is thinking only of his own parties, Christmas tree, gifts, etc., so only after the New Year will I begin to travel.' Lidia planned to visit several people in the southwest and southeast ofPoland, who had shown some interest in the Baha'f Faith.
That month, December 1938, La Praktjko carried a satirical story Lidia had evidently written while in the United States. It was called 'La suno revenas en Noktolandon ('The Sun Returns to Nightland'). In it
Lidia told of a country called Nightland, where the sun had not risen for so long that it had nearly been forgotten. In the absence of the real sun, lamps became very important objects and 'much attention was devoted to them. Special professions even developed, and the men who occupied themselves with lighting were generally called "Illuminationists". They had various ranks. There were High- Lampers, Lampers, Low-Lampers, Lanternists, and Candle-men. Sometimes various Illuminationists warred among themselves because some said to others: "Our lamps are the best, and yours give only soot."'
The story illustrated the Baha'f principle that divine revelation was renewed from time to time through Manifestations of God who appeared at a time when religion had degenerated to empty forms. Although the story was phrased in allegorical fashion, it was Lidia's plea to the Esperantists to investigate the Baha'i Faith. 'Dear Reader!' she concluded, 'If in the hour of black night you should hear that the sun has returned, do not turn away from those tidings. Raise yourself up to the heights, to the mountaintops, and look.'
Lidia's plans to remain in Poland a few weeks and then go to France were encountering difficulties. In Lyon, Emile Borel was trying to arrange for Lidia to teach in France; she was waiting to hear if a work contract he had drawn up would be approved by the French Ministry ofLabor. Without it, she could not work there. It is not clear ifthis was a new requirement or if, after her unhappy experience in America, Lidia had become more aware of the need to find out about such regulations beforehand and had warned Mr Borel to make inquiries.
A correspondent in France had written Lidia expressing his opinion of why she had been forced to leave America so suddenly. Lidia answered: 'You say that it is, as it were, because of the rule of the Antichrist that I could not work longer in America. Well, God is stronger than the Antichrist, even when He allows the Antichrist to rule. IfI left America, perhaps it was because God preferred that I work in another land. And in God's choice, the deciding factor is not my satisfaction, not my pleasure, not even my security — but the work which I can and must do.' To his objections to America, she answered with her impressions. 'I saw a nation different from the European ones,' she observed. 'A nation not rotting - young, strong, with hope in the future.'
The correspondent had said he thought that America was weakened by overindulgence in dancing and playing games. Lidia responded: 'No . . . play is not a sin, not evil. Man has the right to some pleasure, because he has been created to be happy, not unhappy, because there is a time to cry, but there is also a time to bejoyful, and each isjoyful in his own way. Furthermore, I don't agree with you that dancing is only play. Surely you know that to the ancient Greeks dance was an art not only lofty but sacred... I myselfneither dance nor sing (especially the latter, I quite regret) but if only the matter is not taken to extreme, I really and sincerely do not see anything bad in it.'
Christmas trees were beginning to appear in Warsaw. Always thinking about what she saw around her, and finding a greater meaning in the ordinary things oflife, Lidia set down her reflections on the season in an essay she called 'Kristnaskaj pripensoj' ('Thoughts on Christmas'). She typed copies of it and sent them to her correspon- dents. 'The Christmas tree is an old custom,' she wrote. 'Once the tiny candles that light its branches were made of wax. One after another they were lighted by the one who decorated the tree. He had to bend low, hiding among the lowest branches, or climb up to reach the highest ones. He had to push his hand through the branches and sometimes prick his fingers. And sometimes the candles refused to bum and he had to be patient until they caught fire. They did not bum long. Their life was short. They went out, leaving on the branch only a bit of wax in the empty candleholder and some smoke in the air.
'Ifwe remember the words ofBaha'u'llah, that all men are the leaves of one branch, then the Christmas tree becomes for us a symboclass="underline" it represents mankind. The needles are men. The twigs are the peoples. The branches are the nations. The tree is the whole of mankind. The hand that lights the tree is the Hand ofGod. And the candles with their flaming lights are the Light-bearers of God - his prophets.
'Each of the candles illumines a certain branch, a certain part of the tree. Each of the prophets spoke to a certain human group. Other branches of the human tree are not forgotten, however. Another candle was lighted in their midst, among the darkest branches - another prophet appeared to give light to another group of men, to a group which was at that time farthest from the spiritual light.
'Those prophets never appeared at the same time - one after the other the different candles were lighted; one after another various branches received the light. And when one had already been lighted, another branch was still in darkness. When one still bumed, another candle had gone out: the temples were like empty candleholders without light: the light of the Spirit had gone; there remained nothing but the wax of external forms and the smoke of divisions, unrest and hypocrisy.