Indigo Worship in a Time of War

My first sojourn to the Baha'i House of Worship in Wilmette transpired one day before Naw Ruz on Thursday, March 20th, 2003. My grandmother had died earlier in the week and the Wednesday night I rolled my dilapidated but acclimated wagon into downtown Chicago I was greeted with the news that US forces had begun to slam Baghdad with a batch of missiles. Mother was taking care of her stepfather Frank; keeping the house clean, making sandwhiches, penning out a premature list of peace lily Thank Yous. The remainder of the family was gathered around the digital rectangle in the living room, watching swirled armageddon boutonnieres achingly pin their way across the Iraqi dawn.

When I greeted my relatives with whiffed condolensces and embraces they briefly knodded and swatted me out of their vision. Artillery tinsel exploded across the glazed lens. My Uncle Rudy kept making unfounded correlations to 9-11, talking about patriotism using playoff terminology.

"That's what happens when you mess with us on our home court." He says. "Watch-out!!That's what I'm saying. BAM! Look at the size of that explosion!!! Baghdad's gonna be a parking lot for US hummers!!! That's all I'm saying!!"

I feel like pointing out that I don't think Iraq had much to do with the terrorist attacks on 9-11 but don't. Instead I slurp instant coffee under the hard yellow lights of Grandma's circa 1970's kitchen. I come from a family of mostly republicans. Sometimes my long hair doesn't auger well in regards to political conversations. My Uncle Rudy has already told me once to get a haircut, hippie.

"What do you think about the war?" I ask mom.

"I hope you're not drafted." She says.

"No, I mean seriously. We're literally pillaging a country with corpses for what...oil?"

"They have Weapons of Mass Destruction." My hushed-eyed mother says with discernment. "The paper says that they found Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. Don't you think that's a valid reason to attack?"

I don't but my lips remain sterile. Mom's lived through the Vietnam war and the cuban missile crisis. Her real father was an hard-edged alchololic who was so blitzed he didn't even make it to his daughters wedding. In the last thirteen months mom witnessed the demise of both her husband and her own mom. She has hard diminutive cocoon-shaped shadows pooled beneath her eyelashes.

I haven't seen mom since Christmas when she yelled at me for going outside for a cigarette.

"Things in the world are pretty crazy right now." Mom says. "At least your father and grandma are with the Lord."

"Yeah," I say, assenting chin to her solace, sipping tepid grains of coffee.

"Our countries at war!" Uncle Rudy declares as he runs into the kitchen, opening up the fridge, frisking his fingers on the lower shelf for a beer.


*


The next morning avenue thick headlines furrow the brows of early editions nation wide and I take my leave. I ignore my yahoo driving directions to 100 Linden Ave, Wilmette IL. and instead drive parellel north accompanying Lake Michigan knowing that I need to take a hard right sometime after I guzzle through Northwestern's campus. It is March and the budding spring sky is grisly soil, bulbous clouds cut like triangular-sails hang heavily above. My grandmother's visitation is at four pm. Illinois plays Western Kentucky this afternoon in the first round of NCAA tournament. After what seems like months of speculation and political absurdity regarding a purported nest of vile weapondry, my birth country has tranisitioned into a gradeschool bully, hoisting lunchroom wedgies into the waist-lines of the meek.


I flick on the radio. NPR seems to have round-the-clock coverage of Baghdad's bombing. The few ground atrillery men stationed on Iraqi soil have already coined the euphemism 'friendly fire' in regards to US casualties. The entire war seems to be marketed to a gullible-lobed populace simply as AMERICA at WAR. No one seems to want the war and in a way, no one seems to care.


I continue to drive north. My windsheild has been dotted with flecks rain. It is almost like the whole world's starting to sniff and realize that their mascara is begining to run and they don't want anyone to see what they really think or feel. I know I need to take a right somewhere only I'm not exactly sure where.

*

"When you go to the House of Worship make sure you have them show you the cornerstone room." Uncle Mike informs me. We are going on one of our idle drives where I ask him questions and he delivers anecdotes. I am inbetween shifts. I teach during the day, try to crank out pages during the afternoon, fuel myself with Starbucks House blend and Camel filters and then coast through my library post at night, clocking off at 3 am, motoring home, showering, seep up the cat vomit, sleep by four, up and at 'em by seven-fifteen. Day starts all over again. The days and the weeks blur into vertigo bouquet--which is fine. A moment to muse and mull over my life means that I have to eye certain facts. Means that I have to admit that I'm twenty-five and don't have a fucking clue what's happening to my life. Means not having to ascertain the reality that my father's skull is gradually eroding in his Sunday best beneath a diminutive heap of dirt, that my mom wants nothing to do with me, that my sisters and I don't talk. Working all the time means that I don't have to be at the house I'm renting where my roommates kids and cats take turns sullying the carpet and subtle unemployed acquaintences squat on our sofa for days on end plugged into playstation. Working all the time means that I'll have cash for gas and cigarettes and booze on the weekends. That I'll be able pay off the exorbitant rash my college loans and credit cards have become. Working all the time means that eventually I won't care what happens to myself or to anyone. Means that'll have to watch my own ass, screw other people over, eventually get to a financial echelon where my back account is full and my chest is completely empty.

Occasionally I take the afternoon off from writing and have dinner with Uncle Mike. The crazy Baha'i psychic who used to live down the street from me who used to give readings to Gretta Alexander, famous psychic from Delevan.

"Gretta was all ego," Mike huffs.

"She was on the news last week," I tell him, how, in passing, I saw her ample frame featured on a national televsion show late at night.

"She said that everyone has a little bit of these powers in them. 'Everyone can play chopsticks--I can play chopin' That was her words verbatim."

"Gretta was all ego," Mike says. "She didn't understand her gifts. People who are born with these gifts sometimes develop tremendous egos."

"The television program said that she was struck with lighting when she was eight and that was how her powers came into fruition."

Uncle Mike has always told me that his own gifts were really no big deal and that most of the time they are more of a curse than a blessing. He says to think of presupposed supernatural gifts as antenaes. "Think of human beings as antenaes." He points to the silver stem sprouting up from near the top of his hood. "Right now, passing through that antenaes--passing through our own bodies, there are millions of frequecies-but only certain frequencies can be only determined when the antenae is tuned specifically to a certain dial. There are even televsion and satellite frequencies, but certain antenaes can only pick up certain frequencies. You get what I'm saying? He inquires.

"What frequency do you think you're tuned into." He suggests.

"My own," I retaliate, tired, dreading going into work later on in the evening.

*
I roll my station wagon into the parking lot at 100 Linden Avenue. Thick green tufts of spring branches grants birth to an immaculate papal-hatted dome levitating above the chipped-blue suburban skyline. I smell like cigarettes and Starbucks. I can feel the huffed-breeze of Lake Michigan zip the back of my neck. I flick off talk radio. Baghdad is preparing for another nocturnal fussilade. There is construction humming outside near the gardens. The thick mop of clouds has momentarily parted and a slender slant of sunlight has managed to wedge its way through. I have arrived, exhausted, emotionally-enervated, but I have arrived nonetheless.

*

"When Abdu'l-baha arrived at the dedication ceremony for the House of worship in Wilmette the contractors already had the corenerstone picked out for him." Mike said. I'm exhausted. Another late-night shift is slowly shedding its blue-collar antics on the denim horizon of dusk.

"Yeah," I say, emitting a soporific yawn. I tell Mike that I have to be at work earlier, around 9:30. I tell him that I need to put in extra-time so that I can go to my grandma's Wake later in the week. I've also told him that I'm going to the house of worship. Can show him the internet directions I've downloaded.

"The house of Worship is a holy place." Mike mentioned earlier. He told me about the time when he was in his late twenties and he bumped into a seeker in a Chinese restaurant the two of them went for a drive and Uncle Mike told him stories about the faith. He told this seeker all about the early pilgrims. All about Hafai. All about the Bab and the dispensation. Uncle Mike and the seeker drove from Bloomington to Peoria and from Peroia to Wilmette.

"We just felt drawn their like a magnet." Mike said. "I met this man around 8 in the evening and by the time we arrived at the House Of Worship it was 4:30 in the morning. We got to watch the sunrise over Lake Michigan together before we attended devotions. Later on in the day, this man accepted the faith."

I picture Mike thirty years ago, tall and lanky but still somewhat awkwardly jointed, his bird-squinting face still bearing thick spectacles. I picture the two of them with sloppy school boy haircuts sitting on the steps to the House of Worship, watching the nuclear hearth slolwy push its way over the saltine shores of Lake Michigan.

Mike keeps driving. He has been spoon-feeding my spiritual zeal anecdotes about the house of worship. He is telling me about the cornerstone room about how when the Master arrived the contractors had reserves a special cement groom for Abdu-l'baha to consecrate and Abdu'l-Baha told them simply to wait.

"He told them to wait?" I inquire. Mike nods.

"They were ready to have the ground breaking ceremony and Abdul-baha told them simply to wait."

"So they waited."

"Yes," Mike says, with a nod. "They waited and Abdu'l-Baha pointed. In his direction their was an old lady ferrying a rock in a little red wagon. Abdul-baha pointed at it and said, 'Will use this one.'"

"Wow."

"This was in accordance to biblical scripture: 'He shall use the stone the builders rejected.'" I pause-engrossed. It is a fascinating story.

"I need to get to work." I tell Mike.

"Are you going to be alright at your grandmothers funeral?" Mike asks.

"Yeah," I tell him. "She was old. She had a good life. Once you hit eighty you can't ask for much more. Eighty-laps around the old sun is pretty good. Dad only had fifty-four."

"Say the prayer for the departed for her." Mike tells me.

"I will." I say. I say the Prayer for the Departed everynight.
Mike pulls up in front of the library. I open the car door.

"Here," Mike says, groping my fist. He grabs my hand and plants a wadded twenty in it.

"Mike I'm fine."

"You're going to need money for gas." He says.

"Thanks." I look at him, ashamed that he thinks I'm having financial trouble.

"Well, take care buddy." I go to shut the burgundy wing of Mike's Lincoln Continental.

"Just remember," Mike says.

"What," I reply, curiously.

"When you see your grandmother's body, all that is is a rug. Your're not seeing her true essence."

"Thanks," I say, pausing. Mike drives off. I go in front of the library and fire up a coveted cigartte before my shift. Tomorrow I am going up to Chiacgo to pay my respects to my grandmother. I am going to the House of Worship. Other than that I really have no clue where I am going. Not a clue at all.

* * *

(sorry-this is a two-party. Check back Monday for the remainder. As always, thanks for putting up with my long entries. You girls rule!!!)