11 'Izzat 166 (Baha'i Calendar)
Drumbeat in my head:  The Fauns, "Come Around Again"

I just got back from three days of travel.  I spent Tuesday at the Baha'i House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois, and then traveled around southwest Wisconsin on Wednesday and Thursday.  I will talk about my Wisconsin travels in a separate post--the wonderful experiences at the Baha'i House of Worship deserve their own blog post.

Part of the journey of going to the Baha'i Temple is traveling there.  I think I discovered what might be the fastest way to get there from Madison WI.  I took US Highway 12 through some beautiful rolling hills, through Fort Atkinson and around Whitewater and Lake Geneva to Richmond, IL, just south of the IL-WI border. From there I took Route 173 along the top of Illinois to Interstate 94, and got to the area near the Baha'i House of Worship in just under three hours.  (If I wanted to avoid the tolls and avoid funding suburban sprawl, I could have taken US Highway 41 which runs parallel to I-94, but it's a slower way.) 

First stop, however, was lunch with my sister.  She works not too far from the House of Worship so we got together at a diner in Skokie and caught up on things.

Then it was off to the Baha'i House of Worship.  I spent about five hours total there. When I'm there, I usually alternate my time between the bookstore, the auditorium (the main place of prayer), the gardens and temple grounds outside, and I even wander across Sheridan Road to Gillson Beach to take in the view of Lake Michigan.

The Visitor's Center bookstore is a dangerous place for a credit-card equipped Baha'i to be.  I bought two books and a CD and congratulated myself for my self-restraint.  One of the books I really look forward to reading--"Life at First Sight--Finding the Divine in the Details," by Phyllis Edgerly Ring.  Finding the divine in the details something I really need to work on.

At the bookstore, a woman who works there and I recognized each other.  I remember having a fairly long and intense conversation with her two years ago when I was visiting the Baha'i Temple as a seeker. Back then, I was contemplating leaving the spiritual path I'd been dedicated to for the previous eleven years and joining the Baha'i Faith.  You can read about that journey here.

Going up into the auditorium has always been a powerful spiritual experience.  They call the main place of prayer the auditorium, but how many auditoriums have 138 foot high ceilings and beautiful intricate stonework going all the way to the top?  When I'm in the auditorium I alternate between looking at the ceiling (often focusing on Greatest Name in the center), praying, and writing in my journal.  A lot of times it takes a while for me to clear my mind and really focus on being there.

Part of my prayer this time around had to do with feeling joy in my path as a Baha'i, and another part of my prayer has to do with clarity of direction in life.  On one level I feel a lot of clarity, as evidenced by my choice to live in a co-op house and live more lightly on the earth, but I feel the need for greater clarity as far as my career goes.

In making my prayer, the first feeling I got was that God understands how I feel.  The second feeling I got is that I need to trust God more and not judge myself, that there is a bigger picture unfolding in my life.  The third feeling I got is that I need to keep relentlessly asking questions, as many as possible and to as many people as possible. I also got the feeling that God was telling me to trust the process I'm going through and not give up on the process for something that might be less rewarding.  I felt God was saying to me, "Think of Me," find a way to read the Writings in a way that I can absorb them more, and, finally, to remember this place, this House of Worship, think of the people here, and of my fellow Baha'is in Madison.

I didn't want to leave.  But I knew I had to. I had a long drive back. It was a difficult drive back, too.  I didn't want to drive the way I came because I didn't want to drive dark, narrow, twisty roads late at night and put myself at increased risk of hitting a deer. But to take the other route, I had to drive some ten miles through surface streets just to get to Interstate 294 and 90.  I got caught in two traffic jams and it took me two hours just to the edge of the metropolitan area in Elgin.  This time, it took me four hours to get home.

It felt like leaving the Baha'i Temple behind was like saying goodbye to God.  But I knew that we weren't really parting. And I need to keep memories of the temple in my heart as a way of remembering this experience.