Diary of 2012 Summer Trip (5)

07-23-2012

I visited the Baha’i Garden in Haifa and prayed in the Shrine of The Bab today.

To say the Garden is beautiful does not do justice about the Garden. It’s beautiful beyond description (my description at least). 

Beautiful is only part of the characteristics of the Garden and the Shrine, important as it is, it’s not the essence of it. It is like a lamp, the beautiful design of its outward structure is not the essence of the lamp. It is the light that shines through the lamp which makes the lamp luminous and truly beautiful. The same is true about the Baha’i Gardens. Here in Israel, the land is basically desert or semi-desert, some spotted greenery, but mainly yellowish outlook, especially in hot summer sun. And yet out of this desert there appears the most wonderful, the most green and the most shining Garden on the ancient Mount Carmel. When walking on the terraces, a water stream follows every step I took, the sound of which is like a music that makes my walk a dance. Everywhere I look, I can see and feel the spirit shines through every leaf, every flower, every physical structure and every human face. There is inner happiness reflecting from all of them. It is, after all, the symbol and the beginning of the reality of The Kingdom of God on earth as promised ages ago. 

 

Diary of 2012 Summer Trip (4)

7-22-2012

I am waiting at Prague airport to check in and fly to Tel Aviv and then to Haifa.

Life is such a mystery unfolding each day and we don’t know for sure to where it will lead us. It never stops amazing me that I and my whole family would one day come to visit the Holy Land as pilgrims. Growing up in China as atheist, finding God that is believable to me via a Muslim classmate in Prague, then in Rolla Missouri joining Christian church and finally finding my heart desire in Baha’i Faith, the journey traversed half the world and involved more than 15 years of search. We had many aspirations and expectations from life when we were young, many (almost all) proved to be, if not false, at least misperceptions about ourselves and about life. One thing we realized as life proceeding, it is in relation to God that the value of all things is evaluated and determined. At the end of 2007, our whole family came to Haifa Israel as pilgrims for the first time, also the last time as family, which was, in my opinion, our consummate achievement we, as a family, could ever attain.

7-22-2012 evening

I landed in Tel Aviv this afternoon and took sherut to Haifa this evening. The street (Ben Gurion) I am staying at is right in front of Baha'i Garden on Mount Carmel.  The Shrine of the Bab and the terraces are luminous through dark background, which is true in both literal and symbolic sense. It’s hard to believe I am here in this land again, onto which so many historical stories happened and recorded, so many prophecies had been made, so many hopes had been and still be placed and through which all prophecies have been fulfilled, even though not been recognized by the still sleepy populace yet.

This is the Holy and mystic Land.

Diary of 2012 Summer Trip (3)

7-21-2012

We took train from Prague to Ceske Budejovice and dropped Mingway at Townshend International School near Hluboka for a week long summer camp. The school is near the beautiful Schwarzenberg Castle and the whole area is picture like. The students are from around the world. Mingway already made a friend this afternoon: Zinzan from Hamburg of Germany.

 

 

While Mingway is in Townshend, I will fly to Israel for a 3-day visit at Baha’i World Center located at Haifa and Akka areas.

Diary of 2012 Summer Trip (2)

7-18-2012

We arrived at Prague this afternoon via train from Munich. It took about 6 hours. It’s a long yet pleasant trip.

Prague is no strange place to us, me especially, at all.  This visit is my fourth visiting here.

The first time I came to Prague was in the fall of 1985 for attending a UNESCO graduate course. I was very young and very shy then. My English was poor and I was buried deeply in homesick. That was a painful and lonely 10 months. 

In the fall of 1989 soon after TianAnMen Square event, I came to Prague to join Heping who had been there studying for two years. We were there in time to witness Czechoslovakia communist government dissolved and Berlin wall collapsed. Two months after I arrived, Heping got a chance to go to study at UMR of Missouri. We decided to take the opportunity even if it meant I had to be left behind alone in Prague. I couldn’t go back to China at the time because of the situation there and I was not allowed to company Heping to USA because US embassy said no. That one year in Prague alone was the lowest point in my life. But it was also during this lonely and hopeless period I started to think about God and sometimes out of desperation asked Him for help even though I didn’t believe anything back then.

Two years ago in May 2010, we (Heping, Mingway and I) came to Prague the third time after 20 years. We were very excited and came across two of our old friends in the street (talking about miracles). We visited our advisers (Heping and I had the same advisers while studying in Charles University) and all those familiar places: the dorm we stayed, the school we studied in, the castles we visited and even the secret path we walked. Nothing has changed, Prague never changes. However many years have elapsed, we could count on to come back and find old memories at the exact places and exact environment. 

Prague has been and will always be my favorite city, not only because of its ancient beauty, its fine architectures, and its well educated people, but more importantly because it is the portal to our worldwide exploration. It has witnessed our struggle with life at young age, our bewilderment about life’s meaning and purpose. Here we left part of our hearts and many valuable memories. I know I will keep coming back to Prague for as long as I am able to.

Diary of 2012 Summer Trip (1)

7/15/2012

Mingway and I started our 2012 summer trip yesterday and we arrived at a small town Ismaning of Germany near Munich this morning. Ismaning is as beautiful and refreshing as before.  Plants are amazingly green and well kept, air clear and moist, street quiet and neat. A creek full of clean water quietly flows through the center of the town.  Widows and front decks are decorated with fresh flowers. Something in this small town deeply impressed Heping when he first came here for a business trip a few years back. He said he had found me a perfect town I had been looking for  and he promised us he would one day take us here and he knew we would enjoy it as much as he did.

Two years ago in May 2010, Heping took Mingway and me to Ismaning. The beauty and neatness of this town impressed us as much as it did to Heping and we thoroughly enjoyed its environment and its food. I remember Heping was very excited and kept saying “I have finally brought my family here” as if it was one of his missions of life.  Coming here again this time seems coming to our second home, heart comforted and spirit uplifted. We stay in the same little hotel around the corner, dine in the same restaurants. Everything stays the same, nothing has changed except the one who led us here in the first place has left us.

Our hotel Fischerwirt in Ismaning

 
River flows through Ismaning

Nearer My God To Thee

The weather is so unbearably hot that nothing could be done outside though there is a lot need to be done. Both Mingway and I got sick after the carnival of July 4^th. I stay inside lazily listening to music or reading a book or flipping through old pictures.

Some time ago I came across this song called “Nearer My God To Thee” from Mingway who told me it was the last music heard on Titanic before it sunk. The melodies of this song touched me deeply, and aroused deep longing of my heart to be nearer to the Source of Perfection. I listened to it again this afternoon and felt the incredible beauty from within and the magnificence of life seems to become sharply focused.

It seems that time and distance, sometime viewed as the biggest obstacles against our desire to be near right here at this moment, could act as filters that events happened in the past and hopes for the future, people far away or parted from this physical world are formed and reformed so that only the beautiful are remained. When we (mainly me) live in daily life, busy ourselves with mundane details that life demands, it is so easy not to see, not to feel and not to value properly the beauty that life presents in every moment. Time and distance simply have that magic to add beauty into all things happened and push deep down into our heart the beautiful feeling of appreciation for each other. Sometimes I believe that beauty, true beauty could only be seen, felt when one is in suffering. How could a person who has everything, who owns everything appreciate anything, properly? How could a person who is always full enjoy any food, however delicious? In this sense, hunger, loss or deprivation could be a blessing in disguise. They seem to sharpen our senses, cultivate our feelings and align our views that we could see farther, feel deeper and focus on right direction. Is this why, I wonder, that God starts our eternal journey toward Him on this earthly plane, the farthest point from Him where our deep longing for perfection could never be satisfied, where anything that maters is intangible, veiled or inaccessible to us, while anything that doesn’t matter is solid, clear and all the time accessible? How wonderful it shall be when that day will finally come that the veil will be lifted, we shall see the world in its true reality, we will see each other in our true beauty, there will be no more time and space that can separate us, we will walk together, with hand in hand, toward the Source of Perfection, eternally.

Nearer, My God, to Thee

Titanic Last Scene (1953)