A Sceptic’s First Glance (at the Baha’i Faith)

Did I hear you talk of your grave?
No fear of death! Are you really so brave?
Why don’t you cry when I offer you pain?
Your loving smiles must prove you’re insane!

I am my own God, my very own Lord,
I won’t chant with the passionate horde.
What do you mean? I don’t need eyes to see!
What do you mean? Do I have faith in me?

So you want us all to be the same!
It won’t ever happen, ain’t that a shame!
And now you say the bigots will turn with the years,
I say: Your dreams will drown in your tears!

Come on now, you’ve got to agree,
God’s dead, you ape, climb down from your tree,
You understand me, so why do you smile?
Why should I sit with you and listen for a while?

Where’s the point in trying to love one and all?
For all your troubles you are fed just gall!
How can you care for those that wish you ill?
How can you die and not wish to kill?

How does your faith bring you such calm,
When you’re surrounded by that which brings harm?
Don’t the scientists and ‘modern’ people say,
Religion died in…………yesterday?

So what is the essence that burns in your heart?
Whence came your love and when did it start?
How can you be so sure of your belief?
Tell me, for life can be so brief.

(Most of this poem was written, but left unfinished, by an unknown visitor to a Baha’i teaching project in Shrewsbury, where I found it while tidying up on the final day. I was so taken with it that I took it home and completed the final verse.)