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Tomorrow I begin my writing of response to the book’s question #4 (about my father) – so I shouldn’t be surprised that today I feel far from chipper!  I found a passage today that I wish I understood – but I don’t.  Not really, not in any way but the most superficial fashion:

“Truly, I say, the fear of God hath ever been the perspicuous protection and solid fortress for the whole community of the world.  It is the greatest means for the protection of mankind, and the chief cause of the preservation of humanity.  Yes, there exists a sign in the being of man which guards and protects him from that which is unworthy and unbecoming.  That sign is called modesty.  But this virtue is assigned to a few; for all are not endowed with this station.” From Baha’u’llah in “Bahai’I World Faith:  Selected writings of Baha’u’llah and ‘Abdul’l-Baha” (out of print) page 180

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This would suggest that for the bulk of humans it would be the fear of God that would keep us in line with living a truly good life.  Modesty, in a culture so pervasively materialistic, is often considered ONLY in this light.  But when I went to Webster’s online dictionary I found that the first definition of ‘modest’ is this one:  “placing a moderate estimate on one’s abilities or worth.”

I feel today as I prepare to write tomorrow for the book that I have a sinkhole of sadness and of DISAPPOINTMENT inside of me that seems at this moment to circle around a center that this word ‘modest’ represents.  I see that within this small and not-often used word might be a deep connection to both the essence of empathy and of compassion both of which were entirely missing in the severely abusive home of my origin.

Oh, no doubt both of my parents would have claimed if asked that modesty was one of their most ‘prized personal possessions’, but that would have been a lie as big as all the others their patterns in living represented.

It didn’t seem to be my mother’s ‘fear of God’ that was the straw that broke her, but rather the ‘fear of the devil coming to get her’.  I am not interested in arguing any points about how these two perspectives might be similar or different from one another.  I just sense at the core of my body that it was not any light that the first might carry that was present in her but rather all the darkness contained in the latter.

Whatever factors a human being might need to have been exposed to in their earliest life so that a healthy self could form that could have healthy relationships was missing from both of my parents’ experience.  They must have both been denied whatever it takes to develop “a moderate estimate on one’s abilities or worth.”  There is NOTHING moderate about infant-child abuse!  There IS NOT SUCH THING as ‘moderate abuse’.  Abuse is abuse, and I cannot imagine a human being who HAS “a moderate estimate on one’s abilities or worth” ever committing it.

Yet if modesty, according to this quotation is a rare virtue not common among humans, then there must be a whole lot of people who do, in their innermost essence, at least have a healthy fear of some kind for God – however that relationship is defined and experienced.  (I imagine the rare modest people have both.)  This passage suggests to me that to live a life of well-being ONE of these two factors must be present.  My parents evidently didn’t have either one – and oh the suffering and abuse that was fostered and perpetrated in their absence!

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