I trudged across the sidewalks of bad neighbors who didn’t get up to shovel snow. I swam through billowy blankets of white fluff to get here, but it was well worth the windy road to the Baha’i Temple. The feeling of being utterly dwarfed takes shape just north of Northwestern. But what is it, specifically, that dwarfs me?
Surely it must be something more than the sheer size of the building. Perhaps what dwarfs me is the magnificence of the architecture, the intricate patterns in the stone. Perhaps it’s the thousand hands linked together to build it. No, it’s really none of those things; but nevertheless I shrink like a raindrop into the vast depths of Lake Michigan. I float across some kind of clear, cool sea in time. The ellipses that wind the bone-colored walls are infinitely connected and never-ending.
As I stare into the vaulted dome ceiling, a simple figure sits in the center. It means “O Glory of all Glories” and I butcher it with my drawings. But it keeps staring down at me. It is the Sun and I am a seed ready now to grow and stretch. It is God, no? All right, I won’t preach, but I’m allowed to hope, right? If humans can work together to build this, there must exist some hope. All of the various proverbs on the walls speak the idea of unity and they race up the walls to meet in the dome’s peak like the folding hands of God praying.
The snow whirls more fiercely outside in the world. But humanity weathers this storm just like all the others. It’s going to be okay.
The lights are dim, but the walls are made of windows and this is a seclusion, but also a chance to look out from a distance. The solitude gives us a chance to look in. The windows are eyes out and perhaps mirrors in. What’s there to see in either?
The sanctuary is calm and pure except for the gurgling laughs of a small child. This temple is the soul of faith sitting unobtrusively a few blocks above our campus. It is beautiful. A voice whispers, “Quiet please, God is speaking.”