My 101st post!
Mood:  a-ok
Topic: Words of Wisdom
My friend’s dead mother came to me for the first time just before the earthquake hit Indonesia and usually I sadistically tell dead people that they’re dead and to find someone else to pass on their woes and regrets to the living, but this woman had already expressed herself (rather clearly, I was told later) before she died. Most dead people want the living to feel mournful and keep all the highly emotionally charged memories fresh in the minds of the living because we’re taught that the more we cry and mourn someone’s passing the more that person knows we loved them. The truth is that all that negative energy is exactly the opposite of what they need to move on to the next stages of their lives and while praying for the dead does a lot to release them from their attachments to this world, there is nothing more powerful than love, and the memory of all that anguishing love works just as well, to keep people’s souls united in whatever relationship they had with you in life. So, I mention this woman because her message to her loved one wasn’t about blame or regret or being remembered more kindly than she was in reality; it was about making sure her child received something “special” that was deliberately left hidden from the vultures in her family. I don’t know what the association is other than the fact that it was her favorite tree; however the ironwood tree is very significant to me now as well. I’ve already passed the information to my friend and the mother is happily off enjoying her afterlife and that tree is on my mind waking and sleeping.

The more I discover about it the more it amazes me. They have beautiful flowers that look almost like large snapdragons and extremely hard wood which is still hard to cut with modern tools, thus, the name Ironwood. And what fascinates me more than their 1500+ year lifespan is the fact that the tree still felt it necessary to protect itself with long, sharp spines on its trunks (it’s built like a 25 foot tall bush) and small thorns on the leaves. I can understand the need for thorns on the leaves; it’s a desert tree and it could kill the tree to have too many animals eating the leaves, but why the spikes on the rest of the tree? The largest animals in the area wouldn’t be heavy enough to break the limbs, so why would that tree need such aggressive defenses?

Shoghi tells me the Ironwood tree is significant to his Beloved and Master, too; and that there is one in Persia of particular importance to them. All I am able to see is people planting Ironwood trees and other trees and I don’t know whether that was something significant that happened in Shoghi Effendi’s life (which I can easily imagine knowing he designed the gardens and Shrine of the Bab) or if it’s something we were supposed to have done after his passing and it’s very important it be completed. Just because I’ve been talking to dead people all my life doesn’t mean I have a clue what they’re talking about; the “message” is rarely for me, virtually always through me like a… like a broken winged bird with someone else’s life hanging by a thong around my neck. I feel increasingly frustrated because I know I’m being led to valuable information and it seems like everyone else gets to put all the pieces together and find what they’ve been searching for and none of it was related to me. I feel like I’m always the last one to figure it out for myself because all I have to do is listen on the phone with my seven year old niece for a whole ten minutes and she’ll accurately (and without breathing, it’s amazing) explain the entire Universe to me without me needing to ask her twice. On the other hand, what’s there for me to know when I want for nothing that isn’t provided to me just because I’m alive and willing to accept all that life has to offer? Knowing that the Y chromosome is rarer to extinction by the second (every child born brings us that much closer) explains some things to me; but only religions and governments and folks who fear same gender relationships because they don’t know how children can be born to same gender couples will feel at all threatened by loosing a little “y” chromosome. Those who follow Abdu’l-Baha’s counsel and loves all peoples and kindreds **without limitation or restriction** will evolve and solve the challenge of procreating without a y chromosome as they most certainly will be inspired by God and the Universe to do. If you think the majority of people born with penises seem willing to poke it into anything they please with or without permission now; just imagine how desperately they will want to poke their penises into exactly the “perfect” child bearer for their precious seed in the meantime before our species is fully evolved and working on the next challenge – keeping our predominantly matriarchal Earth from swinging too far the other way and beginning the cycle of abuse against folks with y chromosomes which set the genders apart in the first place. You should have already been united as a planet under the protection of the Universal House of Justice and your preserved cultures by the time scientists noticed the challenge of procreating without a y chromosome; which is easily solvable now with the technology we already have, by the way. Make folks think with their brains and don’t worry about the size of their penises unless they’re poking you without your permission, then I say take it as a souvenir.
And I wanted you all to know earlier, but I was distracted; the first Siberian tigers this season at China's Siberian and Bengal tiger preservation project's facilities were born May 22 and are shown here a few hours old and perfectly healthy with mom.

Just to show you that the most important "signs" aren't always earthquakes and devestations; virtually all the time it's the details which make all the difference in the world.