Today we went to visit the B’hai Gardens – the most famous site in Haifa. It is considered the second-most holy site for the B’nai faith, because its founder is buried here.The gardens, as you can see, are spectacular. It’s as perfectly manicured and arranged as a Japanese garden. Our guide said that their gardeners literally walk around with measuring tapes and trim the plants and bushes to centimeter-specific guidelines. The architect was a famous guy who also built a prominent temple in India, although, sorry Aaron, I can’t remember which one. I’m sure it is google-able.
Laura, my roommate from Holland, was also on the tour. She and I agreed that the whole place is pretty amazing, but we both had mixed feelings about the amount of money and labor it takes to maintain such a place – and then keeping it basically barricaded away, so it can’t really be enjoyed.
Japanese gardens are places for quiet strolls and silent reflection. At the B’hai Gardens, you can’t go in without a reservation, made several day
s in advance; then, when you arrive, two tour guides shuttle you through briskly, forbid photographs in all but designated places, and tell you to hurry up and “stay with the group” if you linger too long on a landing. All the grassy areas are roped off, of course, and the few benches dispersed around the gardens are inaccessible. Even drinking the water we were carrying was forbidden, and it was 110 degrees outside.
s in advance; then, when you arrive, two tour guides shuttle you through briskly, forbid photographs in all but designated places, and tell you to hurry up and “stay with the group” if you linger too long on a landing. All the grassy areas are roped off, of course, and the few benches dispersed around the gardens are inaccessible. Even drinking the water we were carrying was forbidden, and it was 110 degrees outside.Eze basa I learned to say today. What a pity.
Laura had a neat idea. Wouldn’t it be cool, she said, if you could enter the gardens and linger as long as you like, and placed discretely on little plagues with inspirational sayings or quotations from the B’hai faith, which one could sit and contemplate.
Yeah, that would have been cool!
1 comment:
I'm glad you enjoyed the Terraces and Gardens. To speak to some of your concerns consider that the Terraces and Gardens serve multiple purposes and there are, as you suggest, limited funds to maintain them.
First they serve as compliment to the Shrine of the Bab - the main building on the Terraces. He lived a short life calling for the reconciliation of religions by acknowledgement of the promises in all religions that one day universal brotherhood would be established. Indeed He claimed to have announced the very onset of that process. He was received with fanaticism and his shattered remains are in the Shrine. Having a garden - both formal and wild (along the outer edges, you can find turtles in there) is in part a recompense for what He suffered.
The Terraces and Gardens, and most especially the Shrine, also serve as one of the places Baha'i pilgrims, as I am now, are here to visit to honor and remember what has happened - that, as we believe, God spoke to humanity again and has lead the way in the changes we dimly appreciated these last almost 200 years. We are here to consider what are the priorities in our lives. What of our habits serve the common good and what contributes to the disarray of our economics, for example. Consider that slavery was widespread and leisure time was for a very lofty few 200 years ago plus all the marvelous inventions and discoveries we've made. Few appreciated how wrong such extremes were then. We believe God has been warming our hearts for our next stage of civilization - "the Divine Springtime has come" we have in our scriptures. And in spring we all put away things we had to do to deal with coldness, albeit in a spiritual sense, a kind of coldness of heart. It's been over two thousand years since Christianity had it's promises. Islam has over a thousand years according to it's calendar. Jews have been waiting even longer. Each of them was born from some segment of humanity rejecting the Message of God so only a few listened and changed their ways, though from those few a civilization did indeed bloom albeit in another land from where the Prophet came.
Litter would be a big problem in such an environment. Consider the state of cleanliness. Perhaps you are aware of the problem of plastic bags affecting sea turtles and some birds? Look in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico and you will find a vast wasteland of our plastics floating there in an oxygen dead zone. I don't know why you would be denied water on hot days but I do know why we don't have signs all over the place and people are restricted at times. As a pilgrim I had to walk past some visitors and some of them were... distracting in dress and manner.
Also keep in mind many of the guides and security personnel and gardeners are little more than volunteers - some are exactly volunteers. This is part of how we keep the costs down for the gardens and visitors come free to them.
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