June 26

Love hath bound a myriad victims in its fetters and pierced a myriad wise men with its arrow. Know that every redness thou seest in the world is from its wrath, and every paleness in men’s cheeks is from its poison. It yieldeth no remedy but death and walketh not save in the valley of extinction; yet sweeter than honey is its venom upon the lover’s lips, and fairer its deadly sting, in the seeker’s sight, than a hundred thousand lives. 

Wherefore must the veils of the satanic self be burned away in the fire of love, that the spirit may be cleansed and refined, and thus may apprehend the station of Him but for Whom the world would not have been created. [1]

Kindle the fire of love and burn away all things;

Then set thy foot into the land of the lovers. [2]

- Baha’u’llah  (‘The Seven Valleys’, 2019 revised translation by the Baha’i World Centre; included in ‘The Call of the Divine Beloved’) 

[1] An allusion to the Ḥadíth in which God is said to address the Prophet Muhammad in these words: “But for Thee, I would not have created the spheres.”

[2] From a poem of Bahá’u’lláh