The Snowflake Chronicles

Examining my Insecurities & a Nursery Rhyme

17 Baha 164 B.E. – Friday, April 06, 2007

Quote: "A light mind creates an inner playground for ideas. Insecurities mortals have about letting down their adult guard, and thus look foolish, need to be reexamined for the benefit of creative exhilaration."

Jill Badonsky

I’ve examined my insecurities a lot lately. I have a great deal of insecurity. Insecurity results in focus on self and the world around, rather than on God. I’m changing my focus slowly. For the past twenty or thirty years, I’ve attempted to change my focus to the spiritual. It’s a slow process, especially if you don’t journal about it or don’t remind yourself everyday that you’ve placed everything in God’s hands.

I’m not going to list my insecurities at this point. Not in this blog anyway, first there are too many of them and they depress me. Second, I keep discovering new insecurities everyday. Some of them I think are a bit silly and some of them I know where they come from. I suspect listing insecurities is like recounting your troubles, the more you list the more you find. So when you list them the list gets longer and longer.

I put everything in God’s hands everyday. Sometimes I find I have to remind myself that I’ve placed the situation in the hands of a higher power. I don’t know how it works with other people, but I know with me I have to give myself little reminders. Even repeat a prayer that I’ve learned by heart.

Prayer: “O God! Refresh and gladden my spirit. Purify my heart. Illumine my powers. I lay all my affairs in Thy hand. Thou art my Guide and my Refuge. I will no longer be sorrowful and grieved; I will be a happy and joyful being. O God! I will no longer be full of anxiety, nor will I let trouble harass me. I will not dwell on the unpleasant things of life.

O God! Thou art more friend to me than I am to myself. I dedicate myself to Thee, O Lord.”

'Abdu'l-Bahá, Compilations, Baha'i Prayers, p. 150

I learned the following nursery rhyme early, for some reason this morning it keeps going through my mind. It’s interesting that I don’t remember the punctuation, so this must have been one of the rhymes my mother read to me when I was a child. I’m not even sure that the line phasing is done properly, but this is how I remember the verse.

Four and twenty black birds
Baked in a pie
When the pie was opened
The birds began to sing
What a dainty dish to set before the king

The king was in the counting house
Counting out his money
The queen was in the pallor
Eating bread and honey
The maid was in the garden
Hanging out the cloths
When along came a black bird
And snipped off her nose

Thinking about some of the nursery rhymes or Mother Goose Rhymes, they were a bit violent. Of course, I’m looking at this from an adult perspective and not from the point of view of a child. Still a black bird biting off a person’s nose has to be painful and bloody. I’m not even sure that it is possible, for a black bird to do this. The question is “Why is it the maid the one the bird attacked?” From what I know of castle life, neither the maid nor the queen baked any birds in a pie, it was the job of the cook or the baker to make the pie. Why didn’t the bird attack either of those individuals?