During one of Hájí Amín’s journeys to the Holy Land to visit
‘Abdu’l-Bahá in the late 19th or early 20th century — delivering the offerings
of the Bahá’ís in payment of Huqúqu’lláh, as part of his duties as Trustee of
the Right of God — the experience turned into discontent. Upon handing over the
funds he had collected to the beloved Master, he was asked, “Hájí, was there
anything else?”
At the time, the Trustee’s whole life flashed before his
eyes. Most probably, he would have wished to be anywhere else in the world,
rather than being challenged on his trustworthiness. Of course, the Master had
full trust in him. But He knew something was missing.
Back in his quarters that evening, dear Hájí Amin knelt down
to God in subjugation and prayer, asking for guidance. At the moment he knelt,
a piece of metal hit the hard surface of the naked floor, and the chiming sound
grabbed his attention and interrupted his prayers.
It turned out that a penny had slipped through a tear in the
lining of his overcoat, making his delivery of the Huqúqu’lláh payments short
by one penny, in the presence of his beloved. The love of God came to safeguard
him in less than 24 hours, and with that missing payment found, Hájí’s face was
saved…
Over a century later in late 2016, history repeated itself
roughly 8,000 miles away. The Board of Trustees of Huqúqu’lláh in the United
States received a check issued to the Bahá’í Huqúqu’lláh Trust for only $0.03 —
three pennies. This check was issued by one of the largest financial institutions,
mailed to the Office of the Treasurer of Huqúqu’lláh in Los Angeles, but did
not state the name of a specific individual as a payer!
The Trust often receives payments without any name attached.
Usually, it takes just a few phone calls to the bank or the brokerage firm,
which can tell us who had arranged for the sale of stocks or bonds to pay their
Right of God. Upon contacting the financial institution, we are required to
give certain passwords and codes to get the clearance and receive the name of the
payer.
This particular time, the firm was so serious, with no
evident sense of cooperation — no matter how many back-and-forth phone calls
with its sales desk, supervisor, managers, legal department or administrative
staff. As anxiety kept escalating, we knew we must discover whose $0.03 that
payment represented, in order to issue a proper receipt.
After a few weeks had passed, the subject of the mysterious
three pennies came up in casual communication between the coordinator of the
Office of Huqúqu’lláh at the Bahá’í World Center and the treasurer of the U.S.
Board. The treasurer, firmly reminded of Hájí Amín’s experience over a century
ago, was told he must find out where the three pennies had come from.
Month after month we checked with the brokerage firm,
begging them to provide the information, thinking they had ignored the request.
Suddenly, a solution came to mind: If the $0.03 check was deposited into the
Huqúqu’lláh bank account, then the bank was responsible for checking with the
financial institution that issued it and finding out the name of the payer.
Let’s not forget that in the world of finance, it is an
accepted accounting procedure for an organization to write off certain amounts
of unfound income when the cost of research surpasses the value of the money.
By this time, we had probably spent many multiples of that
amount, and certainly many weeks and hours, to identify that payer of the
Huqúq. It was (and will always be) a moral responsibility, however, to
recognize the source, as the Board is required to issue receipts for every
payment.
After all the waiting, without any results, the Board’s
treasurer wrote a letter to the vice president at the bank in Washington, DC,
explaining the multiple layers of importance and spiritual significance of
every penny that comes to the Trust. It was mentioned that payments are
expressions of the individuals’ relationships with their Lord, and that it is
the fiduciary responsibility of the Board of Trustees to issue receipts.
Perhaps this final piece of correspondence became the cause of moving the vice
president of the bank to go through legal channels and put pressure on the
original financial institution to divulge the source of the money.
To our great delight and pleasant surprise, almost eight
months after receiving the $0.03 check, we received an email from the vice
president of the bank explaining the situation. It seems the firm had issued a
check to the Huqúqu’lláh Trust even earlier, representing the sale of stocks
from the estate of a deceased Bahá’í. Afterward, the firm realized it had
shortchanged the Trust by “three pennies” and issued the smaller check.
With that, the name of the payer was identified. The heavy
weight that was carried for eight months was finally lifted. The three pennies had
been stuck in the lining of the financial system’s proverbial overcoat.
Though Hájí Amín’s dilemma was solved in less than 24 hours,
ours had taken far too long. How could we get back to the World Center office
if the issuing firm found it immaterial and not cost-effective to conduct any
research to get back to us? Thank God the source of the three pennies was
identified, and we were able to issue the receipt and mail it to the executor
of the will.
An email received subsequently from the office at the Bahá’í
World Center quoted a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi:
“The execution of the provisions of the will causes the
spirit of the deceased to rejoice in the Abhá Kingdom.“ (From a letter written
on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual believer, quoted in a letter dated
24 June 1982, written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice to a National
Spiritual Assembly).”
The email continued:
“While it is interesting that this $0.03 was of sufficient
concern to the integrity of the financial institution that they paid it, the
fact that you searched, likely for hours, to ensure that this final payment was
made quite certainly meets the level of distinction mentioned by the Universal
House of Justice in its letter of 21 June 2016 to the International Board of
Trustees of Huqúqu’lláh:
“'It is essential, then, that the spiritual significance of
this mighty law, both in its individual and its social dimensions, remain
uppermost in the minds of those serving the institution of the Right of God. In
carrying out the vital functions they have been summoned to perform, the
members of the Regional and National Boards of Trustees share in the
responsibility of ensuring that the institution of Huqúqu’lláh is distinguished
by the impeccable probity with which it is administered and that the believers’
understanding of the spiritual and practical aspects of the law deepens.'”
The incident motivated us to work with our programmers to go
back to the drawing board and rewrite the advanced Huqúqu’lláh receipting
program, to become capable of processing payments in pennies.
This painstaking experience, with a great resolution to the
story, teaches us that nobody’s payments are taken lightly, as it all belongs
to God.
(Adapted from an article by the Board of Trustees of Huququ’llah in the
United States; The American Baha’i, vol. 48, no. 6, November-December 2017)
