Let Your Vision Be World-Embracing

“Let your vision be world-embracing, and not confined to your own self,” Bahá’u’lláh told humanity over a century ago. He also asserted, “The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.” Not content to leave this at the level of principle, He exhorted his followers: “It is incumbent upon every man of insight and understanding to strive to translate that which hath been written into reality and action.”

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley‘s avowed goal is to have the greenest city in the United States, and as such is the honorary co-chairman of “Cool Globes,” an art installation this summer along the shore of Lake Michigan, featuring 124 5’ diameter sculpted globes created by artists from around the world, as well as 200 mini-globes around the city made by art students and celebrities such as Barack Obama and filmmaker Ken Burns, to raise awareness, create dialogue, and find solutions to global warming.

Throughout the summer, exhibit visitors will be challenged to implement five changes in their daily lives or business operations to combat global warming. Pledges can be made at the CoolGlobes and Chicago Sun-Times Web sites. At the end of the summer, a raffle will be held to award a Toyota Prius to one of the pledge participants.

On July 11 CEOs and other senior-level leaders from Cool Globes’ corporate sponsors will hold a roundtable discussion to share ideas for environmentally sensitive business practices, as well as strategies for developing and marketing green products.
On October 5 the globes will be auctioned off to benefit environmental education programs. More information can be had at http://www.coolglobes.com/.

The globes depict, whether clumsily or cleverly, global environmental conditions, and their possible solutions, none of which we haven’t heard before, and one even reminds us of the Kyoto Protocol, which governments have had so far a poor record implementing. #74 was done by Bahá’í artist Michelle Maynerick, and includes a quotation from Baha'u'llah: “The well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established.” This may seem an innocuous statement, but is at the very heart of Bahá’í teaching. The problems of the world are such that if we attacked them one at a time, even without new ones arising, it would take us until eternity and beyond to fix them.

So are these laudable efforts useless, candles in the wind? Bahá’u’lláh paints the picture: “The winds of despair are, alas, blowing from every direction, and the strife that divideth and afflicteth the human race is daily increasing. The signs of impending convulsions and chaos can now be discerned, inasmuch as the prevailing order appeareth to be lamentably defective.”
“The All-Knowing Physician hath His finger on the pulse of mankind. He perceiveth the disease, and prescribeth, in His unerring wisdom, the remedy. Every age hath its own problem, and every soul its particular aspiration. The remedy the world needeth in its present-day afflictions can never be the same as that which a subsequent age may require. Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and center your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements.”

“We can well perceive how the whole human race is encompassed with great, with incalculable afflictions. We see it languishing on its bed of sickness, sore-tried and disillusioned. They that are intoxicated by self-conceit have interposed themselves between it and the Divine and infallible Physician. Witness how they have entangled all men, themselves included, in the mesh of their devices. They can neither discover the cause of the disease, nor have they any knowledge of the remedy.”

And what is the remedy for this age? “He Who is your Lord, the All-Merciful, cherisheth in His heart the desire of beholding the entire human race as one soul and one body.”

The present situation may be likened to a couple experiencing marital problems. They may think, “When our financial situation improves, when our children’s school grades rise, when our in-laws will stop pestering us, when we both work our psychological baggage, when the other one will change, when we get relief from stress, then we’ll be happy.” Happiness and unity are not the end result, but the foundation without which the problems will never end. And thus Michelle Maynerick has inscribed upon her earth, “The well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established.”