The Geza Fracas

Super Hooper

2011-12-27T08:12:00.000-08:00

In recent years, various members and ex-members of the Universal House of Justice have blessed the Bahá’í World with the fruit of their own personal experience and learning from serving in the inner core of the ring of fire in the form of books for us to ponder. One of these is Hooper Dunbar’s Forces of Our Time – The Dynamics of Light and Darkness, published by George Ronald in 2009. Bahá’ís have a view of this topic diametrically opposed to the view of the rest of humanity, and is the reason why in these days of unprecedented anxiety even worse than in the days of the Cold War when The Bomb hung over all our heads whether waking or sleeping that Bahá’ís remain cheerfully and unremittingly optimistic about the future. Are the Bahá’ís out of touch with reality or do they see what virtually all the scientists, economists, politicians, military leaders, NGOs, journalists, mavens and gurus, the Information Highway, and Hollywood to Bollywood have somehow missed? Is it yet another desperate utopian dream among the myriads that have been foisted upon an increasingly skeptical world that scornfully heaps each failed ideology into the same dustbin marked “forget these embarrassingly deluded fools”? Mr. Dunbar says: “We cannot help but perceive and be touched by the pain, sorrow, anxiety, and fear all about us but must strive to see the tumult of the world through God’s vision instead of our own. This will give us courage and power.” (pg. 51)

Certainly the part of the world that is aware of this still apparently insignificant and impotent yet ubiquitous and insistent community is watching – watching to see if the Bahá’ís are truly serious and can not only embody but foment these ideals the whole world wants yet is utterly incapable of realizing. Some may secretly be cheering them on, others ready to chortle with evil glee the moment they find a stray unraveling thread in its seamless royal robe; in the meantime, numbers in every clime, after considering the options, are signing on the dotted line and affirming their wish to become part of the solution Shoghi Effendi has enunciated:

Let there be no mistake. The principle of the Oneness of Mankind -- the pivot round which all the teachings of Bahá'u'lláh revolve -- is no mere outburst of ignorant emotionalism or an expression of vague and pious hope. Its appeal is not to be merely identified with a reawakening of the spirit of brotherhood and good-will among men, nor does it aim solely at the fostering of harmonious cooperation among individual peoples and nations. Its implications are deeper, its claims greater than any which the Prophets of old were allowed to advance. Its message is applicable not only to the individual, but concerns itself primarily with the nature of those essential relationships that must bind all the states and nations as members of one human family. It does not constitute merely the enunciation of an ideal, but stands inseparably associated with an institution adequate to embody its truth, demonstrate its validity, and perpetuate its influence. It implies an organic change in the structure of present-day society, a change such as the world has not yet experienced. It constitutes a challenge, at once bold and universal, to outworn shibboleths of national creeds -- creeds that have had their day and which must, in the ordinary course of events as shaped and controlled by Providence, give way to a new gospel, fundamentally different from, and infinitely superior to, what the world has already conceived. It calls for no less than the reconstruction and the demilitarization of the whole civilized world -- a world organically unified in all the essential aspects of its life, its political machinery, its spiritual aspiration, its trade and finance, its script and language, and yet infinite in the diversity of the national characteristics of its federated units. (The World Order of Bahá'u'lláh, pg. 42-43)

Dunbar’s book was not written as such, nor is it a compendium of speeches, but is an arrangement of themes taken from recorded Monday night classes he gave on Mount Carmel in the 1980s. The style is appealing as it retains much of the conversational style in which he delivered them. For example:

Through divine revelation the forces of the higher world penetrate the realities of this world. There is a kind of pulsation, a moving from the spiritual plane to the physical and back again. Bahá’ulláh would receive a spiritual power from the higher invisible realm, which was His animating principle. It would stir His whole being. He would communicate that spiritual power in the form of divine verses, which He would recite or chant. Those verses would this become physical; through His chanting they would becoming sound that would reverberate out into space, influencing every atom of existence. They would also be noted down in a written form on a tangible, material page. They reach us in printed form a hundred or more years later. We read them and are able through their influence to connect with the impulses of the original spiritual Revelation of Bahá’ulláh. These energies compel us to act in conformity with the verses we read. Yet to outward seeming they are no more than black scratching on a sheet of paper. Spirit has become matter and yet somehow retains and conveys its original spiritual impact. This is indeed a mysterious process. (pg. 15)

One of Dunbar’s most obvious gifts in this book is his ability to delineate processes, satisfying those who want to know not only principles, but how things actually work. And this is done systematically throughout the book and is no doubt the work of the compilers, chiefly Holly Hanson, a student of the Mount Carmel Monday night sessions. Ergo the titles of the various sections:

1. The Nature of Spiritual Forces

2. The Outpouring of Creative Forces

3. The Crystallization of Divine Forces

4. The Progressive Release of Divine Forces

5. Universal Fermentation and the Impact of Creative Forces on Human Society

6. Understanding Forces of Darkness

7. Combatting the Forces of Darkness

8. Custodians of the Forces of Light

Yes, these talks were given from Mr. Dunbar’s most profound understanding, but in true Bahá’í style they are based on his study of the Bahá’í Writings and peppered with quotations; furthermore, the final forty-seven pages of the book consist of the passages from Shoghi Effendi which inspired his own thoughts (compiled by him before the efflorescence of the data bases which now let us find them – prophetically -- in a flash), and which are given to us, with the humility characteristic of the members of the most august Institution of the Faith, to meditate upon them ourselves in order to draw our own unique insights therefrom. How’s that for an “interactive” book?

One may be especially intrigued by the titles of Chapters 6 and 7. Lest one be tempted to immediately associate these themes with the endless cartoonish movies of the battle of good versus evil humanity gorges itself upon, the truth as expounded in these chapters is radically different than these escapist fantasies that our race can’t seem to graduate from, but if we remain in that quagmire, we cannot advance. Chapter Eight is for fully mature adults that wish to face the future armed with a real power of which superheroes are deprived.

These books are an essential companion to studying the documents and messages of the current Plans of the Faith; the latter give us the lines of action and unfold the dramatic surging of the Faith in the united worldwide community, while each of the former expand the scope and depth of our vision of the Faith we thought we already knew and loved so well.

Fill Out the Fiends

2011-11-24T08:13:00.000-08:00

When one reads the Middle Eastern accounts of the early days of the Faith, the protagonists are divided into heroes and villains. This division is almost cartoonish, as was the wearing of black and white hats in old TV Westerns. This does not satisfy me, as I have a novelist’s fascination with the complexities, unpredictabilities, the paradoxes of character. When I read history, I want to be there, immersed in the myriad entangled forces directing their fangs at each other’s jugulars. So I sometimes feel like howling with laughter, when studying Ruhi Book 4, at the dismissal in a couple of words of the characters who opposed the Faith. On page 31, Governor Husayn Khán of Fars is encapsulated as “a cruel and wicked man”; then on page 37, Hájí Mírzá Aqási, Persian Prime Minister in the time of The Báb is deemed and doomed as “a selfish, incompetent man.” His successor, Mírzá Taqi, is stigmatized as “as bloodthirsty as the previous one” on page 41. And in this context this is all we perhaps need to know, just as Judas Iscariot’s betrayal of Jesus and his subsequent suicide is sufficient unto us, and we need neither to know his life story and character, but only his most infamous betrayal to sum up his role in history. But some of us thirst to know more.

In 1848, the aging Muhammad Sháh died after only fourteen years on the Peacock Throne. Mírzá Taqi Khán had been a trusted adviser and perhaps even father figure to the crown prince cum teenage king Nasiri’d-din Sháh (pictured above), in juxtaposition to the latter’s domineering mother, and the boyking promptly made him Prime Minister and virtually gave him the reins of government. The process of modernization and westernization sorely needed after the disaster of the Russo-Persian War was largely Taqi’s initiative. At that time, Persia was nearly bankrupt, so he initiated sweeping reforms in both governmental and social spheres: expenditure was slashed, and central administration overhauled; foreign interference was curtailed, though foreign trade was encouraged. He established the first modern university in the Middle East with European instructors to train a new generation of administrators in Western techniques. The ornate and formal writing that sometimes seems archaic and impenetrable to many readers of the Bahá’í writings, even in Shoghi Effendi’s pyrotechnical English, was abolished by Taqi’s decree, replaced by a modern Persian prose style. Nevertheless, he will forever figure in the chronicles of the Bahá’í Faith as an archvillain for ordering the execution of The Báb and viciously attempting to eradicate the “Bábi problem,” which was a domestic thorn in the side of Nasir’id-din Sháh, who needed to focus on more pressing foreign policy concerns, like the encroachment and invasions of the Russians and British.

As it so often happens, from Oedipus to Ashoka, his greatest strength was also his Achilles’ heel. The Sháh’s mother convinced him that Taqi’s efficient and visionary statesmanship and gift for social reform was a master plan to usurp the throne. In 1851 the Sháh dismissed him and not only sent him into exile, but had him murdered there to boot. His meteoric career as Prime Minister had lasted less than four years.

Násiri’d-Dín Sháh himself, (literally and ironically “defender of religion” -- the younger generation may know this name only as a Bollywood film star, much as Mark Antony is only known as a popular singer) Ruhi 4 tells us on page 91, “was far more ruthless than his father.” He danced with Western Europe, making a famous trip to England and publishing his diaries from that journey, and was not only the first Persian monarch to be photographed (dozens, if not hundreds of times), but set up the first photography studio in the land. He established the first real Persian newspaper, telegraph, and postal service; he was a patron of the arts and also dabbled in painting, drawing, and languages, reportedly doing rather poorly at all of them. But ultimately his Westernization and modern reforms had the taint of insincerity, as his personality remained deeply conservative and despotic. His concessions to the West were motivated chiefly by economic and not visionary impulses, at times making him look ridiculous, as with a tobacco patronage scandal than ran him afoul with the clergy, his subjects (tobacco boycott), ending with his own eighty-four wives forbidding him to smoke. In 1852, some Bábis, contrary to the explicit wishes of Bahá’u’lláh, made an inept attempt at the life of the Sháh, causing an inhuman backlash against the Bábis all over the country.

An almost equally botched attempt, forty-four years later, by Mírzá Reza Kermani, (a member of a movement that has in the present day become known as the Islamic Brotherhood in Egypt), this time in the shrine of Sháh ‘Abdu'l-'Azím just barely achieved its objective. And this on the very eve of magnificent celebrations that had been long planned to mark his 50 years (by the lunar calendar) on the throne -- apparently to pre-empt Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee planned for one year later. What to do? To give them time to think, his dead body was propped up in the carriage to make it look like he was still alive as they took him back to the palace. His death was no more dignified than his life, and the whole country burned with shame. His successors did even worse, finally bringing to an end the Qajar Dynasty.

Mírzá Yahyá (“Mister John”), the much younger half-brother of Bahá’u’lláh, lived only as a foil to test the true adherents of the Faith, and would otherwise best be forgotten; nevertheless he makes as much a fascinating (and disgusting) study in villainy as Iago or Richard III, rating more than simply “ambitious and cowardly” (Ruhi 4, pg. 109), as does his evil genius/sidekick Siyyid Muhammad, who was “more shameless than himself.” The former’s evil deeds, as attested in God Passes By, include: ordering the murder of several eminent persons; perverting the text of God; poisoning Bahá’u’lláh and His family; marrying the Báb’s widow, divorcing her, and passing her on to another man; making lying and indecent accusations about Bahá’u’lláh to the Sultán (resulting ultimately in the further exile of the entire Bábi – by now Bahá’í – community in Adrianople); and even claiming himself to be a manifestation of God – yikes! The juxtaposition of Bahá’u’lláh’s über-Job forbearance of him -- resulting at times in the indignity and deprivation of His own family -- with Mírzá Yahyá’s cloak-and-dagger disguises, chicanery, and aliases until the final “Most Great Separation” in Adrianople, is the stuff of drama of Shakespearean proportions. Yahyá ended his rather long days in exile in Cyprus, nowhere to swim or paddle to, his application for British citizenship refused, and now dust blows over his weedy resting-place without a marker.

Huff, Puff, and Blow

2011-07-26T11:12:00.000-07:00

It is not a new ruse to adapt easy-to-sing melodies for congregational singing in churches. One of the oldest and most familiar examples of this practice is the Christmas carol “What Child is This?” sung to the tune of “Greensleeves,” the carolers blissfully unaware that the older title refers to a prostitute. At a funeral in a Catholic church in Honduras recently I heard them first sing a well-known hymn to a slowed-down version of “The Sound of Silence” a Paul Simon song about depression, of all things. This was followed a few minutes later by another I had heard previously, to the tune of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” a protest song from Bob Dylan. But minutes later I could barely contain my laughter; I came perilously close to committing a major social blunder as I watched those beatific faces innocently and solemnly intoning a hymn of praise to Peter, Paul, and Mary’s (appropriate names, no?) “Puff the Magic Dragon.” Now I will laugh: ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HAHAHA!!! Whew, that felt good.

Indulge me while I point out the obvious. Songwriters are constantly raving about self-expression, and even the greatest among them strive to use musical language to enhance, embellish, or outrightly parallel the content of their lyrics (I refer you to Franz Schubert’s “Erlkönig” or Richard Strauss’ tone poems for some of the most successful examples of this), but the fact is that musical language by itself is too abstract to paint specific pictures or narrate specific events in the mind of the listener. Try, for example to make a musical rendition of “Casey at the Bat” without words or a title, and the listener is as likely to imagine Shrek or a visit to the supermarket as they would the baseball legend that is intended. Beethoven loathed poetic subtitles to his music, partly because they limited the audience’s imagination. “Moonlight Sonata” was not his appellation, but was added later, and virtually all modern listeners associate this sublime music with moonlight, unintended by the composer. If the first movement of his Fifth Symphony was telling a story, what story would it be? No two answers to this question would be the same.

It is this “association” that is the key. Throughout the musical history of the Christian church, even though its music inevitably evolved and changed, a constant feature of it was a style that was reserved for worship, so that the very sound of it elicited reverence and spirituality. There is no mistaking what Händel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” is about, and it could never be used properly as a graduation march or deodorant commercial. This phenomenon of melding holy or devotional words with popular music styles is a very recent one, and reveals more than anything the desperation of churches over dwindling congregations. The popularity of “Christian” music, however, has not swelled the pews.

During his own lifetime, the Guardian discouraged artists and musicians to try too consciously to develop distinctly Bahá’í music, but rather produce their finest work, which would presumably eventually become identifiably Bahá’í by the stamp the light of faith that would transform their souls and their art. Therefore it behooves Bahá’í musicians to develop a musical style that is commensurate with the loftiness, majesty, and sublimity of the words or sentiments. In the matter of translating the Bahá’í writings into English, for instance, the Guardian chose the style of King James Version of the Bible in order that any English-speaking person of Christian background would immediately identify these words as holy scripture. He was pressured to simplify them but maintained that we should rise to its level, and not drag it down to ours.

The guidance so far from the Universal House of Justice is to observe dignity; we can certainly argue endlessly as to what that entails, but if we are honest with ourselves, we will often find that our arguments are constructed to justify our own musical tastes. Since the Bahá’í Faith is global, it can be speculated that there may not emerge a single dominant style of musical worship, perhaps rather a canon of work to which many cultures will contribute. But in any case the striving for excellence and refinement will necessarily be the hallmarks of the Bahá’í art that will be worthy of the name.

Irony to the World

2011-07-04T09:55:00.000-07:00

To date and to the best of my knowledge, the best Bahá’í music has come from non- Bahá’í sources. This must inevitably change, but it is the present state of affairs. I’ve often thought, for instance, that Joy to the World (the Christmas carol, not the Three Dog Night song) is as soul-stirring a Bahá’í song as it gets when you view the lyrics from a Bahá’í perspective.

It turns out I couldn’t be more wrong, though quite from the opposite direction. Joy to the World is a Bahá’í song, plain and simple, and not even a Christmas carol at all. It is the brainchild of Isaac Watts (1674-1748), the “father of English hymnody.” His own father was a Non-Conformist, so he came by creative thoughts honestly. Here’s the scoop on what actually happened and what the song actually is.

John Calvin had previously initiated the practice of creating verse translations of the Psalms for congregational singing, but Watts took this a step further by introducing Psalm-inspired lyrics for songs. He also thought the Psalms should be updated, because though King David (author of many of the Psalms) was divinely-inspired, his religious understanding could not possibly have fully apprehended the truths later revealed by Jesus Christ. Therefore the Psalms, in Watts’ thinking, should be “renovated” to imitate the language of the New Testament rather than the Biblical Hebrew.

Joy to the World is based on Psalm 98 which begins, in the King James version, “O sing unto the Lord a new song, for he hath done marvelous things,” and includes the famous line “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord.” Lines such as “Let the floods clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together” are easily seen to inspire this hymn. The music was then adapted and arranged by Lowell Mason from an older melody which was believed to have originated from Händel because of obvious similarites to snatches of phrases from The Messiah.

All fine and good, but here’s the clincher – are you ready for this? Even if today “Joy to the World” is commonly thought of as a Christmas song, its lyrics were originally written by Isaac Watts as a hymn glorifying Christ's triumphant return at the end of the age! Ha!

For those of us who have to pull out our carol sheets every Christmas, here follows the complete lyrics to Joy to the World. Bahá’ís are invited to sing this silently or out loud with Isaac Watts’ intention in mind.

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven, and heaven, and nature sing.

Joy to the world, the Saviour reigns!
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat, the sounding joy.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders, of His love.

Ave Maria

2010-12-27T09:49:00.000-08:00

Recently my only flute student here in Honduras was forbidden from performing Schubert ‘s “Ave Maria” at a church Christmas presentation on the grounds that it is “Catholic” and therfore not allowed in that Evangelical hall. This is reminiscent of an experience of mine a couple of dcecades back. I was playing the flute at a wedding in Mississauga, Ontario with a harpist, and because of unclear directions, we uncharacteristically arrived only minutes before the ceremony was about to begin. As we were hurriedly setting up, the minister came over and enquired about the music we were planning to play, and I gave him a quick run-down. When I mentioned the Schubert “Ave Maria,” he stated flatly that I couldn’t play that.

“Why not?”
“It’s Catholic.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Well, you can’t play it.”
“The bride and groom have requested it.”
“I don’t care. You’re not going to play that in my church.”
“I believe this is the Lord’s church.”

He went off in a huff; I wasn’t trying to be insolent, it was that everybody was ready and waiting for the wedding march to begin and I it wasn’t the time or place to get into an argument.

A few readers may know what he was talking about, but most, I venture, are baffled or see this as a silly sectarian view, akin to the Communist Chinese government banning the music of Beethoven because he was “bourgeois.” The crux of the matter is that in churches, the Latin words that are usually sung are the prayer, “Hail Mary, full of grace . . .” The Catholics have a cult of the worship of the Virgin Mary not shared by most Protestant sects. To inflict this doctrinal squabble on a defenseless little musical masterpiece, even when it is played instrumentally, without the words, is a tiny example of the myriad walls religion has erected in the seamless Faith of God, the removal of which is the avowed thousand-year mission of the Bahá’ís.

The original lyric that Franz Schubert (pictured above) selected for his song was a German translation (made by one Adam Storck) of an excerpt from Canto XXIX of Sir Walter Scott’s epic poem Lady of the Lake. The heroine, Ellen Douglas, is on the run, and prays to the Virgin Mary. It begins thus:

Ave Maria! maiden mild!

Listen to a maiden's prayer!

Thou canst hear though from the wild,

Thou canst save amid despair.

Safe may we sleep beneath thy care,

Though banished, outcast, and reviled--

Maiden! hear a maiden's prayer;

Mother, hear a suppliant child!

Ave Maria!

Schubert set this to music around 1825, at age 28. He wrote over 600 songs, and introduced them to his circle at musical parties which came to be known as Schubertiads. He wrote to his parents about this song, mentioning that the listeners were surprised at the piety in the song, which was not something he was known for. His own title for this song was “Ellen’s Third Song.” It occurred to an unknown person at a later date that the Latin prayer to Mary could be moulded to Schubert’s sublime melody, and I wonder whether the soul of that meddler in is a place arrived at via a road paved with good intentions.

In For a New Experience

2010-06-08T08:02:00.001-07:00

In Chicago one of the many Bahá’í hats I wore was “Pioneer Resource Person,” a representative of the Office of International Pioneering at the community level, making presentations at Feasts and encouraging those who could and especially those who believed they couldn’t to forsake their homes and go to distant lands to serve the Faith. But not for a moment during this time did I think I would actually go myself. After all, I was serving here. I was needed here. But, like a traffic accident which happens suddenly without warning, events in a plodding existence took a precipitous turn, and my thoughts turned to pioneering, and also to learning a new language. Where would I go? Hungary is in dire need of pioneers who can speak the native language; this was brought home to me by the royal treatment I received on a travel-teaching trip in 2003. What language would I learn? Why, Arabic, of course. And then the call came to go to Honduras, and I answered without question, for I perceived it as the call of the very voice I could not ignore. At a gathering on the night before I left, a friend quipped that I must have been mumbling my prayers, and God heard “Honduras” instead of “Hungary.” And the new language must needs be Spanish.

But there was no turning back. Who should I meet in the waiting lounge at Pearson Airport in Toronto reading a Bahá’í prayer book but a Canadian on her way to Honduras to serve as an Auxiliary Board Member? She had been there many years and gave me much advice on the flight. Yet as someone who had lived for half a century in sophisticated metropolises in the privileged part of the world, on the mango- and poverty-lined road up the mountains which Christopher Columbus had called “the depths,” I was in for more jolts and jabs than Mike Tyson could have inflicted upon me.

On the very day I arrived, I overheard a telephone conversation which included the following sentence: “Bring the machetes to the devotional gathering.” I knew I was in for a new experience. The machetes were used to cut the grass, prune the trees, and clear the weeds at the local Bahá’í Centre that had fallen into neglect over the summer, and fixed in my memory is the image of elderly Doña Julia in her formal black dress and high-heeled shoes stooped down and wielding the machete like the blades of a helicopter over the screaming weeds. Lesson #1 in Honduran culture.

I’ve heard of mobile book units before, but where else is the Bahá’í library located under the seat of a motorcycle, wending its way up gnarled rocky mountain roads? That is where Joycelyn Jolly, a striking black American woman who was an accomplished cellist and Suzuki teacher who adopted an orphaned girl in Brazil kept the books as she provided this service amidst her struggle to be a single mother and obedient servant of the Five Year Plan. Her struggles were causing her to look elsewhere, and she suddenly got a marriage proposal from a musical colleague stretching back over a quarter of century who began scouring the planet for her after he had lost his wife. Since she left for Baltimore, I have been performing this function, keeping all the books under lock and key, and bringing them out for display carefully and gently at every Feast.

There are many other singular events, but probably the most astonishing was watching a one-legged man during prayers at a Feast methodically chase down a spider on a wall, leaning to the point where surely he was going to topple over first this way and then that, reaching and contorting, until finally at an angle Olympic gymnasts the world over must envy, whacked the spider -- with a Bahá’í prayer book! -- all while the prayer continued unabated and unconcerned. I admit at the time what I felt was shame, but now I regard as one of the more bizarre scenes in a community that spearheads an “A Cluster” (designated as being at an advanced stage of organization) but is still in the infant stages of love and reverence for Bahá’u’lláh.

My experiences in Honduras are posted as a series of updates on a separate blog, siguahon.blogspot.com.

On the Ninth Day of Ridván, My True Love . . .

2010-04-27T13:35:00.000-07:00

The Festival of Ridván, the “King of Festivals” is celebrated by the Bahá’ís from April 21 to May 2. It was during those twelve days in 1863 that Bahá’u’lláh received visitors in the Najibiyyih Garden outside Baghdad, and made the stupendous announcement to at least four of His closest followers that He was in fact the Promised One prophesied and awaited by all the major religious traditions and scriptures.

Furthermore, three of these days have been designated as Holy Days. The first and last are understood easily enough, but what about the ninth? We read so often that His family visited Him on the Ninth Day that we can get the idea that it is because of their arrival that that particular day is celebrated. Except for Naw-Rúz (New Year, March 21), the Bahá’í Holy Days are all associated with the Twin Manifestations, the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh. We do not know who these family members were or how many (they did not include ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, who was there from the First Day); for all we know they may have been future Covenant-breakers, and it would be inconceivable to have a Holy Day associated with covenant-breaking. And it was likely that their arrival would have been earlier had it not been for high rushing waters of the Tigris River (The Najibiyyih Garden was on an island) imperiling any crossing.

We have a direct if rather prosaic explanation from the writings themselves:
“. . . the reason we commemorate the 1st, 9th and 12th days of Ridván as Holidays (Holy Days) is because one is the first day, one is the last day, and the third one is the ninth day, which of course is associated with the number 9. All 12 days could not be holidays, therefore these three were chosen.”
Letter written on behalf of the Guardian, dated June 8, 1952, to an individual believer, in Lights of Guidance, pg. 230
(Compilations, NSA USA - Developing Distinctive Baha'i Communities)

Alas, I do not read either Arabic or Persian, but I have been told by more than one Persian believer that there exists an untranslated Tablet in which Bahá’u’lláh answers questions about the various Holy Days, and in which He purportedly explains that the Ninth Day of Ridván is associated with the Most Great Name (via the abjad system of numerology that was still in use in the nineteenth century). I shall be writing the Research Department about this matter, and may have an update to this post before long.

A note of caution regarding the above photograph of the Ridván Garden. This, and every other photo is of the one outside ‘Akká in the Holy Land, and was called that name by Bahá’u’lláh Himself. It is NOT the one associated with the “King of Festivals.” The Ridván Garden outside of Baghdad is at present a hospital parking lot. May the All-Powerful Lord restore it to the condition in which roses could be piled so high in Bahá’u’lláh’s tent that one could not see over them.

Unity in Diversity

2010-04-24T10:27:00.000-07:00

The concept of Unity in Diversity has been described in the Bahá’í writings as the “flowers of one garden”; humanity has also been described as “the leaves of one branch,” “the waves of one ocean,” and with various other images, but perhaps the first one is the most potent, because of the fact that the flowers of one garden are not all the same -- their pleasing effect is largely because they are not the same, but present a harmonious whole. Surely a garden consisting exclusively of red roses would be impressive, but throw in a variety of colours, and the delight is increased tenfold.

But there is another phenomenon that brings the concept of unity in diversity home to me in a robust way: when one attends a concert, be the audience comprised of twenty or twenty thousand souls, every single person in that audience experiences the music in a personal way that is different from every other person. Forty years of performing and teaching music have taught me that this is absolutely true and not just some sentimental statement. How miraculous is this? How can the same piece of music have a different effect on everyone? The answer is not in the music itself, but in the receptacle, the filter of the human mind and heart. Everyone at that concert brings to bear upon their listening the wealth of their own heritage and experience, their tastes, their prejudices, their reactions, their sensitivities. Music is not heard with a single part of the brain but is actually synthesized in various locations of our mysterious grey matter; the intellectual, emotional, psychological, and every other aspect of the brain is engaged. Memory is a powerful factor, which not only helps us understand the language of music, determines our reaction to music heard before, and is even the basis of apprehending what is new to our ears. How often has a song, not heard for years or decades, instantly unlocked a flood of memories and emotions? Even more powerful, perhaps, is the spiritual realm which is invoked and in which we partake, recognizing the true voice of music reaching us from a world beyond.

Not convinced? Can any of us say that our experience of listening to the selfsame recording is ever exactly the same twice? Was any time exactly the same as the first time? Our mood, our environment, our level of concentration or distraction, our age, our company, biorhythm, a myriad other factors all affect the result. How often have we been disappointed when a favourite piece of music does not produce the same wonderful effect we remember and anticipate? All experience is unique and unrepeatable, even the repetition of drudgery, and we cannot press a button to get an exact replica of one, much though we may be led to believe this is possible.

Yet, yet . . . at a concert there IS a communal experience. We all experience it together, and there is a general consensus about the quality and effect of the performance and presentation. We feel the buildup of excitement together and are transported to bliss together. We feel the climax together and we respond as one. Some concerts even become legendary for creating a special moment in time that all who had attended agree upon. And it is that harmonious whole that is our Unity in Diversity. Imagine if there were no unity, that life and experience were not shared, how unutterable lonely the cosmos would be. And though we do, at times, feel alone, isolated, and misunderstood, our greatest desire at those moments is to return to that blessed unity that brings us peace and love. Uniquely and together.

Anna Schmanna

2009-09-23T14:29:00.000-07:00

You heard it here first: Anna’s Presentation is boring! What? Allow me to explain.

What the Bahá’í World has come to know as “Anna’s Presentation” is excerpted from Ruhi Institute Book 6, Unit Two, Sections 6-19, and is the brainchild of Dr. Arbab and perhaps his associates, distilled from the experience of Bahá’ís around the world. It is the idealized, comprehensive unfolding of the Faith through the vehicle of a fictional, remarkable, well-nigh unbelievable seventeen-year old as expounded to her Catholic school friend Emilia. (“Well-nigh,” since the Faith actually does sprout such prodigious youth.) The style of it is reminiscent of Plato’s Republic in that one person is expounding while the other(s) merely give laconic assent to its inexorable flow. From the turn of this Gregorian Millenium this presentation has been increasingly touted as the teaching tool sin qua non in the mounting crescendo of emphasis on direct teaching. We now have full-colour booklets replete with gorgeous photography, flip charts, and power point presentations, and Anna is the rock star of the current Five-Year Plan.

But whoa, just a minute. Occasionally we go overboard in our enthusiasm. In some quarters it is recommended that those going forth to teach memorize it in toto and regurgitate it when we find receptive souls. First of all, we are not selling the Faith like Encyclopaedia Brittanica so we’re not giving a prefabricated spiel that has a proven track record, and secondly, in difficulty it is roughly equivalent to memorizing Act II, Sc. 2 of Hamlet. And most importantly, giving it in its published form is like listening to deadpan comedian Steve Wright recite The Tell-Tale Heart – boring! The Institutions of the Faith have lately recognized this, and are encouraging the believers to animate their renditions with their own personal zeal for the Faith.

So why do we use it and what is its value? It really answers the question, “How do I teach the Faith -- what do I say?” Most of us in introducing the Bahá’í Faith to a person unfamiliar with it choose certain aspects of it we are comfortable with, the principles or the history or the community, for example. Or else we say things that are perhaps meaningful for us, but give little glimpse of the big picture, such as, “For me it is about hope.” Or perhaps even more commonly, “I finally found a religion that teaches what I have always believed.” Over the years I have been time and again taken aback by the things that have come out of Bahá’ís mouths, having no context or connection to the virgin listener, such as the Infallibility of the Manifestations, stories of the martyrs, personal reminiscences of meeting a Hand of the Cause, their own struggles with a particular Bahá’í law, or some other matter that requires considerable groundwork. Few of us give a comprehensive view, the skeleton of the entire colossal edifice, which would in the course of a few or even a single meeting, give a seeker a sufficient overview to decide whether his own soul has connected with it. How many of us have encountered the same seekers at firesides month after month, year after year, who still have little grasp of the “fundamental verities” that lie at the heart of this glorious path to God? And this is the genius of Anna’s Presentation, that it gives a panoramic view of this vaaaaaaaaaaaast ocean.

So yes, we ought to internalize this guide, and then be prepared to talk about the Central Figures with the love we have for Them, the Administration with all the reverence and obedience we have for its Institutions, the laws, the worldwide community, the core activities that prepare souls to usher in a new age of humanity, the mighty socially transformative principles, the Covenant, Progressive Revelation, the beautiful prayers and majestic words of the writings, and our central passion for teaching in our quest for the holy grail of uniting all of mankind.

The Face of My Lord

2009-04-13T11:44:00.000-07:00

******** Every Easter brings much the same spate of movies of the life of Jesus Christ, and ever since I was very very young, I thought: this can’t be right – surely Jesus did not look and act like a washed-up, drug-sodden, syphilitic ex-rocker spewing those famous world-changing words à la Bob Dylan, which is largely how He is portrayed in Hollywood. And even different interpretations, like The Last Temptation of Christ or The Passion of the Christ don’t do it for me. I had often asked myself what Christ was really like – was he the man of sorrows depicted to me by my teachers and Bible storybooks? I wasn’t convinced. There was a majesty to His words that was not accounted for. What was His bearing? His tone of voice? How did He captivate multitudes? How was He at His most intimate moments, as in the Garden of Gethsemane? When He delivered the Sermon on the Mount, was He in another world, or did heaven come to Him? Did His moods change dramatically, was He serene for the most part, how was He when seized by the Holy Spirit? Much is made of His anger when casting the money-changers out of the Temple – how did that actually happen? Were His words about the Pharisees as cutting and ironic as I imagine? We know that he grieved; surely he joked and laughed as well?

Oddly enough, the Bible itself is little help in this regard, for not only does it not provide any details that might serve as clues, but the four Evangelists themselves had differing portraits of Jesus. Even more oddly, the model that came as close to satisfying this thirst was Swami Dayananda Saraswati, a saffron-robed teacher of Vedanta with whom I studied for fifteen years. He spoke with calm authority, and was saintly and dignified without being the least bit pious, since ebullient hilarity was bubbling and gurgling just under the surface at all times.

At any rate, Bahá’ís are prevented from portraying the Manifestations of God as characters in a drama for this selfsame reason, that it would be impossible for us to do justice to the majesty of Their being, as well as for preventing a host of other abuses, such as having Bahá’u’lláh’s face in an ashtray, or a plastic Lucky Buddha smiling inanely atop the television showing the Ultimate Fighting Challenge.

Case in point: this past Good Friday I was in a village in Honduras where they spray-painted the Stations of the Cross on “carpets” (actually sand poured on the street), and paraded effigies of Jesus, Mary, and other figures on funeral biers during all hours of the day and night, followed by a brass band playing the most pitifully morose music you could ever imagine. Doesn’t the face of Christ in the photo above look like Che Guevara? And the priest and his retinue would walk over the face of Jesus!! Somehow that’s what upset me – the rest I could pass off as village tradition, which is the only explanation I could get anyway.

I was privileged to see one of the two existing photos of Bahá’u’lláh on a recent pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and it pierced my very soul. The other is not in the hands of the Bahá’ís, found its way onto the Internet, and was sent to me by a friend for verification. I glanced at it for a mere five seconds (Oh, my God) and filed it, and shall perhaps look at it someday again at a propitious moment. But I certainly won’t be putting it on my welcome mat.

Which Way to the Qiblih?

2009-03-15T14:45:00.000-07:00

A concept that may be foreign to most Christians, Hindus, and Buddhists, but is of great importance to Muslims and Jews, is the direction to face while reciting specific prayers. The Jews have always turned toward Jerusalem, and one may argue that their problems with the Muslims began when the Prophet Muhammad directed them to turn and face Mecca instead, and they refused.

The Bahá’ís continue this practice of reciting daily “obligatory” prayers while facing the “Point of Adoration,” (Qiblih in Arabic), turning towards the resting-place of Bahá’u’lláh, at Bahji, near the city of Akko (Akká, Acre), across the bay from Haifa on the eastern Mediterranean coast.

But if one is in Ougadougou, Medicine Hat, or Siguatepeque (and there are Bahá’ís there as well as in virtually any other spot on the globe), how does one answer, “Which way to the Qiblih?” In fact, far too many make the mistake of consulting a flat map; we should all know better, since we know that it is a distortion. New Yorkers who do this, for instance, will conclude that it is just a wee bit south of east, whereas they should be facing NORTHeast.

The simplest way to find the shortest and most direct route over the surface of the earth (rather than through it) is to take a piece of string and a globe, press down one end of the string at Akko, make the other end point at wherever you are, and pull the string taut. Counterintuitive as it may seem, the string has traced the path to the Qiblih. (This will also answer why, if you’re flying to Rome from New York, you’ll stop in or pass by London on the way.) If you happen to be in Alaska, your route will take you over the North Pole. Try it!

A more precise way is to go to a website such as http://www.qiblih.com/, where you can type in your longitude and latitude, press the enter button and presto! your direction will be displayed. Of course you’ll need to know which way is north, south, east, and west, which can easily observe by watching a sunrise.

2009-01-31T10:55:00.001-08:00

All Bahá’ís know that 41 weekend Regional Conferences around the world are in full swing, and large numbers have attended them so far. I attended the one in Managua, Nicaragua, on Jan. 17-18. I expected the topography of neighbouring Nicaragua to be indistinguishable from Honduras’, but the volcanic mountains provided one astonishing vista after another, a gorgeous distraction from the dangers of driving on these roads

In spite of being stopped at the border for five hours
In spite of having to stay three nights in a hotel where a disco just on the other side of the wall was in full swing until 4 a.m.
In spite of examples of behaviour unbecoming to Bahá’ís
In spite of the bus breaking down twice on the way back

It was a magnificent enterprise, bringing together Bahá’ís from the region, many of whom were unaware of the face of the Faith outside their own communities, for a twofold purpose: to celebrate the accomplishments halfway through this Five-Year Plan (Bahá’ís have not only a static belief but a dynamic one, in which the Faith is ever-evolving) and to consult about achieving the goals mandated by the Universal house of Justice.

Being new to the region (since August 2008), I expected to meet no one I knew there, but in fact I met several, mostly friendships that had been struck up while I was on tour with the Voices of Bahá in the Caribbean in 2005, for example, Tommy Kavelin, tenor and longtime pioneer to Puerto Rico, brother of Linda Kavelin Popov of Virtues Project fame; Eve Fernandes, who sang with the Toronto World Unity Choir for a season; and the Jamaican lady who is vice-president of the tourist bureau and who organized the Voices of Bahá’s sojourn in Jamaica, a royal tour in more ways than one.

The Bahá’í Faith is one of not only belief, but service and action, and 100% of those assembled were actively involved in some aspect of teaching the Faith and serving humanity. Before the final speeches, all watched a power point presentation on the pledges and goals gathered for increased activity before April 2011, the end of this Five-Year Plan, which would represent a stupendous achievement even if say 70% of it was fulfilled.

For me, the highlight of the many highlights was the presence of two of the Counsellors from the International Teaching Centre, Juan Franciso Mora and Rachel Ndewa. The former is a brilliant young man of only 31 years whose speeches were not only inspiring but crystalline in the clarity with which he presented our responsibilities during the Five-year Plan. His partner was charming and inspiring in a different way, telling stories and showing her own personal struggles to understand and be obedient to the Universal House of Justice.

As everywhere in the Third World, a startlingly high percentage of the population is young people, and that fact was reflected all around. The last time there was a big conference in the region, it was attended mostly by “pioneers” – those Bahá’ís who for the sake of spreading the Faith establish themselves in locations where believers are few or none – but this time there was an overwhelming majority of local and indigenous people, the Garifonas of the Caribbean coast of Honduras being a prominent example, for their infectious music and dance. Indeed, my favourite quote of the Conference was given by an indigenous woman named Maxima, who said to all assembled (and I translate), “We live up in the mountains. There are no roads, no electricity, no telephones, no means of communication. You can’t get there from here.” (Pause) “And oh, yes, please come visit us.”
Ha ha, but somehow the Word of Bahá’u’lláh has managed to penetrate even there.

The 3 Rs -- An Upward Spiral

2009-01-01T10:46:00.000-08:00

Much of the world is celebrating New Year’s Day, 2009. It leads me to ruminate about this rather arbitrary designation (for Bahá’ís the New Year falls on the vernal equinox). The new year is somehow a break from the old, a chance to begin anew with a clean slate. Studies in comparative religion have found that many ancient societies believed explicitly that at this time the gods destroyed the world and created it anew. To point out to them from a sophisticated 21st century perspective that the world of Januray 1st looks remarkably like December 31st past would bring, at best, puzzlement. New Year’s resolutions seem to me to be a vestige of those ancient days, for in affirming them we lock into the belief that I can recreate my life, as the past does not have to dictate the future.

So, the cycle of life, resurrection, return and reincarnation. When I hear Christians talking about resurrection, they chiefly mean Christ’s rising after three days. Jews and Muslims, on the other hand, focus on the spectre of the dead rising from the graves, a notion which in its bizarre literal form always engendered horror-film zombies in my imagination. Many a time I have heard questions about resurrection at Bahá’í meetings, and over and above doctrinal interest, my ear always hears the subtext: “But what about me – what will happen to me?” I understand it as much the same question as with reincarnation, wondering what’s going to happen to me after I die.

The pre-eminent Bahá’í scholar Mírzá Abú’l Fadl wrote in 1886, “. . . it is clear to the possessors of intellect that the original intent of the prophets and messengers when they mentioned Return and Resurrection was to deliver to God’s servants the glad-tidings of a future Advent – when all that had transpired would be played out once more, retracing each footstep. In this way, the people would be deterred from believing that the Sun of Reality would never again rise, or that the spring of divine, mystical knowledge would never return. The prepared souls would be awaiting the appearance of the Manifestations of God and watching for the appearance of a primal reality. Then when the spiritual breeze wafted and the lordly, radiant luminary arose, exalted souls would be raised from the tombs of their bodies, a wondrous life would be bestowed on the world through a new spirit, and the earth would be adorned with the flowers of knowledge and science. Thus might the fruits hidden in the trees of existence be brought into the realm of appearance, just as they were at the time of the last Advent, and all that is concealed in the recesses of souls be made apparent and manifest. This is the meaning of Return. Otherwise, in regard to relative characteristics, spirits never return to this world once they have been separated from it. The birds of the soul, once they have ascended to the Most High, never again descend to the nethermost depths.” (Letters and Essays, 1886-1913)

The Far Easterns have had for millennia a cyclical view of life, where souls not only return to earth, but in which history repeats itself, exactly down to the last detail, over and over again for eternity. In the minds of the people of the West, time has taken a very different dimension, moving inexorably forward in a measured and linear fashion toward a future most fear will be cut short abruptly at some point. The Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh synthesizes all views in an astonishingly seamless manner (which is not to say that it is a synthesis; rather they are not only rolled into one, but refashioned and reinterpreted to show that they really have been aspects of one reality all along), and in this regard we have been given a new model that is both cyclical and progressive, an upward spiral. So life in all its aspects, from the individual struggle and experience, to the Revelation of God is seen as both repeating an endless pattern while at the same time striving upward. “All men have been created to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, pg. 214)

As a Bahá’í I have been given a vision of the ultimately destiny of the individual soul, which is an eternally dynamic and progressive one, but human civilization’s destiny is not fully revealed, and we’ll either find out when we get there, or as a mercy a future Manifestation of God will tell us more completely. Either way, I won’t be reincarnated as a dog, princess, or movie star, nor will I be playing harps and drinking ambrosia in a static eternity (or be barbecuing in hell with the devil turning the spit) when the ultimate end of humanity is known, if it ever will be. In the meantime my task has been set before me: “It is incumbent upon every man of insight and understanding to strive to translate that which hath been written into reality and action.” (Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh, pg. 166)

Blotter

2008-12-27T08:54:00.000-08:00

For those who have not had the privilege or opportunity to peruse the books of Nader Saiedi, they come highly recommended from this quarter. Many an ecstatic hour has been spent perusing the pages of Logos and Civilization and Gate of the Heart – Understanding the Writings of the Báb. In fact, the title of the latter has been prophetic in this life, as it has removed many opaque obstructions to understanding the writings of the Herald of the Faith. (Perhaps I shall comment on this further once I have reread the book in a less inebriated state, if that is possible.) Just one of the many valuable aspects of these books is the many provisional translations the author has made, opening worlds of insight and meaning to those of us who speak neither Persian nor Arabic, worlds that hopefully will be accessible to all of us in authoritative versions erelong. Here follows a passage (a summary and paraphrase, not a translation) from of Logos and Civilization, a chapter discussing the Kitáb-i-Badí, an untranslated work of Bahá’u’lláh, a companion volume to the Book of Certitude, and like its predecessor, revealed astonishingly swiftly, 400+ pages in the space of three days.

(One should know, before reading this, that Mírzá Yayhá was a half-brother of Bahá’u’lláh who became His arch-enemy, trying to usurp His place in the hearts of the believers by making spurious claims, issuing ridiculous challenges, stealing and perverting His writings, blackening His name with the Persian and Ottoman authorities with lies and calumny, performing evil deeds such as shaming the Báb’s second wife, ordering the murder of Dayyán, and on several occasions making attempts upon His life, including a poisoning that left His Hand shaking for the rest of His earthly days. Eclipsing the patience of Job, Bahá’u’lláh endured all, protecting Yahyá, keeping him close to Him, helping him to get set up in various businesses, and demanding that the rest of His family respect him, until He had finally had enough, and the Most Great Separation occurred in what is now European Turkey; Yahyá was cast out from the community of the faithful, and ended his days in ignominy and exile in Cyprus, virtually alone.)

Okay, here we go:

"Another moving stylistic element in the Kitáb-i-Badí is Bahá’u’lláh’s narrative of the lamentations and supplications of Mírzá Yahyá’s pen, which has been used to write against the Promised One of the Bayán . . . [the] pen has secretly escaped from him and attained the presence of Bahá’u’lláh, where it has wept and wailed, confessing its shame, sorrow, bewilderment, and anger at Yahyá and its abuse and suffering at the hands of its owner, the arch covenant-breaker. The pen entreats Bahá’u’lláh to act as a fatal weapon against Yahyá, and if He does not grant that wish, at least to liberate it from the fingers of Bahá’u’lláh’s enemy. It expresses its shame before the community of pens and it avows that even if Bahá’u’lláh forgave its sins, it would continue to be mortified because of its role. It admits its confusion and distress at its fate a fate that could not be deserved because it knows that it is non-existent before the divine will, and could not be said to be undeserved because it is unable to understand the logic of mysterious divine wisdom. It complains of the fact that other pens have been used to reveal the words of God in the hand of Bahá’u’lláh, while it has been imprisoned in the grip of the enemy of the Cause of God. The pen declares that its gravest concern is that because of its sins the Pen of Glory may cease to reveal divine worlds, and it implores Bahá’u’lláh to settle its fate and emancipate it from its sorrow, or else make it cease to exist.

"The pen continues to recount its life story to Bahá’u’lláh. From the very first days of its existence as a reed, it longed to attain the presence of Bahá’u’lláh and spent its days and nights in a state of yearning. It endured all hardships for the sake of that wish. Then it was cut off and moved from hand to hand and from place to place until it was bought in the market by one of His servants. But when it was placed in that man’s hand it sensed the odour of his heedlessness and became saddened but remained silent. The servant carried the pen from land to land until he arrived in the land of Bahá’u’lláh’s residence. Joy and delight overtook the pen and it felt itself the king of all kings. It remained in that state of ecstasy till its bearer arrived at a crossroads – one path led to the right and another path led to the left. The man chose the left-hand path, and the pen found itself trembling and wailing until at last the servant reached a house exuding the stench of hell and placed the pen in the hand of the tyrant who rose against Bahá’u’lláh.

"The pen continues to express its unending sense of shame and implores Bahá’u’lláh to take its life and then to recreate it so that it might expunge the memory of its unhappy past. "

(Kitáb-i-Badí, pg. 239-250) Logos and Civilization, pg. 177-178

Birth of the Báb Quiz

2008-10-19T10:35:00.000-07:00

Easy

1. In which city was the Báb born?

2. What was the Báb’s given name?

3. Who raised the Báb from a young age?

4. In what year was the Báb born?

5. What is the present-day name of the country in which the Báb was born?

6. On what month and day was the Báb born?

7. Where is the Shrine of the Báb?

8. Who was born first, the Báb or Bahá’u’lláh?

9. What were the followers of the Báb called?

Medium

10. What religious teacher in Karbilá told his students to find the Báb?

11. How many times did the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh meet in person?

12. The Báb was a descendant of what other Manifestation of God?

13. Why is the Birth of the Báb celebrated over two consecutive Gregorian calendar dates?

14. What did the Báb name the calendar He created?

15. Who wrote the chronicle of the early believers in the Báb?

16. Who was the only woman among the first eighteen followers of the Báb?

Difficult

17. Who was the Persian king at the time of the birth of the Báb?

18. Who were the Báb’s parents?

19. In the future, why will be birthdays of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh be celebrated on the same day?

Answers:

1. Shiráz, Persia
2. ‘Alí-Muhammad
3. His maternal uncle, Hájí Mírzá Siyyid ‘Alí
4. 1819
5. Irán
6. October 20
7. Haifa, Palestine/Israel
8. Bahá’u’lláh (November 12, 1817)
9. Bábís
10. Siyyid Kázim-i-Rashti
11. None
12. The Prophet Muhammad
13. The Bahá’í day is reckoned from sunset to sunset.
14. Badí Calendar
15. Nabíl-i-‘Azám
16. Tahirih
17. Fatih-‘Ali Shah
18. Fatimih Begum and Mírzá Muhammad-Ridá
19. On the Muslim calendar, the two dates fall on consecutive days.

Sai Satya Baba

2008-10-12T09:54:00.000-07:00

India is at once the most religious country on earth and the most open and tolerant. All spiritual pursuits find fertile ground to put down roots in India, and it absorbs with grace and patience even the most fanatical of sects. Sai Satya Baba (pictured above) and his millions of followers in both India and abroad are no exception to this attitude, to the extent that Sai International's bimonthly newsletter, Volume 6, #3, is dedicated in all but the last page entirely to the Bahá'í Faith, with several articles and photos from Bahá'í and non-Bahá'í sources. What a laudable act! And surprisingly accurate for the most part. The errors are so few that pointing most of them would be mere quibbling, so only a few that could actually have been misleading have been selected for correction, and only that Baba's followers may not develop any basic misconceptions.

Naturally, in these pages the teachings found in the Bahá'í writings are compared with those of Sai Baba, and the various authors gleefully round up the similarities, which, given the enlightenment of their holy man, are indeed many. But Ambasht on pg. 4 lets his enthusiasm get the better of him when he proclaims, “Baba is also considered a 'Manifestation of God.'” This designation is reserved by the Bahá'í Faith for those individuals with a direct revelation of the Word of God, constituting scripture, including Krishna, Buddha, Abraham, Christ, and so on. Notwithstanding, learned and holy ones are highly reverenced in the Faith.

Sangeeta Sharma asserts on pg. 4: “The Bahá'ís declare that 15 years of age is the best to get married.” There is no such declaration. 15 is the minimum age. She further (this time correctly) observes, “This book [The Kitáb-i-Aqdas] allows a man to marry two wives under the condition that they are treated equally.” Bahá'ís understand that this is an impossible condition, and therefore only one wife is permitted, and by mutatis mutandi only one husband.

As to the marriage of Bahá'u'lláh Himself, until the revelation of The Kitáb-i-Aqdas (His Book of Laws for this age), He subjected Himself to previous (Islamic) law, and He had, in fact, three wives and a total of fourteen children. When Progya Shankar on pg. 5 states, “Bahá'u'lláh was married to Asiyih Khanum, they had three children, two sons and a daughter,” the reference is to the the surviving children from His first wife, who were the most distinguished and faithful among His offspring.

On pg. 6 Ved B. Kochar, in discussing Shoghi Effendi, writes, “He appointed 27 individuals as 'hands of the promotion of God' with the tasks of promotion and protection of the Bahá'í Faith.” In English the official title is “Hands of the Cause of God,” and the Guardian actually appointed 42 of them, some posthumously.

In referring to current Bahá'í activity, Kochar writes, “Bahá'í classes for children, which are open to all, focus on normal development in the context of the Bahá'í teachings of the oneness of humankind and the unity of the world's religions.” Surely the word “normal” is a typographical error and was meant to be “moral.”

May millions and billions be as liberal and open-minded as the followers of Satya Sai Baba in their pursuit of truth.

World Ends Wednesday

2008-09-06T12:21:00.000-07:00

On September 10th, the European Nuclear Research Centre will activate the Large Hadron Collider, the 17-mile circumference, $8,000,000,000 particle collider 300 feet underground near Geneva, Switzerland. Why? To unlock the mystery of Creation, simulating the first moments immediately after the Big Bang. The LHC will circulate atomic particles around its 17-mile circumference at more than 11,000 times per second before then smashing those atoms into each other in the ultimate carnival bumper-car ride. The machine has been designed to help scientists discover new forms of particles, most notably the elusive Higgs Boson (the vaunted “God Particle”), along with more insights into dark matter and the matter/antimatter dichotomy. No word yet on dilithium crystals.

But not everyone’s in the party spirit. The hue and cry is that there is the danger of creating a black hole that will swallow up the planet Earth. The London Telegraph reports that American Nobel prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek has received death threats with regard to Wednesday’s launch.

Predictably, the scientific community claims the doomsday gloomcasters are overreacting out of ignorance and superstition, or watching too many sci-fi thrillers. Every care and precaution has been taken, every test done and redone, every eventuality has been considered, re-considered, and considered again to ensure that nothing can possibly go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong . . . (Surely you saw that one coming.) James Gillies, the head of communication and spokesman for CERN says, “What we are doing is enriching humanity, not putting it at risk.” Well, that puts everyone’s mind at ease right away. (Beam me to any co-ordinates on the planet Vulcan, Scotty, pronto.)

Being a Bahá’í means that I bring my best intelligence to bear on all matters, but also that I turn to the Scriptures to see if they shed any light on the questions at hand. As far as the Big Bang is concerned, I was very struck by reading in Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time words to the effect that the mathematics of the Big Bang Theory have been mapped out and work perfectly, with the seemingly absurd proviso that they apply only if the Big Bang did not actually take place! Huh? And yet for me, this paradox echoes the words of Bahá’u’lláh:

Know assuredly that God's creation hath existed from eternity, and will continue to exist forever. Its beginning hath had no beginning, and its end knoweth no end. His name, the Creator, presupposeth a creation . . . (Gleanings, pg. 150)

The one true God hath everlastingly existed, and will everlastingly continue to exist. His creation, likewise, hath had no beginning, and will have no end. All that is created, however, is preceded by a cause. (Gleanings, pg. 162)

Yet another Bahá’í principle applies here, that of the Harmony of Science and Religion. The two must work together, so that we don’t have defensive scientists claiming exclusivity and should be left alone to pursue knowledge that will benefit the human race, nor should superstition and ignorance rule the day. Human knowledge must progress, and religion must supply the moral framework, but it must be knowledge that will advance the best interests mankind and it must be true religion, not pietistic flummery. Then we shall be rid of this mutual suspicion and have more joyous examples like the ones where we have seen rockets setting out towards the unknown, and the astronauts gaping with wonder at the beauty and majesty of God’s universe.

From the light tone of this article, you can no doubt discern that I personally am not much more worried about the prospects of this planet than during other weeks. I am reminded of the cartoon in which a robed and besandled character carries a sign announcing, “The world ends Wednesday!” and the cop on the beat tells him, “Just don’t let me catch you here Thursday!”

Beijing Trifecta

2008-08-26T17:02:00.000-07:00

***************************************************
********** The book of the Bahá’í presence at the Beijing Olympics consisted of three chapters. The first was the song “Beijing Olympics Hao Yuing (Good Luck),” written by Bahá’ís Phil Morrison and Keith Williams, of Brunswick, Georgia, USA (not the other Georgia that was making news at the same time). The song was one of 30 selected by Olympic organizers from 3,000 submissions to communicate to visitors the spirit of the 2008 Games, and the only one to have been penned by American-born musicians. Its lyrics include such Bahá’í ideas as, “Just one human family,” “The earth will celebrate -- For World Unity,” “Promoting peace and friendship for all -- The world will come together -- we'll open up the gate.” It can be heard at http://www.philmorrisontrio.com/.

Chapter Two, just days before the Games began, was provided by a British teacher resident in China, Wilma O’Sullivan, 52, who was chosen to carry the torch as a nationally acclaimed contributor to education in China. Perhaps a little-known fact is that torch bearers get to keep their torch after they pass the flame along to the next leg of the journey, so whereas it’s not an Olympic medal, it’s an impressive souvenir. Bahá’ís routinely leave their homelands to provide sacrificial service to humanity in other countries.

But the third chapter was a great climax and a shining moment, as Portugal’s Nelson Evora leapt for gold in the Triple Jump event. While not a marquee event, the Triple Jump is nevertheless a hotly-contested major track and field competition. Evora finished 40th in the same event in 2004 in Athens, but brought his A game this time around, clearing 17.67 metres to capture the gold. In true Bahá’í World Citizen fashion, Evora was born in Cotê d’Ivoire of Cape Verdean parents, and for whom he competed until 2002, when he acquired Portuguese citizenship.

Omid, Oh My!

2008-07-30T12:43:00.000-07:00

While watching Omid Djalili's 2005 HBO One Night Stand special, I noted that he did not mention that he was a Bahá’í -- I'm supposing the fact that he is Iranian AND British was confusing enough for his audiences, so he played it as though he was Muslim, just as he had done on Whoopi Goldberg’s sitcom. Anyone who has seen his YouTube videos knows it is not out of shyness. In fact, in an introduction to a compilation on humour in the Bahá’í Writings (co-written with Annabel Knight), he did not hesitate to poke at his own religious community in making this astonishingly bold critical assertion: “Amongst religious communities, including in Bahá'í society, the place for humour is invariably segregated from spiritual life. It is confined to a carefully placed joke in a talk by a keynote speaker, or in the form of an evening programme where ‘the youth,’ as they are affectionately called, can run amok with a mish-mash of ‘challenging’ sketches. There is a time for spirituality, and there is a time for humour. The two do not mix.”

However, he did sing "We are drops of one ocean," a song of Pacific Ocean origin (most likely Hawaiian), which is sung by Baháí children the world over, which he bizzarely associated with the “insanity” of Donald Rumsfeld. This again walks perilously close to the edge of the limit of this Bahá’í principle: “Speak thou no word of politics; thy task concerneth the life of the soul, for this verily leadeth to man's joy in the world of God. Except to speak well of them, make thou no mention of the earth's kings, and the worldly governments thereof.” (Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu'l-Bahá, pg. 92)

The first verse of this call-and-response ditty runs thus:

We are drops of one ocean
We are waves of one sea
Come and join us
In our quest for unity
It’s a way of life for you and me.

My view of comedians is that they are almost alone in present-day society in being allowed to tell the truth, a role abnegated somewhere along the line by poets and musicians. Furthermore, that is one of the chief reasons we tune in to them and pay to see them debunk nonsense ranging from our human relationships to political issues to our private behaviour, religious malparactices and human condition. This being a precious commodity in our time, I am inclined to grant them as wide a latitude as possible in making us squirm in our seats while laughing involuntarily.

Am I Bibulous?

2008-07-17T09:42:00.000-07:00

The Year of Living Biblically is the journal of a “controlled experiment” by A. J. Jacobs, a New Yorker, nominally Jewish, erstwhile Who Wants to Be a Millionaire contestant, and self-absorbed, obsessive/compulsive writer for Esquire magazine. This experiment was to live for [only] one year following literally everything in the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, especially its 600+ laws and ordinances.

Most people he knew found the whole conceit silly. However, he didn’t “perform” this alone, but assembled a whole host of spiritual advisors of every Jewish and Christian stripe, personal and online, and a library of about 100 books. (One he read rather sparingly during the year, however, was the actual Bible.) I say “perform,” since this was done much less out a need for spiritual growth than as an exhibitionistic performance-art piece to be perpetuated for a few more years by its published documentation. For this he had role models: “The prophets didn’t just utter their prophecies. They staged what are known as ‘prophetic acts’ – wild, attention-grabbing, God-inspired pieces of performance art.” (88) So he grew his hair and bought a Biblical robe at a Hallowe’en costume store and tassels from Tassels Without Hassles. He took his Biblical 10-string harp out for walks (169), but unlike the prophets, he often ran away from people because he couldn’t explain or justify his bizarre behaviour. (On eating locusts: “It’ll be Fear Factor, Old Testament style.”) (174)

What was his spiritual state before starting out?: “I’ve rarely said the word 'Lord,' unless it’s followed by 'of the Rings.' I don’t often say 'God' without preceding it with 'Oh my.'” (21) His relationship with God had several other hurdles to jump: “Deuteronomy 5:9 the Bible says ‘I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.’ . . . Why should God punish my grandson for my sins? It seemed outrageously un-American.” (145)

People beside his skeptical wife noticed changes immediately: “I’ve even started to get the occasional positive comment about my looks. The Italian woman who works at the corner deli said she feels more sacred in my presence and is afraid to curse or gossip. And my co-worker Tom, whom I hadn’t seen in months, said he was all ready to greet me with a one-liner about Mel Gibson’s facial hair, then decided he couldn’t make a joke because he felt almost reverential. Reverential, that’s the word he used. I was on a high for two days afterward.” (180)

There is admittedly a good deal of information about Judeo-Christian groups across America, their practices and interpretations, beliefs and evasions. They range from the banal (Jerry Falwell was “disappointing”) to the bizarre (a visit to a Creationist museum with dinosaurs). We also read about Samaritans, red heifers, the origin of the mezzuzah, attaching the Ten Commandments between your eyes, and serpent-handlers. (Here’s where Bahá’ís can be grateful that we have no warring sects and conflicting ideologies and can all turn toward recognized authority for guidance.)

His spiritual odyssey included a trip to Jerusalem. “Walking around Jerusalem in my biblical persona is at once freeing and vaguely disappointing. In New York . . . I’m still unusual enough to stand out. But in Israel I’m just one of the messianic crowd.” (220) “I’m resting here on the stone steps [Jaffa Gate, Jerusalem], which . . . have a bumpy surface that makes them look like a Rice Krispies Treat.” (219)

Did he achieve any spiritual progress? “I get bored easily . . . Maybe spirituality attracts me for its novelty factor.” (193) “I have managed to slash my total production of white lies by one-third.” (195) “If you try to literally follow Leviticus 19:18 – ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’ – well, you can’t.” (323) “I’ve taken a step backward again, spiritually speaking. My faith is fragile. Little things jolt me back to pure agnosticism.” (193) “The truth is, I’ve begun to get really rigorous with my rituals. I hate missing my daily routine . . . Why? Perhaps because these rituals dovetail beautifully with my obsessive-compulsive disorder.” (148) He found a checkbook on a plane and mailed it to its owner, who replied with a thank-you-card and a gift card to Starbuck’s: “The checkbook triumph gives me such a moral high, I use the card to pay for the latte of the guy behind me at Starbuck’s. I got the idea from a religious website devoted to kindness.” (179)

His plethora of advisers gave a lot of mixed signals that would confuse anybody. For instance, following Deuteronomy 22:6: “[Mr. Berkowitz] has set up two pigeon nests on his third-floor windowsill . . . Whenever there’s a newly-laid egg, he allows a faithful seeker to come over, pay one hundred dollars to charity, shoo the mother pigeon away, pick up the egg, hold it aloft, say a prayer, place it back in the nest . . and thereby check off this commandment as officially ‘fulfilled.’”

And when his experiment was all over: “I’m not just shaving my beard, I’m amputating a large part of my identity. In a couple of hours, I won’t be Jacob anymore. I’ll be back to being a regular old, unremarkable New Yorker, one of millions.” (330) “I’m still agnostic [but] I’m now a reverent agnostic.” (329) I suspect his real religion is “America,” or even more specifically, “New York.”

Perhaps the best value of this book is that of laughter. In fact, I found the book not in the religion section, but the humour section, and it is marketed as such. Jacobs has a gift for funny characterizations, such as Guru Gil, his uncle in Israel. Here’s two samples of hilarious scenes:
On hundreds of Hassidic men dancing at Simchas Torah: “. . . an ocean of undulating black hats. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them in a hall the size of a large gymnasium. It’s as loud as any concert I’ve been to. But instead of drums and guitar, it’s a village of men singing Ay yi yi yi . . . Everyone’s bumping, smacking, thumping into one another . . . sort of a Holy Roller Derby.” (86)
On a circumcision support group: “They called themselves RECAP, short for Recover a Penis . . . ‘I don’t feel whole,’ said one. ‘I want to feel whole again.’ Another asked, ‘Can you imagine what it’s like to have sex with a foreskin? It must be like watching colour TV.’”

So shouldn’t I just lighten up and laugh along? Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. But I balance that with Bahá’u’lláh’s admonition: “This is not a Cause which may be made a plaything for your idle fancies, nor is it a field for the foolish and faint of heart.” (The Kitáb-i-Aqdas, par. 78)
Anyway, it is Jacobs who is laughing all the way to the bank, for even if my complaints are valid, the fact remains that I still bought and read his frivolous book. You’ve been amply warned.

Quiz Answers

2008-07-11T21:16:00.000-07:00

1. Tabríz
2. Muhammad-‘Alí-i-Zunuzí (“Anis”)
3. Mount Carmel, Haifa.
4. Chihríq
5. Assassination attempt on Nasir’id-Din Sháh.
6. Táhirih
7. He was under house arrest, as some Bábís in Mashhad had killed some guards that were parading his servant around the city with a rope through his nose.
8. A cholera epidemic struck suddenly. The Governor fled, and the Báb healed the son of the Chief of Police, who interceded on His behalf.
9. 1500 (2 x 750)
10. Hájí Mírzá Siyyid-‘Alí, His maternal uncle.
11. Táhirih
12. Sam Khán
13. Zachary Taylor
14. 40 days
15. Siyyid Husayn
16. 84
17. King of Martyrs and Beloved of Martyrs
18. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (She was Múnirih Khánum)
19. They all housed the remains of the Báb for a time.

Martyrdom of the Báb Quiz

2008-07-08T20:43:00.000-07:00

On each of the Bahá’í Holy Days, I'll post a quiz, with the answers following a few days later.

Easy

1. In what city was the Báb martyred?

2. Who was martyred along with the Báb?

3. Where are the Báb’s remains today?

4. Where was the Báb during the Conference of Badasht in July 1848?

5. What happened in August 1852 as a direct consequence of the Martyrdom of the Báb?

Medium

6. Who dramatically announced the end of the Muhammadan Dispensation at Badasht in 1848?

7. Why was Mullá Husayn not at the Conference of Badasht?

8. Why was the first order to execute the Báb in 1845 in Shíráz not carried out?

9. How many shots were fired toward the Báb on July 9, 1850?

10. What relative of the Báb was the first of the Seven Martyrs of Tehran?

Difficult

11. Who translated the Báb’s Commentary of the Surih of Joseph from Arabic into Persian?

12. Which participant of July 9, 1850 had formerly been Chief of Police in Mashhad?

13. What U. S. President died on July 9, 1850?

14. How long after Mullá Husayn declared his belief in the Báb did the second Letter of the Living do so?

15. Who was the only person to share a jail cell with the Báb and also be incarcerated with Bahá’u’lláh in the Siyyáh-Chál?

Yeah, Good Luck

16. According to Shoghi Effendi, how many Bábís participated in the Conference at Badasht in July 1848?

17. Which two brothers, 9 and 11 years old at the time, served the Báb at a banquet given in His honour by their father in Isfahán in 1846?

18. The niece of the host of the previous question was conceived through the intercession of the Báb. Who became her husband?

19. What do the Shrines of Ibn Bábuyyih and Imámzadih Zayd, the residences of Aqá Husayn ‘Alí Núr and Muhammad Karím ‘Attar in Tehran, and the House of ‘Abdu’lláh Páshá in ‘Akká all have in common?

Voices of Joy

2008-06-30T13:41:00.000-07:00

One of the best-kept secrets of the Bahá’í world must be the Voices of Bahá. Created almost as an afterthought to the Second Bahá’í World Congress in New York in 1992, it remains its most enduring legacy: the gorgeous choral music swept the assembled away, and the subsequent recording, played at thousands of gatherings, is perhaps the only music that has some claim to be well-known throughout the Bahá’í world community. But the “secret” part is that the Voices of Bahá embarked on annual tours that took them not only several times to the great concert halls of Europe, often with first-rate symphony orchestras (Madrid, Paris, Budapest, Warsaw, Prague), but to the former Soviet Union, the Caribbean, and the Far East. Sandwiched in amongst these were a Heartland of America tour and a Mississippi Riverboat tour, on which concerts were given where the riverboat docked.

The entire enterprise was intiated and shouldered by Nashville composer, arranger, and conductor Tom Price, who virtually single-handedly (Ohio’s Barbara Baumgartner became his right hand in the mid-90s) arranged all aspects of the tours, from travel and lodging to arranging all the music, auditioning singers over the telephone, producing practice recordings of all the parts, and the multitude of vagaries involved. The local Bahá’í communities would arrange the venues, advertise the events, and distribute the proceeds to charities. Two of his daughters were perpetually featured soloists.

Wherever they performed, not only did thousands attend the concerts, but local and national Bahá’í communities arranged a multitude of teaching events and initiatives in order to optimize the energy generated by the tour, for in many of these places the actual Bahá’í communities are rather small. For instance, in Thonon-les-Bains, France, near Geneva, there were only two believers (one of which was in the hospital), but an intense radio campaign and bus shelter advertising ensured a sellout in the Sports Palace in spite of a scathing newspaper article attempting to denigrate the Bahá’ís.

The singers represented as many as 22 countries, all who paid their own way. A few stalwarts, such as American Steve Brisley (pictured above) have participated in virtually every performance of the Voices of Bahá. After preparing individually for weeks via printed scores and practice recordings, 2-3 days of intense rehearsal would be all before the performances began. The programme consisted of music in styles ranging from ethnic folk to classical to gospel to several composed by Price himself, in a variety of languages, and in every locality some attempt was made to sing in the local tongue. One song, in particular, “O God My God,” has been sung in at least a score of languages from Slovak to Catalan to Hungarian, and local debates on pronunciation were often very lively indeed.

Highlights are more than can be counted, and surely someone will write a book to accompany the various video and audio archives. Here I’ll just mention a very few. While recording in Moscow, a revolution broke out, and everyone was confined to their hotel while the government buildings were under siege. Yet when the curfew was lifted, a full house attended a concert without any advertising.

In 2001 Tom Price decided it was time raise the international profile of the choir, and so in addition to concerts in France, Slovakia, Spain, and Germany, the choir was entered into several categories in a prestigious international choral competition in Wernigerode, Germany. 186 singers rehearsed Mendelssohn and Brahms in snatches between concerts, after meals, and on long bus rides, and switched from performance mode to Olympic-type competition, from unity to striving for excellence. Far from embarrassing themselves, they earned silver or gold standards in all categories entered, and were specially invited to sing for the throngs of tourists in the city square at the close of the competition. 2003 saw a return engagement.

In 2002, Price arranged a New York City Arts Festival to mark the 10th anniversary of the Second Bahá’í World Congress that started it all. As well as a slate of daily theatre, dance, visual, and mixed-media presentations around Manhattan, three grand concerts were given: a Persian concert shown via satellite in Iran, a full gospel concert, and a Carnegie Hall performance by the largest edition of the Voices of Bahá ever assembled: 550 voices and a full symphony orchestra.

Perhaps the most gruelling day for the Voices of Bahá was in Caracas, Venezuela in July 2005. The day began with a morning recording session of a full concert programme at the national television studio, followed by a live performance in front of television cameras of the same programme in the early afternoon. Another 6 hours was spent re-recording bits and pieces, and after the outer limits of exhaustion, they lip-synched the entire show again to their own recording for the benefit of the cameras. This was all for a documentary film to be used throughout Latin America. And these were largely amateurs of all ages with little experience of the rigours of touring.

On the same tour, the plane set out from Miami to the Dominican Republic and had to fly around Hurricane Dennis. After stops in Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and Trinidad, they arrived in Jamaica just two days after a hurricane had hit there, so they became media darlings of the Tourist bureau. Not two weeks later Hurricane Katrina hit.

An element of gospel music has been a part of the Voices of Bahá from its inception. Van Gilmer (pictured above, with Rachael Price) pioneered in bringing gospel music into a Bahá’í context with his groups and many popular compositions, and in 2004 he led a full gospel tour to Britain and Western Europe in lieu of the regular Voices of Bahá tour. In 2007 and 2008 the large choral tradition has been continued by a festival at the Bahá’í House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois, where Gilmer serves as Music Director.

For these events and tours, singers save up all year, endure pickpockets, laryngitis and other ailments, and local food; they often witness crushing poverty, yet travel and work as one big happy family, running on adrenalin physical and spiritual, and nowhere where they’d rather be than spreading this message for the healing of the world. Furthermore, this “parent choir” has spawned local chapters around the globe, especially in Canada and the United States, enriching celebrations and developing a Bahá’í artistic life.

The Fifth Buddha

2008-06-23T17:59:00.000-07:00

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This is the fourth in a series about organizations that reflect some of the new values and teachings that have come into the world in this age that has witnessed the dawning of the Bahá’í Faith.

The Maitreya Project at Kushinagar, Uttar Pradesh in northern India is erecting a 152m bronze statue of the Buddha. Buddhists await the advent of “Maitreya-Amitabhá.” Even though the Buddha’s texts were revealed in the Pali language, “Maitreya” is from the Sanskrit “maitri” meaning “universal loving-kindness,” while “-abhá” is a form of “Bahá” (Glory) in Arabic. Bahá’u’lláh claimed to be that Universal Manifestation, the Promised One of all ages, the fulfillment of all millennial prophecies.

The physical outlay of the Maitreya Project has some striking simlilarities to Bahá’í Houses of Worship, which are to be surrounded by a number of other facilities, including universities, hospitals, and even drug dispensaries. (The present stage of the Houses of Worship has yet to realize these adjuncts.) According to the Maitreya Project website http://www.maitreya-statue.org/, there are plans for “temples, exhibition halls, a museum, library, audio-visual theatre and hospitality services. All will be set in beautifully landscaped parks with meditation pavilions, beautiful water fountains and tranquil pools. The buildings and grounds of the Project will contain a remarkable and inspiring collection of sacred art.” (Projected cost: $250 million.) Bahá’í Houses of Worship are all surrounded by gardens and fountains (pictured above is the Lotus Temple, near New Delhi). The bronze statue is designed to stand for at least 1,000 years. The Bahá’í structures on Mount Carmel were specifically designed and built with Mediterranean marble to also last a millennium.

There are glaring differences, of course. Building the Maitreya statue is intended to create, economic stability, as well as spiritual and social renewal, in and around the Project site, whereas the Bahá’í Houses of Worship are part of global plans and visions, and there will never be any admission fees or donations accepted. And though the Buddha is revered by the Bahá’ís, there are no representational images, nor will there ever be. Interestingly, in the early days of Buddhism, there were no images of the Buddha, only symbols or ciphers. The idea entered the East via the Greek statues brought by Alexander the Great’s armies. Since by then no one knew what the Buddha had looked like, He was portrayed as an Adonis-like young man sitting in the lotus position. As time went on, the form of the Buddha took on various cultural ideals in different places.

As a Bahá’í, I ask myself, will they come to recognize Bahá’u’lláh as that “Fifth Buddha,” the Maitreya-Amitabha, or wait another thousand years?

This 'n' That

2008-06-19T11:13:00.000-07:00

For its viewers Seinfeld coined meanings for “this” and “that,” humourous euphemisms meaning “Platonic friendship” and “Sex,” respectively. Absolutely everything turns my diseased mind into spiritual matters, and I’m going to drag you along with me. First to Hinduism:

The essence of Vedanta and the pinnacle of Hindu insight is enshrined in the four “Mahavakyas,” (Great Sayings), the first of which is Tat Tvam Asi, (“That Thou Art”).

Huh? “That Thou Art”? That’s a great saying? Reefer madness?

Some explanation is obviously needed. There’s a prayer (or affirmation) in the Isavasyopanishad that in the original Sanskrit runs:

Om Purnamadah Purnamidam
Purnat Purnamudacyate
Purnasya Purnamadaye
Purnamevavasisyate
Om Shanti Shanti Shanti

One clumsy English rendition minus the “Om Peace” (italics mine):

That is whole; this is whole;
From that whole this whole came;
From that whole, this whole removed,
What remains is whole.

Well that cleared it up, didn’t it? The intended meaning is thus: “That” is the spiritual realm, the object of our search, invisible. “This” is creation, the physical, phenomenal world. So in a nutshell the teaching implied in the above verse is creation emanates from spirit and is ultimately a projection, a superimposition, real enough on its own level, but possessing no substantial reality of its own, being totally dependent upon spirit for its creation, and sustenance, and the ever-present possibility of its dissolution. (Notice I didn’t use the words “this” and “that” in cette paragraph, which wasn’t easy.)

The claim of Bahá’u’lláh is of being the Promised One of All Ages, the fulfillment of the prophecies of ALL past Dispensations and traditions. And whereas the Buddha, Zoroaster, the Great Spirit, and men of India meditating in caves get passing mention, the overwhelming context in which the Bahá’í Revelation is placed is firmly in the Adamic-Abrahmic-Judeo-Christian-Islamic line – in other words, the traditions of the Middle East. So I’m particularly tickled to find what I deem direct connections with teachings that emanated from elsewhere.

A significant portion of the Báb’s output is in the form of Commentary which has been exalted to the rank of Revelation (please just take my word for it here). In the Commentary on the Surih of the Cow II, He expounds on a tradition of the Imám Ridá, where “that” and “this” are referred to as “there” and “here”:

Elevate the alphabetical letters of that divine verse unto the sublime station of the manifestation of their heart . . . Verily that ascent is the spirit of the Elixir of true knowledge, so that the servant may advance all that is motionless unto the lofty station of vibrant motion, and make manifest the Causes of his existence within the stage of the effect, and reveal the fruit of the Final Cause in the rank and station of the receptive phenomena. That is the true meaning of the words of Imám Ridá, peace by upon Him, that verily those endued with understanding cannot know that which is there, except through that which is here. (provisional translation by N. Saiedi)

Obviously there are many concepts in that short quote; the Báb’s writing is extremely dense and dripping with meaning just as His own dream of the blood of the Imám Husayn. But I hope I made the connection clear.

If not, I apologize and leave you with another Jerry Seinfeld quote: “There is no such thing as ‘fun for the whole family.’”

Unforgettable

2008-06-10T15:13:00.000-07:00

It is fitting that as the last of the Hands of the Cause of God passed away last year, that tributes to these 50 individuals that were appointed by the Central Figures of the Bahá’í Faith to “diffuse the Divine Fragrances, to edify the souls of men, to promote learning, to improve the character of all men and to be, at all times and under all conditions, sanctified and detached from earthly things,” should begin to appear in print. Such is the book The Unforgettable Hands of the Cause by Ohio-born Michael Woodward, just published by the Bahá’í Publishing Trust of India.

It consists almost entirely of first-hand reminiscences and anecdotes of the author’s interactions with 14 of the Hands while living in Hawaii, pioneering in Africa and Taiwan, and on trips to Conferences and the Holy Land. Therefore it is an intimate account, almost too intimate at times, as he details personal the involvement with his family’s life and tribulations of Abu’l-Qásim Faizi (pictured above) and Enoch Olinga. In the early part of the book, Woodward falls into the trap like many before him, of describing minute events with overenthusiasm, making the stories sound lame. The difficulty, of course, is that the events themselves are outwardly unremarkable: a word here, a gesture there, but suffused with spiritual potency and immediacy that makes an impression lasting a lifetime, and these things take no small literary skill to articulate.

However, when he moves on to document conferences and the lessons and talks given by the Hands at these momentous gatherings, we get a good sense of how they taught the friends, encouraged, exhorted and admonished them with illustrative stories, explanations of the Writings and the guidance from the World Centre. We see figures Bahá’ís have come to know so well: Dr. Muhajer, Bill Sears, Ruhiyyih Khanum, Collis Featherstone, and others in the full flower of their glory in accomplishing the Herculean tasks given to them.

While Woodward’s writing is not first-rate, one thing he accomplishes very well is the sense of history, especially the murmur of anguish felt by the Bahá’í community around the world as the number of the Hands -- 27 in 1957 at the passing of the Guardian, inexorably dwindled down to only three well before the turn of the Millenium, and so how every moment with these sublime mentors was so precious.

Surely many more volumes are in the offing, especially as we have full biographies of only a smattering – I almost wrote “handful” – of these seminal figures, without whom it would be impossible to envision the Bahá’í Faith as it has come to exist, flourish, and grow to this day.

Sirens in Daidanaw

2008-06-03T12:15:00.000-07:00

It is now exactly a month since Cyclone Nargis hit the Irrawaddy River Delta, killing over 200,000 and leaving countless others destitute in Myanmar (Burma). And so far very little aid has been getting through, since the government in adamant in controlling who and what enters the country and how. Its concern has been its own clinging to power rather than the welfare of its peoples, as it received a scare only a few months ago with the worldwide attention received by the rebellion of Buddhist monks.

For the Bahá’ís in the delta town of Daidanaw, it’s the second time that carnage has been visited upon them almost incidentally as part of a larger catastrophe. The first was in 1945, when the town was attacked for ethnic cleansing, and 11 Bahá’ís were killed and their homes, a school, and the Bahá’í Centre razed to the ground. Among the casualties was Mustafáy-i-Rúmí (pictured above), posthumously named a Hand of the Cause of God, a very high honour and designation bestowed upon only 50 individuals, all who have now passed on, and no others will ever be so named again. Rúmí was a religious scholar from ‘Iráq who spoke at least seven languages, engaged in the rice trade in India, and became a Bahá’í in Calcutta. He travelled all over Southeast Asia teaching the Faith and converted all 800 inhabitants of Daidanaw, the first all- Bahá’í village outside of Irán. He made his home there and among the many services he performed was to spearhead the creation of a marble sarcophagus which he not only helped pay for but was one of the people who transported it to the Holy Land. The remains of The Báb (Prophet-Herald of the Bahá’í Faith), hidden and moved about to about two dozen different locations since His martyrdom by firing squad in Tabríz, Persia in 1850, were finally interred in this sarcophagus in a shrine on Mount Carmel, its golden dome the most recognizable Bahá’í building on earth.

The Bahá’í Centre in Daidanaw was rebuilt. At the present time it is a refuge for abut 800 families (Bahá’í and non) who are in desperate need of the necessities of survival, which are still only trickling in.

Providentially, the nine members of the National Spiritual Assembly of Myanmar were in consultative meetings in Thailand when the cyclone hit and so were spared. An irony that is surely not lost on Bahá’ís of Iránian background is that the name chosen for this cyclone – Nargis -- is identical to that of the most favourite of Iránian Bahá’í sirens.

Cinco de Mayo

2008-05-05T20:16:00.000-07:00

What connection could there possibly be between Mexico’s Cinco de Mayo celebration and the early history of the Bahá’í Faith? On May 5, 1862, 8,000 invading French forces with state-of-the-art equipment were turned back by 4,000 rustic Mexicans (albeit with a splendid cavalry) in the battle of Pueblo. The French soon pressed on to victory, installing Maximilian I (brother of Austro-Hungarian Emperor Archduke Ferdinand) as ruler for a short five year period until democrat-ically elected Benito Juarez was able to reclaim the land for the locals. Nevertheless the heroism of the Battle of Pueblo is what is celebrated every May 5th.

And who ordered this French invasion? Why, none other than Napoleon III (portrait above by Franz Xavier Winterhalter). Bahá’u’lláh addressed admonishing and prophetic letters to many of the temporal and religious leaders of the day from His exiles in Ottoman lands, instructing them in how to be enlightened leaders, announcing to them His stupendous claims, and offering them the Most Great Peace should they arise to accept Him. He also warned of dire consequences should they not heed His advice and change course. In his book The Promised Day is Come, Shoghi Effendi documents the swift and dramatic downfall of those who spurned Bahá’u’lláh’s message, including Kaiser Wilhelm I (2 assassination attempts), Emperor Franz Josef (too many disasters to list culminating in World War I), the Ottoman Sultan ‘Abdu’l-Azíz (deposition and murder, followed by the cataclysmic demise of the entire empire), the Sháh of Irán (assassinated in 1896), and Pope Pius IX (loss of papal lands and temporal authority, self-imposed imprisonment). Czar Nicholas II, who through his Foreign Minister Prince Dolgorukov (or Dolgoruki) was instrumental in freeing Bahá’u’lláh from a dreadful Tehrani dungeon, suffered a slower decline, and Queen Victoria, whom Bahá’u’lláh praised and whose response was the most favourable of all, escaped calamity altogether.

In fact, Bahá’u’lláh sent two letters to Napoleon III. The first one he was reported to have tossed behind him haughtily, exclaiming, “If this man is God, I am two Gods!” and furthermore it was laughably construed to be a veiled request for money! The second letter was more stern. It began: “O King of Paris! Tell the priests to ring the bell no longer. By God, the True One! The Most Mighty Bell hath appeared in the form of Him Who is the Most Great Name.” After several paragraphs in this vein, He confronted Napoleon regarding his hypocrisy in the Crimean War: “Thou didst say: ‘. . . the cry of the oppressed, who were drowned in the Black Sea, wakened me.’ . . . We testify that that which wakened thee was not their cry but the promptings of thine own passions, for We tested thee, and found thee wanting . . . From what thou hast done, thy kingdom shall be thrown into confusion, and thine empire shall pass from thy hands, as a punishment for that which thou hast wrought.”

His descent began within a year: in May 1870 he was confirmed in a popular vote, but corruption and dissent in the army revealed itself when by July when he declared war on Prussia as part of a scheme to install Leopold von Hohenzollern on the Spanish throne. After several ghastly and catastrophic defeats, the mighty French army received its coup de grace on September 1 at Sedan, and the Second Empire was ended in one fell swoop. Napoleon spent the remaining three years of his life in exile in England, but as a final punctuation mark, his son was killed in the Zulu Campaign in 1879.

The French agent in Palestine who translated and sent the second letter became a Bahá’í himself when he witnessed the prophecies so remarkably fulfilled.

Collateral Damage

2008-04-17T15:59:00.001-07:00

The persecution of Baháí’s in Iran has spilled over to a high-profile non- Bahá’í citizen, an eminent personage no less than the 2003 Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi. On April 14 the AFP reported that she had been receiving death threats pinned to her office building entry, signed by the “Association of Anti- Bahá’ís.” Ebadi is not a Bahá’í, so what’s their beef? Other groups in the country have been less than comfortable with her promotion of the rights of women and children, and her speeches made abroad on justice. But this group cites her “un-Islamic and “Bahá’í-based faith,” and include her daughter in these threats. Bahá’í-based? That’s a new one! Is this a reference to the Bahá’í principle of the Equality of the Sexes?
The Islamic Republic defends its record on human rights and its treatment of religious minorities, but it does not consider the Bahá’í Faith a religion but rather an apostasy of Islam, and therefore feels justified in denying the Bahá’ís the rights granted other minorities. The denied right currently receiving the most worldwide attention is that of higher education, and not only the Bahá’í Faith but campus groups around the globe and even the Presidency of the European Union are expressing their outrage and calling for justice. In America, a proposed bill from Illinois Congressman Kirk is gaining momentum and the American Federation of Teachers is expressing concern.

Ebadi has not been taking these threats as ideological rather than personal and has assigned a fellow colleague to defend her case.

Spirit in Celluloid

2008-04-08T14:56:00.000-07:00

Easter brings the inevitable: children biting the ears off chocolate rabbits, and the spate of Jesus movies featuring in the starring role what look like washed-up, drug-sodden ex-rockers in the final stages of syphyllitic decline. Why is that? Even as a child I knew for certain that Jesus didn’t look or behave like those clueless indigents out of whose mouths the very words of the Son of God sounded inane.

So the Bahá’í injunction prohibiting the representation of Holy Personages as characters in a story makes a lot of sense to me. The central reason is that we cannot do them justice – cute as some find the idea, God isn’t “just a slob like one of us.” The only portrayal of a Manifestation of God that had any ring of truth to it for me was Charlton Heston (died April 5, 2008) as Moses in The Ten Commandments. But his more recent freeze-frame image was not holding up Moses’ staff, but a shotgun for the NRA. Likewise Willem Defoe moved from portraying Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ to the evil villain in Spiderman – it just doesn’t sit right. (Here’s a bit of trivia: James Caviezel – the actor portraying Jesus -- was struck by lightning during the filming of The Passion of the Christ, which somehow didn’t attract as much attention as the director’s subsequent racist remarks under the influence of alcohol, a potent truth serum.) Morgan Freeman as God? Or George Burns? Granted these were comedies, but it underscores the painful fact that Hollywood doesn’t understand God or spirituality in any meaningful way. Even Martin Scorsese’s Kundun (about the Dalai Lama), respectful, though it was, was a grand spectacle that was otherwise devoid of drama, displeasing the critics.

There are many inherent difficulties in filming religious narratives, not the least of which is that the stories from the Bible and other Holy Books are well-known, removing most of the suspense and locking in the main features of the story. (Tricks like Deepak Chopra’s recent novel of the Buddha, in which he introduces a number of fictional central characters, won’t fly with the much more vigilant Christian church authorities.) In the theatre of the past, from ancient Calcutta to the Passion Plays of European Middle Ages, this was a strength, not a weakness, and modern film-making surely can be creative within these constraints, but only if it is respectful and reverent rather than wishing to put the past into the service of contemporary ideologies or individual quirks, which Bahá’ulláh stigmatized as “idle fancies and vain imaginings.” And, speaking of Buddhism, the fabulous American Buddhist children’s author and illustrator Demi was commissioned to create a book on the Prophet Muhammad, and had her illustrations complete before discovering that Islam had a similar, though not identical prohibition. Nonplussed at first, she covered over the form of the Prophet with gold.

Classical Greek drama is replete with human actions that boggle the mind, but they were never represented onstage, but rather recounted by eyewitnesses. Now they didn’t have the resources of the Bayreuth Opera House, but we still study them today as some of the greatest examples of the thespian art. I never saw the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but I’m told that the real horror of it was that it happened off-camera, leaving the imagination to plumb its own depths of fear, while subsequent filmings of the story were weakened by the graphic gore. Mystery, suspense, drama, and intrigue can be heightened by the conspicuous absence of the God-figure onscreen, making the potency of their imminence feel even greater. Ha, if Godot can drive a plot with his non-existence, how much more the Creator of the Cosmos and His emissaries?

I am one of those people that often re-imagines a film the way I would have made it, or visualize the way a story could be put on the big screen. And a recurring technique in this inner cinema is that the camera is the eye of a witness or protagonist, making the story a first-person narrative and giving it an immediacy that no voice-over could ever give. I offer this suggestion of this rarely-used technique to any enterprising young filmmaker who can make fruitful use of it.

Attempt to Torch a Baha'i in Shiraz March 19

2008-03-20T12:16:00.000-07:00

The following is the text of the report sent by the person who was engulfed earlier today in persecutions directed at Baha'is in Shiraz by a certain group called Sarbazan Gumnam Imam Zaman.for the Ministry of Intelligence and Security of the Province of Fars :

"The Esteemed Ministry of Intelligence and Security of the Province of Fars ;

"With respect, attached please find a copy of a warning letter dated 17 March 2008 sent by the group Sarbazan Gumnam Imam Zaman ('the unknown soldiers of the Lord of the Age'), indicating that I and eight others will be publicly executed for being Baha'is.

"Today, 19 March 2008, I parked my automobile in Davari Street in order to attend to a business engagement in Sadi Street . I attended to my work on Sadi Street and when I returned to my car and opened its door, I noticed a person [on the sidewalk] who was holding a gallon size container. He asked me for gasoline, saying, "My family is in my car [which has ran out of gas] and if possible, please give me some gas so I can reach the gas station." I opened my gas tank, but didn't have a hose. He went to his car, in which a woman in a black chador was sitting in the front seat, and from the truck brought out a hose. He siphoned gas from my tank and filled his gallon container.

"He then placed the container on the asphalt and from behind grabbed me firmly, placing one hand over my mouth. At the same time another person, who appeared to be passing by on the sidewalk, quickly came forward and helped him carry me to a nearby tree where they chained me and secured it with a lock around my neck. They then poured gasoline all over me. The first person quickly went to his car and got in. The second person struck a match and threw it towards me. But it did not light. The second match died when struck. The third match struck my clothes and extinguished. The fourth and final match fell near my foot and while it was lit, I put it out with my shoe.

"At that point, he too ran away and got into the car and together they disappeared. Two kids were riding their bicycles in the same sidewalk and saw me. I called them forward. At the same time, one of the residences was leaving his house in his car. I also called him, and upon seeing the situation, he was frightened. I told him, "Call 110 [the emergency in Iran ]". But he said, "I'm not from here; ask someone else." He left. Other residents began to tell each other and soon a crowd was gathered.

"By that time, I was beginning to recover somewhat. I noticed my own mobile phone and called 110. Other residents also called the emergency services. After a half an hour, officers came from Zand police station. At first, they tried to break the chain with an axe, to no avail. Then one of the neighbors brought some keys and managed to open the lock.

"One of the officers placed me in his car and took me to the police station; where a report was prepared, which I enclose.

"With respect."

(Signature withheld.
29.12.1386 [19 March 2008])

From the Sarbazan Gumnam Imam Zamam:

"In the Name of God, the Sentry of the blood of martyrs and the Destroyer of corrupts and oppressors!

"Mr. _________ [name removed by Iranian Baha'is]

"Another page is recorded in the golden tablet of the Islamic Revolution, so that future generations will know that Islam and Muslims are vigilant and would not fall prey to the trickery of the devotees and spies of Israel , nor would they allow followers of the pure religion of Muhammad to be deceived by charlatans like you. Therefore, in accordance with the research conducted by the Sarbazan Gumnam of the Imam Zaman, established in the city of [Shiraz] you and eight other infidels (i.e. Baha'is) are condemned to revolutionary execution which will be soon carried out publicly.

"As a follower of the false Prophets Baha'u'llah and Siyyid-e Bab, ask them, if indeed they are true, to prevent the execution of this decree, and much like Abraham the Friend, for Whom God made the fire cool, to cool the fire for you.

"Let this serve as a warning notice for all your co-religionists."

-- Ahang Rabbani, PhD http://ahang.rabbani.googlepages.com/ _

Solomon's Ring

2008-03-13T16:32:00.000-07:00

The Bahá’í period of fasting is during the daylight hours of March 2-20 every year, and is mandated and intended as a time of spiritual renewal, so all other considerations associated with it – nutrition, health benefits, work, losing weight, etc., are all secondary to this chief objective. And since the central intent is spiritual, Bahá’ís may certainly gather to break the Fast together and enjoy fellowship, but not hold large feasts to gorge themselves in the dark. Nor is it a time to distract oneself with frivolous activity, but to increase prayer and reflection.

A wee little confession: in my early days of studying the Bahá’í Writings, I encountered these words in a prayer for the Fast: “Thou hast endowed every hour of these days with a special virtue, inscrutable to all except Thee.” I took this to mean that every hour had its own particular and separate virtue, and wanted to make sure I didn’t miss out on a single one of them. I still don’t want to miss a single hour of it, but am much more serene in my approach.

It is personally my most favourite time of the year; I actually fasted during the two years before I declared myself a Bahá’í. During this time perceptions are sharp, spiritual insights abound, and the words of the Scriptures penetrate the heart as at no other time. The appetite for sublime beauty is insatiable, the waves of love sweep the heart out of control, the sweetness of music sets dancing every molecule and pore. Life is awesomely, ineffably wondrous.

Physically, it is not difficult, though I should speak for myself. It just means skipping lunch and to ensure enough liquid intake before sunrise to combat dehydration. Even with that it is much more than the vast majority of the people of the world get for their daily intake.

I don’t want the Fast to end, and often toy with the thought of simply carrying on well after the prescribed date, but inevitably by the end, it is physically wearing, and the body is happy to resume is normal regimen.

One year I was so eager to reap a winter harvest from the Fast that I decided to go it alone during November – this is allowed, but not as a replacement for the March Fast. I was very disappointed in the result. The days were, in Toronto, much shorter than in March, and the whole spiritual atmosphere was quite different – November is a busy month for Bahá’ís, with two holy days (one of them commemorated in the wee hours of the morning), 2 Feasts, the Day of the Covenant, Unity in Diversity Week, and hardly has a November passed where other dates have not been added for various reasons (Thanksgiving in America, etc.). So whether it’s the time of year or whether it’s the synergistic effect of all the Bahá’ís around the world participating in this together, or that it is specially ordained, the March month of fasting is what delivers the goods.

And each and every Fast is unique, with One of the highlights for me this year is chanting one of the long fast prayers in the Bahá’í House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois. This is as good as it gets.

And what are these aforementioned insights? Some of them can be articulated, and some just cannot. They are highly personal, and one really needs to explore this for oneself. They are as unexpected as they are unasked, and are breathtaking as only grace can be. The month is replete with e-mail testimonials from friends around the world on the subject, but no one has said it better than Jalauddin Rumi, the 14th Century Persian mystic poet:

There is an unseen sweetness in the stomach’s emptiness.
We are lutes. When the soundbox is filled, no music can come forth.
When the brain and belly are burning from fasting, every moment a new song rises out of the fire.
The mists are clear, and a new vitality makes you spring up the steps before you.
Be empty and cry as a reed instrument.
Be empty and write secrets with a reed pen.
When satiated by food and drink, an unsightly metal statue is seated where your spirit should be.
When fasting, good habits gather like helpful friends.
Fasting is Solomon’s ring. Don’t give in to illusion and lose your power.
But even when all will and control have been lost, they will return when you fast, like soldiers appearing out of the ground, or pennants flying in the breeze. A table descends to your tents, the Lord’s table.
Anticipate seeing it when fasting, this table spread with a different food, far better than the broth of cabbages.

SaveYourself By Telling the Truth

2008-02-25T15:41:00.000-08:00

Camelia -- Save Yourself By Telling the Truth is a personal memoir of Camelia Entekhabifard, an Iranian journalist who suffered persecution and imprisonment in her homeland in 1999. As a Bahá’í, I am accustomed to hearing heroic and self-sacrificing accounts of persection and martyrdom in Iran, true martyrdom in which souls stand up for what they believe and face the consequences joyfully and without fear. But the author is by her own admission a spoiled little rich girl whose family had enjoyed privilege in the time of the Shah and were habituated to European vacations. Whatever historical background she gives are relevant only as the orbit to her own unexemplary life. Typically, when the family heard of the announcement of the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, her mother became hysterical and beat her for no reason she could fathom, and she freely admits: “To me, the first important thing that happened to me was that the schools were closed for a week and the final exams were postponed.”

Yes, she endured the wrath of the new regime in the form of fundamentalist vigilantes in school and on the streets as a child and as an adult and a journalist was imprisoned and interrogated for 70 days without justification, as a “spy for Israel.” Her account of her interrogator is not within the context of justice, but in the absurd context of her falling in love with her abuser, though neither sees each other’s face. And when she is given a list of sixty-seven men she has allegedly had relations with, which include several close relatives, she begins to lie and lie and lie, with the view of saving her own skin, since that is what everyone is Iran does, according to her. A typical reply was, “I wasn’t educated properly, I wasn’t a good Muslim, I was addicted to sex. I’m so full of sin you should punish me however you decide.” She also recounts her tawdry love affair with the nation’s most famous soccer player which, after the initial flush of not love but notoriety, fizzles unceremoniously out since neither of their expectations works out – she wants life in the fast lane, the jet set, while he wants a wife who will cook him several meals a day. How banal!

The subtitle of the book is misleading, inasmuch as it suggests clinging to the truth as one’s weapon against corruption, injustice, and tyranny, and with that weapon one would prevail, either in this world or the next. We find, however, that these words were addressed to her by her interrogator, and “the truth” was far from the intention of either of them. His was extracting from her the confessions his superiors wanted to hear, and hers was to secure her freedom with as little pain and as soon as possible, by any means necessary. She attempts to impress us with her clever prevarication in her quest for her own freedom, her ability to survive and thrive, which is her prerogative as a memoirist, but if we’re looking for a bona fide heroine here, we are bound to be disappointed by this self-absorption.

She achieves national attention as a young poet – even this under false pretences, as she reads a love poem which she misrepresents as being inspired by and directed towards the Ayatollah. In her book, she resorts to a non-chronological narrative, juxtaposing her halcyon youth with her barbaric treatment at the hands of her jailers. This writer hopes he is not being unfair, and though himself having escaped a totalitarian regime under dramatic circumstances, has never been subjected to intense personal persecution. Still, this book compares quite unfavourably with Azar Nafizi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran, which was told in the context of a love of beauty in literature, or certainly with the heroic episodes of such accounts as The Dawn-Breakers, which are still unfortunately little-known outside of Bahá’í readership, but which nevertheless I believe will before long sweep the world.

The book is not without virtues, even if incidentally. To North Americans, and even to Bahá’ís at large, Iran is seen as a monolithic, backward culture of Islamic fundamentalists, and their leaders are demonized as such in the media. Accounts such as this give us at least a glimpse of the complexity and diversity of Iranian society, its class clashes, its struggles between tradition and modernity, its shifting patchwork of religion and politics, and its pride in its glorious heritage. For this little girl, perhaps the greatest shock outside her sometimes petty personal concerns is the aggressive replacement of the Persian culture of her family and ancestry by the foreign values of the Ayatollah’s theocracy.

Another element is her relationship with her interrogator, with whom she says she falls in love, but manipulates to fall in love with her in order to win her freedom, and their love/fear/power struggle relationship continues after her release in an ugly and indecent affair. This seems like a microcosm of the relationship Middle Easterners tend to have with their leaders, bizarre as it may jangle in Western ears.

She mentions the Bahá’ís twice, briefly. On page 154, her mother’s words: “. . . this Nava is a Bahá’í and unclean . . .” On page 179, while she was incarcerated: “I was given religious books from the prison library to read. One of the books was about the candle stuffing of the Bahá’ís by Amir Kabir. The book told how he persecuted them and would stuff all the orifices of their bodies with lit candles and parade them around the city in a ghastly spectacle. My stomach churned, and I shut the book in disgust. It was horrifying.” This disgust doesn’t seem to have translated into any subsequent journalistic search after truth on her part. Her most scandalous piece, never published, was on the prostitutes (wives for a day) in the clerical city of Qom. I submit that to write of the plight of the Iranian Bahá’ís who sacrifice themselves with no personal thought but rather for the spiritual regeneration of the entire human civilization would be a more worthy enterprise. This link would be a good place to begin: www.kdkfactory.com/quench/

The Great Need of the Hour

2008-02-08T05:08:00.000-08:00

In a speech delivered in a church in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 20, 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama, addressed the congregation with words echoing Dr. Martin Luther King: “Unity is the great need of the hour.”

Much of this speech dealt with political matters on which I am not qualified to speak, and included much Civil Rights jargon which, as a Canadian, I simply cannot relate to with the fervour that stirs Americans. The part which grabbed my attention was the apparent realization that unity is the key to solving the nation’s (and, by extension, the world’s) insoluble problems. There is a widespread unexamined notion that unity is something we will achieve at the end of our efforts to put humanity on the right track for the future, after we have confronted and triumphed over the myriad social, ecological, political, moral, technological, and economic challenges of our age, whereas Bahá’ís proceed on the assumption that unity must come first, and is in fact the essential element without which progress is stalled in the quagmire we find ourselves in as humanity’s ills only deepen and the wisest of the wise are struck dumb with helplessness. Perhaps the most oft-quoted passage in the Bahá’í Writings is: “The well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established.” This is emphatic and unequivocal.

Please let it be clear that I am not endorsing any candidate and have not an iota of interest in partisan politics, merely the hope of the paradigm shift, the idea whose time has come, aided by those who have the ear of the multitudes. Here are the relevant nuggets from Senator Obama’s remarks, to mull in our own hearts, irrespective of politics:

“Unity is the great need of the hour - the great need of this hour. Not because it sounds pleasant or because it makes us feel good, but because it's the only way we can overcome the essential deficit that exists in this country.

“I'm not talking about a budget deficit. I'm not talking about a trade deficit. I'm not talking about a deficit of good ideas or new plans.

“I'm talking about a moral deficit. I'm talking about an empathy deficit. I'm taking about an inability to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we are our brother's keeper; we are our sister's keeper; that, in the words of Dr. King, we are all tied together in a single garment of destiny.

“All too often, we seek to ignore the profound institutional barriers that stand in the way of ensuring opportunity for all children, or decent jobs for all people, or health care for those who are sick. We long for unity, but are unwilling to pay the price.

“But of course, true unity cannot be so easily won. It starts with a change in attitudes - a broadening of our minds, and a broadening of our hearts.

“We are told that those who differ from us on a few things are different from us on all things; that our problems are the fault of those who don't think like us or look like us or come from where we do. The welfare queen is taking our tax money. The immigrant is taking our jobs. The believer condemns the non-believer as immoral, and the non-believer chides the believer as intolerant.

“So let us say that on this day of all days, each of us carries with us the task of changing our hearts and minds. The division, the stereotypes, the scape-goating, the ease with which we blame our plight on others - all of this distracts us from the common challenges we face - war and poverty; injustice and inequality. We can no longer afford to build ourselves up by tearing someone else down.

“The Scripture tells us that we are judged not just by word, but by deed. And if we are to truly bring about the unity that is so crucial in this time, we must find it within ourselves to act on what we know; to understand that living up to this country's ideals and its possibilities will require great effort and resources; sacrifice and stamina.”

Divine and Human

2008-02-01T09:52:00.000-08:00

In 1900 Leo Tolstoy was not only a world-famous writer, but arguably the most famous person in the world. Spiritual crises tormented him relentlessly from an early age right up until his death; he had an intense desire for the ascetic life to search for the ultimate meaning of life, but his wife would have none of it. His struggles led him into the study of Oriental religions and got him excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church for blasphemy. As early as 1855 Tolstoy wrote in his diary plans to create a new religion “cleansed of faith and mystery, a practical religion, not promising future bliss, but giving bliss on earth.” He sought religion with social justice without prejudice and superstition. In the twilight of his life he encountered the Bahá’í Faith, which fit the bill of his searching. We have on record a number of references he made to the Faith: speaking of the eternal enigma called life, and deploring the fact that we spend our entire earth allotment of time trying to solve the riddle, he goes on to add: “But there is a Persian prophet who holds the key.” His most explicit endorsement: “The teaching of the Bábís have great future before them....I therefore sympathize the Bábísm with all my heart, inasmuch as it teaches people brotherhood and equality and sacrifice of material life for service to God....The teachings of the Bábís which come to us out of Islám have through Bahá'u'lláh's teachings been gradually developed, and now present us with the highest and purest form of religious teaching.” The year after his death, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was in London, where he said, “I received a letter from Tolstoy, and in it he said that he wished to write a book upon Bahá'u'lláh.”

Alas, he did not leave such a work to posterity. But recently I perused a newly-translated sampling of his later short stories under the title Divine and Human, and looked for tell-tale signs of Bahá’í influence on his writing. I did find about a half-dozen passages which it seemed to me couldn’t have been written without this influence, but this is nevertheless speculation on my part. However, one of the stories, A Coffeehouse in the City of Surat, could well have been told by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá himself. A Persian scholar studied the essence of God all his life, but in the end became confused, and the king exiled him. So in this coffeehouse in India, he has a conversation with his slave about God, which attracts the interest of a number of travelers who happen to be there at the time. In turns a Brahmin priest, a Jewish moneychanger, an Italian Catholic, a Protestant pastor, and a Turkish customs officer expounded on the nature of the one true God from their own limited perspectives, and a great commotion ensued where everyone argued. All participated in the melee but one Chinaman who sat quietly in the corner. Observing this, they stopped their arguing and asked the Confucian to arbitrate. Instead of choosing any one of them as a victor, he told a parable about traveling all over the world and listening to people argue childishly about the nature of the sun, each claiming the sun for themselves. Finally the skipper of the ship, who had seen the sun in all these various regions set them all straight. Tolstoy has the Chinaman wrap up the story thus:

“And tell me now, whose temple can compare with that which was created by God himself when he wanted to unite all people into one faith? All human temples are copies of this temple—that is, the world created by God. All temples have domes and ceilings, all temples have lanterns, icons, images, inscriptions, books of laws, sacrifices, altars, and priests. Which temple has a bath as great as the world’s oceans, or a dome as high as the heavenly dome, or lanterns like the sun, moon, and stars; or images such as people living together, loving and helping each other? Are there any mere inscriptions about the love of God that are more easily understood than the blessings God gives us for our happiness? Where is the book of law more easily understood than the law of love, which is written on our hearts? Where are the sacrifices equal to the ones people give every day to those they love? Where is the altar that compares with the heart of a kind person in which God himself receives the sacrifice?

“The more one tries to understand God, the closer one will come to him, reflecting God’s goodness, mercy and love to everyone.

“Let him who sees the whole light of the sun that fills the world not despise the superstitious man who sees only one ray of this very same sun in his idol. Let him also not despise the unbeliever, who is blind and cannot see any light at all.”

When the Chinese man had said this, all the people in the coffeehouse ceased their arguments about whose religion was the best.

Whack the Platypus

2008-01-28T15:51:00.000-08:00

A current bestselling novelty book is entitled Plato and Platypus Walk Into a Bar, which quite deftly explains philosophy through jokes, most of which we’ve hear before, but their context makes them funnier in the deconstruction process. On page 86, it lists the various incarnations of the Golden Rule in spiritual traditions chronologically. Bahá’ís are very familiar with this, as we often use this to illustrate the unity of religion, and I was pleased to see Bahá’u’lláh’s Arabic Hidden Word #29 quoted: “O Son of Being! Ascribe not to any soul that which thou wouldst not have ascribed to thee, and say not that which thou doest not. This is My command unto thee, do thou observe it.” And since it was chronological, the Bahá’í quotations are always final. However, the authors located one even more recent, from Episode Twelve of the Sopranos: “Whack the next guy wit the same respect you’d like to be whacked with, you know?” Ha ha ha!! I got a good laugh out of that one.

Epistle to a Philosopher

2008-01-16T13:35:00.000-08:00

(Recently sent to Jacob Needleman at San Francisco University)

Dear Professor Needleman,

I read your book Why Can’t We Be Good? with keen interest and genuine enthusiasm, and thought you might like to hear from a reader with no professional or academic skew in its apprehension. I was drawn to many aspects of your presentation and argument, one of which was keeping God in the equation without making it contentious in any way; another was that you kept the content personal, both for yourself and the reader, thus maintaining a knife-edge immediacy and keeping it on a plane of human intimacy rather than imposing the imperious distance of the theoretical.

I do not have venom- or envy-tinted glasses, and am hereby an admirer, though not flatterer. I noticed from your jacket biography that you are a former director of the Center of the Study of New Religions at Berkeley. From that I have to tentatively surmise that you are acquainted with the Bahá’í Faith, though if you are you didn’t breathe a specific word of it in this particular work.

As a lifelong student of the inner mysteries, I recognize and commend that though your commitment to your Jewish Faith is evident, you do more than give token honour to the world’s great spiritual traditions. As a Bahá’í myself, I can pay you no greater tribute than to confirm many of your hard-won insights with the supreme authority of the Word of God, and invite you to investigate for yourself the veracity of its claims.

On pg. 6 you wrote: “But to know these ideas only with the mind is not enough. They must be allowed to penetrate a man or a woman’s heart and soul down to the very tissues of the body. Struggle with and within oneself is necessary to allow the inner opening to what is called God, a force which alone makes possible a sense of responsibility to one’s neighbor, and hence, genuine moral action.”

Shoghi Effendi, Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith, in a letter to the believers of America, dated Sept. 24, 1924, made this unequivocal statement: “One thing and only one thing will unfailingly and alone secure the undoubted triumph of this sacred Cause, namely, the extent to which our own inner life and private character mirror forth in their manifold aspects the splendour of those eternal principles proclaimed by Bahá'u'lláh.”

Throughout the first half of the book you refer to the marvelous phenomenon of “thinking together.” For every Bahá’í, high or low, and for all the Institutions of the Faith, this mandated. Since there is no clergy in the Faith and for the sake of unity it is forbidden to foist one’s understanding of the scripture on anyone else -- “For the faith of no man can be conditioned by any one except himself.”1 -- Bahá’ís habitually “deepen” (note this word) their understanding by studying together. And to all is given the command to “consult,” an innocuous and unglamourous-sounding word with far-reaching ramifications. “Consultation bestoweth greater awareness and transmuteth conjecture into certitude. It is a shining light which, in a dark world, leadeth the way and guideth. For everything there is and will continue to be a station of perfection and maturity. The maturity of the gift of understanding is made manifest through consultation.”2
Breaking the Semitic tradition of arguing for one-upmanship, we are told that, “The shining spark of truth cometh forth only after the clash of differing opinions.”3 In fact, the guidance is unequivocal: “The text of the Divine Book is this: If two souls quarrel and contend about a question of the Divine questions, differing and disputing, both are wrong. The wisdom of this incontrovertible law of God is this: That between two souls from amongst the believers of God, no contention and dispute might arise; that they may speak with each other with infinite amity and love. Should there appear the least trace of controversy, they must remain silent, and both parties must continue their discussions no longer, but ask the reality of the question from the Interpreter. This is the irrefutable command!”4
The model of consultation operates thus: when the friends desire a solution to a problem, they gather together with the mindset of seeking the best path, purging their breasts of any other motive. Then they pray together in sincerity to unify their hearts and minds. Then each person puts their best ideas on the table, freely and frankly (but with courtesy and moderation), and no one must belittle the idea of another. But – and this is the pivotal point – once an idea is expressed, it is no longer that person’s idea, but the property of the group in its consultation. So there is no jockeying for position or lobbying for one’s own ideas over another’s. It is though the table were a boiling cauldron in which the ideas are stirred until the right solution presents itself. The group strives for consensus; failing this, a vote is taken, and the majority prevails. Once a decision is reached, all the members accept it spontaneously and unreservedly, and implement it forthwith. There is no dissension; if an individual strongly believes that the wrong decision was arrived at, he may ask for the mater to be raised again, but he does not criticize it to others.
I’m sure this scenario will raise an eyebrow or two and give rise to many questions.

On pg. 86, you state: “How to remember, how to see that being swallowed by moral despair (and its crippled spawn of guilt and passive helplessness) actually conceals from us the fact that we simply do not understand what Man is, what place he occupies in the cosmos.” Bahá'u'lláh makes this extraordinary assertion: “All men have been created to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization.”5 Therefore, there are no superfluous men, and all play a part in the destiny of the human race.

One of your noble themes is the nature of true love and its expression. You may be inspired, even astounded perhaps, by this description of love given by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: “Know thou of a certainty that Love is the secret of God's holy Dispensation, the manifestation of the All-Merciful, the fountain of spiritual outpourings. Love is heaven's kindly light, the Holy Spirit's eternal breath that vivifieth the human soul. Love is the cause of God's revelation unto man, the vital bond inherent, in accordance with the divine creation, in the realities of things. Love is the one means that ensureth true felicity both in this world and the next. Love is the light that guideth in darkness, the living link that uniteth God with man, that assureth the progress of every illumined soul. Love is the most great law that ruleth this mighty and heavenly cycle, the unique power that bindeth together the divers elements of this material world, the supreme magnetic force that directeth the movements of the spheres in the celestial realms. Love revealeth with unfailing and limitless power the mysteries latent in the universe. Love is the spirit of life unto the adorned body of mankind, the establisher of true civilization in this mortal world, and the shedder of imperishable glory upon every high-aiming race and nation.”6

Or by Bahá'u'lláh on justice: “O son of Spirit! The best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice; turn not away therefrom if thou desirest Me, and neglect it not that I may confide in thee. By its aid thou shalt see with thine own eyes and not through the eyes of others, and shalt know of thine own knowledge and not through the knowledge of thy neighbor. Ponder this in thy heart; how it behooveth thee to be. Verily justice is My gift to thee and the sign of My loving-kindness. Set it then before thine eyes.”7

One of your most beautiful passages can be found on pg. 246: “. . . pure duty, pure morality, is intrinsically joyous; it is meant as a call to that in us which brings ultimate happiness and meaning to human life.” In the first 5 paragraphs of His Most Holy Book of laws for this Dispensation, Bahá'u'lláh writes, “O ye peoples of the world! Know assuredly that My commandments are the lamps of My loving providence among My servants, and the keys of My mercy for My creatures. Thus hath it been sent down from the heaven of the Will of your Lord, the Lord of Revelation. Were any man to taste the sweetness of the words which the lips of the All-Merciful have willed to utter, he would, though the treasures of the earth be in his possession, renounce them one and all, that he might vindicate the truth of even one of His commandments, shining above the Dayspring of His bountiful care and loving-kindness.” “Think not that We have revealed unto you a mere code of laws. Nay, rather, We have unsealed the choice Wine with the fingers of might and power. To this beareth witness that which the Pen of Revelation hath revealed. Meditate upon this, O men of insight!” Furhter, “They whom God hath endued with insight will readily recognize that the precepts laid down by God constitute the highest means for the maintenance of order in the world and the security of its peoples . . .We, verily, have commanded you to refuse the dictates of your evil passions and corrupt desires, and not to transgress the bounds which the Pen of the Most High hath fixed, for these are the breath of life unto all created things.” Morever, here’s the joy: “From My laws the sweet-smelling savour of My garment can be smelled, and by their aid the standards of Victory will be planted upon the highest peaks. The Tongue of My power hath, from the heaven of My omnipotent glory, addressed to My creation these words: ‘Observe My commandments, for the love of My beauty.’ Happy is the lover that hath inhaled the divine fragrance of his Best-Beloved from these words, laden with the perfume of a grace which no tongue can describe.” And finally, the challenge: “The first duty prescribed by God for His servants is the recognition of Him Who is the Dayspring of His Revelation and the Fountain of His laws, Who representeth the Godhead in both the Kingdom of His Cause and the world of creation. Whoso achieveth this duty hath attained unto all good; and whoso is deprived thereof hath gone astray, though he be the author of every righteous deed. It behoveth every one who reacheth this most sublime station, this summit of transcendent glory, to observe every ordinance of Him Who is the Desire of the world. These twin duties are inseparable. Neither is acceptable without the other. Thus hath it been decreed by Him Who is the Source of Divine inspiration.”8

Part of your assessment on pg. 249 reads: “Progress made in one sphere is inevitably offset by barbarism in another.” Witness Bahá'u'lláh’s apostrophe to the leaders of the world: “O ye the elected representatives of the people in every land! Take ye counsel together, and let your concern be only for that which profiteth mankind and bettereth the condition thereof, if ye be of them that scan heedfully. Regard the world as the human body which, though at its creation whole and perfect, hath been afflicted, through various causes, with grave disorders and maladies. Not for one day did it gain ease, nay its sickness waxed more severe, as it fell under the treatment of ignorant physicians, who gave full rein to their personal desires and have erred grievously. And if, at one time, through the care of an able physician, a member of that body was healed, the rest remained afflicted as before . . . We behold it, in this day, at the mercy of rulers so drunk with pride that they cannot discern clearly their own best advantage, much less recognize a Revelation so bewildering and challenging as this. And whenever any one of them hath striven to improve its condition, his motive hath been his own gain, whether confessedly so or not; and the unworthiness of this motive hath limited his power to heal or cure.
“That which the Lord hath ordained as the sovereign remedy and mightiest instrument for the healing of all the world is the union of all its peoples in one universal Cause, one common Faith. This can in no wise be achieved except through the power of a skilled, an all-powerful and inspired Physician. This, verily, is the truth, and all else naught but error.”9

And finally, on page 19 you assert: “God is One – yes, but also, and of the highest importance: God is Oneness. God is Unity.” Bahá’ís believe not only in the unity of God, the unity of His Manifestations, and the unity of religion, but are entrusted with a thousand-year mission to effect the organic unity of the entire human race, for as Bahá'u'lláh famously proclaimed: “The well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established. This unity can never be achieved so long as the counsels which the Pen of the Most High hath revealed are suffered to pass unheeded.”10 “It is incumbent upon every man of insight and understanding to strive to translate that which hath been written into reality and action.”11

1 Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh, pg. 143
2 Bahá'u'lláh, The Compilation of Compilations. Vol. I, p. 93, #168
3 Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu'l-Bahá, pg. 87
4 Bahá’í World Faith, pg. 428-429
5 Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh, pg. 214
6 Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu'l-Bahá, pg. 26
7 Bahá'u'lláh, The Arabic Hidden Words, #2
8 Bahá'u'lláh, The Kitáb-i-Aqdas, par. 1-5
9 Bahá'u'lláh, The Summons of the Lord of Hosts, pg. 90-92
10 Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh, pg. 286
12 Tablets of Baha'u'llah, pg. 166

(The Bahá’í Writings may be found at http://www.bahai-library.org/)

May you receive continued blessings and confirmations on your unremitting search for what is true and real.

An Open Letter to Bahá’í Fiction Writers

2008-01-10T12:19:00.000-08:00

I would like like to address those Bahá’ís who wish to write stories and novels, and to some extent, plays (poetry is an altogether different matter), caution against some pitfalls, and offer some words of encouragement.

The worst mistake and the one to avoid the most is to be didactic, to make the story an excuse for teaching the Faith. As all Bahá’ís are exhorted to teach the Faith and are in varying degrees eager to do so, it may seem only natural to think of fiction as a way of reaching a wide public for disseminating Bahá’í ideas. There are already a number of science fiction books in circulation written by Bahá’ís which examine Bahá’í principles in futuristic settings, and there is certainly a large market out there for inspirational books, either of purely Christian ideals or the pseudo-mystical exoticism of writers such as Paulo Coelho, but here I wish to deal with books with higher artistic aspirations, those that attempt to plumb the depths of the human soul, to express the inexpressible, make others see what they themselves are searching for, to find the truly beautiful.

Another mistake would be to make the Bahá’í characters in a story paragons of virtue, perfect exemplars of an ideal Bahá’í life, better than anyone else, holier-than-thou; worse still, mouthpieces for the teachings of the Faith, for not only would that be poor fiction, but who would want to read it? Virtually any story you can name is in large part about the consequences of breaking one or more of the Ten Commandments or succumbing to one of the Seven Deadly Sins, and the staple of television fare is people lying and misrepresenting themselves in seeking fame, fortune, and other objects of their desires, or simply trying to save face. No, the arts have various rules of their own, which are not above spiritual principles, but are different in nature. Characters themselves may and must hold to certain beliefs, but as soon as they are puppets to an author’s agenda, readers can sniff it out and lose interest. They accuse the author of preaching rather than telling a real human drama. So if, for instance, you wish to show the superiority of consultation in solving the problems of everything from family crises to international conflagrations, you must find a way to make it part and parcel of a human drama that really grabs people’s attention and can hold it.

A story, among other things, needs suspense, conflict, moral ambiguities/dilemmas, temptation, ghosts, mistaken identity, sexual tension, betrayals, class struggle, greed, aggression, longing and the perils of romance to grip the reader and move the plot, all of which and more are absent or unequivocal in Divine Revelation but which consume the inner and outer lives of humans. Spiritual teachings are the antidote to the fires raging within, but oddly resist being the denouement even in a voyage of self-discovery. Witness the drama of Raskolnikov’s purgatory in the aftermath of the murder he committed in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and the flat and unsatisfying redemption and revivification in the arms of Sophie, the soulful prostitute, in Siberia. There are many instructional manuals on how to write fiction, among the best being those of Eudora Welty and Jack Hodgins, and above and beyond that one must read many good books, dissect them to find their inner workings, and then transmogrify one’s experiences and perceptions into stories that will delight, astonish, and challenge others.

The very best model I know of a writer who weaves religion into his work in a meaningful and artistic way, making faith, religious principles, and the moral and ethical struggles of breathing human beings the warp and woof of the fabric of narrative and plot is Isaac Bashevis Singer, a Jew from Poland who moved to New York and wrote in Yiddish, but whose works are all available in English. Almost any of his many novels and stories are a clinic in how to do this, perhaps most notably Satan in Goray or The Slave. There are a handful of others, of course, such as Tolstoy, and I would particularly like to mention Canadian author Miriam Toews’ novel A Complicated Kindness, in a Mennonite setting, quirky and hilarious – how about a shunning booth at the local fair?

And herein is a particularly Bahá’í quandary: at present any book with Bahá’í content written by a Bahá’í must pass a review for accuracy of content before it can be published. The irony of this, of course, is that a non- Bahá’í can write anything about the Faith with impunity, while a believer cannot. (I shall refrain here from examining the very important question of the fate of such a writer in the next world.) And National Review Committees have up until now received only a small number of submissions of literary fiction dealing with the Faith – the overwhelming majority of them are non-fiction. Therefore these committees need the challenge of more experience, for it is a relatively simple matter to review a non-fiction work for Bahá’í accuracy compared to the snake pits of the ways people, even in fiction, are compelled to live in this world. The committees’ roles are complicated when there are Bahá’ís in the stories lead lives that are not in line with the Teachings of the Faith, and since the majority of the world’s population are yet to be familiar with these Teachings, the author must make clear the difference between the principles and laws on the one hand, and the characters’ behaviour on the other. If the author fails on this point, it is likely to be rejected by the committee, for at this juncture, a bestseller featuring a swashbuckling Bahá’í character who loves wine, gambling, making war and whoopee and then raises up trade unions and runs for Governor of the state would be injurious to the profile of the Faith. There are Bahá’í artists that cry “censorship!” and their views on artistic freedom put them to a mighty test of obedience.

One last piece of advice: read The Saddlebag by Bahiyyih Nakhjavání, a very fine piece of literature by a Bahá’í author.

The Elders

2007-12-23T09:45:00.000-08:00

********

In 1992, British rock musician Peter Gabriel founded Witness, an organization that uses video to advance human rights. In 1999, he began a conversation with media mogul Richard Branson about The Elders, a new gathering of world leaders who would pool their wisdom to guide and support our global village. For their model they looked to traditional village elders, trusted by people for millennia around the world to resolve conflict within their communities. In 2001 Gabriel and Branson took their idea to Nelson Mandela and Graça Machel, who were enthused and assembled Ella Bhatt, Mary Robinson, Desmond Tutu, Gro Bruntland, Fernando Cardoso, Aung Saan Suu Kyi, Kofi Annan, Lakhdar Brahmini, Jimmy Carter, Li Zhaoxing, and Muhammad Yunus.

Nelson Mandela: “This group can speak freely and boldly, working both publicly and behind the scenes on whatever actions need to be taken. Together we will work together to support courage where there is fear, foster agreement where there is conflict, and inspire hope where there is despair.”

Desmond Tutu: “Despite all the ghastliness that is around, human beings are made for goodness. The ones that ought to be held in high regard are not the ones who are militarily powerful, nor even economically prosperous. They are the ones who have a commitment to try and make the world a better place. We- The Elders – will endeavour to support these people and do our best for humanity.”

Their very first mission was to Sudan to intervene in the Darfur conflict. From September 30-October 4, 2007, they met with as many officials and groups represented in the conflict, down to the powerless and displaced villagers. Their mandate, in their own words, was: “We act only as individuals and a group of men and women who have lived long, learned much, and are united in the belief that we must do everything in our power to contribute to bring peace where it is absent, justice where it has been denied, and dignity where it is under attack. We want to amplify the voices of people who are not heard and give hope to the marginalized and help to the peacemakers.”

They released their report in November 2007, which described the fragile peace as on a “knife edge.” Their recommendations included an immediate ceasefire, inclusive peace, a peacekeeping force, freedom of humanitarian agencies, and of course, democracy.

Laudable as this initiative has been, I am disappointed and unimpressed by this initial salvo. Any reasonable commission could have come up with these conclusions, even before going there. Since the departure of The Elders, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005 has continued to be violated, and the brutal inhumanity of war continues. It might lead one to the painful realization that not only are the temporal and religious leaders of the world impotent to stem the cascading torrent of the age, but even such a collective of the wise are chaff in the wind – it’s too big even for them. So shall we throw up our hands in despair and submit to our gloomy fates? Bahá’ís are not so inclined. In the Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, Bahá’u’lláh wrote: “Religious fanaticism and hatred are a world-devouring fire, whose violence none can quench. The Hand of Divine power can, alone, deliver mankind from this desolating affliction.” (pg. 13)

And what did the Hand of Divine power ordain? “O ye the elected representatives of the people in every land! Take ye counsel together, and let your concern be only for that which profiteth mankind, and bettereth the condition thereof . . . Regard the world as the human body which, though at its creation whole and perfect, hath been afflicted, through various causes, with grave disorders and maladies. Not for one day did it gain ease, nay its sickness waxed more severe, as it fell under the treatment of ignorant physicians, who gave full rein to their personal desires, and have erred grievously. And if, at one time, through the care of an able physician, a member of that body was healed, the rest remained afflicted as before . . . We behold it, in this day, at the mercy of rulers so drunk with pride that they cannot discern clearly their own best advantage . . . And whenever any one of them hath striven to improve its condition, his motive hath been his own gain, whether confessedly so or not; and the unworthiness of this motive hath limited his power to heal or cure.

“That which the Lord hath ordained as the sovereign remedy and mightiest instrument for the healing of all the world is the union of all its peoples in one universal Cause, one common Faith. This can in no wise be achieved except through the power of a skilled, an all-powerful and inspired Physician. This, verily, is the truth, and all else naught but error.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, pg. 254-255)

Not only did He ordain it, but gave instructions on how it was to be accomplished: “The Great Being, wishing to reveal the prerequisites of the peace and tranquillity of the world and the advancement of its peoples, hath written: The time must come when the imperative necessity for the holding of a vast, an all-embracing assemblage of men will be universally realized. The rulers and kings of the earth must needs attend it, and, participating in its deliberations, must consider such ways and means as will lay the foundations of the world's Great Peace amongst men. Such a peace demandeth that the Great Powers should resolve, for the sake of the tranquillity of the peoples of the earth, to be fully reconciled among themselves. Should any king take up arms against another, all should unitedly arise and prevent him. If this be done, the nations of the world will no longer require any armaments, except for the purpose of preserving the security of their realms and of maintaining internal order within their territories. This will ensure the peace and composure of every people, government and nation . . . The day is approaching when all the peoples of the world will have adopted one universal language and one common script. When this is achieved, to whatsoever city a man may journey, it shall be as if he were entering his own home. These things are obligatory and absolutely essential. It is incumbent upon every man of insight and understanding to strive to translate that which hath been written into reality and action . . . That one indeed is a man who, today, dedicateth himself to the service of the entire human race . . . It is not for him to pride himself who loveth his own country, but rather for him who loveth the whole world. The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, pg. 249-250)

And since He ordained it and told us how to do it, will it happen? "Once . . . asked Bahá’u’lláh, 'How will the Cause of God be universally adopted by mankind?' Bahá'u'lláh said that first, the nations of the world would arm themselves with infernal engines of war, and when fully armed would attack each other like bloodthirsty beasts. As a result, there would be enormous bloodshed throughout the world. Then the wise from all nations would gather together to investigate the cause of such bloodshed. They would come to the conclusion that prejudices were the cause, a major form being religious prejudice. They would therefore try to eliminate religion so as to eliminate prejudice. Later they would realize that man cannot live without religion. Then they would study the teachings of all religions to see which of the religions conformed to the prevailing conditions of the time. It is then that the Cause of God would become universal." (Adib Taherzadeh, The Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh, Volume 4, pg. 56)

The one criticism of the Faith I hear with any consistency is the cynical one that its ideals are too high, they’ll never work. For over a century now, Bahá’ís around the world have been working to establish these realities, and have been building up institutions to implement these ideals that will be in place as the old world order crumbles. They are doing so at every level, mostly at the grassroots, but on high diplomatic levels as well. Anyone who wishes to investigate the chronicle of this amazing process is referred to the document Century of Light, online at http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/bic/COL/col-2.html, which will explain the astonishing happiness and purposefulness of the Bahá’ís in the face of the world caught whirling in a maelstrom.

Stuck in a Cheese Grater?

2007-12-21T07:34:00.000-08:00

I love puzzles of all kinds, and am a crossword puzzle addict, er, I mean cruciverbalist – yeah, that’s the word. I solve them by the truckload and am irresistibly drawn when I espy a naked one or someone else solving one, and have often met interesting people that way, though I can’t claim I’ve met my best friend, the love of my life – one can have fantasies, can’t one? -- or had a career break by this form of contact.

I first started doing them in earnest when I would take my daughter to Hungarian school on Saturday mornings and would have over two hours at the library before I picked her up again. At first I did it desultorily and unsuccessfully, but on a trip to Halifax to audition for the Atlantic Symphony, my host’s roommate walked around the house with a copy of the New York Times, vowing that she would solve it before the week was out – did I know a seventeen letter word beginning with ow for when your elbow gets stuck in a cheese grater? Intrigued, I helped her out and found I could do it, and in the process I was initiated into the world of crossword puzzle words, actual words (unlike bogus words in a Scrabble dictionary that start with Q but are not followed by U) though not in common usage, like ort and erne and yegg, and began a lifelong relationship with Estes Kefauver.

So every Saturday for the next 20 years I did the weekend crosswords in the Toronto Star, and once I began to see certain patterns of language peculiar to them, I would complete two of them at a single sitting in under an hour. I never used dictionaries or other aids, but would occasionally ask my wife when I got stuck on a certain clue, and though she had no confidence in her own language skills, surprisingly often supplied a recalcitrant word, a movie title, disease, or colloquialism.

My halcyon days were when the local paper printed the New York Times Sunday puzzle (a week later, so what?), but eventually advertisements ate up its space. In case you don’t know, most large or sophisticated puzzles have themes, or quips from comedians’ one-liners, and part of the fun is cracking the code of the theme. Puns, palindromes, and conundrums are the mainstay of clever clues, and you should know that puns are followed by questions marks in the clues. For instance, from Jan 5/03, entitled Bonus Rounds, you have to add an “O” to a well-known phrase to come up with a new one: the clue “Dentist’s Jazz band?” produces “FineToothCombO,” and “I think, therefore I wrestle?” yields “CogitoErgoSumO.” Ha ha. One of my favourites is a St. Patrick’s Day special in which the centre black square is surrounded by four white ones, or rather green ones, as the colour green completes each of the solutions around it, forming a four-leafed clover. Particularly tricky are those that have more than one letter or even a full word in selected squares. However, what makes difficult crossword puzzles more challenging is usually not the solutions, but the clues, which get more abstruse and deliberately misleading the higher the degree of difficulty. The clue is always in the same tense or part of speech as the solution, but the part of speech itself is not easy to decipher. And it is true that, unlike many other types of word puzzles, you do have to have a fairly wide knowledge base that spans cultures, topics, and generations – if you don’t know who Yma Sumac and Mel Ott were, you’ll have a tough time beyond the moderate level.

Sure, puzzles and games are largely a source of amusement, but I believe all enduring games contain something valuable. Word puzzles and trivia games make your brain’s search engine skitter around your neural pathways like a frightened rodent, lighting up dusty corners, finding alternative routes unimagined by Mapquest, shrieking the wrong way down streets marked One Way, and creating new constellations. I’m told that it’s a prophylactic against Alzheimer’s, and thank God for that. For me, it performed an indispensable service when I was going through a major crisis that consumed my life: once I had said all my prayers, done all my work, and dumped my woes on my good friends, crossword puzzles kept my mind off fretting over sorrows which only time had the power to heal and change. Little could those little men and women fussing in solitude over the construction of these anagrammed squares have imagined.
In my pre-crepuscular years I have become one of those little men, creating puzzles, not professionally but as supplementary learning materials for various courses I teach. One of these is the Ruhi Institute, and the puzzles help the participants return again and again to the Scripture they are studying, expanding their vocabulary and even deepening their insight as they scour the passages again and again.

And I continue to meet interesting people on trains and in cafés who are poring over crosswords, erasing and scratching their heads, but I doubt that I will ever attend any conventions – I presume they exist – or travel thousands of miles to meet Will Shortz, the Grand Imperial Wizard of cruciverbalism. Yeah, that’s the word.

The God Gene

2007-11-16T09:43:00.000-08:00

The geneticist Dean Hamer’s book The God Gene examines the possibility that our predilection or lack thereof towards spirituality is “hard-wired into our genes.” To those of faith the very idea may seem preposterous or absurd, but Bahá’ís would welcome this, as embedded in the Teachings is the principle of the essential harmony of Science and Religion, setting aside the fallacious disputes between the two. Perhaps on the relative success in locating a “gay gene,” the question arose as to whether a similar detective search would yield information that will rock our world.

The studies that fed this report were a mix of biochemistry, neurology, and anatomy, citing new research such as brain imaging during meditation to the application of previous methods such as Temperament and Character Inventory and studies of identical twins. The former gave rise to the Newberg Scale, eerily parallel in scientific terms to The Seven Valleys, a mystical document from the Pen of Bahá’u’lláh. Various religious groups were studied: particularly interesting were the genetic congruity of the Jews, and to some extent the Hindus. Some of these investigations gave rise to curious and bizarre speculations on the part of some scientists, such as that the mystical visions of St. Paul, the Prophet Muhammad, Joan of Arc, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky were all a result of temporal lobe epilepsy. Another curiosity is that spiritual ecstasy lights up the same spot in the brain that hallucinogens do, giving some credence to those who assert that their drug trips are transcendental.

One of Hamer’s basic premises is the separation of religion and spirituality. Spirituality he deems as the impulse to worship, of “self-transcendence,” the experience of the mystical and the personal apprehension of worlds beyond the physical, whereas religion he sees as learned – the teachings, doctrines, dogmas, and practices of a belief system. His research focuses chiefly upon the former.

Did he find the gene? In a word, no. However, he still has his hopes set on the gene VMAT2, looking for the fire in that cloud of smoke. I especially had to laugh at his explanation of the results of a twin study: “The remainder of the variation for each trait could be ascribed to that mix of events, serendipity, and measurement uncertainty called unique environment.” Serendipity is now a research factor? -- Cool! And early on in the book (pg. 16), he all but negates all his scientific inquiry by his own assertion: “Spirituality is ultimately a matter of faith, not of genetics.” And, like his colleague Francis S. Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, he quotes Einstein, in a famous statement virtually identical to a well-known Bahá’í dictum: “Religion without science is blind; science without religion is lame.”

I wrote to Dr. Hamer, offering him to research Bahá’í communities, which are small, but readily available, willing, and a much wider gene pool than any he quotes in his book. I hope he takes us up on it.

The Varqá Legacy

2007-10-14T18:29:00.000-07:00

September 22, 2007 brought to a close the ministry of the Hands of the Cause of God with the passing of Dr. ‘Ali-Muhammad Varqá in Haifa, Israel. 50 known Hands were appointed by the Central Figures of the Faith to protect and propagate the Cause. They included some family relations, but none match the 3-generatioin legacy of the Varqá family of Persia.

1. Mírzá’Ali-Muhammad Varqá (c.1856-1896)had a dream as a child in which God came and threw the dolls he was playing with into a fire and told him to cast away his vain imaginings. His father was a Bábí and an eloquent speaker who was flogged, then exiled with his two sons for holding a meeting of 200 Bábís in Yazd.

His own fame was as a poet, but he was also a doctor. In Tabríz, Varqá prescribed a remedy to an employee of the Crown Prince which helped his wife to conceive a child. In gratitude Varqá was given the Prince’s daughter in marriage, which began a very complicated family life filled with dangers. He had to finally leave Tabriz with his son Rúhu’lláh, divorcing his wife after a plot on his life. Later in Zanján he remarried, but later his first wife became a Bahá’í.

"Once Varqá asked Bahá'u'lláh, 'How will the Cause of God be universally adopted by mankind?' Bahá'u'lláh said that first, the nations of the world would arm themselves with infernal engines of war, and when fully armed would attack each other like bloodthirsty beasts. As a result, there would be enormous bloodshed throughout the world. Then the wise from all nations would gather together to investigate the cause of such bloodshed. They would come to the conclusion that prejudices were the cause, a major form being religious prejudice. They would therefore try to eliminate religion so as to eliminate prejudice. Later they would realize that man cannot live without religion. Then they would study the teachings of all religions to see which of the religions conformed to the prevailing conditions of the time. It is then that the Cause of God would become universal."*

In 1896 Varqá managed to get precious Bahá’í archives out of Zanján, but he himself was arrested and taken back. 16 days of pressure failed to make him recant his Faith, so he and his son were sent to a Tihrán dungeon. Násiri’d-Din Sháh was assassinated May 1, 1896, on the eve of his jubilee celebration, and the steward of the prison took revenge on the innocent Bahá’ís. He himself stabbed Varqá in the belly and ripped his body apart. He then turned to Rúhu’lláh and offered to take him and give him an allowance, but the 12-year old boy just sobbed that he wanted to be with his father, so the boy was strangled with a rope.

2. Rúhu’lláh’s older brother Valíyu’lláh Varqá (1884-1955) learned the Faith from an uncle; in his spare time he learned English and Arabic. In 1911-12 he accompanied ‘Abdu’l-Bahá on his trips to America and Europe, as treasurer and interpreter, and was dearly loved by him. Back in Irán he worked as a translator at the Turkish Embassy in Tihrán.

In 1934 he was elected to the National Spiritual Assembly of Irán, sometimes serving as Chairman, and In 1938 Shoghi Effendi appointed him Trustee of Huqúqu’lláh. Upon being appointed a Hand of the Cause in 1951, like most other Hands he traveled extensively to Bahá’í conferences and on teaching trips to Uganda, Stockholm, Chicago, New Delhi, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Germany, and South America.
In 1953 he fell ill in Einstein’s home town of Ulm, but continued to travel and serve; he finally succumbed to his illness in 1955 in a German hospital.
On his death his son ‘Ali-Muhammad was appointed both a Hand of the Cause and Trustee of Huqúqu’lláh in his place.

3. Dr. ‘Alí-Muhammad Varqá (1912-2007) was born while his father was traveling in America with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. He studied economics and history in Tihrán, completed his doctorate at the Sorbonne in Paris and became a professor at Tehran and Tabríz universities.
On his father’s death in 1955, he was appointed to replace him both as a Hand of the Cause and as Trustee of Huqúqu’lláh. During his tenure, the Institution of Huqúqu’lláh expanded around the world, with the establishment of Boards of Trustees, deputies, and representatives.

After 1963 he represented the Universal House of Justice at inaugural elections of many NSAs, including such unusual places as Sicily, Central African Republic, the Windward Islands, and Greenland.

Because he was Francophone, he was often sent by the Universal House of Justice to French-speaking countries around the world, most notably to France in 1962 to strengthen the new NSA that replaced the one that had largely supported Mason Remey in his claim to be the next Guardian.

In the 1970s he was assigned to collect reliable accounts of the early days of the Faith around the world. He was away from Irán during the Revolution of 1979, never returned; he was accepted as a refugee in Canada.

My own last memory of Dr. Varqá was on May 27th of this year. Since one of his great joys was to have seen during his lifetime the Bahá’í Faith spread all over the world, he loved after his addresses to the pilgrims assembled in Haifa to hear prayers chanted, sung, and recited in their native languages. Among many others, even though I am Canadian, I recited a prayer in my mother tongue of Hungarian. All of us did so with added fervour to the beaming face of our beloved Dr. Varqá.

The Universal House of Justice is vigilant not to arrogate to itself powers and functions not mandated in the holy writings of the Bahá’í Faith, and they could find nothing that granted them the authority to appoint more Hands of the Cause. Since these functions nevertheless had to continue to be carried out, they instead appointed Continental Boards of Counselors that work as advisors to the elected Institutions of the Faith and circumscribed their duties in great detail in the document The Institution of the Counsellors.

Dr. ‘Ali-Muhammad Varqá is survived by three daughters.

*Adib Taherzadeh, The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh volume 4, pg. 56

Rumi at 800

2007-09-29T12:12:00.000-07:00

September 30, 2007 marks the 800th birthday anniversary of arguably the world’s most beloved poet, Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273). If only the place of his birth were as certain as the date, for he is generally thought to have been born in eastern Afghanistan, but more likely in what is now Tajikistan. Notwithstanding this and the fact that his entire poetical career was lived in Konya, Turkey, he is Persian through and through, in the great tradition of the mystic poets that preceded him -- ‘Attar, Khayyam, Ferdowsi, Sana’i, et. al -- his contemporary Sa’adi, and those who followed, such as Hafiz.

His prodigious output, several times that of Shakespeare’s, is all the more remarkable in that he didn’t begin until mid-life. He had been following in the footsteps of his scholarly father until the arrival on the scene one day of a certain Shams from Tabriz, Persia, who challenged his whole approach to the spiritual life. Legends abound about how this took place, the most popular being that Shams burst upon Rumi reading to his students from his own father’s works, and knocked the book into the fountain behind him. More likely was the less melodramatic problem posed by Shams about the Prophet Muhammad and Bayazid. At any rate, the older Shams became a mentor/muse/axis mundi/sounding board and human incarnation of his spiritual beloved all rolled into one, a relationship unknown in the western world. Rumi was initiated into the mysteries of Sufism, with its attendant devotional poetry about yearning to be reunited with the Beloved, music, chanting, and ecstatic, trancelike movement. Rumi began composing verses, many of them while “whirling,” and rarely stopped until the end of his life.

His relationship with Shams was fraught with turbulence and aroused the jealousy of his students. Shams disappeared at least twice, casing him untold anguish. He was once found in Damascus and brought back, but the last time he evaporated for good – rumours of his murder are unsubstantiated, and this last disappearance remains a mystery. Rumi eventually came to terms with this, reportedly discovering that Shams was somehow with him and he carried on.
Nevertheless two others in succession fulfilled Shams’ role, Salah al-Din, and Hosam al-Din, and the poetry showed marked differences in these periods. For instance, during the Shams period, his major work was the Divan – ecstatic poems suffused with longing, beautiful imagery, and mystical insights. These continued, but under Hosam’s prodding, he produced a no less-beloved work, the Mathnawi, full of instructional moral tales drawn from the Qur’an and the lore of the Middle East and Central Asia.

After his passing, his students established the Mevlevi Order in his honour and remembrance, famously known as the Whirling Dervishes, which have in these days been taken over by the government of Turkey as a cultural feature and export.

The present popularity of Rumi in America is largely attributable to the work of Coleman Barks, who has published several best-selling volumes of translations. Purists squirm at these, since Barks has taken all manner of liberties in trying to free them from their original context and make them contemporary and universal; notwithstanding Barks has struck a nerve, and the public is devouring them. Rumi has also become an icon himself, as films, stage productions, and musical works are devoted to his life and work.

Bahá’u’lláh quotes Rumi often in His own Writings, most notably in The Seven Valleys, an early mystical work revealed in Baghdad, ensuring that Rumi’s legacy will continue as long as the Bahá’í Faith endures, unforeseen in the wildest imaginations of the 13th century.

In 2000 Franklin Lewis published the most comprehensive scholarly work yet on the poet, the 686-page Rumi – Past and Present, East and West, and for this was invited to Iran for special recognition, all the more remarkable as he is non-Persian and a Bahá’í for good measure.

Here are the opening lines of the Mathnawi:

HEARKEN to the reed-flute, how it complains,
Lamenting its banishment from its home:
"Ever since they tore me from my osier bed,
My plaintive notes have moved men and women to tears.
I burst my breast, striving to give vent to sighs,
And to express the pangs of my yearning for my home.
He who abides far away from his home
Is ever longing for the day ho shall return.
My wailing is heard in every throng,
In concert with them that rejoice and them that weep.
Each interprets my notes in harmony with his own feelings,
But not one fathoms the secrets of my heart.
My secrets are not alien from my plaintive notes,
Yet they are not manifest to the sensual eye and ear.
Body is not veiled from soul, neither soul from body,
Yet no man hath ever seen a soul."
This plaint of the flute is fire, not mere air.
Let him who lacks this fire be accounted dead!
'Tis the fire of love that inspires the flute,l
'Tis the ferment of love that possesses the wine.
The flute is the confidant of all unhappy lovers;
Yea, its strains lay bare my inmost secrets.
Who hath seen a poison and an antidote like the flute?
Who hath seen a sympathetic consoler like the flute?
The flute tells the tale of love's bloodstained path,
It recounts the story of Majnun's love toils.
None is privy to these feelings save one distracted,
As ear inclines to the whispers of the tongue.

Civil Obedience

2007-09-21T08:58:00.000-07:00

At a recent talk given at Transitions Bookstore in Chicago, Robert Stockman (pictured here with his family) coined the term Civil Obedience, a model of social change the Bahá’ís have used, and which he wistfully reflected the world in general may not yet be ready for. Bahá’ís are the supporters and well-wishers of every just government and are obedient to their own, and since only the Universal House of Justice has the authority to deem any government unjust and has never exercised this prerogative in the 44 years of its existence, the believers cannot agitate against civil authorities and can only use means within the laws of their lands to seek justice.

He cited a number of examples. In the Iranian city of Yazd, 150 families received a letter from the police, ordering the heads of the household to appear at the station on the morning of a given date. This kind of summons could only mean impending arrests, so the Bahá’ís held a meeting and at the appointed hour 150 women appeared in front of the police, as Bahá’ís maintain complete gender equality. Flummoxed, they let the women go.

In apartheid South Africa blacks were only allowed to enter the rear doors of homes, so the Bahá’ís placed heavy furniture blocking the front doors so everyone would have to enter through the back. When mixed-race meetings in public buildings were banned, members of Bahá’í committees were picked up in cars and the meetings were held while riding about the city, perfectly legal. When mixed-race Assemblies were outlawed, all the white members resigned, and the community was run by all-black Assemblies, a situation perfectly acceptable to the Bahá’ís, but not exactly what the government had in mind.

The Iranian Bahá’í community is rife with many examples. An ongoing dilemma is the systematic deprivation of Bahá’í students to a university education, a cat-and-mouse game in which, although books, computers, and records of a private Bahá’í university have been confiscated by the government, 500 students have obtained degrees and have been accepted into graduate studies in foreign countries. This year 800 students are enrolled, and all are studying English, as their online studies are administered by a computer network in Canada.

Bahá’ís continue to seek justice – never retribution or revenge – by diplomatic and legal means. They support UN Resolutions on human rights violations and encourage the local elected officials in their own countries to ask their national governments to support these resolutions as well by presenting them with unbiased, documented facts. And the students in Iran have garnered the support of campus and online organizations, Bahá’í and non- Bahá’í alike, so they might receive the education whose results will redound to the glory of their own nation.

Hatcher's Proof

2007-09-11T09:04:00.000-07:00

There are certain existential questions that have never interested me. One of these is the proof of God’s existence. I have maintained for some time that you cannot prove nor disprove His existence through rational argument; rather it is a matter of either faith, or even better, a Reality once you have come face to face with either through experience, insight, or revelation that has removed all doubt forever. The challenge with this lack of doubt is to communicate it to unbelievers and convince them you are rational or sane. Yes, they might envy you your certitude or have their atheistic armour pierced by observation of your fine human qualities by virtue of your “irrational” views, but to convince them of the veracity of your view is an uphill battle.

There are traditional proofs of God, but they are existential and not scientific in the modern sense, and inadequate as arguments to a skeptical heart and mind. The Bahá’í Scriptures maintain that this has always been and will always be the way of the Almighty, for He places a high value on His creatures who will seek and find Him, which would simply be too easy if He were apparent for all to see without any hard-won spiritual insight.

Undaunted by attitudes such as mine, the late William Hatcher published several books on the subject, collating the best knowledge we have from the fields of mathematics, philosophy, physics, metaphysics, epistemology, and even linguistics to formulate his scientific proof of the existence of God, a proof which he calls Minimalism. Building on the classical Greek philosophers through Avicenna, Descartes, Gödel, and more modern thinkers, his approach seeks to debunk the excesses of reductionism and subjectivism, the fallacies of materialism and post-modernism, uproot the attitudes of atheism, agnosticism, cynicism, and skepticism, and tries to establish the invigorating breezes of rational thought over illogical dogmatism. [This has to be the worse sentence I’ve written since fourth grade.]

After a careful building up of parameters and methodology, in his last work: Minimalism: A Bridge Between Classical Philosophy and the Bahá’í Revelation, Hatcher has arrived at four metaphysical principles (as I understand them): first that Reality, the totality of existence, is composite; secondly, that every phenomenon is either caused by something else, or self-caused, but never both; thirdly, the cause of a phenomenon will also be the cause of its parts; and fourthly that a part of a phenomenon cannot be a part of its cause. From these principles he proposes a theorem that there can be only one universal cause and goes about proving it by arguments derived from the four principles.

Confused? If so, it’s not Hatcher’s fault, by mine, for he sets out these arguments with exemplary lucidity and relish. It should provide a colossal challenge for those who are predisposed to dismiss any introduction of a spiritual dimension into scientific inquiry as hokum, as it did in college milieu wherever he presented it. Check it out.

God Bless America

2007-09-07T09:36:00.000-07:00

Now that I have lived in the United States for one full year, I have to pose a question I could keep at arm’s length when I was in Canada, but which is now in my face: Since when did God become American?

Over the millennia, many a culture has conceived a God in its own image, and it has even been said that if a triangle had a god, it would have three sides. Many races and nations have had their particular claim on God, fashioning their special status or justifying aggression. But America seems to have taken this to a whole new level, not only claiming that God is on our side, but that God is an avid supporter and defender of the American Way, the American Dream, the American Way of Life, as though the Almighty is a glorified cheerleader for the Dallas Cowboys, one with an I-phone, wears the latest designer clothes, and eats at fast food restaurants. In effect, it has put American patriotism and values above God, and assumes that God enthusiastically approves of every move made by the greatest nation the world has ever seen. Surely I am not the only one who sees danger in such hubris. Am I wrong about this?

I queried a Bahá’í scholar on this vexing scenario. He posited that God was woven into American culture right from the beginning, and it has grown from there. That is certainly true, but since this notion is unique in the world, there must be forces that maintain and propagate this position. On the one hand, early American documents and manifestos mention God (though, interestingly enough, not Jesus Christ) frequently, and even the cash we handle daily affirms that God is a bedrock of American life. In our current climate, it has even been claimed that anyone who is an atheist has a questionable right to American citizenship. Shortly before his death, the playwright Arthur Miller spoke of the patriotic overlay on religion, and that there is even a small but vocal segment of society that is “aching for an Ayatollah.” On the other hand, the separation of church and state was guaranteed from the outset, and Presidents Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Buchanan, and Lincoln were not church-goers and spoke out against religion both in public and even private life.

We mostly hear these attitudes in conjunction with Christianity, usually of the more fundamentalist stripe, and associated with Conservatism. But some of the followers of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi of Transcendental Meditation fame have made claims that America can become invincible through the collective energies of 2500 yogic flyers, and receive an annual $12 million grant from a private foundation to carry forward research in this area. Indian spiritual thought has embraced belief from the highest mysticism and philosophy to the wildest imaginations of cults and madmen, but I sincerely doubt that any holy personage or group ever conceived that yoga, meditation, or any other spiritual practice would lead to the invincibility of India as a nation or political entity. It seems to be a particular American genius.

It is easy sport to criticize the weaknesses and foibles of any group, and the strong and unique are easy prey. For all its visible shortcomings, any fair person would acknowledge that the United States of America is a major player in the world, that its culture has touched down in every other nation in the world, and that in its short history it has brought incalculable benefits to the human race. The Bahá’í Faith affirms its special status. Bahá’u’lláh addressed these words to the leaders of the American Republics, during the tenure of Ulysses Grant:

Bind ye the broken with the hands of justice, and crush the oppressor who flourisheth with the rod of the commandments of your Lord, the Ordainer, the All-Wise.

In 1912, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá revealed this “Prayer for America”:

O Thou kind Lord! This gathering is turning to Thee. These hearts are radiant with Thy love. These minds and spirits are exhilarated by the message of Thy glad-tidings. O God! Let this American democracy become glorious in spiritual degrees even as it has aspired to material degrees, and render this just government victorious. Confirm this revered nation to upraise the standard of the oneness of humanity, to promulgate the Most Great Peace, to become thereby most glorious and praiseworthy among all the nations of the world. O God! This American nation is worthy of Thy favors and is deserving of Thy mercy. Make it precious and near to Thee through Thy bounty and bestowal.

And the Guardian of the Faith chose America to establish the Administrative Order, which would spread over the earth and usher in the Golden Age of the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh. So its station and destiny, along with the responsibilities therein enshrined, are high indeed.

But if I just might add with my lone small voice, please make the nation under God, to make its future secure with divine guidance and truly spiritual forces and virtues.

Is This On?

2007-08-25T17:27:00.000-07:00

I recently watched the 2003 documentary film When Standup Stood Out, about the Boston standup comedy scene from 1977-1985. I’ve always loved jokes, and can remember hundreds of them on demand, of all varieties. In my student days, to let off steam I would visit a pair of buddies in a neighbouring university, and we would share routines from Richard Pryor to Spike Jones all weekend, non-stop. We would re-create classic skits from Monty Python to Woody Allen to Groucho Marx, and I would return to my studies with sore ribs and shoulders from laughing. I once even considered standup as a career (this I never shared with my parents), but decided I didn’t want to have to be funny on cue, and didn’t want every moment of my life to be material for gags.

I never believed Freud when he reduced laughter to “social nervousness” – deep down I knew it was a good thing, a reaction to the intrinsic absurdity and surprise of life, but also something that unites people and makes them happy. But why do people go to comedy clubs, and what do they expect from comedians? Doubtless there are many reasons, but one of the chief ones in my estimation is that we go to hear the truth, as comedians are one of the few groups in today’s society that are allowed to tell the truth, a role that poets and musicians have bartered away. Certainly we don’t hear it from our parents and teachers, politicians, philosophers, scientists, and doctors, either because they don’t know or won’t tell.

I’m with Steve Smith of The Red Green Show fame, who expressed that making people laugh was a “special state of grace”, even more with the Prophet Muhammad when He says in the Qur’an, “The Gates of Heaven are open wide to him who can make his companions laugh,” and even with Bahá’u’lláh, who as a Manifestation of God, had a scathing wit. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá asserted that his home was a place of “mirth and laughter.” Many books have been written the last few decades on the therapeutic benefits of laughter. Therefore I submit to Bahá’ís that we need to laugh more, let out hair down and be irreverent – within limits, though comedians chafe at having limits – and to value humour as an aspect of the soul and culture as the Jews and the Irish, for instance, have done.

There are at present only a handful of bona fide Bahá’í jokes that make the rounds, and two or three well-known Bahá’í comedians. There are, of course, a multitude of anecdotes and amusing stories, but not many actual jokes. So here follows my own submission of jokes in the well-worn Jeff Foxworthy tradition of “Redneck” jokes:

If you've been divorced three times and still need your mommy and daddy's permission to get married, you might be a Bahá'í.

If a movie star offers you a night of passion and your response is "Um . . . can I investigate your character?" you might be a Bahá'í.

If you get more excited by LSA than LSD, you might be a Bahá'í.

If the only smoke you envision when you hear the phrase "joint feast" is from overdone tadiq, you might be a Bahá'í.

If you think March Madness is the result of extreme hunger, you might be a Bahá'í.

If you see "Some Assembly Required" written on a box and you think it came from a place that needs homefront pioneering, you might be a Bahá'í.

If you see a real estate billboard that says "Fully Detached Community" and you drive on saying "We're not needed here", you might be a Bahá'í.

If your stomach growls on the Ides of March and you answer the pager on your belt, you might be a Bahá'í.

If your idea of the perfect family vacation is to wait for ten years, climb a mountain on foot where there are no casinos, no golf or tennis, you have stay quiet, stand in line, cannot take pictures, you visit a lot of gravesites, and at the end of ten days they kick you out of the country, you might be a Bahá'í.

And you are definitely NOT a Bahá’í if

You think “Paris Talks” was first published in People Magazine.

You think the “Hidden Words” are the lyrics to “Louie, Louie.”

You think the Hands of the Cause aided and abetted a felony.

You think the Tablet of Carmel is chewy.

Magical Buffet

2007-08-12T08:55:00.000-07:00

This interview of me appears in the July 20 issue of The Magical Buffet (http://www.magicalbuffet.com/)

Q: What is the Bahá’í Faith?

A: Thank you for this opportunity to respond. I’m tempted to give Louis Armstrong’s classic reply of “Man, if you don’t know, I can’t tell you,” but you might get some idea that it’s some kind of jazz heaven, which actually may not be too far off. Bahá’ís believe in Progressive Revelation, meaning that from time to time God raises up Messengers to educate humanity, such as Buddha, Abraham, Krishna, Moses, Zoroaster, Christ, Muhammad, etc., and that the latest one arrived in the 19th century under the title “The Glory of God”, who lived and taught mostly under exile and imprisonment in Middle Eastern lands from Iran Iraq to Turkey and what is now Israel. These Messengers reiterate the eternal spiritual truths that are the foundation of all religion, but also give social teachings for the age. This age particularly needs guidance for an emerging global consciousness, ethics and morality for international travel, finance, ecology, communication, science and technology, and the realization that the entire globe and its inhabitants are in the same boat traveling together. Humanity on its own has no hope of solving the colossal challenges besetting it today. One of the most remarkable elements of this Revelation is that it gives not only a vision of the new World Order, but actually gives a blueprint of how to achieve it. So Bahá’ís worldwide are endeavoring to establish this order right in the midst of the crumbling of one human institution after another. The “Glory of God” has given the believers this directive: “It is incumbent upon every man of insight and understanding to strive to translate that which hath been written into reality and action,” and emphasized that we all have a part to play: “All men have been created to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization.”

Q: What are some the basic teachings of the faith?

A: Every faith teaches the same basic things, those being the nature of God and truth, morality and virtue, prayer and worship; the emphasis is different, according to the needs of the times; Judaism emphasized the Law, Christianity focused on love and good works, and Islam on submission to the Will of God, for instance. The Bahá’í Faith’s overriding value is unity: God is one, His Messengers are one, religion is one, humanity is one; therefore the thousand-year mission of the Bahá’ís is to effect the organic unity of the entire human race, for it is written “The well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established.” Principles that accompany this central mission are removal of prejudices of all kinds, gender equality, universal education, universal systems of governance/ justice,/currency, and a language by which the whole world can communicate. And one other very important one: mankind has progressed to the point where each individual’s spiritual progress is their own responsibility; therefore it behooves every person to independently investigate truth and reality for themselves – ergo, no clergy.
And here’s a good one: Science and religion must work together to root out superstition and provide a moral foundation for knowledge and its application.

Q: How does the Bahá’í community view and interact with other faiths?

A: Baha’is do not cling to each other, but regard all humanity as their brethren. The Founder proclaimed, “Consort ye, O people, with all religions with joy and fragrance!” They tend to spearhead and are often over-represented at Interfaith gatherings; all divinely-revealed faiths are honored, so there is no concept of “other”. Just once I would like see a Bahá’í jump up and yell, “All you heathens are going to Hell!” but (sigh) it just isn’t going to happen. (This is just kidding, of course.) Seriously, the last thing we need is yet another religion; what we need is to come together.

Q: For our readers who may have not have heard of the religion before now, is there a fictional character in television or film that embodies the ideals of the faith?

A: Ha ha. I consulted some of my Bahá’í friends on this one, and got suggestions such as McGyver, since he used non-violent technological ingenuity to solve problems, the humble Frodo Baggins on his glorious quest of faith, or Star Trek with its multiethnic co-operation boldly braving the final frontier.

Q: What holidays do Bahá’ís observe?

A: There is a calendar of 19 months of 19 days, with a few extra Mardi-Gras type celebratory days thrown in to round out the solar year. And the Faith has its own holy days celebrating the births and deaths of the Central Figures, as well as a few others, such as the Day of the Covenant, Nov. 26, celebrating the fact that God does not leave humanity adrift without guidance. Individually, believers tend to celebrate just about any festival of any religion or culture with other friends – we love a party!

Q: What is the biggest misconception, if any, about the religion?

A: The Bahá’í Faith is not, nor ever was, a sect of Islam. It grew out of an Islamic environment, as did Buddhism out of Hinduism or Christianity out of Judaism. Also, since it is so all-embracing, some get the idea that it is eclectic and syncretistic, drawing from the good points of bygone traditions and philosophies, or that is accepts all faiths as being equally true and valid. It regards itself as the latest stage in the unfolding Faith of the one God that has been called by many names, and that its principles and beliefs have been divinely revealed just as the Ten Commandments or the Vedas, the Dhammapada or the Qur’an.

Q: According to http://www.religionfacts.com/ Dizzy Gillespie, Carole Lombard, and Rainn Wilson were/are all Bahá’í. Would you be offended if I said that was really cool?

A: Many distinguished people are Bahá’ís, but they don’t get obnoxious, obsequious, or obstreperous about it. They found universities, establish socio-economic projects, and are inventors and innovators. The head of state of Samoa is Bahá’í [note: died May 11, 2007], as have been Queen Marie of Roumania and other royalty, and it has attracted great minds from Tolstoy to Tagore to Khalil Gibran – would you believe President Woodrow Wilson got the idea for the League of Nations from his Baha’i daughter? Another Khalill, Khalil Green, shortstop of the San Diego Padres, is perhaps the most well-known Bahá’í presently in popular culture. In America, the duo of Seals and Crofts (“Summer breeze, make me feel fine . . . . “ c’mon sing it with me now) spread the Faith by giving talks after their concerts on tour in the 1970s. Others include K. C. Porter (producer to Santana and Ricky Martin), and British funnyman Omid Djalili (remember him from Whoopi’s sit-com?) Cool! Hot!

Q: Do you care to comment on the plight of the Baha’is in Egypt?

A: The Bahá’ís in Egypt are a fairly small community, but have been placed in a quandary; they are required to carry ID cards, on which they have to identify their religion. They have no problem with this, as all Bahá’ís in every country are obedient and loyal to their governments. But they have only three choices: Christianity, Judaism, or Islam -- it’s like those dating sites or online questionnaires where you only have a limited choice of responses, none of which apply, but there is no “other” option, and it will not let you skip the question or continue without answering. Baha’is cannot lie about their religion or anything else, and without these ID cards they have no access to education, medical services, employment, or many other basic services. So they are continuing to work to get the Bahá’í Faith official recognition so they can have legal status just like other Egyptian citizens.

Q: Where can I go to learn more about the religion?

A: Even though there are only about 6 million Bahá’ís worldwide, we are spread like a thin film over the entire planet, including in such unlikely places as Greenland, North Korea, the Faroe Islands, Tasmania, Alaska, Mongolia, Madacasgar, Botswana, and virtually every island in the Pacific, so with a little checking in phone books or word of mouth, a human representative of probably the most hospitable community in the world can be found, but beware, you will be plied with tea and sweets and all the literature on the Faith you’d ever want. Baha’is, however, do not proselytize. Since it purports to be the most truly international and universal expression of spirituality, it is not surprising that it should be the first Faith on the Internet; sites abound, a couple of the main ones being: http://www.bahai.org/ and http://www.bahai.us/. You are most welcome to contact this author at gezabahai@yahoo.ca.

Q: Parting shot! Ask us here at The Magical Buffet any one question? (this question cannot be changed. We ask everyone this one question. You can ask anything, even silly stuff like who is your favorite boy band or boxers or briefs!)

A: This is confusing, but if I read it correctly, you want me to ask you a question. Okay, I’ll be brief, I mean boxer. I see that you love feasting at the salad bar of heavenly delights, but do you ever get spiritual indigestion?

MB: Yes.

Bio of Geza Farkas:Geza (rhymes with amaze-a) Farkas, the Funky Flutist of Faith, became a Baha'i in 1997 after a lifetime of study of the works of the world's great mystics, saints, and seers, since he sensed that in it appeared that which has never appeared before, namely a blueprint by which all of human civilization can be spiritualized, and not just a few special individuals. Hungarian by birth, Canadian by nationality, and Indian in spirit, he has recently emigrated to Chicago and lives near the Baha'i House of Worship for the North American Continent in Wilmette, known as the "Mother Temple of the West."

Let Your Vision Be World-Embracing

2007-08-06T17:42:00.000-07:00

“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.”

The Spirit of 1893

2007-07-30T09:33:00.000-07:00

This is the seond in a series looking at the multifarious groups and organizations around the world that have been inspired to envision in their own way the Teachings Bahá’u’lláh loosed upon the world in the 19th Century. Bahá’ís not only consort with the followers of all religions in a spirit of friendliness, but seek especially to connect with like-minded people who seek to inculcate these ideals for the betterment of the planet and its inhabitants.

In 1892 Bahá'u'lláh passed from this world, having completed His mission to bring a Revelation from God to this needy world. In 1893 a Columbian Expo was held in Chicago to commemorate the 400th Anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of America, showcasing the glorious advancements in science and technology. Almost as an afterthought, a World Parliament of Religions was added to it, ostensibly to show the superiority of the Christian Faith over all the others that were slowly garnering public attention with the opening up of the world to travel and communication. However, man plans and God laughs. Events did not follow the script. The Parliament of Religions outshone the Expo in notoriety, and the stars of the show were deemed minor players at the outset.

7000 attended, and some of the notables were Gandhi representing the Jains, and Annie Besant representing the Theosophical Society. Enter Swami Vivekananda (pictured above), #31 on the roster. Indian spiritual thought preceded any actual exponents to America through the Transcendentalist Movement headed by such figures as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman, but now here was one in the flesh, not merely a Hindu priest but the chief disciple of the latest God-man of India, Ramakrishna (1836 -1886). The delegates arose one by one and delivered prepared speeches, but when it came his turn, Vivekananda was too nervous to speak, seized with stage fright, so postponed several times. It became known that he did not have a prepared script and would speak from his heart. So when he finally got up the gumption, all eyes were expectantly on him. He began by bowing to Saraswati, the Goddess of Wisdom, and began, “Sisters and Brothers of America,” which so touched a nerve that these five words aroused a spontaneous 2-minute standing ovation. He proceeded to speak to everyone’s astonishment not of his own religion as all of the others had, but of tolerance and acceptance, quoting “As different streams, having their sources in different places, all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take . . . all lead to Thee.” Deafening applause followed his final plea for the quick termination of sectarianism, bigotry, and fanaticism. He had hit on the hidden hope of all, a desperate desire for unity.

He gave six addresses over the course of the Parliament, which included these words on Sept. 19: “If there is ever to be a universal religion, it must be one which will have no location in place or time; which will be infinite, like the God it will preach, and whose sun will shine upon the followers of Krishna and Christ, on saints and sinners alike; which will not be Brahminical or Buddhist, Christian or Mohammedan, but the sum total of all these, and still have infinite space for development; which in its catholicity will embrace in its infinite arms, and find a place for, every human being, from the lowest groveling savage, not far removed from the brute, to the highest man, towering by the virtues of his head and heart almost above humanity, making society stand in awe of him and doubt his human nature. It will be a religion which will have no place for persecution or intolerance in its polity, which will recognize divinity in every man and woman, and whose whole scope, whose whole force, will be centred in aiding humanity to realize its own true, divine nature.”

There was yet another event of significance at the Parliament that was less evident at the time. On Sept. 23, Rev. George Ford of Syria read a paper sent by Henry Jessup, Director of Presbyterian Missionary Operations in North Syria, which ended thus:

“In the Palace of Bahjí, or Delight, just outside the Fortress of 'Akká, on the Syrian coast, there died a few months since, a famous Persian sage, the Bábí Saint, named Bahá'u'lláh --the "Glory of God"-- the head of that vast reform party of Persian Muslims, who accept the New Testament as the Word of God and Christ as the Deliverer of men, who regard all nations as one, and all men as brothers. Three years ago he was visited by a Cambridge scholar [Edward Granville Browne] and gave utterance to sentiments so noble, so Christlike, that we repeat them as our closing words:

“‘That all nations should become one in faith and all men as brothers; that the bonds of affection and unity between the sons of men should be strengthened; that diversity of religions should cease and differences of race be annulled. What harm is there in this? Yet so it shall be. These fruitless strifes, these ruinous wars shall pass away, and the 'Most Great Peace' shall come. Do not you in Europe need this also? Let not a man glory in this, that he loves his country; let him rather glory in this, that he loves his kind.’”

Now it sounds like Jessup was trying to affirm that the teachings of Christ were gaining ascendancy among the Muslim strongholds in the Holy Land, but Bahá’ís point to this as the first public mention of the Bahá’í Faith in America. This paved the way for several pockets of burgeoning Bahá’í communities, and the 239-day tour of North America by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, son of Baháu’lláh in 1912 was feted with great celebrity by the media, and this “Persian sage” spoke to audiences of thousands in universities, churches and synagogues, hotels, etc., from New York to San Francisco, as well as leaders and intellectuals of the day, such as Theodore Roosevelt and Alexander Graham Bell. The most visible legacies of this are the communities of believers in every state and major city in America, and the magnificent House of Worship in Chicago that draws visitors in six figures annually. The legacy of Vivekananda is also two-pronged, spawning interest in the Orient from which have sprung virtually all authentic spiritual movements, and the establishment of hospitals in India which still bear the names of him and his master.

There are a number of remarkable parallels in the careers of Vivekananda and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: they were both the celebrated right-hand man of the central figure that they humbly served, both blazed trails in America and Europe, both were instrumental in social and spiritual revolutions, and both were indispensable heroes to the propagation of holy messages, both spoke of the new consciousness of unity of religion and mankind, and they were virtual contemporaries, though the two never met.

Damanhur -- Temples of Humanity

2007-07-25T16:46:00.000-07:00

Beautiful!!!

This is the first in a series looking at the multifarious groups and organizations around the world that have been inspired to envision in their own way the Teachings Bahá’u’lláh loosed upon the world in the 19th Century. Bahá’ís not only consort with the followers of all religions in a spirit of friendliness, but seek especially to connect with like-minded people who seek to inculcate these ideals for the betterment of the planet and its inhabitants.

By accident I ran across a large picture-book at my local library entitled Damanhur – Temples of Humanity, and I was intrigued. The story goes that in 1978 a group of artisans and visionaries led by one Oberto Airuadi gathered around a campfire near Turin, Italy watched a meteor leave a trail of stardust in its wake. They took this as a sign to begin turning the dream they’d harboured for some time into a reality and forthwith picked up their shovels and picks and began to dig. For the next 13 years the subterranean building went on in secret, all by hand tools, in 8,500 cubic metres on 5 levels, joined by hundreds of metres of corridors, inside a seam of mylonite.

In 1991 the secret was leaked, and only upon threat that the mountainside would be exploded if they refused to reveal the location of the temples, beginning four years of a predictable dogfight with political and religious authorities and ensuing court battle.

This self-contained kibbutz-like community of 800 people sports its own laws, constitution, and currency, considers itself a “template for a sustainable world with a permaculture future,” and the temples as a modern-day Noah’s Ark. Their philosophy attempts to be universal and inclusive, but is based heavily on ancient pagan traditions, especially from Mediterranean cults, with tarot, astrology, meditation, spiritual healing, and other occult sciences (including time travel). Added to this are ecology, a concentration on the arts, and an overarching New Age sensibility. All this might suggest that they are a hermetic commune, but their doors are open to visitors and those who would learn from the courses they offer, and they are making efforts to collaborate and co-operate with large worldwide organizations. They produce publications and have hosted festivals.

I should leave no doubt that their ideals are high but not all of its esoterica is in line with Bahá’í teachings, rather in its ideas of unity of religion and humanity, commitment to the environment, and harmony of science and religion. But what really got my attention is the phantasmagorical artwork. Murals, sculpture, mosaic, and stained glass of astonishing skill and inventiveness adorn the walls of the Blue Temple, Hall of Water, Hall of the Earth, Hall of Metals, Hall of Spheres, Hall of Mirrors, and adjacent smaller spaces. A maze of illuminated pathways called the Labyrinth is dedicated to the harmony and union of Divine Forces; in it are contained 35 stained glass windows, each in honour of a spiritual tradition, from ancient to modern, representing all parts of the globe, each one with a central image surrounded by what they term Sacred Language ideograms. All this can be best viewed in the book: Ananas, Esperide (2006). Damanhur: Temples of Humankind. New York: CoSM Press. ISBN 1-55643-577-0, but a fairly good peek can be had at: http://www.damanhur.org/temple/ -- click on the images and follow the slide show.

Here is part of an e-mail I sent Esperide Ananas (Silvia Buffagni) :

You might be interested in knowing of the Baha'i Faith because you share many of its ideals and purposes. From its inception in Iran in 1844, its avowed one thousand year mission is to effect the organic unity of the entire human race, and has been given the tools and method to actually achieve this. The Founder, Baha'u'llah (Glory of God), stated, "The well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established." Furthermore, He derived His authority from the same source as Jesus and Muhammad, Buddha, Krishna , Abraham, Moses, and others who have been sent by God to educate humanity, and His claim is that He is the Promised One foretold in all the Scriptures of the past, the One who will usher in the Golden Age.
In 164 years, the Faith has spread all over the planet, its 6 million believers spread like a thin veneer over the surface of the globe. Already in its short history, the Baha'i Faith has an intimate connection with Italy in that the marble for the buildings on the "mountain of the Lord" (Mount Carmel in Haifa , Israel), was transported there from Italy .
I am sure that the promotion of Damanhur and its vision occupies your entire life and being, its model offering a spiritual alternative to the downward spiral of the crumbling civilizations of humanity. I encourage you to investigate the Baha'i Faith as a like-minded partner in the building of a new World Order.

She answered me back within minutes, telling me a government official had recently informed her about the Babaji [sic] Faith, figuring the two had compatible aims and beliefs.

Gambling With God

2007-07-19T07:46:00.000-07:00

Einstein famously asserted that God does not play dice with the universe. Nevertheless religion and gambling have a long history.

Yuddhishtira in the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata is the eldest of the five Pandava brothers, and he has a list of virtues as long as his wife’s sari (check that story out), but also a fatal flaw, a weakness for dice games. The brothers are to inherit the kingdom, but Yuddhishtira is lured into a “friendly” game of dice by his cousin Duruyodhana who wants to usurp the throne. To no one’s surprise (except the Pandavas – apparently a knowledge of human nature is not on that long list of virtues, like Vitamin C missing from the nutrients the body produces – talk about design flaws!), Duruyodhana has enlisted a ringer to play on his behalf, and after initial winnings, Yuddhishtira begins to lose. Like all gamblers after him, he feels his luck must turn, but it doesn’t, and not only does he lose all his earthly possessions, but also his birthright, their wife (again, you really have to check this story out), and finally the lives of himself and his brothers, who must become slaves. And after the many years they submit to their loss and work off their debt, they return to claim their inheritance, and are refused. This ultimately results in the battle of Kurukshetra, on the eve of which Lord Krishna reveals to Yuddhishtira’s brother, the master archer Arjuna, the Bhagavad-Gita, holy book of the Hindus.

Fast forward to 17th century Cartesian France. Mathematician Blaise Pascal, dour and sickly, a Jansenist Catholic, whose previous claim to fame was demonstrating the existence of a vacuum, was contacted by a gambler to help increase his odds of winning, and through their correspondence the laws of probability were first established, sparking a revolution in European intellectual and philosophical thought. Then he had his “night of fire,” his personal mystical meeting with God, a fact which was not discovered until after his death – people simply knew he had changed, though they couldn’t fathom the reason. It caused him to want to integrate his mathematical knowledge with his newly-intensified belief. And so he formulated his “wager” on belief in God, which consisted of only four possibilities:

1. You believe in God, and are correct. You win the jackpot in heaven forever.
2. You believe in God, but you are wrong. All you have lost is a few years of debauchery, a blink in the infinite vastness of time. The House wins.
3. You don’t believe in God, and you are right. So you spend a few years following your own passions, but when it’s over, it’s really over. The House wins.
4. You don’t believe in God, but you are wrong. You are in deep deep doodoo for all eternity.
So roll the dice, how do you like the odds? What’s it going to be?

Now gambling is expressly forbidden in the Bahá’í Writings, though interestingly the playing of lotteries is not, and many Bahá’ís assert that the Faith would see the fruits of their winnings. But the most famous example of gambling in the Bahá’í Faith involved no less a person than its Founder, Bahá’u’lláh. It happened during the early 1860s in Baghdad. The local clergy were not amused at the high esteem in which He was held by members of all levels of society, including not only high-standing government officials, but some among their very own ranks. Plus there was that endless stream of visitors paying him homage, traveling hundreds of miles on foot to do so, a worship they could only watch and covet, regardless of how much they desired it for themselves. And He had never studied Qur’anic exegesis, philosophy, theology – in short, He was an amateur! This would not do. But getting Him denounced as a dangerous heretic didn’t fly, as they couldn’t obtain the necessary signatures. So they resorted to a ploy of public humiliation, which would see His career come tumbling down. A mullá was dispatched to interview Him and then ask that He perform a miracle for them, which would be solid proof of His divinity. Instead of being insulted that these clowns would make a circus of religion, He called their bluff: "Although you have no right to ask this, for God should test His creatures, and they should not test God, still I allow and accept this request.... The [scholars] must assemble, and, with one accord, choose one miracle, and write that, after the performance of this miracle they will no longer entertain doubts about Me, and that all will acknowledge and confess the truth of My Cause. Let them seal this paper, and bring it to Me. This must be the accepted criterion: if the miracle is performed, no doubt will remain for them; and if not, We shall be convicted of imposture."*

The clergy deliberated for three days, but couldn’t decide. Their problem now was: what if He actually pulled it off? Then they would have no further recourse. Oops! – they hadn’t quite thought this one through. They were forced to cut their losses and drop the matter. They gambled and lost. The House, as always, won.

And finally, from the words of Baha'u'llah: "Even or odd, thou shalt win the wager." The friends of God shall win and profit under all conditions, and shall attain true wealth. In fire they remain cold, and from water they emerge dry. Their affairs are at variance with the affairs of men. Gain is their lot, whatever the deal. To this testifieth every wise one with a discerning eye, and every fair-minded one with a hearing ear.**
___________________________________________

* Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, pg. 144
**Baha'u'llah (The Compilation of Compilations volume. I, pg. 154)

p.s.: In response to several comments made, I should make it clear that what I meant is that the clergy were gambling, not Baha'u'llah.

Trustees of God's Faith

2007-07-11T18:03:00.000-07:00

On July 11, The Associated Press reported: “For the second time in a week, Pope Benedict XVI has corrected what he says are erroneous interpretations of the Second Vatican Council, reasserting the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church and saying other Christian communities were either defective or not true churches.” This was not a new pronouncement from the Vatican, but nevertheless sent ripples of consternation throughout the non-Catholic Christian world. Most reaction was that this is a setback for the Interfaith movement, and even for Christian ecumenism, though there were a few conciliatory voices, such as The Rev. Sara MacVane, of the Anglican Centre in Rome: “there's the huge amount of friendship and fellowship and worshipping together that goes on at all levels, certainly between Anglican and Catholics and all the other groups and Catholics."

In April 2002, the supreme administrative body of the Bahá’í Faith, the Universal House of Justice, sent a letter to the religious leaders of the world, detailing the progress the human race is making in so many areas of human endeavor, but that religion is hampered in its development. It identified claims of exclusivity to be the single greatest obstacle. It quoted its founder, Bahá'u'lláh:

“There can be no doubt whatever that the peoples of the world, of whatever race or religion, derive their inspiration from one heavenly Source, and are the subjects of one God. . . Cleave unto that which draweth you together and uniteth you.”

The Universal House of Justice went on to explain: “Such an appeal does not call for abandonment of faith in the fundamental verities of any of the world's great belief systems. Far otherwise. . . What the above words do unequivocally urge is renunciation of all those claims to exclusivity or finality that, in winding their roots around the life of the spirit, have been the greatest single factor in suffocating impulses to unity and in promoting hatred and violence.”

The letter goes on to argue that there is an emerging global consciousness that humanity is one entity, that the earth is one common homeland for all peoples, that rights and privileges belong to all. This vision is yet fragile and not fully formed, and under attack by cataclysmic events, and therefore the peoples of the world look to their leaders, including religious ones, to cement and support this “intuitive awareness.” “It is to this historic challenge that we believe leaders of religion must respond if religious leadership is to have meaning in the global society emerging from the transformative experiences of the twentieth century.”

This letter was not only sent to major religious leaders of every established faith around the globe, but was carried by individual rank and file Bahá’ís to the pastors, deacons, mullahs, priests, lamas, and other clergy in their immediate communities. The reactions, were, predictably, mixed, and, predictably, there was not a wholesale and spontaneous acceptance of the appeal. But there was much in there for the trustees of the spiritual life to mull, such as:
“In order for this diffuse and still tentative perception to consolidate itself and contribute effectively to the building of a peaceful world, it must have the wholehearted confirmation of those to whom, even at this late hour, masses of the earth's population look for guidance.”

Furthermore the message contains not only an earnest plea for religion to catch up with human progress and become a moving force in morality, peace, unity, and knowledge, but it contains admonitions as well: “What cannot be morally justified is the manipulation of cultural legacies that were intended to enrich spiritual experience, as a means to arouse prejudice and alienation. The primary task of the soul will always be to investigate reality, to live in accordance with the truths of which it becomes persuaded and to accord full respect to the efforts of others to do the same.”

For Bahá'u'lláh Himself had warned: “Religious fanaticism and hatred are a world-devouring fire, whose violence none can quench. The Hand of Divine power can, alone, deliver mankind from this desolating affliction.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah, pg. 288) Therefore Bahá’ís continue to promulgate this message of the oneness of humanity, the oneness of religion, calling mankind’s spiritual legacy “one common faith,” believing that true progress for civilization in this age consists of organically unifying our human heritage at every level.

The complete text of the Universal House of Justice’s Letter to the World’s Religious Leaders may be viewed at:

http://bahai-library.com/published.uhj/religious.leaders.html

from Al Gore's 1992 Book "Earth in the Balance"

2007-07-10T18:58:00.000-07:00

Page 261 - 262: One of the newest of the great universalist religions, Baha'i, founded in 1863 in Persia by Mirza Husayn Ali, warns us not only to properly regard the relationship between humankind and nature but also the one between civilization and the environment. Perhaps because its guiding visions were formed during the period of accelerating industrialism, Baha'i seems to dwell on the spiritual implications of the great transformation to which it bore fresh witness:

"We cannot segregate the human heart from the environment outside us and say that once one of these is reformed everything will be improved. Man is organic with the world. His inner life molds the environment and is itself deeply affected by it. The one acts upon the other and every abiding change in the life of man is the result of these mutual reactions." [Shoghi Effendi, through his Secretary, from a letter dated 17 February 1933 to an individual believer, cited in (Baha'i International Community, 1998 Feb 18, Valuing Spirituality in Development).]

And, again, from the Baha'i sacred writings comes this:
"Civilization, so often vaunted by the learned exponents of arts and sciences will, if allowed to overleap the bounds of moderation, bring great evil upon men."
[Baha'u'llah, Gleanings #164]

New Indigo Kids on the Block

2007-07-06T09:24:00.000-07:00

During the autumn of 1844, the Báb, forerunner of Bahá’u’lláh, made this startling pronouncement to his earliest followers, known as the Letters of the Living, in Shiraz, Persia, just before they all scattered around the Middle East and India:

"The secret of the Day that is to come is now concealed. It can neither be divulged nor estimated. The newly born babe of that Day excels the wisest and most venerable men of this time, and the lowliest and most unlearned of that period shall surpass in understanding the most erudite and accomplished divines of this age." The Dawn-Breakers, pg. 93

There are voices that claim this prophecy has come to pass. One of the manifestations of this phenomenon has come to be known as the “Indigo children.” The term was coined by American psychic and synesthete Nancy Ann Tappe, who classified people's personalities according to the hue of their auras. Self-help gurus Jan Tober her husband Lee Carroll, gained 15+ minutes of celebrity status with the 1999 publication of The Indigo Children – The New Kids Have Arrived. Perhaps because of the background of the authors, it never attracted the attention of science and research, or serious study of any kind, and was snapped up instead by New Age practitioners, who have made wildly exaggerated unsubstantiated claims, embellishing them with psychic and paranormal phenomena, such as the colours of their auras or even that angels have sent them to regenerate the human race. Some take this further, saying Indigo children have been around for 100 years, paving the way in the new Millenium for Crystal children, who will establish peace and love as the organizing forces of the planet.

Who are they, and do they live in my street or building? Is there one in my family? We are told that they not only seem full of intuitive knowledge, but self-aware, self-composed, self-confident, mature beyond their years, empathic and/or telepathic, do not submit blindly to authority, are creative, nonconforming, and iconoclastic. They also become withdrawn in anti-intellectual, anti-spiritual, anti-creative environments. According to Tappe,

“As small children, Indigos are easy to recognize by their unusually large, clear eyes. Extremely bright, precocious children with an amazing memory and a strong desire to live instinctively, these children of the next millennium are sensitive, gifted souls with an evolved consciousness who have come here to help change the vibrations of our lives and create one land, one globe and one species. They are our bridge to the future.”

Critics say that children have always been this way, and suddenly calling them “special” merely excuses snotty and rude behaviour – the whole phenomenon is a pseudoscience without foundation. Precocious children generally have a hard time socially, and more often that not, their apparent genius fades over time. These supposed indigo kids are troubled, and some of them may have disorders, everything from ADD to autism, that should be met not with praise, lenience, accommodation, and encouragement, but with therapy, discipline, and Ritalin, otherwise they will become sociopaths. Ascribing suprahuman characteristics to them is a result of watching too many science fiction movies.

Is there a new race of men, a new stage in the evolution of human consciousness? If so, are there special children who are growing up to be the first generation of the dawn of a new era? Do we squelch them at our peril, retarding the development of humanity’s entrance into a golden age? Or is this all a chimera, much ado about nothing, “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”? Isn’t this worth looking into? Without proper investigation, let’s neither let our imaginations go psychedelic with extravagant fancy nor dismiss it out of hand, throwing out the baby with the bath water. Let’s check it out.

Whirling in the Millenium

2007-06-30T09:53:00.000-07:00

On June 14th, the Whirling Dervishes of Turkey appeared in Millenium Park in Chcago in honour of Rumi’s 800th birthday. As I myself am involved in the creative team putting together a multimedia show for the same avowed purpose, I was doubly intrigued. It was my first visit to this beautiful venue, -- well, beautiful except for the doggie-doo all over the lawn, and I’m still taken aback at the American practice of allowing and even selling alcohol at outdoor events.

Since it was presented by the Department of Cultural Affairs, The Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Turkish Consulate-General, there were some pompous though mercifully short speeches before the show. The Turkish minister, who I swear introduced himself as being from the Ministry of Culture and Truism, introduced the opening act, singer Ahmet Ozhan as one of the foremost exponents of “classical Turkish music,” as well as a “renowned Rumi interpreter.”

Rumi and the Whirling Dervishes were being presented as Turkish cultural icons. Rumi was Persian, he spoke Persian, was born in what is now Tajikistan hear the Afghan border; the Sufism he espoused was a Persian mystical tradition, perhaps influenced by India. The milieu in which he taught was Persian, in lands that had fairly recently been opened to Islam – Rumi means “The Roman.” And the poetry which is his most enduring legacy is firmly in the Persian mystical tradition, Sana before him, Sa’adi contemporary with him, and Hafiz after him. He had nothing to do with Turkey or the Ottomans except that Konya, where his career was made, is now in Turkey. I hoped this would be more than a case of Turkey usurping some glory from one of the great poets of humanity. (And I tried to focus in spite of the family with three young children in the row directly in front of me who decided to have their hot dog picnic with wrangling over pickles and chips not before, but once the show had begun.)

Ahmet Ozhan was preceded onto the stage by his 10-piece orchestra, all with recognizably Persian or Persian-derived instruments, except for the jolly fellow on the end with a pair of cymbals the size of large dinner plates. He sang two songs, 12-15 minutes each; I couldn’t tell how much Turkish was contained in them, nor how much Rumi, if any, but there was a lot of “Allah’u’Akbar.” And the style was barely folk, much less classical, being less sophisticated than a ghazal. The instruments, after a short introduction, added little; there was no harmony to speak of, the drum repeated simple, impoverished patterns reminiscent of an Orff ensemble, and the cymbals were a murmuring presence. Furthermore, they all played all the time, so there was no variety to speak of, no changes in colour, though variety in the East is less a value than in the West. Perhaps they were supposed to be trance-like, but were merely monotonous. It was vaguely reminiscent of European café music, which in Europe is considered merely entertainment of no artistic consequence. It was hardly a tribute to Rumi, whose poetry is full of music a lot more evocative and rhythmic than anything we heard from the stage. It did nothing to change my view that the best Turkish music was composed by Beethoven and Mozart, who merely used their flavour as pastiches. The one interesting element in this music was the scale or melodic formula, a kind of poor man’s raga, which nevertheless conveyed some emotional content.

Then it was time for the dervishes. Besides the musicians, there were 9 singers and 8 dervishes, 6 of whom would whirl. The audience was asked to refrain from applause before of during the display. (They were also asked not to take photographs of videos, but this request was flagrantly ignored.) The opening flute solo was very captivating. Now this music was intended to be spiritual, and so different in intention than the “classical” music, and very effective and affective, though I noticed the oud (lute) player miss a few notes while he checked his watch and a couple of the others share a joke during the proceedings. Nevertheless a slow, ritualistic, trance-like movement was maintained throughout, culminating in several episodes of whirling with upraised hands, looking heavenward, counterclockwise, pivoting around the left foot while remaining in place. The effect was heightened by a skirt which billowed in the whirl. I noticed the crowd eventually getting restive from the repetitions – the process took an hour (they should try sitting through a Japanese tea ceremony), but this was not a chorus line from a musical stage show. Unfortunately, the ministry of truism back in Turkey in its efforts to secularize society had banned this practice altogether in 1925, and now allows it as a cultural dance presentation, and as such I felt as uncomfortable at moments as I did previously listening to Tibetan monks intoning their secret chants in public.

Were they in ecstasy while whirling? Probably not, but they went through their paces admirably, and there was a truly angelic moment right near the end when all the music stopped but for the ney (flute – a fine player) and the silent whirling.

Babes in Limbo

2007-06-22T12:29:00.000-07:00

As a child sent to Catechism in the Roman Catholic Church, I naturally heard of limbo, but gave it no deep thought. Later limbo would mean a Caribbean dance under a progressively lowered bar, which given my physiology and the meager effort I exerted, produced only a lot of sand in my hair. In common parlance, it means a suspended place, a no man’s land, a place of indecision, a place of deferral pending other events or decisions.
Christians have been wrangling with limbo for centuries. It is a place where unbaptized babies go (as well as Jesus, for even though He took on the sins of the world, surely He could not go to Hell, but that is a topic for another day), a kind of warm swimming pool where we can float but have no way to ascend unto heaven. The doctrine was first asserted by St. Augustine in an anti-Pelagian argument (not going to get into that) around the turn of the 5th Century A.D. Baptism had two major purposes: the induction of the soul into the fold of the Church, and to remove Original Sin. It was for the second reason that Augustine came up with his argument. Tertullian in the 2nd Century had coined the term “Original Sin” for the fall of Adam and its residual stain on all mankind. Out, out, damned spot!
The arguments became predictably convoluted. Here’s an example of the linguistic gymnastics:
As for the expression limbo of infants, it was forged at the turn of the 12th-13th century to name the "resting place" of such infants (the "border" of the inferior region). Theologians could discuss this question, however, without using the word limbo. Their doctrines should not be confused with the use of the word limbo.
How could any one possibly be confused?
In April 2007, the Vatican authorized publication of a document entitled, "The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized." Herein it is stated: “the Christian community notes that there is no mention of limbo in the liturgy” (part 5); “When the New Testament mentions the practice of baptism, it generally points to the baptism of adults”; and “Finally, when reflecting theologically on the salvation of infants who die without baptism, the church respects the hierarchy of truths and therefore begins by clearly reaffirming the primacy of Christ and his grace, which has priority over Adam and sin. Jesus Christ, in his existence for us and in the redemptive power of his sacrifice, died and rose again for all. By his whole life and teaching, he revealed the fatherhood of God and his universal love.” (part 7)
(Those who wish to view this document in its entirety may find it at http://www.catholicculture.org/library/view.cfm?recnum=7529, among other sites.) Of course clerics around the Christian world are dissecting this document and its theological implications, one of which may be that centuries of Church teaching about limbo may simply be swept away (hopefully not throwing the baby out with the bath water, heh heh.)
Quoth the Guardian: “None, I feel, will question the fact that the fundamental reason why the unity of the Church of Christ was irretrievably shattered, and its influence was in the course of time undermined, was that the Edifice which the Fathers of the Church reared after the passing of His First Apostle was an Edifice that rested in nowise upon the explicit directions of Christ Himself.”
(Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha'u'llah, pg. 20)
Bahá'u'lláh stigmatizes all these church dogmas time and time again as “idle fancies and vain imaginings.” Notwithstanding, Bahá’ís face the same dilemma from a different perspective. We know that souls progress eternally, and that life on earth is an important stage during which our purpose is to acquire spiritual perfections through our actions, choices, and decisions that will be of use to us in the next world. Naturally we ask how this works out for those who are autistic, mentally retarded, disabled in other ways, and especially if we die too young to have made progress. Laura Clifford Barney asked ‘Abdu’l-Bahá this question, and received a direct answer:

Question. -- What is the condition of children who die before attaining the age of discretion or before the appointed time of birth?

Answer. -- These infants are under the shadow of the favor of God; and as they have not committed any sin and are not soiled with the impurities of the world of nature, they are the centers of the manifestation of bounty, and the Eye of Compassion will be turned upon them.

‘Abdu'l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions, pg. 240

Let us not waste our breaths bashing those who tried to understand the Scriptures and God’s will. “God hath forgiven what is past.” (Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh, pg. 219) How can we be unforgiving to those who, faced with the silence of Divine Guidance on a matter, tried to give it their best understanding based on the implications of the Bible? Of course, Bahá’ís face many quandaries about matters not specifically revealed in the Holy Text, but we have been given the Divinely-ordained Institution of the Universal House of Justice on these matters (unlike, say, the Sanhedrin, the Catholic Church or the Caliphate, which arrogated this status for themselves, making themselves “partners with God” in the revelation of His Will and Law.) Furthermore, Bahá’ís are expressly forbidden to impose their understanding on others, creating sects and inserting unauthorized dogma into the pure fabric of the Faith. But at least we can tell our Christian friends when enlightenment through progressive stages reaches clerical authority -- as it is slowly but inexorably doing -- and encourage them to accept the Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh and avoid the rush.
Noble have I created thee, yet thou hast abased thyself. Rise then unto that for which thou wast created.
Bahá'u'lláh , The Arabic Hidden Words, #22