95 Youth Conferences

On Feb. 8, The Universal House of Justice has announced that 95 youth conferences will take place between July and October of 2013, and it listed the host cities alphabetically.  Not many of us could rattle off what countries all these cities are in, so here is a reference list:

Accra	Ghana
Addís Ababa	Ethiopia
Aguascalientes	Mexico
Almaty	Kazakhstan
Antananarivo	Madagascar
Apia	Samoa
Atlanta	USA
Auckland	New Zealand
Bakú	Azerbaijan
Bangalore	India
Bangu	Central African Republic
Bardiya	Nepal
Battambang	Cambodia
Bhopal	India
Bhubaneswar	India
Boston	USA
Brasilia	Brazil
Bridgetown	Barbados
Bukavu	Democratic Republic of the Congo
Cali	Colombia
Canoas	Brazil
Cartagena	Colombia
Chennai	India
Chibombo	Zambia
Chicago	USA
Chisinau	Moldova
Cochabamba	Bolivia
Daca	Bangladesh
Daidanaw	Burma (Myanmar)
Dakar	Senegal
Dallas	USA
Danané	Cote d’Ivoire
Dar-es-Salaam	Tanzania
Dnepropetrovsk	Ukraine
Durham	USA
Frankfurt	Germany
Guwahati	India
Harare	Zimbabwe
Helsinki	Finland
Istanbul (2)	Turkey
Jakarta	Indonesia
Johannesburg	South Africa
Juyand	Tajikistan
Kampala	Uganda
Kananga	Democratic Republic of the Congo
Kapilavastu	Nepal
Karachi	Pakistan
Kinshasa	Democratic Republic of the Congo
Kolkata	India
Kuching	Malaysia
Lae	Papua New Guinea
Lagos	Nigeria
Lima	Peru
London	England
Lubumbashi	Democratic Republic of the Congo
Lucknow	India
Madrid	Spain
Manila	Philippines
Matunda Soy	Kenya
Moscow	Russia
Mulanje	Malawi
Mwinilunga	Zambia
Mzuzu	Malawi
Nadi	Fiji
Nairobi	Kenya
New Delhi	India
Otavalo	Ecuador
Ouagadougou	Burkina Faso
Panchgani	India
París	France
Patna	India
Perth	Australia
Phoenix	USA
Port Dickson	Malaysia
Port Moresby	Papua New Guinea
Port Vila	Vanuatu
Port-au-Prince	Haiti
Sacramento	USA
San Diego	USA
San José	Costa Rica
San José	Philippines
San Salvador	El Salvador
Santiago	Chile
Sarh	Chad
Seberang Perai	Malaysia
South Tarawa	Kiribati
Sydney	Australia
Tbilisi	Georgia
Tirana	Albania
Toronto	Canada
Ulán Bator	Mongolia
Vancouver	Canada
Verona	Italy
Yaoundé	Cameroon

Lame and Blind

Though the voices for the harmony of science and religion have been swelling since 1927 (year of The Heisenberg Indeterminacy Principle), the most clamorous voices and the general perception is still very much that the two are at loggerheads with each other and that only one of the two can ultimately win.  Max Jammer’s 1999 book Einstein and Religion has only recently come to my attention, though I along with many Bahá’ís have long been familiar with Einstein’s famous statement that “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”  It is easy to exult that the most famous mind of the twentieth century should utter such a quotable statement that so closely parallels Bahá’í teachings, but before we put him in front of the seventy-six trombones at the head of the parade, let’s take a closer look at his overall vision.

            Of course Einstein is not famous for his religious pronouncements, and we know of his views on the subject chiefly from three major papers he prepared upon request and written and spoken communications in which he responded to questions of religion.  In his book Max Jammer analyzes these in great detail, along with the reactions of the scientific and religious communities, as well as the implications to Physics of Einstein’s views.

            He was born into a non-religious German Jewish family and was educated in Catholic schools (with a Jewish tutor to balance things out).  He seems to have accepted his early religious training without rebellion.  He once said in an interview, “I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene.”  When he began to involve himself seriously with philosophy and scientific books he began to express disdain for superstitions, rituals, and the kind of God of the popular imagination.  He found a deep affinity in his philosophical views with the seventeenth-century Dutch Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza.  The third major element in his spiritual views was music, a subject barely touched upon in this book.

            A personality trait that marked Einstein was his non-acceptance of authority, which served him well in science, and in the arena of religion, similarly, he followed his own best insights and his keen sense of conscience, accepting no doctrine at face value.  He had a strong identity as a Jew, but at his death, contrary to Jewish tradition, had his body cremated and his ashes scattered.

Einstein did not only use his powerful capacity for rational thought to form his personal theology, but also analyzed his perceptions and experience.  He told a critic at a 1927 Valentine’s Day dinner in Berlin: “Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible, and inexplicable.  Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion.” (pg. 39-40)  He strongly suggested that the true scientist was also deeply religious:  “[Cosmic religious experience] “is the strongest and noblest driving force behind scientific research.” (pg. 80)  And, “I am of the opinion that all the finer speculations in the realm of science spring from a deep religious feeling, and without such feeling they would not be fruitful.”  (pg. 68-69)

We get the idea that science replaces religion in the minds of not only scientists, but a host of others for whom rational thought has been placed far above faith.   Einstein’s was far from this:  “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.  It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.  Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.  It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion.  A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds – it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.  I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves.”  (pg. 73)

But did he see any connection between the two, or did he just happen to be both scientific and religious, just as someone could be both a jazz saxophonist and a basketball player to boot?

“Science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding.  This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion . . .  I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith.  The situation may be expressed by an image:  science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”  (pg. 94)

It is easier to see how science helps religion, by dispelling superstitions or confirming Scripture.  How does religions help science?:  “Even science at an advanced stage, cannot define, let alone commend, ethical values.  For science is confined to what is and ethics to what should be, and no path leads from the knowledge of what is to the knowledge of what should be.”  (pg. 52)  Einstein declared that our moral judgements, our sense of beauty, and religious instincts are “tributary forms in helping the reasoning faculty towards its highest achievements.  You are right in speaking of the moral foundations of science, but you cannot turn it around and speak of the scientific foundations of morality . . . every attempt to reduce ethics to scientific formulae must fail.”  (pg. 69)

He cautioned that the knowledge of science and religion is not mutually exclusive, and religious knowledge should not concern itself with only that which science cannot explain, something that has been called “God of the gaps”:  “A doctrine which is able to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress.”  (pg. 232)

In summary, Einstein shows the connection between science and religion in most persuasive terms, hard to argue with, though not conclusive if one stubbornly wishes to differ.  His view of God is very personal and intimate, and we immediately see how real God is to him as a benign presence, and we are cheered that he sees God at the beginning and end of all investigative enterprise, and scientific endeavour only strengthens his sense of mystery and wonder at what must lie behind this amazing Creation.  His is a faith many a Bahá’í strive for in vain.  He also asserted that we learn about God from special individuals, though he mentions only Moses and Christ.  He differed from Bahá’í teaching in at least two fundamental ways:  first, his his rejection of a personal God that rewards and punishes, to whom one may petition and hope for a direct result, and who suspends the very laws He Himself has created in order to answer these prayers; and secondly, he rejected the idea of free will in favour of determinism.  This philosophy suited his scientific and Spinozan views, and may seem rigid in its vehemence, yet is remarkably close in expression to the following passages from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh:  The decrees of the Sovereign Ordainer, as related to fate and predestination, are of two kinds . . . The one is irrevocable, the other is, as termed by men, impending. To the former all must unreservedly submit, inasmuch as it is fixed and settled. God, however, is able to alter or repeal it. As the harm that must result from such a change will be greater than if the decree had remained unaltered, all, therefore, should willingly acquiesce in what God hath willed and confidently abide by the same.  The decree that is impending, however, is such that prayer and entreaty can succeed in averting it. (Gleanings, pg. 132)

Every act ye meditate is as clear to Him as is that act when already accomplished . . . All stands revealed before Him; all is recorded in His holy and hidden Tablets. This fore-knowledge of God, however, should not be regarded as having caused the actions of men, just as your own previous knowledge that a certain event is to occur, or your desire that it should happen, is not and can never be the reason for its occurrence. (Gleanings, pg. 148)

Qaligraphy

Beautiful calligraphy is an honoured tradition and high art in many parts of the world, especially in Asia from Japan to Turkey.  For a boy being educated in Canada, for me calligraphy simply meant good penmanship, of which I was proud, but it certainly didn’t imply any dimension of actual artistic merit, just neatness (and perhaps a hint of a good character).  In the Muslim world, which eschews graven images, calligraphy is elevated to the status of high religious art, the apotheosis of which is the adornment of mosques with holy words from the Qur’án.  Since the Bahá’í Faith was born, suckled, and weaned in this environment, it is therefore not surprising that the Scriptures of the Bahá’í Faith have been hand-copied and recopied, framed and illuminated (decorated with intricate borders, often golden), and often admired almost as much for their artistry as their spiritual content.  Bahá’u’lláh’s father and Bahá’u’lláh Himself were noted calligraphers.  Perhaps the most famous Bahá’í calligrapher contemporary with Bahá’u’lláh was Mishkín-Qalam, pictured below (the spit and image of John Lennon, no?), and his enduring legacy in the Bahá’í world at large is his rendering of the “Greatest Name” or “Most Great Name”:  “Ya Bahá’u’l-‘abhá” (“O Thou the Glory of the All-Glorious”).  Most Bahá’ís have this symbol is some form in their homes, from plaques to tapestries to bookmarks for selected books.

All well and good so far.  However, Bahá’ís, who fearlessly confront all manner of social and religious issues, often skirt the fact that the majority of the world does not read Arabic, nor that Arabic, like Persian and Hebrew, is read from right to left.  Many more people, however, can read English, and if one looks at Mishkín-Qalam’s masterwork, it seems blatantly to say “EVIL”  -- you simply can’t not see it, and by the time you explain it away, the initial effect has made a cicatrix difficult to heal.  This is not only fodder for anyone opposed to the Faith, but off-putting to anyone else as well.  One can only speculate as to how it works on the imagination, but it can’t be good.  We can’t just sweep this under the rug, for it is often the first impetus and conversation piece for teaching about the Faith.  I opine that we really ought to be more discreet in our use of this symbol and instead field questions about photos of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá on our walls and end-tables, as people are always curious about our great-grandparents.

For eighteen years I had a music school in Markham, Ontario, and on a wall opposite the piano I had a beautiful Navajo sandpainting of Mishkín-Qalam’s Greatest Name on a brilliant turquoise background and surrounded by nine eagle feathers.  Dozens of people saw it daily.  One day a student of mine piped up and asked, “Why does it say ‘Elvis’?”  I don’t know if he was dyslexic, but clearly the musical training was progressing nicely.

Super Hooper

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.