Ascension

A Moderate Ascension

By John Taylor; 2007 May

In response to the most recent installment of the Badi list, The Ruhi Thing, reader Jean sent a note on advertising the Ruhi thing, saying that it has been well done at:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5RPXFm8h6o>

As the title indicated, I have a thing about the Ruhi thing, so it will be a while before I get up the gumption to review these videos but I trust that Jean would not steer me wrong, so I share this with you un-reviewed.

I attended a deepening on protection of the Faith on Monday night given to the Niagara Cluster by Joe Woods. One of the organizers of the series, Nancie, sent out such an enthusiastic promotional email that I could not stay away, though it is quite a drive from Dunnville to St. Catherines. Fortunately, I picked up Peter in Smithville on the way and he showed me a quicker route. Here is what Nancie wrote:

"He (Joe) is such an inspiration - having committed to memory tons of passages from the Writings that he weaves into his conversation in such a natural way. To be able to hear and consider the meaning of instant phrases and passages that he can so easily insert into everything he says is truly remarkable and a wonderful example of how the Writings can influence our thoughts and discussions if only we can remember them at the appropriate times!"

"When asked about his technique for memorizing, he said that what he does is to pick out what verse he wants to concentrate on the night before and when he wakes up he reads it and then writes it out long-hand three times that morning and again 3 times that evening before bed. Then he repeats this until he has it memorized, and then he looks for the first opportunity to use it in his next talk or discussion so that it enters his long term memory bank. He continues to periodically look for opportunities to keep using it as he adds new quotes to his repertoire."

I cite Nancie's promo in full here because this is a memorizing technique that actually works. I had been slaving over my own list of quotes-to-memorize for most of that day. I had tried for the longest time to memorize them as laid out in my outliner Maxthink's display, without much to show for my efforts. So all day long I had gone through the long, tedious process of converting each citation from ASCII to PowerPoint format in hopes that projecting the Holy Writ on the inside wall of my garage door might make them more accessible and easy to read aloud and remember. In any case, it should be good practice combining the laptop and video projector, something I will have to do if my multimedia curse lifts and I ever start giving illustrated talks.

I arrived home late and, having no alarm clock available, slept through until quarter to four, too late to go to our local Ascension of Baha'u'llah commemoration but not too late to say the Visitation Tablet on my own. It turned out to be a wonderful if solitary experience. This prayer is my favoritest prayer in the whole world and not for over ten years, since we moved to Dunnville, have I had the chance to read it aloud. That night, all alone, I did. Before, when I was in a much larger community I was almost always chosen to read it in English, while a Persian was chosen read it in Arabic. But here, in spite of repeated hints and even eventually open pleading, I have never once had the bounty of reading it. Instead I had to listen to others stumble over unfamiliar territory and mispronounce words while I silently, excruciatingly, tore out every hair on my head. I feel like Nicolo Peganini might have if he were forced to listen to a full concert by a violin student of three months experience. I love this Tablet and have it practically memorized. Its words should be read so as to move the listener to tears. But at least this year, for me alone, I moved myself to tears.

On our Holy Day we were planning an excursion to Port Colbourne when my brother Bob phoned to say he was coming on one of his rare and brief visits. He took Grandpa and the rest of us over to Grand Island for a fish dinner. The kids were fascinated to hear about his treasure hunting, and he explained to an avid Silvie how to pan for gold and how he has been walking the beaches of Florida with his metal detector, picking out of the sand bottle caps and the occasional bit of lost jewelry. He has also been getting into birding, photographing birds, insects and other wildlife. He showed us on his laptop scads of shots taken in Texas of gators and squirrels ("Sandy!" the kids shouted, remembering the Texan squirrel in Spongebob Squarepants). I was interested to try out his expensive camera; it was the first time I have had the chance to put a digital SLR through its paces, and it was smooth, much quicker, more responsive and produced nicer pictures than my El Cheapo special. I was suitably envious, if it is ever suitable to evince one of the seven deadly sins.

I was tired from the driving I had done the night before and disinclined to go out but the kids for once dragged me out (instead of the other way around) on a walk to the library. Thomas chose no fewer than five Spongebob Squarepants videos, and Silvie concentrated on the Disney Cinderella films. On the way back we stopped by the Youth Outreach Center, where a talk was in progress by a local Dunnville High School student and Dr Reza Kazemi. Reza is an Iranian of Muslim background (but not belief) who has become something of an activist on behalf of the world's underprivileged masses. He and his wife, Barbara, are Marie and the kids' family physicians. I had heard his spiel about his trip to India where he found out how farm subsidies in rich countries are artificially depressing the prices of staples in the Third World, crushing the hopes and dreams of poor farmers. But this time, it was different.

The Powerpoint presentation was mostly given by the student, which was part of her duties on the student program that Reza is running. I did not catch her name, so we can call her Sally. Sally told how the good doctor had taken her and a group of other students to a tiny Mayan village in Mexico on a two week long literacy program. They lived with the Mayans and during the day paired off with two or three aboriginals to teach them how to read. How they got around the triple language barrier I am not too clear on, but they seem to have made some progress.

Prompted by Reza, the taciturn and almost inaudible Sally told how the short trip changed her life permanently. She saw how people with almost zero opportunity and no purchasing power are much, much happier than anybody around here. They get up in the morning cheerful and work all day long while singing a happy song. When she got back here Sally was hit hard by culture shock. Everybody swears and is grumpy, and though we have a thousand times the opportunities that these aboriginals will ever have, we care nothing about that and fritter our lives away in petty squabbling and idle pleasure seeking.

Reza told how every student on this program (the name of it also escaped me) who takes the trip down to Mexico immediately afterwards raises his or her marks by an average of 15 to 20 percent. They see with their own eyes that what we get handed to us on a platter is beyond the wildest dreams of most of the world's population. It is one thing to say, "Eat your veggies, others are starving," and another to go down and see people who have nothing to eat. Well, not nothing, but as their pictures show, the villagers are malnourished. They eat nothing but corn and as a result a grade 12 student there is as tall as a grade 3 student here. But spiritually and socially, they are far more advanced than we are. We are willing chattel for the bribery of the corporate machine, they live fulfilled, productive lives, and their waste, their ecological footprint, is practically nil. In other words, Ruhiyyih Khanum was right, the native peoples are way ahead of us, which is why the teaching of the Faith does so well there, and not here. Even the study circle method -- what I have been railing about as inappropriate here -- is perfectly suited to these villages. The photos and descriptions of the literacy program these students went through with the Mayans look for all the world like a Ruhi circle thing.

Just as the Mayan villagers are physically stunted, we are intellectually stunted. I can see that now. For the past few weeks I have been enthusiastically learning and discussing the word "polity." Polity describes everything we are missing out on with our insane preoccupation with materialism and individualism. For the villager, all this analysis would seem laughably simplistic. Of course you give it up for the whole, and the whole gives it up for the individual. They do that all day long, and are all the happier for it. We are miserable, all the while wallowing in waste, wealth and opportunity.

As if to reinforce that point, yesterday the first issue of my new subscription to World Order arrived. (I have decided to spend more money on Baha'i publications, as opposed to technical gadgets like my brother's Nikon, and this and Brilliant Star were the first periodicals I chose) The lead editorial, "Civility, Society and Individual Freedom" (WO, 2006, Vol. 37, No.4) is a very similar essay to my recent blog entries on polity, except that instead of polity they focus in on the word "civility." They point out that civility is not a synonym for courtesy, it is broader, implying full participation in the social order around you -- in other words, the typical virtues of a Mayan villager, the almost forgotten virtues of anybody in a developed country. They cite part of the following letter from the Guardian to the British believers explaining why Baha'is, in spite of the centrality of peace in our ideals, are not full-blown pacifists:

"With reference to the absolute pacifists, or conscientious objectors to war; their attitude, judged from the Baha'i standpoint, is quite anti-social and due to its exaltation of the individual conscience leads inevitably to disorder and chaos in society. Extreme pacifists are thus very close to the anarchists, in the sense that both these groups lay an undue emphasis on the rights and merits of the individual. The Baha'i conception of social life is essentially based on the principle of the subordination of the individual will to that of society. It neither suppresses the individual nor does it exalt him to the point of making him an anti-social creature, a menace to society. As in everything it follows the 'golden mean'. The only way that society can function is for the minority to follow the will of the majority." (Shoghi Effendi, Unfolding Destiny, 435-436)

So, as the Guardian states, the rule of moderation in all things applies to our social involvement. Could it be that aboriginals are too social? Certainly it would be hard to attain a high level of education staying in a group all day long, laughing, working and singing, the way they seem to do. In that case the cut directed at Aristotle could also come at us Baha'is. Aristotle got an early reputation as the supreme philosopher of the golden mean. Everything for him was enough, not too much or too little. Finally, perhaps inevitably, his detractors started accusing him of being "immoderate in his moderation." Still, we cannot go far wrong in following the discoveries of the fellow who most agree is the most intelligent man in history.