Promise of Peace, Part I

The Promise of Peace, An Appraisal Twenty Years After; Part I

By John Taylor; 2006 June 12

On the fortieth anniversary of the formation of the United Nations, 24 October, 1985, the Universal House of Justice wrote a letter on the ways and means of peace addressed to the peoples of the world. In years following Baha'is distributed this message first to world leaders, then to local people of prominence, and finally to everybody we could reach. This was by far the widest proclamation of the Baha'i peace program ever undertaken, although similar efforts to reach and influence world leaders were made less than five years after the birth of the Baha'i Faith in the mid-19th Century, as we shall see later on in this essay.

Today, twenty one years later, the United Nations has just gone through its sixtieth anniversary celebrations; this time around everything was different, though. Serious deliberations for fundamental change were undertaken, including serious consideration of surprisingly radical reforms of the international institution. There was general agreement that the UN must modernize in order to address our current political climate. Unfortunately the sense of urgency was not strong enough to summon up a collective will to act upon what everybody agrees has to be done sooner or later.

The House of Justice's letter, now known as the "Promise of World Peace," two was written, as I said, two decades ago, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall. It pinpointed exactly why we are so strangely comatose. Their timing, from today's perspective, seems perfect. The subsequent fall of communism proved that our paralysis on the world level has only worsened. Economic globalization charged ahead while political pacification stalled. Instead of bringing about peace on earth, not to mention a huge peace dividend from the dismantling of the engines of war that many expected, the removal of Communism only stirred up new, decentralized and more ruthless and determined enemies. Events only served to emphasize how deeply entrenched militarism and warlike ways of thinking are in all of us, both individually and in our institutions.

Today, without the excuse of superpower rivalry and an arms race, astronomical sums are being frittered away on weaponry, both nuclear and conventional; in fact far more even than in the mid-1980's at the height of the Cold War, which until then everybody that was the peak, the most crushing expensive preparations for a non-existent war in history. Meanwhile, uncertainty, hatred, violence and terrorism spread uncontrollably. Why? Why are we helpless to uproot these searing flames of war? The Promise of Peace letter points out not only why we are so helpless before our own bellicosity, but also exactly how to overcome the paralysis that is enervating our will and distracting us from the most urgent task in the world, establishing peace. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let us begin with the memorable opening words of the Peace Message:

"The Great Peace towards which people of good will throughout the centuries have inclined their hearts, of which seers and poets for countless generations have expressed their vision, and for which from age to age the sacred scriptures of mankind have constantly held the promise, is now at long last within the reach of the nations. For the first time in history it is possible for everyone to view the entire planet, with all its myriad diversified peoples, in one perspective. World peace is not only possible but inevitable. It is the next stage in the evolution of this planet..."

In later years some curmudgeons have criticized this position, saying that if we really accept peace as inevitable, people are liable to just say, "Well, if it is unavoidable I see no need to sacrifice for it or make any strenuous efforts at all to bring it about. What will happen will happen." There are several reasons that drawing such a conclusion is wrongheaded, many of which are to be found in the body of this very letter. For one thing, as the House points out, the alternative we face is between world peace or a plunge into bloodshed and anarchy, suffering on a scale that the earth has never witnessed; "...failure to stem the tide of conflict and disorder would be unconscionably irresponsible." And, "We have a choice between a consultative act of will or the horrors of war." On the positive side, anyone who succeeds in helping form a permanent, constitutional peace would be remembered for thousands of generations as a savior of the human race. The enticements of being remembered favorably by posterity do not get any more tempting than that.

As the House of Justice points out, it is now possible for the first time to look at history from a single perspective, with peace at the summit. Certainly if we know what is good for us we will come to know and teach all history in this way. A united humanity needs a single, united history, for the way to know the next step is first to understand where we have come from and where we are right now. At last such histories are being written, notably Jared Diamond's books, the most recent of which is Collapse, which I will be reviewing here soon.

Anyway, a year after the Peace Message first came out the Association for Baha'i Studies published a prettier, annotated and footnoted version of the peace message, which included much supplemental material. Most interesting for me are the supporting comments by leading lights from past and present. I especially recommend reading the quotes that the ABS chose to bolster the above opening paragraph of the Peace Message. Truly, peace has been a dream for every major tradition, including the Six Nations, whose founder, Deganawida, originated the saying "bury the hatchet," for what we prosaically call disarmament.

I Deganawidah,
And the chiefs of our Five Nations of the Great Peace
We now uproot the tallest pine into the cavity thereby made we cast all weapons
Into the depths of the earth
Into the deep underneath ...
We cast all weapons of war
We bury them from sight forever ...
And we plant again the tree ...
Thus shall the Great Peace be established."
-- Iroquois poem, "The Tree of the Great Peace." Cited in Peace on Earth: A Peace Anthology (Paris: UNESCO, 1980), 34-35

The Peace Message then goes into the details of how to get the peoples and nations of today to agree to bury thier hatchets. They first point out that recent history offers ample reasons to hope that a new age and stage of peace is approaching. In the 20th Century institutions on the international level progressed and strengthened, colonization was replaced by independent nationhood, racial and sexual equality became universally recognized, humanitarianism increased and cooperation among formerly antagonistic groups became the norm. Perhaps most important, the advance of science and technology portends a social surge forward, as well as providing the means to administer a united world. And this the House wrote a decade before the Internet came to the fore. But we cannot put all our hope into this basket, they warn.

"Yet barriers persist. Doubts, misconceptions, prejudices, suspicions and narrow self-interest beset nations and peoples in their relations one to another."

At this point the House of Justice brings in the teachings of Baha'u'llah, who even in the early 1880's was well aware of what peace is up against. They cite a passage from the Lawh-i-Maqsud, one also included in the "Great Announcement to Mankind,"

"The winds of despair", Baha'u'llah wrote, "are, alas, blowing from every direction, and the strife that divides and afflicts the human race is daily increasing. The signs of impending convulsions and chaos can now be discerned, inasmuch as the prevailing order appears to be lamentably defective." (Proclamation 113, Tablets, 171)

The House then says that there are four major signs of these flaws today: unstoppable war, economic collapse, terrorism and the suffering of millions. Our flagrant helplessness to stop these has given birth to an entrenched belief that we must be intrinsically aggressive. If violence is in our genes it must be ineradicable. This embroils us in a paralyzing contradiction: we all long for peace and know that we need it, but at the same time we uncritically accept that humans are incorrigibly selfish. How can we be bold and creative with that degrading self-image? How can we hope to erect a harmonious social system? The only way to peace is reassess these presuppositions festering at the root of our predicament. Next time we will go on to exactly how they propose that this debunking be done.

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

Men in the House

"Men in the House, Revisited Again"

 

By John Taylor; written 19 September, 2005; revised 2006 June 11

 

 

Dear Friends, I promised the LSA that I would make some kind of visual peace message presentation for our community's public meeting on Tuesday; I have been hard at work researching the UHJ's 1995 Peace Letter and have been unable to complete anything new for today. So I am re-sending an essay I did last fall. A couple of my feminist readers were kind enough to give me positive feedback on my hypothesis as to why there are men only on the UHJ. I promised to send this for evaluation to another feminist reader, my spiritual sister, and I wondered if anyone else has any feedback. Have I solved the unanswerable question, "Why only men?" Or have I just rephrased pre-existing inadequate proposals? Say what you want, but say it to my face, do not report me to the NSA. I am in enough trouble as it is.

 

****

 

Men in the House

 

 In the course of this summer just ending my thoughts have revolved around the question of why, why are only men allowed on the Universal House of Justice? Why, why, are only men obliged to go on pilgrimage in the Baha'i Faith? What is the wisdom of this apparent skew towards the male element?

 
A climax of sorts to my ruminations came in August when I read an article in Time Magazine about a Christian minister in the States who has taken upon himself a personal "mission to the men." He pointed out that over sixty percent of the membership rolls of Protestant churches, and something like eighty or ninety percent of their active membership, are female. In those conservative sects where women clergy were suddenly allowed, the number of female leaders shot up from zero to, again, ninety percent or more in only a few years. He said that male church members who do turn up complain about the artsy-fartsy services chosen by the gals, singing, dancing and lovey-dovey sentiment. All that good ol' rootin' tootin' hell, damnation and brimstone are a thing of the past. To my surprise, this pastor with the mission to the men negatively compared female-dominated Christianity to Islam, the world's fastest growing religion, which gives a bigger place -- to say the least -- to men.

 
I cannot say that I found this man of God's approach to attracting males to religion all that interesting. Taken to an extreme, he would be hiring wrestling announcers as preachers and staging mini-football games behind the pulpit to keep the interest of male congregants from flagging. But nonetheless, he has a point about men in religion generally, one that is driven home to me every time I attend Feast here in Haldimand. While we have one or two other men who turn up sporadically (depending, I suppose, upon the NHL hockey schedule), usually in a roomful of women the only males are myself, Ron, and my six-year old son, Tomaso. This imbalance is not obvious in communities with a Persian element, since they resemble Muslims in that men tend to be more active than women. This male exodus, it seems, is characteristically Western.

 
So, suppose that in setting up ground rules for male involvement in religion Baha'u'llah was not trying to maintain the last bastions of a rotten, patriarchic, male-dominated old order. Was He rather looking to the new Order? Was He pointing a divine finger at the face of men in developed lands, saying:

 
"Do your duty to God. You have a responsibility not to lose yourselves in freedoms to indulge in wine, women and sports. Do not blow energy on selfish pleasure. You must take a positive role in society, religion, and particularly in family life. Yours must be a partnership with women but also take on a leadership stake in the family. That is why you are the nominal head, so that you will keep your family name going through many generations, at whatever cost to you personally. By inclination men are selfish and altruism comes harder. So fight your inclination to flee family life. Join in not because you are forced to do so or for personal power but because this is the best moral course for you. The mark of male maturity is that ability to plan restrained, consultative initiatives; this is also the best impetus for spiritual progress. The balance of virility of family as an institution depends upon you, and hence of politics and democracy generally."

 
And what exemplar do you have, men? Well, there is the Master for one. One novel insight came to me reading Myron Phelp's book, the first ever written in English about `Abdu'l-Baha, called The Master in Akka. It has a mini-history of the Faith not in `Abdu'l-Baha's words but His sister Bahiyyih Khanum's words. She gives a female perspective, but Western men especially should read this eyewitness account in its entirety (I would like to make a video of it, with my daughter Silvie as narrator). Here is what I gleaned from what she said about `Abdu'l-Baha as paterfamilias:

 
His charitable initiatives did not go unnoticed in family circles. He gave prodigious amounts of money to the poor and indigent at times when the family was by no means prosperous. This, it seems, was especially galling in the female "andarun", mothers, daughters and sisters. I had imagined this might be so, but it was the first time I saw it mentioned. What does this mean? Our Exemplar was unstinting, even at the price of family prosperity, on behalf of the poor. His leadership was unrelenting, tough, but not -- God forbid! -- in the sense of male oppression. Quite the reverse, this was the hard path of relieving the world of poverty and oppression.

 
So men, if you want to do your duty, turn all your money and energy to ending poverty and indigence locally and in the world. Turn off the Stupid Bowl and the Sadley Cup for a while, and act, plan, for an end to oppression and tyranny. When they are stamped out, then you can think about a watching rather than playing a sport, but not before.

 
Bahiyyih Khanum also tells the story of the Master as father. Like most parents in an age before antibiotics, He and the Holy Mother Munirih Khanum underwent the unimaginable trauma of losing five of nine children, most at a young age. Only four offspring survived, all girls. Long story short, tremendous pressure by the believers was brought to bear upon Father and Son to bear a male heir. The Covenant, the Prophetic succession, the future of the Faith itself hung upon primogeniture, the eldest boy taking over leadership. And only girls were making it through childhood.

 
Surprisingly for many (for me, at least), Baha'u'llah did not stand in the way of a second spouse for His Son, `Abdu'l-Baha; that would have meant more chances for a male heir, and the Kitab-i-Aqdas did not forbid taking on a second wife. According to Bahiyyih Khanum, Baha'u'llah stood back and intentionally did not forbid `Abdu'l-Baha from marrying, saying in effect, "If He wishes He may do so, nothing stands in His way." The Master, having the decision left to Himself alone, interpreted the clause in the Aqdas allowing two wives max as effectively enjoining monogamy since it had stipulated that a second marriage was conditional upon peace and harmony, and that is impossible in a menage a trois.

 
Why the sidestepping? Why was polygamy not just directly forbidden in the Book? Clearly, there is a lesson here, one especially aimed at men as fathers and heads of families. Our exemplar had His chance, a decision on His shoulders alone, and He made it. It is well known that He had had a personal dislike of privilege and inequality from His earliest days. Though He could have taken a second spouse legally and answered expediency with a chance at a male heir, He freely elected not to and was no doubt upbraided by some of those concerned.

 
So, now the legal system in the West has swung around to give men a similar choice. We all know that for most men most of the time voluntary responsibility is not a real choice at all. Pick out a ball and chain behind curtain number one, or take free sex without moral strings behind curtain number two. Given that freedom, who can be surprised when pews empty out and sports bleachers and porn websites are packed to the brim? Not surprising then that the indicators of men shirking unpleasant duty are everywhere, from top to bottom.

 
One example on top is especially hard to ignore, how a certain American leader started his administration paying lip service to a "culture of responsibility" (several decades after Shoghi Effendi called this the "age of responsibility"), yet ignored cheap and simple preventive measures that would have averted the flooding of New Orleans. A city that was poor and largely Black, an unpleasant burden ignored by the slacker "father" of the world's wealthiest nation. Meanwhile every time a privileged hand was extended to him, he could not say no, to the extent that the national debt has expanded to the point where there is talk of economic collapse in the world's wealthiest nation.

 
This lack of responsibility extends all the way down the totem pole, to the extent that most young men regard higher learning as "uncool," and are staying away from universities in droves. Soon men of the next generation will pay for this, just as the entire next generation will have to pay the debts and clean up the pollution resulting from the flagrantly irresponsible male leadership of today. Such is the reverse of the model of virility and manliness in the cause of moral good shown by the Exemplar.

 

 

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

Enlightenment III

What is Enlightenment? Part III

By John Taylor; 2006 June 10

Our family were the only Dunvillians at Monday's Nur Feast in Caledonia; I was called upon by the chair to give a report upon the Inter-institutional conference and upon a children's classes curriculum that I heard about from Jim Millington called "Unite the Hearts," an item of great interest here, since so many of us in this community are teachers or retired teachers. I had not prepared myself to give a talk on this and was desperately trying to remember details.

Then I happened to glance over at 11 year old Silvie. She had been mirroring my every hand motion during the talk, carrying a strange, beatific smile on her face. Worse, she was in full view of the audience, who were smiling at this monkey see monkey do performance. I had not realized I was moving my hands like that and instantly recalled that studies have linked such movements to memory recall; for some reason hand wiggling jogs the memory, especially for the spatially-oriented male brain. I had been pausing a great deal as it was and seeing what was happening brought me to a complete halt. My thoughts mirrored the mirror and not what I was saying, bouncing from the subject matter to my own gesticulations to Silvie's imitated gesticulations to the audience's appreciation of her mimicry rather than what I was saying. Only a supreme effort got me back to what I was trying to say, and I wrapped it up quickly. Clearly, when I mocked the keynote speaker of the Inter-institutional Conference in my notorious review, I angered the gods of public speaking. I may never again talk in public without something weird happening. And while we are on that topic, here is some reconstructed dialog that came up not long after my notorious review radiated throughout the world. We were interrupted from our evening prayers and recital of the Writings by a phone call. The next day:

Marie: What was all that laughter when you were talking to (our LSA secretary) last night?

JET: Oh, it seems that somebody we do not know objected to what I said about a speaker at the conference last week. Wanted to know who I am; he or she was so offended that they had reported my offensive act to the NSA and wanted our LSA to do something about it too. I have heard of suicide by police but now I realize there is such a thing as assault by institution as well.

Marie: If people do not like what you say why do they not just ignore it? Nobody is forcing them to read it. I have been on the Karel Gott fan internet discussion group and there are these people who go on and on about how they hate him. If they do not like him what are they doing in a fan discussion group?

JET: Actually I can understand why a Czech might get tired of Karel Gott, you cannot avoid him, he is on the airwaves, in the gossip tabloids, in your face everywhere.

Marie: Yes, but if you take the trouble to go to a den of Gott fans like that and dis him there you have to be looking for trouble. Why cannot people just ignore?

JET: Well anyway, what we found funny was this. Here is a fellow who professes to be concerned about the feelings of that speaker lest my words ever get to him, but doing what he did made it certain that they will. Which shows how easily anger trumps love and make it into hypocrisy.

This incident in my personal life, along with the arrests of terrorists infesting the Muslim community in Toronto last week, have pushed me ever deeper into that fateful question, "What is enlightenment?" No matter how much I wave my hands about, I cannot remember the answer to that question. I have read Kant's essay by that name twice but a clear image fails to come together. Questions keep breaking it up, questions like, "How much backbiting and lying did it take for these young Canadian kids to set out to, among other things, behead the Prime Minister?"

One newspaper quoted an Islamic legal scholar who claimed that after years of research he had never once come across a reference to beheading in Shari'ah law. What hypocrisy that is! It may not be written down in law texts but the practice was ubiquitous, as anybody who has read anything about Babi' history will attest. Nor was the practice restricted to the Middle East, since the so-called Enlightenment was crowned with the Terror, an orgy of beheading that rivaled the Babi' persecutions in number of beheadings. No, the question "What is Enlightenment?" has to be asked everywhere, in the most advanced and developed lands most of all. Every time we condemn, criticize, or otherwise attack a person verbally, we may not think so but in reality we are laying the groundwork for an atrocity like the beheading that these young persons were planning. And as the Master -- I think I recall -- once pointed out, to attack an individual is bad but it is far worse to attack an institution, since that is composed of many individuals who represent even more souls.

Right now throughout the Middle East, hatred fed by half truths against the West are rampant, and not only among the religiously inclined. I happened across one half truth made into a lie lately. An Iranian on a website complained that the Persian railway concession was forced upon poor old Iran by the evil British just after the first world war. British delegations and military transports got free passage on the railway whenever they pleased, not to mention raking in a king's ransom in profits. I just happen to be familiar with the details of how that discriminatory deal was "forced" upon the Persian negotiator (it is documented in one of Marzieh Gail's books; her father was an eyewitness). He signed the deal, probably among the worst sellouts by an official of his country in history, and went home with a suitcase full of cash. It was a great deal for the British, albeit dishonest. But today is that official hated by the average Iranian? Is his name a synonym for betrayal? No way, he was one of us, it feels much better to put all the blame on the British, the foreigners. Nations rise and fall by the uprightness and honesty of their own citizens, always have, always will. So the first thing Iranians should do if they want to get ahead is read Secret of Divine Civilization and follow it. The Persian government at the time was doing the reverse of what the Master prescribes in this book. Every member of that delegation was there on his own funds, including Marzieh Gail's father. Their government paid them nothing but promises. Is it any wonder that its chief representative sold their country out big time? Her father resented that sellout to his dying day, but he could do nothing to stop it. And now his countrymen see fit to ignore the truth and bathe in convenient lies that soothe the ego but deny the truth.

This tissue of lies is clear to me, an outsider, but no doubt our society has its own comfy lies wrapping us up in illusion too. If it were not so, the air we breathe would be clean and pure. In the famous first paragraph to his essay on enlightenment, Kant wrote,

"Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! `Have courage to use your own reason!'- that is the motto of enlightenment."

Is courage enough? Does an act of will suffice to overcome the lies and deceptions that stand in the way of peace? Is that enough to counteract a culture of lies? It could be, if Sapere Aude is a first step to seeking out truth. Ultimately, the cure for lack of enlightenment is Covenant and its main weapon, prayer, as a couple of recent Badi' list essays have already explored. Prayer eliminates the anger and the verbal grounds of violence by establishing in mind and heart a direct line to the Healer, Baha'u'llah. We have to know we are in darkness to want the light. To be cured, we have to know we are sick and that there is a cure. Here is the Master's description of how spiritual healing works between a patient with a physical illness and a doctor (spiritual ills are not so limited).

"...the complete and perfect connection between the spiritual doctor and the sick person -- that is, a connection of such a kind that the spiritual doctor entirely concentrates himself, and all the attention of the sick person is given to the spiritual doctor from whom he expects to realize health -- causes an excitement of the nerves, and health is produced. But all this has effect only to a certain extent, and that not always. For if someone is afflicted with a very violent disease, or is wounded, these means will not remove the disease nor close and heal the wound -- that is to say, these means have no power in severe maladies, unless the constitution helps, because a strong constitution often overcomes disease. This is the third kind of healing." (Abdu'l-Baha, Some Answered Questions, 255-256)

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

Enlightenment, Part II

What is Enlightenment? Part II

By John Taylor; 2006 June 09

The Guardian called our time the "age of responsibility," not the age of enlightenment, though you could say that one implies the other. Let us talk about that today.

A babe receives everything, including life, free and unasked for. Only much later does it learn that none of it was really free; nothing ever is. There are limits to freedom, and reasons that it is free. Parents and society nurtured us at a price, for a purpose. The latest estimate I heard was some sixty thousand dollars out of pocket for parents to raise a child, while the state invests much more, perhaps half a million dollars in health care, education and other supports. Not even the sun shining on our heads providing our whole planet with the energy for life is entirely free. An immense fusion reaction is literally burning up our closest star, albeit slowly and stably.

Enlightenment then is a loan, it comes at a price. For unity to be, diversity must stand aside, and in order for diversity to exist unity has to accept multiplicity. Each renounces an infinity of possibilities for itself in order to embrace the other. Such is love in love.

The reciprocal duty of enlightenment was initiated in the parables of the Lamp and of the talents. A lamp is made for a reason, Jesus taught; its purpose is to shine out into the darkness. Do not hide it under a bushel. By implication, we are servants created to serve God, hence it is our duty do all we can to make our as universal and enlightening as can be.

Similarly, the parable of the talents teaches that enlightenment is like a sum of money left in trust while the master goes away. The faithful steward is expected to invest it, to take a risk so that it will increase. A fearful, recalcitrant steward buries his talent under a rock. The investor is rewarded, the hoarder is banished to where there is "wailing and gnashing of teeth."

Here is what "fear of God" really means, not fear that paralyzes, that seeks to eliminate risk. Fear of God appreciates the debt of gratitude that God's bounty incurs, that every gift is by nature a loan, as is every good act. "Cast your bread on the waters; For you shall find it after many days," (Eccl 11:1, WEB); that freedom, more than any rule or expectation, entails responsibility and moral obligation. No matter how freely given, every bounty or gift establishes an equal and opposite reciprocal obligation. Healthy respect begins the original "free enterprise," takes risks in order to gain increase in the trust of God.

"Honor the Lord with your possessions and with the firstfruits of all your increase; so your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will overflow with new wine." (Prov. 3:9-10)

I have been listening to the recorded lectures of a Shakespearean scholar, Peter Saccio, who points out that the word "talent" itself, a unit of money for the Romans, entered most European languages as the word for latent abilities and virtues, for what the Writings call "perfections," all because of Jesus Christ's parable of the talents. Saccio points out that the protestant reformation expunged asceticism and monasticism because, as more people gained direct access to the Bible, it became clear that these parables contradicted any withdrawal or "burying" of oneself from the common run of society. It became understood that wasted talent is not just a waste; it is a mortal sin, an affront to God Himself. I would add that Islam had already eliminated monasticism several centuries before, and that Europe was finally catching up to the Middle East in this respect.

Anyway, the reason Saccio brings this up is that the lesson of the parable of the talents was a major preoccupation for Shakespeare. He adduces several examples, which I think are interesting enough for us to examine in detail here. In Twefth Night, for instance, a lady who has sworn off all contacts with the male sex for ten years as an expression of mourning for her brother is persuaded by a thinly disguised rephrasing of the parable of the talents to return to the marketplace of love. As well, the fourth sonnet laments cloistering the divine virtue of beauty, comparing the burying of its talent to a bad loan one makes to oneself, which is collected at the moment of death.

Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend

Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?

Nature's bequest gives nothing but doth lend,

And being frank she lends to those are free.

Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse

The bounteous largess given thee to give?

...For having traffic with thyself alone,

Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.

Then how, when nature calls thee to be gone,

What acceptable audit canst thou leave?

Thy unused beauty must be tomb'd with thee,

Which, used, lives th' executor to be.

And, almost at the start of Measure for Measure, the Duke Vincentio invokes the same metaphor that Jesus used, only a torch instead of a lamp,

"Thyself and thy belongings

Are not thine own so proper as to waste

Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.

Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,

Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues

Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike

As if we had them not.

...Nature never lends

The smallest scruple of her excellence

But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines

Herself the glory of a creditor,

Both thanks and use."

Similarly, Hamlet sums up the logic of the first Baha'i principle, search for truth, saying that surely God did not mean for our mind to go moldy for lack of use: "Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god-like reason to fust in us unused." In another poem that could be a prayer, A Lover's Complaint, Shakespeare writes,

"'Lo, all these trophies of affections hot,

Of pensived and subdued desires the tender,

Nature hath charged me that I hoard them not,

But yield them up where I myself must render,

That is, to you, my origin and ender;

For these, of force, must your oblations be,

Since I their altar, you enpatron me."

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

Enlightenment Part I

What is Enlightenment? Part I

By John Taylor; 2006 June 08

The Bab, at the end of the paragraph following the passage we looked at yesterday, says: "Through the radiance of His light God imparteth illumination to your hearts and maketh firm your steps, that perchance ye may yield praise unto Him." (The Bab, Selections, 155) The Bab's slant on enlightenment, then, is that it has a purpose, to help us on our path, ultimately so that we will be in a position to worship God. As a slogan: "knowledge is for love."

His answer was to a question that had came to prominence in the previous century, an age when Europeans began to cast off superstition and seek truth independently of revealed, traditional religion. It was an age flattered themselves with the title, "The Enlightenment." It was almost over when Immanuel Kant in 1784 wrote a short essay, his most important popular work, called "What is Enlightenment?" This essay with its pregnant question has mesmerized me for over a week, since I returned from the Inter-institutional conference in Toronto last week. Our determination to initiate entry by troops will, I began to think, constitute a kind of recognition of the Bab's answer to that question, "What does it mean to be enlightened?" Like Tahirih at Badasht, we need only tear away our veil and light will shine in and away, of itself. The Master said,

"Today the call of the Kingdom is the magnetic power which draweth to itself the world of mankind, for capacity in men is great. Divine teachings constitute the spirit of this age, nay rather the sun of this age. Every soul must endeavour that the veils that cover men's eyes may be torn asunder and that instantly the sun may be seen and that heart and sight may be illumined thereby. (Abdu'l-Baha, Selections, 310)

The secular Enlightenment divorced orthodox, devotional religion from science and reason, and now even religious people willingly divorce religion from spirituality; but such separations soon will be reconciled. In view of that, let us return to the balance of the paragraph cited above; the Bab wrote,

"This is the divinely-inscribed Book. This is the outspread Tablet. Say, this indeed is the Frequented Fane, the sweet-scented Leaf, the Tree of divine Revelation, the surging Ocean, the Utterance which lay concealed, the Light above every light... Indeed every light is generated by God through the power of His behest. He of a truth is the Light in the kingdom of heaven and earth and whatever is between them." (Selections, 154-155)

Enlightenment, then, is not an abstraction. It may be compared to a book, a temple, a leaf, a tree, an ocean, but all these are metaphorical personifications of the Manifestation, a human being, albeit a unique, chosen One. His Instruction is a light that transcends all other lights. He is the light. Any indirect enlightenment derives from the Will of God, and is instantiated in Him, for what makes one Man good makes all good.

Here is the value and justification of the institution of royalty. An enlightened monarch submits to laws and the constitution and in her munificent influence demonstrates the illumination of the rule of law. The law is the educator of the monarch, and by extension all of us, in the same way that the Will of God educates and informs the Manifestation.

"Clearly then in the same manner, and by the same means through which a man becomes truly good, he will frame a state that is to be ruled by an aristocracy or by a king, and the same education and the same habits will be found to make a good man and a man fit to be a statesman or a king." (Aristotle, Politics, Book IV)

The Manifestation enlightens by modeling truth. One cannot prove God to limited, finite minds, or demonstrate holy truths like a mathematical equation. Instead the Manifestation shows truth in human form in His own Person. The wonder and the glory of the Baha'i Era is that we have the prophet, we have more than a prophet, and we have the Son. We have `Abdu'l-Baha, our perfect exemplar or model of how to be a believer.

Early in the Baghdad period, that is, after the annunciation in the Siyyih Chal but well before the proclamation of the word "Baha'i," Baha'u'llah insisted on everyone calling His eldest son "Master." He is reported to have said at the time, "There is one and only one Aqa and He is the Most Great Branch, others should be addressed by their names..." (Adib Taherzadeh, Child of the Covenant, 232) Thus soon after the Covenant was established and well before it was outwardly known to anyone outside the holy family, `Abdu'l-Baha was the Center of the Covenant. A boy not yet a teenager, was to be called "Master." The Ascension of Baha'u'llah took place when He was forty eight years old, during which time He had refrained from writing anything save at the express bidding of Baha'u'llah. His tutelage was long and His obedience complete. When He emerged as leader then He did the reverse of what most do upon coming of age, He incorporated servitude in His very name, He went from being called master to "Servant of Baha."

His biography sets up a paradoxical model. It demonstrates how to liberate by serving, how to gain wealth by giving it all away constantly, to the privileged as well as the poor. He is enlightenment on every level, from practical to spiritual; His ethical standard was never seen on the face of the earth before, but because He was also the consummate teacher He made His model into something like a scientific discovery, that is, once confirmed it spreads to others quickly. With entry by troops it will spread to every soul on earth. As the standard of the Covenant is raised, His high ethical standard will become the norm.

It is in the light of this Man, this model centering the Covenant, that Kant's answer to the question, "What is enlightenment?" in his essay of that name can be understood. I will dive into that tomorrow.

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

More on Prayer

Faith, Prayer and Oneness

By John Taylor; 2006 June 06

I had drifted far into the garden of repose but this morning was jerked back to the principle of One God. My morning reading was a cordial wake-up call from the Bab. In the opening to this passage He succinctly sums up in four sentences four qualities that Oneness entails, omnience, possession, inscrutability and peerlessness:

"God testifieth that there is none other God but Him. His are the kingdoms in the heavens and on the earth and all that is between them. He is exalted above the comprehension of all things, and is inscrutable to the mind of every created being; none shall be able to fathom the oneness of His Being or to unravel the nature of His Existence. No peer or likeness, no similitude or equal can ever be joined with Him." (Selections, 154)

The center of our knowledge, then, is from the point of view of the human mind eclipsed (omnience, material cause), made a vassal (possession, efficient cause), mentally outgunned (inscrutability, formal cause) and outshined (peerlessness, final cause). At heart every cause for every effect is a void, an unknown about which we can be certain of only one thing, that we will never be, own, grasp or attain to it. How do we know even that? As it says above, God Himself testifies to this. If you cannot trust God, who can you trust?

Nonetheless it is clear that we cannot know much since the best minds from Socrates forward have attested to their inadequacy. And as if that were not enough evidence, they inadvertently offered further proof by failing to agree at the most fundamental levels. The greater the thinker and the more profound the thought, the wider the understanding gap looms. All we can hope for is to accommodate inadequacy, as Kant strove for in his Critique of Pure Reason, and Verner Heisenberg discovered with his uncertainty principle. Heisenberg's principle is the reflection in tiny things of the broader phenomenon that the Bab describes above. Let us therefore call the original, divine principle the greater uncertainty principle and Heisenberg's the lesser uncertainty principle. Not everybody can study quantum physics, but everybody must come to terms with the greater uncertainty principle, for it is the heart of the principle of the oneness of God.

If it is true what Kant said, that understanding is knowledge adequate to our purpose, is recognizing the greater uncertainty principle adequate to our purpose as human beings? Is knowing that we do not know understanding enough? It certainly is universal, for though knowledge may be exclusive, all are born ignorant and what is universal is holy. Does that holy anointing in ignorance suffice? Again, we have to trust that it is.

We know from the Writings that our overall purposes are twofold, to know and to love God. Having covered the inadequacy of knowing, the Bab proceeds to the duty to love. Unlike knowledge, love stands not on presuppositions, or the lack thereof, it has, as the French saying goes, its reasons that reason knows not of. Nor does it stand on motives. As a character in Twelfth Night puts it: "Love sought is good, but given unsought better." Which is why a mother's love runs deeper than that of the child in return. The Bab says,

"Yield ye praise then unto Him and glorify Him and bear ye witness to the sanctity and oneness of His Being and magnify His might and majesty with wondrous glorification. This will enable you to gain admittance into all-highest Paradise. Would that ye had firm faith in the revelation of the signs of God." (Selections, 154)

Love comes when all the props of certainty have fallen away but still there is the universe unfolding before our eyes, teeming with life and beauty, the product of consummate knowledge and love. Is that not proper cause for wonder? Spontaneous love for God enables us to rise and enter heaven, the Bab tells us, but it is all too clear that our love is derived, second hand, it will never match God's love for us, just as our knowledge will never touch His Omniscience. Yet all that is good, beautiful and true in life comes of our love one for another, and ultimately for God. The Master says,

"Whatever produces any influence in this world of existence is on account of the love of God, which is the spirit of life and the cause of salvation." (Star of the West, Vol II, #15, p. 16)

In the last sentence above the Bab says, "would that ye had firm faith in the revelation of the signs of God." We do not have it. Yet. Yet He hopes it will happen. And here is the Bab's definition of faith. Faith is what happens when the knowledge and love of God are reciprocated. It is the slosh-over, the overlap of His true knowing and loving over ours; it is the moment when they become One. Oneness is concentrating upon the One, what we cannot know or appreciate. Yet. It is prayer, unity of attention, as the Master affirms. All else is a waste of time.

"The worshipper must pray with a detached spirit, unconditional surrender of the will, concentrated attention and spiritual fervour ... AUTOMATIC, FORMAL PRAYERS WHICH DO NOT TOUCH THE CORE OF THE HEART ARE OF NO AVAIL. When we turn to God with our whole heart and invoke His Name, a spiritual connection is established through which we become a channel of divine influence." (`Abdu'l-Baha, quoted in a letter dated 19 October 1925 written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual, cited in UHJ memorandum dated 15 September 2003)

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

Power of Prayer

The True Power of Prayer

By John Taylor; 2006 June 05

"One who performeth neither good deeds nor acts of worship is like unto a tree which beareth no fruit, and an action which leaveth no trace. Whosoever experienceth the holy ecstasy of worship will refuse to barter such an act or any praise of God for all that existeth in the world. Fasting and obligatory prayer are as two wings to man's life. Blessed be the one who soareth with their aid in the heaven of the love of God, the Lord of all worlds." (Baha'u'llah, cited in UHJ memorandum dated 15 September 2003)

The world's wealthy fiddle about while solar heat, magnified in the lens of industrial waste gasses, literally burns up our beautiful planet. Any and all who are touched by the power to change things are corrupted by power, changed beyond all recognition; decent reformers become obscene exploiters, self-absorbed, petty and contentious. The wealthy clients of our leaders refuse to be guided by wisdom. Meanwhile a rabid, envious fanaticism spreads throughout poorer regions. It is obvious that global climate change will choke us sooner rather than later, but all discussion is halted by one unavoidable fact. Somebody is going to have to give something up. Changes and sacrifices must be made, not by me of course, by the other guy. Plans will have to be made up, not only macro-economically but also on the micro-economic scale. Every career of each and every worker must change.

Rules, new restraints, must be thought out, devised and enforced. The privileged and underprivileged alike will have to submit, willingly, enthusiastically. They are not used to that, fat cats to obeying, skinny cats to planning and thinking on their own. I am reading Jared Diamond's "Collapse," which portrays early on the microcosm of Easter Island, a society broken into several competing tribes, very like our petty-minded nation states of today. Many find it incredible, endowed with the broader view of history, that the Easter Islanders could have ignored common sense and the signs of the times, chopped down their own forests and self destructed, dropping from a vital civilization of some thirty or forty thousand to, at their lowest ebb in the 1870's, a mere few hundred souls, most of whom were slaves. With bitter sarcasm Diamond writes,

"I have often asked myself, `What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it?' Like modern loggers, did he shout, `Jobs, not trees!' Or: `Technology will solve our problems, never fear, we'll find a substitute for wood.' Or: `We don't have proof that there aren't palms somewhere else on Easter, we need more research, your proposed ban on logging is premature and driven by fear-mongering"? Similar questions arise for every society that has inadvertently damaged its environment." (Collapse, 114)

Trees are essential to our survival. They are dying in massive tracts in remote regions of Western Canada, a sign of global warming and the tree killing predators that it unleashes. I briefly met St. Barbe Baker before he died, and if you check his books on the Net you will find that they have mostly gone out of print. But now we know better than ever that what the "Man of the Trees" was saying was dead on target. But what is true of trees and agriculture extends right on up to the top of society. Short term gain must give in to long term benefit. There is no getting around it. Nobody wants to hear that. It is not popular. Austerity is not trendy.

At the heart of this is a reluctance, an utter inability to submit, to obey. Like a spoiled child, the privileged do not want to sacrifice a jot or tittle to the common weal; they do not know what they want but they want it now. Meanwhile the underprivileged long for a quick and simple end to their agony, a tyrant to force them in the right direction. Instead of submitting all kick up a fuss, and, tragically for all of us, they succeed every time in stopping the advance of real progress. Such a state of affairs begins in the family, a basic fact that was well known as early as Ancient Athens.

"...those who have too much of the goods of fortune, strength, wealth, friends, and the like, are neither willing nor able to submit to authority. The evil begins at home; for when they are boys, by reason of the luxury in which they are brought up, they never learn, even at school, the habit of obedience. On the other hand, the very poor, who are in the opposite extreme, are too degraded. So that the one class cannot obey, and can only rule despotically; the other knows not how to command and must be ruled like slaves." (Aristotle, Politics)

So at the heart of it all is the big philosophical question of the 18th Century, freedom and equality: how to act so as to be free and unconstrained while still submitting to the needs of others, of mankind and the planet? How can you be equal and free at the same time? And does not competition, one-upmanship, nullify both of them? And if such values are contradictory, how do you establish habits that will support both? Such quandaries were familiar to Aristotle as well: "But it has now become a habit among the citizens of states, not even to care about equality; all men are seeking for dominion, or, if conquered, are willing to submit." (Ibid) These questions remain unanswered in most minds, even today. The Master, `Abdu'l-Baha, knew the answer. He is the Answer.

"And all this newness hath its source in the fresh outpourings of wondrous grace and favour from the Lord of the Kingdom, which have renewed the world. The people, therefore, must be set completely free from their old patterns of thought, that all their attention may be focused upon these new principles, for these are the light of this time and the very spirit of this age." (Abdu'l-Baha, Selections, 253)

The old stumper of how to bring freedom and equality and sacrifice, together -- like combining fire, water and oil -- is right there in the Aqdas. We free ourselves from the condition of the animal but not from the natural constraints of our humanity. The greatest constraint of becoming human is also its greatest freedom, to submit willingly, with love to the divine, which is inherently above us. To sacrifice to this is joy unalloyed. This act of submission that we all will have to face when we meet our God was prefigured in the declaration of the Master. Here, in His own reported words, is how this primal act occurred:

"I am the servant of the Blessed Perfection. In Baghdad I was a child. Then and there He announced to me the Word, and I believed in Him. As soon as He proclaimed to me the Word, I threw myself at His Holy Feet and implored and supplicated Him to accept my blood as a sacrifice in His Pathway. Sacrifice! How sweet I find that word! There is no greater Bounty for me than this! What greater glory can I conceive than to see this neck chained for His sake, these feet fettered for His love, this body mutilated or thrown into the depths of the sea for His Cause! If in reality we are His sincere lovers, if in reality I am His sincere servant, then I must sacrifice my life, my all at His Blessed Threshold." (from the Diary of Mirza Ahmad Sohrab, January 1914, quoted in Esslemont, Baha'u'llah and the New Era, 51)

This primal act of submission to God, for the Master it was to His Father, but for all others it is to our Father in heaven, must be repeated in every heart. This is the greatest effect of the power of prayer, not miracles that affect a few personal fates but changing our ability to save ourselves from ourselves by submitting. Prayer allows us to submit not only to God but to common sense, to wisdom. It gives the desire to sacrifice, which then is reflected in willingness make new plans and submit to rule of law. The location does not matter, the desire to sacrifice does. It takes place everywhere that humans meet, in board rooms and public meetings, at democratic fora, kitchen tables and in classrooms everywhere. Let me close with this, from a recent paper submitted to the UN by the responsible Baha'i body. It portrays the not so glorious field of verbal battle on which the blood of our sacrifice must be spilled:

"We commend the international community for its commitment to democracy and to a freely elected government as a universal value. However, the standard of deliberation and truth-seeking required for the realization of goals set by the United Nations needs to go far beyond the patterns of partisanship, protest, and compromise that tend to characterize present day discussions of human affairs. What is needed is a consultative process at all levels of governance in which individual participants strive to transcend their respective points of view, in order to function as members of one body with its own interests and goals. Through participation and unity of purpose, consultation becomes the operating expression of justice in human affairs. Without this principled anchor, democracy falls prey to the excesses of individualism and nationalism, which tear at the fabric of the community - both nationally and globally." (BIC, The Search for Values in an Age of Transition, paragraph 13)

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

Ruhi and other news

Ruhi and other news

By John Taylor; 2006 June 03

The most important news coming through the pipes of late is from the Ruhi website, <http://www.ruhiresources.org/>, which could win a reward for most improved website of the year; better still, they have recommenced their mail-out notifications of their updates. If you are not already on their list, go to the above website and sign up. Here is their announcement of a major and confusing change in the numbers of the books in what the Counselor calls the "Ruhi cycle of study circles" (meaning that when you go through books one to seven, you start over at one again, presumably until you die or the world becomes Baha'i, whichever comes first.)

"The Ruhi Institute will shortly publish a new Ruhi Book 5: Raising up Animators of Junior Youth Groups. The previous Book 5: Teaching Children's Classes, Grade 2, will now become Book 3A and will be considered a course "branching out from Book 3".

"We welcome the decision of the Institute...to move the book currently occupying the fifth position in the sequence to a set of courses branching out from Book 3 for preparing Baha'i Children's class teachers and to insert in the fifth place a new book for raising up animators of junior youth groups." - Letter from the Universal House of Justice to all National Spiritual Assemblies, 28 December 2005

I have continued puzzling over the Ruhi institute's insistence that coming into the faith breaks down the distinction between "be" and "do." As far as I have been able to determine, this is ground first laid out and explored by Aristotle, who said that the only way to learn to play the flute is by playing the flute, or to use something more modern, you learn to drive a car or fly an airplane by doing it, albeit guided by an expert, not only by sitting in a classroom. I think in the Ethics he said, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit." Aristotle was not lost in theory like the Platonists, he was the son of a doctor and understood the value of starting with the practical, with what works, and then trying to understand it --that is, induction rather than deduction. In the politics he elaborates upon the role of habit further:

"There are three things which make men good and virtuous; these are nature, habit, rational principle. In the first place, every one must be born a man and not some other animal; so, too, he must have a certain character, both of body and soul. But some qualities there is no use in having at birth, for they are altered by habit, and there are some gifts which by nature are made to be turned by habit to good or bad. Animals lead for the most part a life of nature, although in lesser particulars some are influenced by habit as well. Man has rational principle, in addition, and man only. Wherefore nature, habit, rational principle must be in harmony with one another; for they do not always agree; men do many things against habit and nature, if rational principle persuades them that they ought. We have already determined what natures are likely to be most easily molded by the hands of the legislator. All else is the work of education; we learn some things by habit and some by instruction." (Politics, Book XIII)

The way the Ruhi system is meant to work is to set instruction and habit going in a feedback cycle; a tutor guides the "collaborators," setting the learning process going from the holy Word, then, actively guided by the tutor, they go out into the non-Baha'i world, teach, and by so doing start more beginners into the process, and it all becomes a sort of snowballing habit. Being is doing, teaching the Word becomes second nature. Nonetheless, as the Beatles said, "It don't come easy," or as Kant said more clumsily in the "Critique of Judgment,"

"We readily see that enlightenment, while easy, no doubt, in thesis, in hypothesis is difficult and slow of realization."

Dan Scott said in the keynote speech of the conference Friday night that the problems that inevitably crop up in what the House is calling the "framework for action" can be dealt with by using the new statistical officers now just appointed in most clusters. These will point exactly where the process is breaking down, allowing what I guess you could call "Ruhi rescue crews" to come in and solve the problem. He said, "We now know exactly what to do to change the world and bring in large numbers." He then cited the second paragraph of the all important UHJ letter to the Counsellors of 27 December, 2005:

"Never before have the means for establishing a pattern of activity that places equal emphasis on the twin processes of expansion and consolidation been better understood. Indeed, so consistent has been the experience with intensive programmes of growth, implemented on the basis of this understanding in divers clusters, that no cause for equivocation remains. The way forward is clear..."

Mr. Scott said, "You see, the framework works. If not, it is just a matter of finding the obstacle and removing (it)..." He emphasized that in view of this we need no longer ask how to go about things, we need only plunge into this letter in particular along with two others that seem to have been written in three consecutive days by the House. LSA members came back from the conference with a sheet of questions on these letters which we are to go over together in the next few months, assisted by, well, our Assistants to the Board Member. Our Haldimand LSA already went through the at least one of the letters, but we have resolved to do so again, as suggested. He said that knowing that this process works will "free our energy" and allow us to concentrate not upon all our options but just upon what step to take next.

The objection to Ruhi that comes to mind when anyone in a developed country tries to work it is that social ties are breaking down. We are not used to dealing with people face to face anymore. The habit does not exist. If I had taken the chance to stand up at last week's conference I would have said the following (I rehearsed it in my mind, but unfortunately the restoration work was ongoing at the new Toronto Baha'i Centre, there were noxious chemicals in the air, so I got a migraine. I could not put one thought next to the other during most of the conference),

"I have been reading Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and she describes how in New York in 1963 there was a custom of leaving house keys with a trusted shopkeeper in the neighborhood for residents' guests and family members to pick up at their convenience. The demand for that little service has ceased to exist because people by and large no longer have guests, or even friends, at least outside of cyberspace. Families keep in contact, but across huge distances, by phone, by email, rarely in the flesh. Ruhi assumes a large, vital network of family, friends and acquaintances that -- outside of Latin America and the Third World -- have not existed for at least forty years. If we want to crack into social relations here we will have to start lurking in chat rooms, in social networking websites, and other virtual "places" on the web."

Now Dan Scott had no doubt run across such arguments -- how could he not? and he addressed the objection concisely and I think quite effectively in one of his early addresses. As far as it went, I found it persuasive. Let me try to reconstruct his defense as best I can from memory.

Yes, social relations are in decline, but the Word of God is designed to replace it and build up a new framework. A framework is like a tree, trunk, branches, etc. The only way we are going to grow the new tree is by taking up new space under the sun by forging our own, new social networks, by reaching out and meeting people face to face, by going to their homes, studying the creative word with them together, giving them copies of the Hidden Words (as Book One, it seems, says that we are to give them). No, we and they are not used to having guests in their home and talking in the flesh, but the Word can create something new, we must have faith in that. That is why it is called the New World Order, we must be willing to expand our face to face relations where there is nothing now. Tabula Rasa is good. And believe you me, people miss having a vital community. They may never have seen one, but they are hurting nonetheless and are waiting for this to come to them, to save them from all the ills that come of not having love and friendship to support them. Be assured, it will happen if you just take the first step."

Then I thought of more reasons bolstering this argument. I read science magazines for hope, and they are holding up this idea that there is a vital social network, growing in cyberspace, but is that a lie? People sitting in front of a computer screen act socially, but it is a poor substitute for the real thing. A friend can learn volumes just by looking at your face, help you in ways that would be impossible at the tenth remove of a chat room. Virtual relationships are narrow. And are they all that common? Are they growing as much as they seem? That remains to be seen.

I mentioned that the Ontario Counsel ran this conference with amazing maturity. It was almost over when I realized how brilliant the chair was at his job. There was no sense of "I am running things," but no false humility either. He added a gentle, warm, funny touch to every shift in the program. I was so impressed that I turned to the person sitting next to me and asked who the heck this guy was. "Todd Smith," was the reply. My hat goes off to him. The only slip, and it was a minor one, that I discerned was when one OBC presenter said something like, "and then Dan, I mean Counsellor Scott, I still always think of him as Dan..." Actually, she was right the first time. The House in its Counsellor compilation says that we are not to use this as a title, like Reverend Scott or Doctor Scott, either for people within or without the Faith. I looked up the passage, and here it is:

"As appointed officers of the Faith, the Counsellors and Auxiliary Board members should receive the respect of the friends. Regarding the use of the word "Counsellor" to refer to a particular member of a Continental Board of Counsellors, there is no objection to doing this. However, the exaggerated use of titles related to these ranks is undesirable. The title should not become inseparable from a Counsellor's personal name, as would be the case of referring to a member of the Board of Counsellors as, for example, "Counsellor Jones". Nor is it advisable to address them simply as "Counsellor"."

While I am still on the subject of this conference, the feedback to my first report continues to trickle in. One reader, who did not attend the conference, told me that he found the personal comments so funny that he rolled on the floor and was actually in pain afterwards from too much laughter. He said that reading it nonetheless made him want very much to meet Mr. Scott in the flesh. But then again, he was in the passenger seat of my car at the time and I had it in my power, should his reaction to my writing displease me, to drive the car off the lip of the Niagara Escarpment, thus putting us both to a spectacular end. So he may have had that in mind when he said that. Another reader wrote in part:

"I am upset that any importance at all is put on a person's quirks and quarks. We need to become overlookers and stay focused on the message -- everything else is a 'spanner' and in my opinion of no value except to mock and ridicule someone. I am more upset with myself that I was so careless and didn't pick up on those particular comments and am grateful that other Assembly members did."

I replied: "I am not comfortable with the characterization `negative comments' since I made it clear that these were the errors of a beginning speaker. He evidently heard back from somebody about the tilting of the podium since he only did it in the Friday evening talk. In his position he is dealing with non-Baha'is as a representative of the Faith so it is better he hear about any mistakes from the "friends" than from strangers. My last paragraph was meant to show that I have common feeling for him and I did not mean to be hurtful. People in a public position have to expect to be examined, it is part of the job description. I have a readership of thirty people, and I think of this as a set of drafts for any finished work that I may do someday, so do not overestimate my influence! I only wish that what I said and did mattered as much as what Mr. Scott says and does."

The same reader replied further, later on:

"So I guess it just means we all have to be really, really careful with what we say and do especially when in print because communication is a funny thing and people (as you can see) process things very differently. So I believe this is proving to be a great learning experience for all of us, and, the moral of the story is that 'Our perception is our reality'."

That is certainly true. Aristotle considered thoughts, much less words, to be like dye that contacts a cloth. They stick, they cannot be removed. They enter in and define what and who you are. So, I will try to have good thoughts and words and you do too, my friends.

Soccer season started this week. Silvie had a dream that she was playing soccer, so of course we had to sign them both up. This was not cheap and strained our budget to the limit. I thought it would be two nights a week but it turned out to be four, two practices and two games every week, Monday to Thursday. So as far as time, it is even more expensive. This week during Thomas's practice I fooled around with Silvie and one of her little friends, I was goalie and they tried to get the ball in the net. I was tempted to run and kick. Only afterwards, with muscles checking in and complaining that I did not even know I had did I realize that I cannot run. I have arthritis and have not run more than a few seconds at a time for many years. What happened was that two years ago I read in Scientific American that migraine and arthritis are inflammatory conditions and that meat causes low level, chronic inflammation. So I became a vegetarian and now, praise be to God, I can not only run but kick the ball. Last year if I kicked the ball once I would be unable to walk for weeks afterwards. Now, though I am in pain all up the front of my body, I welcome it. If I continue to practice with one kid while the other is with their team all summer, I will end up in better shape than anytime since I was a teenager.

That is the upside of being a vegetarian. The downside I found out when I visited my doctor's dietitian this week. For my annual checkup this year they filled in almost every check box of my blood test chart and found one major problem: I have a chronic vitamin B12 deficiency, which causes a form of anemia, tiredness, and inability to get going. I thought that was just normal, part of my condition, whatever. I am to take pills with big amounts of B12, and if that does not work by August, I may even be getting injections.

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

Mortality

The Smell of Mortality

By John Taylor; 2006 May 31

"Therefore, do not look at the shortcomings of anybody; see with the sight of forgiveness. The imperfect eye beholds imperfections. The eye that covers faults looks toward the Creator of souls." (Abdu'l-Baha, Promulgation, 93)

Yesterday I wrote my daily contribution at the last minute, while I was online, something I rarely do. To my chagrin I hit the "send" button instead of the "save" button. The send button is an executioner that knows no reprieve. I had intended not only to revise more, but also to include the following further bit of feedback from another Badi' list reader to Monday's controversial review of the conference and the new counselor:

"Thank you so much for your reflections on the Inter-institutional conference. Your observations and conclusions are very accurate and I am going to forward your message to all the members of the St. Catharines Assembly as not everyone was able to attend. Your reflections will provide them with a very good sense of what now needs to happen to accomplish the goals of the Five Year Plan and make Entry By Troops a reality. Thank You So Much John."

I had in mind at this point cracking some joke along the lines of, "Oh no, please do not spread my faultfinding around, I am in enough trouble with the institutions of the Faith already!" But I have had leisure to think better of even hinting at such an attitude, for the whole thrust of the weekend for me was the astonishing maturity of the Ontario Baha'i Counsel. I had been prepared to some extent by attending a similar conference run by them a couple of years ago in Oshawa. As far as my relations with official bodies, the likes of the OBC I had never encountered in all my days, within the Faith or out. I did get the chance in the interval to buttonhole an OBC member last year and beg to hear what their secret was. Her explanation was nothing magical (I had half expected a magic lantern or some contract with darker powers to turn up in the story). She said that when they formed they were encouraged to study "the guidance" and they did so, together and apart, intensively over many months and years. She told me what specific letters they studied but unfortunately that information has slipped my mind.

Last night I viewed on DVD an old theatre performance of John Paul Jones in the role of King Lear. I pointed the old king out to the kids and informed them that here was the actor who played the voice of Darth Vader. They could scarce credit my words; he had no helmet and seemed frail and vulnerable. Darth Vader was nothing like Lear. Darth Vader had light swords, not metal ones.

Anyway, the whole play as I view it at this juncture of my life seemed to be about the difference between true power, a house build on stone, and false tyranny, a house built on sand, about the distinction between the betrayal of idle flattery and the truth of loyal love. Cordelia refuses to exaggerate her love to her father, saying, "I love thee to the extent of my bond, no more." Lear at that point does not realize that this is not minimizing love, it is saying as much as can be said about any human relationship. Lear was her father and king and she loved him as such but she recognized that when she married most of her thoughts, time and effort would go to her husband and children, not to her father. The Cause of God asks nothing more or less than just that, our bond, being faithful to the Covenant, living up to what truly exists between us and God. It is a serious mistake either to ignore or misrepresent that bond in thought, word or deed. Cordelia understood that, and even when called openly to flatter her father, she could not distort that sacred bond, even at the price of his loss of face, and of her life. He was stung by her affront to his prestige and summarily banished her. Before leaving she offered this prophesy to her two false sisters,

"Time shall unfold what plaited cunning hides:
Who cover faults, at last shame them derides.
Well may you prosper!"

Here is an interesting definition of flattery, a determined covering over of faults. Covering faults is a good thing, and when it is your boss or king, it is a very profitable thing too. Indeed, it is too much in our interest. Fault covering then blocks out sincerity. One must not break the greater bond we all have with reality by carrying our fault covering an inch further than the hard and strict bounds of truthfulness. As it is with father and king, so it is with God. God in teaching us to pray does not ask for false flattery, he wants our bond, nothing more. He wants the truth, nothing more. I can go through the whole prayer book every day but if I leave out my Obligatory Prayer, I will have broken my bond. There is no way around that, and my prayers would be nothing but flattery, attempts to ingratiate myself with my Creator. As Mr. Scott pointed out in the insightful maiden speech in question here, the Writings teach that the soul progresses not by self fulfillment but by submission, by obeying the command of God. Nothing more nor less than complete obeisance is going to cut it.

Shakespeare also pointed out, I think it was in Troilus and Cressida, that there is a similar power imbalance between the sexes.

"Though men can cover crimes with bold stern looks,
Poor women's faces are their own fault's books."

As always with poetry, this can mean several things. When I read that, I think of a foul mouthed and verbally abusive neighbor I have. Her profanity to husband and children float over the fence between us every day. She is a young woman but as Shakespeare warns, her perpetual scowl has already written deep lines of anger into what could have been an attractive face. She shows the "book of her faults" to all the world, and all unawares. In fact I thought of her often last weekend when people came to the microphone sharing their successful experiences asking people to sit down and go over a prayer with them, as Ruhi Book One stipulates. It would be pretty funny if I asked her to do that, and if she accepted and was transformed by the Word. It would be astonishing. On the other hand, if she rebuffed me, would I have in hand a "Ruhi refutation?" Considering the many unpleasant run-ins I have already had with these neighbors, the latter seems more likely.

In any case, flattery between men and women, and children and parents, is a more common and insidious danger, perhaps, than with distant authority figures. The fact is that Lear was both, father and king. That is an argument for royalty, for everyone has a father and, whether they consciously realize it or not, the quality of their relationship with their father conditions how they feel about government. And about God. That is why scripture openly encourages us to think of the Manifestation as a father. The Hidden Words especially starts off every verse with "O Son of..." Every virtue, every flaw, is an outcome of the filial bond, of what kind of a son or daughter we are, whether we can truthfully say, "I love thee according to my bond, no more." Or, no less. The truth is that this is no small thing, it is the hardest thing in the world. It is harder than the world itself.

The climax of the play, I think, comes when the two betrayed and exiled fathers, Gloucester and Lear, meet. Both can say with great understatement that they are "more sinned against than sinning." The former has been brutally blinded for his loyalty to Lear, the latter driven far beyond the brink of madness. But only now can they truly say that they know what love and loyalty mean. Only fifteen words pass between them.

GLOUCESTER: "O, let me kiss that hand!"
KING LEAR: "Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality."

I was in tears here, the first and only time in this performance. Baha'u'llah outlawed the kissing of hands in the Aqdas, and here, I feel in my bones, is the reason why. The only time that act can be done sincerely, without flattery or pretension, is in their situation, in the middle of a remote field with nobody look, when the king has lost his kingdom and the servant has given his very eyes out of loyalty. Otherwise, it is an invidious act.

Warmed by my own "unmanly tears" (as they are called in the play) I was reminded of another dramatic event in Baha'i history. A perfidious brother of the Master asked for forgiveness and was taken back into the fold, as it turned out only temporarily. A moment worthy of a thousand screenplays, you can read Youness Afroukhteh's eyewitness account of it in "Memories of Nine Years in Akka." One of the believers was so overcome with joy that this Aghsan had repented that he broke the law of the Aqdas and spontaneously fell to the brother's feet and kissed his hand. Afroukhteh was watching the Aghsan's face carefully and saw the man positively puff up with ego, so gratifying was it for him once more to be the object of the adoring obeisance of the Baha'is. Truly, the man was not aware at all of the "smell of mortality." Had he been, he would not have broken the Covenant, his Bond, and erased his own honor forever.

Still in tears, I wondered, is the believer who fell at that egomaniacal man's feet and kissed his hand to blame for what happened, did that cause his eventual reversion to betrayal? Would the Aghsan have shown himself loyal in the end if the Baha'is had loved and welcomed him more temperately? I do not know, perhaps we are in part to blame when such things happen. We have a duty to love, but not more than our bond, to adore rather than merely to love is to put the objects of our immoderate affection to sore testing. I think we should be aware every minute of what we are doing when love servants of the Cause in high places, even when we are covering up their sins. We must ask: Is covering it over an act of affection and charity, or is it flattery, ego feeding? Think of Lear's unfaithful daughters. Was he to blame for their immoral life and eventual betrayal? Should he have intervened earlier? Part of me wants to say yes, to blame the father, but consider the following:

"Those who are unfamiliar with the workings of the Faith of Baha'u'llah may find it difficult to understand the reasons why these hypocritical, proud and ambitious men were not cast out of the community by Baha'u'llah Himself during His lifetime since He was well aware of their corruption and deceit. To appreciate this important point, one must remember that although the Manifestation of God continually urges the believers to purify their motives in the service of the Cause and exhorts them to remove every trace of hypocrisy from their hearts, He does not question those motives. Rather He looks upon them with a sin-covering eye and instead of examining their hearts to find their faults and shortcomings, He calls upon them to serve His Cause and praises them when they do so. Through the outpouring of loving kindness and encouragement He seeks to improve the character of those who have embraced His Cause. Only if a believer arises to actively oppose the Centre of the Cause will he then need to be cast out of the community." (Adib Taherzadeh, The Covenant of Baha'u'llah, 166)

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

Conference II

Dear Friends,

It has been several months since I got a peep out of my readers on the Badi List, Blog, and I was beginning to wonder if there were any readers left. After a while one becomes convinced that one can say whatever one wants and there will be no effect, good or bad. I have been disabused of that today. I will share parts of the responses with you, anonymously. But first, a friend sent a link to some online photographs of the event:

 

http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?Uc=930fkou.7mlws42a&Uy=i0hns5&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=0&mode=fromshare&conn_speed=1

 
Here is the first response:

thanks for your musings/ account of the inter-institutional conference this past week, John. Made me laugh (in agreement) in places. On the first evening, a couple of us sitting at the side were similarly distracted in nervous anticipation of the podium falling over! and the open mouth... great description. So too the illuminations of the counseller, gave me a better appreciation for what Ruhi is supposed to do... (why then were we forced into the 'Ruhi rush' a couple of years ago? do I remember book 6? book 7? all a blur now).

Respondent number two wrote in part:

"Dear John, consider this.  Who appointed Dan Scott?  How much is he paid?  Would you want the job?  What if Dan Scott has a disability that is responsible for some of the behaviors you describe..."

I had assumed that this was a mannerism that the speaker might get rid of with a little coaching. If it is the result of a disability it would be indeed a cruel comment on my part. As the master said, in referring to personalities, silence is best. I tried in the last paragraph to expiate my lack of silence but it looks like I have the hundred years of fire to look look forward to that is the fate of abusers of the tongue.





--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

Conference

Inter-Institutional Conference

By John Taylor; 2006 May 29

The Badi' List has been inactive for three days because of a change in the weather which knocked me down for Friday morning (day one) and an inter-institutional conference that I attended at the Toronto Baha'i Center (days two and three).

Riding in Ron Speer's minivan to and from downtown Toronto I was impressed with how much worse the smog is in the whole Golden Horseshoe region since I last lived in what I now think of as the big city, Hamilton, almost ten years ago; the whole area is permanently fog bound. Even on what would have been a clear day, you can see the sky above you but very little is visible horizontally.

This was my first chance to hear the rookie Continental Counselor Dan Scott speak in his new capacity; at the same time the former counselor, David Smith, spoke on the last day to us in his new capacity as National Spiritual Assembly Member. Dan Scott's area of expertise is the Ruhi Institute, and clearly that skill is in high demand right now. And what he had to say really does need saying. His big message, and of the other speakers, was that everything we know about Ruhi is wrong. For example, I have taken Book One several times and not once has the tutor come close to suggesting that we actually do the prayer-sharing "action component" with a real, flesh and blood non-Baha'i. He emphasized that if you do not do that, or if you shirk the home visits suggested in Book Two, or any of the service projects in the other books, you have reduced Ruhi to a mere cycle of sterile deepenings. You have not begun to do Ruhi. This came as a shock to me and on the whole I find it surprisingly encouraging. The Ruhi I have seen is an utter failure, has no hope of working and it hardly justifies the confidence that the House clearly has in it. I am anxious to try out the real Ruhi and see if I can make it work. I taped part of his initial talk on Friday night and will transcribe some of his comments for you.

"It is a joy to be here... The purpose of this meeting is to reflect upon the expansion and consolidation of the community of the Most Great Name and to look ahead to the next steps ahead... Transformation is too often used too casually... think of examples of change in the physical world ... the first example that comes to mind is the profound change of the moth and butterfly... Our purpose is secure the welfare of the entire human race and contribute to the advancement of civilization... There is a twofold process that is (made up of parts that are) fundamentally inseparable. The standard of behavior of the individual shapes the environment by which he or she lives, and he or she in turn is molded by the processes and structures of his or her environment... We have to continually focus our efforts on improving our character and our environment. If we do not, the potential of the age in which we live will not be fulfilled.

"I really cannot overemphasize the reciprocal relationship between spiritual and moral growth ... it is impossible for an individual to grow morally or spiritually in isolation from others. We can only continue through effort and activity for the benefit of others... (this is true of any virtue, think of generosity, soul learns by giving to others) the soul learns forgiveness by struggling to forgive others..."

He continued saying that if you develop your virtues too much and in isolation alone in your room you are at risk of becoming self-righteous. Or you can feel guilt, I do not have all these things and am not good enough. Or I can fall into self satisfaction. Both are forms of ego. Conversely if we become too social oriented we can lose perspective and our work to build a new world will become too fragile. "It is all too easy to lose respect and compassion for others... unspeakable acts have been committed by well meaning people who believed they were performing social good."

Mr. Scott has a strange physical resemblance to his predecessor, David Smith. Maybe the physiognomy is burned into the job description after all these years. But unlike Smith, he is not personable, a hail-fellow-well-met personality. He is no "people person," as one believer who has worked with and been fired by him put it to me; fine with me since I am not one either. At the same time from what I know about the Ruhi cycle, I wonder how to make Ruhi work if you are not a skilled and even bold salesperson. A craven fellow like myself who quails at picking up the phone to call friends, much less cold call strangers or distant acquaintances is not going to make Ruhi work. That became clear. In view of my handicap, I have been pounding my head coming up alternative ways to serve the program, perhaps by means of video or a website. I do not want to be completely out of the teaching loop. I also noticed that those using Ruhi spectacularly well who spoke up there were by and large young people, youth and even children. It seems what the Bible predicted, that a "child shall lead them."

In this maiden speech Mr. Scott reached some intellectual heights, and to me justified Ruhi and himself. He cleared up why Ruhi attempts bizarre things, like posing unanswerable questions, stumpers that would stymie a trained philosopher, to untrained laypersons. The reason is to allow the tutor to provoke discussion and resolve the clash of differing opinions by showing the power of the word and unity in the word. I think. Much else that had been confused in my mind is clearer now too. The program, which seemed replete with errors was, I am told, actually devised over fifteen years of experience in the field; it is crazy like a fox.

He actually gave me reason to imagine for a moment or two that I understood what the Ruhi thing was trying to do with all that talk about being and doing; I have never understood it, nor do I understand why it is given such emphasis throughout the books, especially when the Writings pay it no mind. But then I lost what he said. I forgot and it became a jumble again. The only explanation that sticks in my mind was a comment of Peter Smith, the chair for the weekend, that somebody had given him a button saying, "Neitzche says, `To do is to be;' Kant says, `To be is to do,' but Frank Sanatra says, `Dobe dobedo.'" Toss me into the Sanatrist school of thought; nonsense words are all I get out of Ruhi's convoluted attempts to break down imagined barriers between being and doing.

Scott made some of the mistakes one would expect of a novice speaker. During the entire time he grabbed the podium tight and tilted it forward as far as it would go; for the first twenty minutes I was in suspense, wondering if and when he was going to let it fall forward and crush the feet of the poor fellows sitting in the front row. Then it became clear that this was not going to happen, it was just one of those annoying nervous habits they warn you about in Public Speaking 101 that distract from what the speaker is trying to convey. Much worse, about every minute or so he would pause and look around the room with his mouth gaping in a toad-like expression that seemed to say, "Duh?" or, "What-ever!" When my daughter utters either of those sarcastic words I dock her one reward point, for that is her own substitute for swearing. I was glad she was not there, because Scott gave a lesson in how appear to say something sardonic (albeit unintentionally) without uttering a sound, using facial expression alone. This unconscious mannerism would be a good thing to lose. His voice rose and fell in volume, he sped up and slowed down, making much of what he said unintelligible from the back of the room where I and my voice recorder were. Mr. Scott continued,

"Let us imagine a man ... without prejudice against women... what good would that be if he lives in a society that systematically discriminates against women in everything from opportunity to the timing of examinations? ... It is not enough to have a lack of discrimination; that man must go a step further and try to change the structures of society... This is painful and requires sacrifice. But if he does that, things around him will change and from these changes he will gain a far more profound understanding of what equality means. The relation is reciprocal..."

"Ultimately it is teaching the Cause of God that transforms both individual and society together, reciprocally, that gives the vision of where they are being directed, (towards) the Order of Baha'u'llah... We need to connect volition and action to knowledge. There are lots of people with knowledge, there are all kinds of purposeful people in the world who are destroying it... (With Ruhi we get all three, and we learn to orient all to the Writings, both memorized in our heads and reflected in the environment around us. We learn to take ourselves into account and ask if our knowledge, will, actions and virtues are having an effect. We can criticize self, remove ego and adapt as the situation changes.)

To my relief he then turned from theorizing to his own personal experiences last fall when the Counselors just before they were to read the new plan letter from the UHJ were prepared for the experience with a whirlwind three day pilgrimage, nine days squeezed into three. This caused one of their number to cry out in anguish, "Is this an indication of the intensity which the House is expecting us to act in carrying out this plan?"

"We read the message on the morning of the first day and it came as a great challenge and relief. We had time then to reflect and consult. Two or three comments in, a counselor from Africa stood up to the mike and said that he would like to thank the Universal House of Justice for providing us with such an easy plan. (A few of us looked around in confusion. Did we all have the same plan? A different letter? Then we realized he was right. We all felt a great sense of joy.) The first paragraph of this message summarizes the whole message, and the plan."

I will not give more from this talk. His best talk took place on Saturday morning when he gave many new details about how to apply Ruhi so that it will actually work. This is what he knows, and this was his finest hour. Now LSA members across Ontario are spreading out and bringing to the whole community what he taught us about how to bring about growth.

Let me jump to the last talk he gave on Sunday morning, meant to be his rousing piece de resistance. I had sat alone in the only empty section of the room. I must say that I missed most of what he said, I admit it. It was a more concise address than I expected and I had just got my thoughts in order when it was over. Then he came over and sat down in the next seat but one from me. I felt very uncomfortable. No words were exchanged between us, only body language, a wordless conversation of two non-people persons. I tried not to seem unfriendly, though I had to lean forward in my chair and cut off eye contact; as you can guess from what I have said above, my feelings for him and Ruhi are not entirely unmixed. He removed some obstacles but others remain. I still think it is a grave error for Ruhi obstinately to ignore technical means, video, computers, the Internet, the high technology that is the power and glory of developed countries. Anyway, his body language showed that I did not exist in his mind; it bespoke only immense relief and an almost palpable nervous exhaustion. In spite of myself, I could not help but feel a pang of compassion for the man. Clearly this service of public speaking is tough, a real sacrifice for him, not the enjoyable, laid back experience it was for his predecessor. He is not as funny as David Smith, he is in fact deadly serious. He is working for badly needed change at a crucial time and he wants to see that happen, entry by troops, desperately. I did not doubt that the whole Ruhi thing is be as hard a sacrifice and as against the grain for him as it is for the likes of me. For that he earned my respect, if not as yet my warm affection, and I pray that God will confirm him and us in attaining this high aim of mass entry, or indeed any kind of entry at all.

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com