Shining America

Shining Through Nothingness and Contract With America

By John Taylor; 2007 May 7

Shining Through Nothingness

"In the beginning there was nothing. God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better."

This witticism attributed to comedian Ellen DeGeneres was the quote for the day a week or so ago. I liked it so much that I am featuring it first today. For one thing, it is perfectly true. According to the Genesis creation myth, God did create light before He created any objects to see. This strange fact gave rise to speculation in ancient times that beyond everything lay a fifth sphere, a place located far beyond the stars composed not of matter but of a "quintessence." Ether or the quintessence were the supernal objects that higher beings could discern when there is light but nothing to see. The Baha'i term for this, I am pretty sure, is Holy Spirit. The spirit guides where there can be no vision, no understanding on our part.

Philosophically, Socrates demonstrated that in the universe within there also exists a quintessence offering light but nothing to see. This Socrates called his daemon. The daemon or guardian angel guided Socrates negatively; it told him, at crucial moments, what not to do but never what to do. At a time when the liar's paradox had just been discovered (versions of this all-destroying weapon continue today to tear out the roots of every system that logicians and mathematicians dare attempt to erect), Socrates understood that there is only one way to respond, to admit to himself and others that he was ignorant. By clever questioning he could figure out exactly why and how he was ignorant. This too was only negative. The only way that he could find out what to do positively was to continue systematically to clear away all illusions and fallacies by means of a technique that he called dialectic. This way of teaching by systematically questioning began with the conversation that he held within himself; when Socrates applied it to those around him it became known as the Socratic Method.

The problem with this method is that it only works when atmospheric, or rather quintessential, conditions are just right; in the soul and in society there must be a dynamic equilibrium among equality, freedom, friendship and diversity. Socrates needed his daemon or guardian angel, a God who was an intimate friend, in order to work his method successfully. When God is too perfect and distant, the realization of one's own ignorance is a devastating, crushing blow; the only result is despair and enervation. But when God is an intimate, a personal guide supplying wisdom and all the questions required, one can be creative with one's own failings and weaknesses. One can learn. One can teach and still be assured of guidance from the Holy Spirit.

It is impossible to overestimate the importance of loving, equal friendship in discovering and living up to truth. It starts with making friends with oneself. But this cannot be sustained for long in a vacuum. Self-love suffocates in isolation. The self must breathe in the quintessential air. So, while learning to be a friend to oneself we befriend our guardian angel, our contact and intercessor with God, the divine, ultimate Friend and Teacher of the universe. Friendship with God is the beginning and the end of truth and learning; as a prayer in the Book of Psalms puts it,

"At midnight I will rise to give thanks to you, because of your righteous ordinances. I am a friend of all those who fear you, of those who observe your precepts. The earth is full of your loving-kindness, Yahweh. Teach me your statutes." (Ps 119:62-64, WEB)

It is no easy thing to be an intimate with an all-knowing, all-powerful Deity. In this high realm, as we said, there is light but nothing to see. We are helpless. How to be friends with such a Superior? For, again, equality is the essential pre-condition of friendship. Consider what Aristotle says in the Nichomachean Ethics,

"And this is most manifest in the case of the gods; for they surpass us most decisively in all good things. But it is clear also in the case of kings; for with them, too, men who are much their inferiors do not expect to be friends; nor do men of no account expect to be friends with the best or wisest men. In such cases it is not possible to define exactly up to what point friends can remain friends; for much can be taken away and friendship remain, but when one party is removed to a great distance, as God is, the possibility of friendship ceases."

Again, there is no way to be friends with the Godhead, the gap between our condition and It is far too vast. An intermediary or anointed One is necessary. His job is to tie the letters "b" and "e" together and make "be," being, enter the realm of existence. Baha'is call this Holy One the Manifestation of God, a Being Who is not a creature but a Creator. He dwells in an ether, or fifth essence, and instantiates love. Love for Him, even close, intimate friendship with Him, are quite possible, quite necessary in fact. Jesus Christ explained very clearly how this friendship forms and grows:

"I have spoken these things to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full. This is my commandment, that you love one another, even as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his lord does. But I have called you friends, for everything that I heard from my Father, I have made known to you." (John 15:11-16, WEB)

As Jesus says, friendship is for joy and a feeling of inner happiness is the measure of its success. Friendship feeds on mutual affection, but it is only proven true by pain and sacrifice. Friendship is mutual service where, in cases in which one party knows and the other does not, the deprived party offers implicit obedience as his side of the reciprocal deal. But Jesus does not claim to know as God knows, He only repeats what God tells Him, holding nothing back. He acts, he does not verbalize, and obeys God just as we obey Him, Jesus, as parties to a sacred Covenant. For every friendship is an implicit contract; each side must be faithful and never break it. For covenant, shining as it does the light of both mind and heart, is our only hope for freedom from violence.

"Have respect unto the covenant: for the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty." (Psalms 74:20)

Contract With America

Abdu'l-Baha spoke of a contract of friendship with America long before "contract with America" became a political catch phrase. He told us, "The more the Covenant is established, the more the power of the Holy Spirit will become manifest." This bond of friendship is the way to get all the things that Jesus promises above, joy, mutual sacrifice, obedience, humility, inspiration. He came to America to do that, to iron out a deal. He went first to the city that He called in the following Tablet the "candle of America," New York. He spent most of His 1912 visit there. In this receptive, diverse city He carefully nurtured a huge bonfire, whereas in other North American cities He lit many small candles, in passing as it were. In honor of its unique distinction, He called New York the "City of the Covenant." Let us end today with a Tablet and a prayer that He revealed for New York, evidently not too long after He had visited it:

"Strive you day and night that you may establish the power of the Covenant. Today the power that is able to quicken the heart of the world is the power of the Covenant. As the believers of God in New York, praise be to God, have found a new power in the Covenant and Testament, therefore they have gained happiness, attraction and motion.

The more the Covenant is established, the more the power of the Holy Spirit will become manifest.

Truly, I say, if the believers of God become united with heart and soul, in a short time they will shine forth like unto the sun. They will obtain joy and happiness -- the splendor of which will be cast upon all the regions of America.

New York is the candle of America, but on account of discord and differences of opinion, it had become extinguished. Now, praise be to God, it is illumined again. My hope is such that New York may become so luminous that it may illumine all the American continent. Now that unity is established, undoubtedly the confirmations of God and infinite assistance will be obtained.

Every one of the friends who travels to America reaches New York first, and hastens to the assembly of the friends. Should he become intoxicated from the chalice of unity, he would travel in that country as if he were dancing with joy. But otherwise, unquestionably, he would become depressed and dispirited. In short, for the friends in New York, I beseech heavenly bounty and spiritual confirmations.

Prayer revealed for the New York Baha'i Community

O my God! O my God! Verily Thou seest those who are present here turning to Thee, supplicating Thee, relying upon Thee.

O my Lord! O my Lord! Illumine their eyes by the light of guidance, and brighten their hearts with the rays shining from the Supreme Concourse. Suffer them to become the signs of Thy bestowal amongst the people, the standards of Thy power within mankind. O Lord, make those who are here the hosts of heaven and subdue through their means the hearts of mankind. Cause Thy great mercy to descend upon them, and render all Thy friends victorious through Thy love. Continually may they turn to the kingdom of Thy Names, and proclaim Thy Name amongst the people. May they attract all to the Pathway of Thy most great guidance.

O Lord! O Lord! Ordain for them honor in Thy kingdom of eternity.

O Lord! O Lord! Protect them from every test and make their feet firm in Thy love. Suffer them to be as strong, mighty mountains in Thy Cause, so that their steps shall not waver and their sight shall not be clouded and hindered from witnessing the lights emanating from Thy Supreme kingdom.

Verily Thou art the generous; verily, Thou art the almighty, verily, Thou art the clement, the merciful!

(Elaine Lacroix-Hopson, Abdu'l-Baha in New York, The City of the Covenant, pp. 102-103)

Lost Talk Found

Thorn and the Fourteenth Printalk

By John Taylor; 2007 May 05

Thorn
New Talk By the Master

Thorn

I have felt driven over the past few months to study to become a public speaker, but in a small town like this there is not a lot of opportunity. Since Silvie is fascinated with the stage, I figured, why not try out for our local little theater? Acting is talking in front of an audience, and Silvie could get involved too, perhaps as an extra. She would be thrilled. The location could not be more convenient, performances all seem to take place at the Optimist Hall just around the corner from our home.

Not that I have any ambitions to be an actor. I played the role of Marley in our Middle School production of A Christmas Carol, and though I did not do badly, I found the experience highly unpleasant. Now I know that the problem was a nervous spiral caused by stress and weather-induced migraine attacks, which now after so many decades I seem to have under control. Whether I can master my nerves without that on my back is another question. According to the handout distributed at their last performance, the next play to be put on by Dunnville Community Theater will be in November, "Thorn," a drama by Kent Mick, directed by Mike Maloney. I checked the play out on the Net and sure enough, the entire script is available at:

<http://www.lazybeescripts.co.uk/FullLengthPlays/Thorn.htm>

I read it over last night and gave it an "A" for topicality, since it is about the current conflict in Iraq. The playwright is no Shakespeare, however; he did not even bother to run the text through a spell checker. As for theatricality, I cannot judge. I have never tried to imagine what a script would look like on stage based just on reading it. In any case, the play is strangely coincident with a current of my thinking lately; it even mentions my hero and bugbear, Noam Chomsky, plus a historian by the name of Zinn, author of "A People's History of the United States." I had just ordered two of his books, this one and a sequel, from the Hamilton Library; they are currently waiting to be picked up. You will probably be hearing much more about Zinn in coming essays.

In sum, Thorn is an anti-war play. It is about a high school teacher who bounces from a pro-war position to its knee-jerk opposite, a resistor's stance. I was disappointed that we are putting this play on here in Canada, because though an indoctrinated American audience may find its contents shocking, I am sure that a Canadian one would give a resounding, "Duh! Of course!"

I remember when I was a teen in the early Seventies going to an anti-war protest rally at McMaster University. The hippies were all sitting around with their long hair, smoking pot and seething in anger at the Vietnam War, and my response was anger at them. Anger at their pretensions to non-conformism. They believed that breaking a few conventions and laws and spewing anger at the war made them radicals. That is not radical, it is petulant, knee-jerk reaction. Worse, I thought, it is way too easy for us Canadians to protest an American injustice. As I found out later, our plutocrats were making money hand-over-fist from that conflict; that is what we as Canadians should have been protesting, if anything. Or rather, we should have been doing something really radical, pushing for a an end to all war by means of a world government.

A truly radical play would be about Socrates. He was the real radical, the original "thorn," about which this play is supposed to be concerned. He was a gadfly bugging the horse, but he did not do it by threatening to burn a flag (the modus operandi of this play) but by destroying something far more fundamental, the flimsy pretensions and presuppositions of all of us, yes, even democrats, who think we know when we most definitely do not.

New Talk By the Master

My younger readers will recall being thrilled by Pirate Pete's frenzied search for Spongebob Squarepant's lost episode. You will understand my own anxiety and frantic seeking when I realized that a talk of the Master was missing, the one given at the Lake Mohonk Peace Conference in New York. Last year I sent out an appeal on the Badi' List for help with this quest and unbeknownst to me, somebody answered. Here is what Christine and Brian wrote:

"There is more information on Abdu'l-Baha's visit to Lake Mohonk in Mahmud's Diary. Also, this web page has one of the two talks given by Abdu'l-Baha at the Peace and Arbitration Conference in 1912:

It appears the text of the 2nd talk is still unaccounted for.

<http://www.nybahai.org/newpaltz/history.html>

I had seen this website before but when I looked at the talk I was confused. The first phrase of the first sentence were the same, word for word, of a talk the Master gave a few days before in NY City. I assumed that they had just copied that talk. But thanks to these alert readers I saw that they were perfectly correct, this is a new, unpublished, unknown talk of the Master. Better still, this is what I call a "printalk," a talk that runs through the Baha'i principles in short summary form. There are only thirteen others in Promulgation. What a find! I will reproduce it all here, since this website has an annoying background color that makes it hard to read.

From the New Paltz Website

Many people are surprised to learn that New Paltz figures very prominently in the history of the Baha'i faith and the connection between them is over 80 years old!

Before Baha'u'llah (the founder of the Baha'i Faith) passed away in 1892, he appointed his son 'Abdu'l-Baha (whose name means "Servant of Baha") as his successor and the interpreter of his teachings. This appointment is significant in religious history for it marks the first time that the founder of a major religion has appointed a successor in his own lifetime. This act has protected the Baha'i faith from splintering into dozens of sects as has occurred to every other religion.

'Abdu'l-Baha had been imprisoned by the Ottoman Empire for his adherence to the liberal teachings of Baha'u'llah. In 1908, the Young Turk revolution released 'Abdu'l-Baha who had spent over 50 years of his life imprisoned and exiled.

Back in New Paltz, Albert Smiley, the owner of Mohonk Mountain House, had been holding a series of Conferences at the Mountain House in New Paltz on International Peace and Arbitration since the late 1890's. Mr. Smiley heard of the teachings of Baha'u'llah and their great stress on world peace and invited 'Abdu'l-Baha to attend the conference in 1912. 'Abdu'l-Baha agreed and in order to attend the conference he traveled from Haifa, Israel (which was then Palestine) to New Paltz in the Spring of 1912.

Abdu'l-Baha arrived at the New Paltz train station (across from the Water Street Market) and spent the next three days as a guest at the Mountain House. While there he gave two talks at the International Peace and Arbitration Conference.

Before leaving the conference, 'Abdu'l-Baha presented to Albert Smiley a Persian rug as a gift for his efforts to bring about world peace. 'Abdu'l-Baha also remarked that the contributions which Albert Smiley made to peace would be remembered throughout history. The rug is displayed at the Mountain House as is a photograph of 'Abdu'l-Baha.

Here is the text of one of the talks which 'Abdu'l-Baha gave at Mohonk Mountain House in 1912:

The Oneness of the Reality of Humankind (or, The Lost Printalk)

Wednesday Evening, May 15, 1912

When we consider history, we find that civilization is progressing, but in this century its progress cannot be compared with that of past centuries. This is the century of light and of bounty. In the past, the unity of patriotism, the unity of nations and religions was established; hence this century is greater than the past.

Sixty years ago, Asia was in great turmoil of wars; England, Russia, Turkey and France went to war. There were wars in Persia, wars among the religions and wars between nations especially in Persia on account of the existence of the different nationalities, such as Turks, Persians, Arabs and Kurds, and the various religions, namely Mohammedan, Jewish, Christian and Zoroastrian. Among these different religions the greatest enmity and rancor were extant.

At such a time as this, His Holiness, Baha'u'llah appeared. He proclaimed the oneness of the world of humanity and the greatest peace (Most Great Peace). He wrote to all the kings and addressed epistles to all the religionists of Persia, and all the souls who accepted His platform and emulated and followed His teachings--whether Christians, Mohammedans, Jews or Zoroastrians--were united and attained the greatest amity and unity. Through those teachings, the Kurd, the Arab, the Persian and Turk freed themselves from the prejudice of race and were people agreed to an extent which is indescribable, indeed, in such a manner, that were you to enter their meeting you could not distinguish between the Persian, the Christian, the Arab or the Turk, and you would not observe any differences of religious opinion. Among those people the utmost of love and oneness of peace now obtain, for the great teachings of Baha'u'llah make for the oneness of the world and for humanity, universal peace and arbitration. The following are a few of the principles of Baha'u'llah.

First, that all must investigate reality. It is incumbent on all nations to investigate the truth. For Baha'u'llah declares that the foundations of the divine religions are one and that one is reality and reality is not multiple but indivisible. But the imitations which have come in, being different in character, have caused divisions and separations. If we forsake the imitations and revert to the original foundations of the divine religion, we shall find that the foundations are that reality which is one and not multiple.

The second principle of Baha'u'llah is the oneness of humankind. All humanity belongs to one family, inhabiting the same globe; all are beneath the providence of God; God has created all and has nurtured all and provideth for all and preserveth all. This is the policy of God. God is kind to all and why should we be unkind? Is there any policy wiser and better than God's policy? No matter how keen the human mind may be, it cannot surpass the policy of God. The policy of God is perfect and we must follow it and not our own self-interest.

The third teaching of Baha'u'llah is that religion and science are twins. If a religious question be not in accordance with science, it is imagination. All religious matter must correspond with science, every question which meets the criterion of science shall be acceptable, and those questions which do not come to the standard of science are not to be given credence.

The fourth teaching of Baha'u'llah is that religion should be the one bond which shall unite society, which shall cement together the various peoples, which shall cause a unity among all the creeds. If religion should be productive of strife and division, if it should cause bloodshed and war and rapine, irreligion is preferable to religion. Religion was meant to be a bond of love among mankind.

The fifth principle is that racial bias, religious prejudice, patriotic prejudice, political prejudice, are the destroyers of the very foundations of the body politic. All humanity is one in kind, the surface of the earth one home, and the foundations of the divine religions one. All the wars which have taken place since the inception of human history have emanated either from religious prejudice, racial prejudice, patriotic bias or political greed and interest. As long as these prejudices last, so long will the foundations of humanity tremble. When such prejudices pass away the world will at last find peace.

The sixth principle of Baha'u'llah is equality between mankind and womankind. Woman and man are both human and both the manifestations of God's grace. God has created man and has endowed him with knowledge and intelligence. The difference which now exists between man and woman is only a difference of education, and when woman shall receive the same education no doubt her equality with man shall become a reality. The world of humanity is composed of two organizations--the male and the female. If one organ be defective, that defect will affect the other. Until perfect strength shall obtain in both, and woman shall attain equality with man, the happiness of humanity will not be insured.

The seventh principle concerns the readjustment of the economic questions in the social body. The rich now enjoy the greatest luxury, whereas the poor are in abject misery. Certain laws must be made whereby the rich cannot become over-rich and the poor shall not starve, both rich and poor enjoying the comforts according to their respective deserts.

The eighth principle of Baha'u'llah is that philosophy sufficeth not and is not conducive to the absolute happiness of mankind. Great philosophers have been capable of educating themselves, or a few who followed them, but generally education, ethical education, they could not endow. Therefore, the world of humanity is evermore in need of the breath of the Holy Spirit. The greatest peace (Most Great Peace) will not be realized without the power of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit of God which insures the safety of humanity, for human thoughts differ, human susceptibilities differ. You cannot make the susceptibilities of all humanity one except through the common channel of the Holy Spirit.

Peter and Paul

Peter and Paul

By John Taylor; 2007 May 03

Not often do I recommend a film as wholeheartedly as this one: "Peter and Paul," starring a very young Anthony Hopkins as Paul. I had never heard of this production, probably because it started off as a television mini-series. Normally I avoid made-for-television fare and its notoriously poor production values, but this is a big exception. It may not be easy to chase down. In fact, I did not uncover this in a video store but in St. Paul's Anglican Church's library, across the hall from where our kids take piano lessons. I signed it out for a week and am glad I did, though it took most of the week to get through it, watching in dribs and drabs.

When a film is several hours long it is usually a bad thing. A long story gets watered down by detail. But not this time. The relationship between Peter and Paul was a genuinely complex one that simply cannot be conveyed in the two hour time frame of a normal movie. It was so subtle that I now realize that having read the New Testament over several times I still did not have a clear picture of what happened. Strange to say, this stirring story, so central to Christianity, is not told in the Bible. It took place both after and before the chief centers of attention for most Christians, the life of Jesus and current doctrine. Perhaps it is avoided intentionally, because it undercuts the leadership pretensions of a professional clergy. After all, Peter starts an ignorant fisherman and Paul a rabid fanatic; the only thing that distinguishes them from a million other ordinary men -- and even very gifted and learned men -- is the teaching of Jesus and the mysterious motions of the Holy Spirit.

In fact the more I read the Paul of the Biblical text, the less I understood him. He is incoherent; it must be a nightmare to try to translate him. Peter, who wrote not a word, is even harder to grasp. As a Baha'i I might not have considered a failure to understand what went on between Peter and Paul as such a serious hole in my education if it were not for the fact that Abdu'l-Baha brought Peter and Paul up so often as exemplars. He emphasized very strongly how important it is to understand who they were in order to fully grasp the Christian message, and therefore to be a good Baha'i too.

Here are some examples of how the film helped me.

When you read the words of Paul in his letters he comes across so garbled that the question I constantly ask are, Why did anybody at all listen to him? How did they decipher him, much less change their religion on hearing him? How did he have such long-term success? This is answered in this mini-series. It seems that Paul as public speaker was what they call in football a "garbage runner," the running back who stumbles around, looks incompetent and infuriates the fans, but when the coaches go over the statistics they find that he is getting six or seven yards a carry, a very respectable average. Paul was a garbage thinker, probably the sort of leader you had to meet in person and feel the love and passion resonate in his voice. Paul's love made up for it all, and then some.

Plus, Paul had a good slogan. Just as Martin Luther King had his "Freedom Now!," Paul had "By Faith Alone!" That is, you did not need to worry about whether a convert was obeying the Jewish laws or not in order to accept him into the Christian fold. And Peter did not disagree with him on that (as you would think on reading the Bible alone).

On the other hand, as the film makes clear, Peter was a vacillator. A waverer, a fence sitter, a middle-of-the-roader who gets trampled in traffic, in this case his own fanatical fellow believers. It seems that Peter was not just indecisive after the crucifixion when the cock crowed thrice, he was like that all his life. It was his disposition. Some people by nature think twice about everything and contradict themselves as a matter of course. Like my father. All my life his opinions would bounce back and forth between communism and rampant capitalism, the incompatibilities being wiped out by the ravages of a bad memory. I have a friend who is the same way with the Baha'i Faith; one minute he is sympathetic, the next he wishes it did not exist.

Later on when the church sprung up in Jerusalem, Simon Peter was acutely aware that Jesus had singled him out as the "rock" on which His church would be built. Some rock, he thought. When he became leader of the Christians he had to consider the outspoken opinions of the converted Jews in Jerusalem. If he ignored their wishes, the foundation would crumble. On the other hand, he saw the courage, genius and inspiration radiate from Paul; here was an intellectual who put his belief into action, a very rare thing.

This is where Abdu'l-Baha's teaching about Peter comes in useful and complements the film. Never forget, the Master repeatedly says, that Peter was a humble, non-learned fisherman who had to portion out his meals in order to know when to observe the Sabbath -- in other words he was an illiterate and could not read a calendar. There was no way that Peter, no matter how learned he became spiritually, was ever going to be able to take the new religion to Greece and then Rome, the most advanced, sophisticated places in the known world.

That is why Paul was struck down on the road to Damascus. Paul was an intellectual, but the most unlikely kind, one whose mission in life was to exterminate all Christians. So the Spirit, Jesus, asked him: "Why do you persecute me?" Not surprisingly, Paul converted. Nor did he vacillate. He had a determined, steadfast disposition, the mirror opposite of Peter's. And he did what Abdu'l-Baha called us Baha'is to do, he went out and traveled and taught till he dropped, or rather was beheaded by the Roman authorities.

Anthony Hopkins' brilliant portrayal makes Paul into a hesitant speaker; he breaks off in awkward pauses in the middle of his sentences. Truly, a garbage speaker, redeemed by love alone. You can feel Paul's love in your bones, his iron determination, but also -- how can I express this? -- his broken manner of speech reflects the fact that the Spirit, by putting Paul through such a dramatic and violent conversion, had in some hidden way shattered his soul and made him into what Baha'u'llah calls an "entity of a new creation." In his letters Paul speaks of constantly fighting a "fire in his limbs," and more than one gay priest has taken this to mean that he had homosexual leanings that he successfully suppressed and redirected for good. Be that as it may (the frequent stonings he underwent, it seems to me, is a more than adequate explanation for fire in the limbs), the quality of Paul's love, broken but fervent, is a force of nature, or rather a force of heaven.

Words cannot express how inspiring it was for me to see Paul do what he did. No wonder Abdu'l-Baha held Peter and Paul up as examples! Paul stood up before hostile, foreign and angry crowds and spoke until, as often as not, they literally stoned him. And here we worry about a little stage fright!

And Peter's response to Paul's success was, in its way, exemplary too. Nothing was going to make the Rock of the church into an eloquent speaker, a deep thinker, an effective leader of men, or even the sort of rock-like, steadfast personality that we all dream of having. But he had Christ's instructions, "Go out and spread the Gospel to the world." That was enough. So when Paul overshadowed his prominence in Greece, instead of undermining the new rival or sitting and arguing with the truculent Jerusalem Christians, Peter picked another direction, in this case Babylon, and went off to teach there. Have a beef or a problem? Do just that, go off in another direction and spread the Good News.

The end of the film is poignant. Peter comes back to Jerusalem and hears how Paul has taken the message to Rome. Peter swallows his pride as the rock of the church and humbly follows the example of this courageous parvenu and goes in his footsteps to Rome. But Paul is martyred before they can meet, to Peter's chagrin. I was reminded a little of the love that existed between the Bab and Baha'u'llah, how they never met, how the Bab freely and gladly acknowledged the ascendancy of the One Whom God Will Make Manifest.

One important fact is made invisible in this all-English film, the language barrier. Peter was not only illiterate but obviously did not speak Greek or Latin, so his coming to Rome meant that everything he said would have to be translated. There was therefore no question of Peter's substantially proclaiming the Faith to Romans; he came to Rome to meet Paul only. Yes, also (to use the Baha'i term) he came to "deepen" the new Christians in the Faith; but mostly it was a symbolic gesture of love and solidarity with Paul and his new converts across the Roman Empire. The gesture saved the Faith from splitting completely, but mostly it was done out of love for Paul, the man without whom (Abdu'l-Baha Himself says this) Christian faith would never have become universal. Then when the persecutors catch up to Peter in Rome and he is strung up on a cross, he has them put him upside down to express humility and unworthiness to suffer the same fate Jesus had. In a weighty way, the Message of Jesus was mirrored in this underworld. It was "on earth as it is in heaven."

Ordinary people everywhere can learn from this to heed not our shortcomings, but simply arise and teach the Cause, and thereby found the democracy of the Spirit.

Roundup

Loose End Roundup

By John Taylor; 2007 May 02

Tomorrow is a Holy Day, Ridvan 12, and tonight we are having the Haldimand community's commemoration in our home. Lots of preparation to do, so today I will let others do the writing for me on the Badi List and Blog entry will tie together many loose ends. Here is a list of the topics covered today:

Joining Myspace
Email Interview with Barry Smith
New Decision Prayer
Why Ruhi? Video
The Blood and Gore Fund
Reader Response to Morality Essay
Response to Yesterday's Prayer Essay

==========

Joining Myspace

I have joined Myspace. I do not know exactly why I did that but I read that everybody is doing it so I jumped on the bandwagon. The URL I chose is "Gazpacho Guy", specifically:

<a href="http://www.myspace.com/gazpachoguy">Find me on MySpace and be my friend!</a>

Email Interview with Barry Smith

As announced earlier, I wrote Barry Smith with several questions about his comedy presentation, which I came across through newspaper publicity on the Net. His website is: www.barrysmith.com. Here is what I said to him:

"I came across some of your publicity and have written a little about you on my blog, badiblog.blogspot.com I wonder if you could answer some questions for me and my readers. Please feel free to give an introduction to yourself, maybe some of your publicity material. My readers are mostly in Ontario and I notice that you are coming to the fringe festival in Toronto this summer."

Hi John,

I'll do my best to answer your questions:

Are you a Baha'i?

I'm not a Baha'i anymore. I was, as you suspected on your blog, a member of the Baha'i's Under The Provisions of the Covenant, a Baha'i sect that I understand most Baha'i's have never heard of. It was led by a man in Montana, Dr. Leland Jensen, who believed he was the "establisher" of the Baha'i Faith - a fulfiller of prophecy that also had him be, technically, the return of Jesus. There were about 250 believers in this sect.

My show is a comedy about how I found out about this man, how I came to believe his claims (even lived in his basement for a summer), and how I eventually decided I didn't believe him. A comedy with serious undertones about faith and belief. I don't know that I can say across the board that Baha'i's would particularly enjoy this show - I do poke a bit of fun at Baha'i, but certainly not more than I poke fun at myself. My show is not anti-Baha'i or anti-religion (though I personally am neither Baha'i nor religious), it's just my story which happens to involve Baha'i and religion (I was raised Southern Baptist).

Where do you live, in Canada?

I live in Aspen, Colorado.

How do you work such wonders with Powerpoint? I find it clumsy. Do you have the help of a visual artist?

Actually, I use Keynote on a Mac. Like most Mac products (yes, I'm a fan) I find it to be very powerful and intuitive. I do all the visuals myself, though I have a sound designer, Arman Boyles, who does the music for me as well as making my videos sound good.

I am afraid that I do not even know what a fringe festival is, what is it?

Basically, it's an unjuried theatre festival - comedy, music, dance, puppets, improv, drama, you name it - anything goes! It really is an amazing experience, both for the artist and the audience. Lots of cool stuff to see at a Fringe Festival. There are many throughout the world.

Wikipedia has a great entry on fringe festivals:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fringe_festival

Canada has a fringe festival circuit that runs from Montreal to Vancouver for the entire summer. This tour is literally unlike anything in the world, and I'll be on that tour this year with my "Jesus In Montana" show and my new show, "American Squatter." And yes, I'll be performing Jesus In Montana at the Toronto Fringe Festival - you can find my performance dates on my web page, www.jesusinmontana.com

Thanks for writing. Good luck with your blog.

New Decision Prayer

New Prayer Distributed by the Universal House of Justice

Thanks to Jimbo for sharing this prayer of Baha'u'llah originally written for Shaykh Kazim Samandar. This new translation is now official, so rub it out of the handwritten part of your prayer book and put it into the printed section.

Subject: Prayer For Difficult Decisions

Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 20:30:10 -0700

THE UNIVERSAL HOUSE OF JUSTICE

DEPARTMENT OF THE SECRETARIAT

Baha'i World Centre P.O. Box 155 31 001 Haifa, Israel

Dear Baha'i Friend,

Your email has been received at the Baha'i World Centre and forwarded to our Department for response. The prayer that you quote is authentic. It was revealed by Baha'u'llah in Arabic for Jinab-i-Samandar (Shaykh Kazim Samandar), the father of the Hand of the Cause of God Tarazu'llah Samandari, to assist him in making a difficult decision. The Research Department has No information about the date of its revelation.

As you may be aware, until now only provisional translations of this prayer were available. Recently, however, an authorized English translation of the prayer and its context has become available at the World Centre, and it follows below:

Samandar, upon him rest My glory, hath ever been the recipient of divine favours, and there hath befallen him in the path of God that which His knowledge alone can encompass.

In regard to his affairs, let him repeat nineteen times:

"Thou seest me, O my God, detached from all save Thee and cleaving unto Thee. Guide me, then, in all mine affairs unto that which profiteth me for the glory of Thy Cause and the loftiness of the station of thy loved ones."

Let him then reflect upon the matter and undertake whatever cometh to mind. This vehement opposition of the enemies will indeed give way to supreme prosperity."

With loving Baha'i greetings,

Department of the Secretariat

Why Ruhi? Video

Here is a hilarious video explanation of why we need to take book seven and get more Ruhi coordinators going.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz3TjDvAYkg

The Blood and Gore Fund

When I saw Inconvenient Truth I was hot to trot for saving the world. I read an interview with Gore in Wired Magazine where he mentions that he, Al Gore, had got together with some billionaire by the name of Blood, and formed an investment fund that targets environmentally helpful enterprises. It is popularly known as the Blood and Gore Fund, since its real name is boring. I wanted to find out more about the fund but its website is pretty boring and uninformative. Then I ran across an investment professional from St. Catherines who kindly wrote this response to my query.

Hello Mr. Taylor,

I have some information for you as discussed at the Dunnville Home Show. With regard to the "Blood & Gore" fund, after doing a bit of research I found out that it is unfortunately a US only mutual fund firm. We cannot offer it to our clients because it falls under a different jurisdiction. Some US funds have a Canadian mirror that we can offer but this one does not. Essentially, Gore and Blood created a firm called Generation Investment Management. This firm creates funds using companies that are sustainable, eco friendly and that do not add to the long term negative depletion of the environment etc ...

Although we cannot offer funds from this specific company, Investors Group does have a fund that has been around for quite some time that has the same investment philosophy. The fund I am talking about is called Investors Summa fund. This fund may or may not be suitable for you, it depends on your individual investment profile.

You can learn about this fund here:

http://globefunddb.theglobeandmail.com/gishome/plsql/igf.fund_pro?fundname=Investors+Summa-A&iaction=Get+Fund+Profile

Another older article about the fund can be found here:

http://www.investmentreview.com/archives/2001/winter/social.html

Let me know what you think about this fund and if you would like more information on it.

Reader Response to "It is all about morality"

Over a month ago I wrote an essay about sex, more or less laying out the Baha'i position on sexual morality (marry them off young) and discussing the implications for education. Unbeknownst to me at the time, two people responded to the essay. Here are their thoughtful and interesting comments:

Phillipe Copeland wrote:

Thanks for addressing the "hooking up" issue, I've been hearing a lot about it. I've often meditated on how the Baha'i writings tell us that the purpose in obeying the Laws of God is to protect us from our own ignorance and the harm of the mischief maker. Boys and girls engaged in hooking up are not only retarding their own spiritual development but also exposing themselves to injury by "mischief makers" who will manipulate their moral vulnerabilities. Our world is full of such predatory personalities and I don't just mean the obvious ones that you hear about in the news, but the multitude of smooth talking characters who mislead young people on a path of destruction all while professing a commitment to "freedom" and "liberty".

Mystic Wayfarer wrote:

A most thoughtful post. Striving for moral excellence is rarely acknowledged as a critical educational goal. As the Master emphasizes: "Man must now become imbued with new virtues and powers, new moral standards, new capacities."

After living in Israel and observing how the orthodox Jewish communities encourage and nurture young marriages (often under the age of 20), it is clear that the very nature of the social fabric must be designed so as to support such families. But there are various shortcomings in these communities, most particularly the opportunities for women. Here, we can see that the principle of gender equality that so forcefully pervades Baha'i teachings anticipates the complete remolding of the socio-economic matrix of human life. Resources of society must undoubtedly flow to support an intense and ongoing educational process to young parents and all. Understanding how community processes can be restructured is clearly a most challenging spiritual, moral and intellectual task--one that cannot abide the simplistic assumptions of neoclassical economics regarding human nature (or the nexus between human beings and the natural world)

Response to Yesterday's Prayer Essay

Jean wrote:

Enjoyed your speculations today on what is the most common prayer.

I don't agree that it is necessarily about wealth or power. I don't think I've ever prayed for either, though I certainly wouldn't mind more wealth!

I mostly pray for these things:

1) "Dear Lord, get me out of this mess I've got myself into." I procrastinate, I get distracted, I over-promise, and these bad habits get me into situations where I fail miserably at trustworthiness. Not so much the honesty part of trustworthiness, but definitely the reliability part.

Laugh away, but many are the times that Baha'u'llah has sent me green traffic lights and parking places, or phone calls from the people I'm supposed to be meeting, to save me from arriving at appointments late. Or he has helped me stay focused at the last minute to get an important piece of work done before a deadline after I've goofed off for weeks.

2) "Dear Lord, protect my loved one." whether that loved one needs protection from the physical dangers of military service, illness, or natural disasters; the psychological dangers of temptation or bad habits or resentment, or the pain of depression or loss.

I agree with you though, that whatever we pray for ourselves has the possibility of going badly wrong once given to us. If Baha'u'llah bails me out after I procrastinate, where is my incentive to organize myself better and work harder to keep my promises?

I know perfectly well that cleaning up after my mistakes is a waste of His time and energy, limitless as they are, but every time I get in a tight spot, SOS! SOS! There goes another prayer.

The rest of the time, I try to pray for stuff that can't possibly go wrong and that recognizes that God is in charge and I'm not. Even knowing it's impossible to achieve that perfectly, I think it helps me pray for better things. Dear Lord, please make my friend's cancer treatments spectacularly effective, and give him the strength to endure the misery of chemo without losing his hope or his sense of humor.

Dear Lord, help my teenager find a better way to deal with those two kids on her sports team that she always complains about. Lord, inspire our world leaders to make loving and wise decisions and help them to find sound information and pure hearted advice to guide those decisions. When I pray that way, instead of "Cure my friend, don't let anyone bother my teen, and bring our troops home" I acknowledge that God's way of doing things has got to be better than whatever I could dream up.

I also recognize that God's way usually involves silent, invisible changes to hearts and minds rather than splashy contraventions of the laws of nature. Finally, it shows me what I could be doing on my own to make the things happen that I'm praying for. I could send my friend an email or joke; I could think of ways to talk to my teen about backbiting without alienating her, and I could invest the time to write a thoughtful letter to the politicians.

Finally, there's always "Lord, help me do the right thing, with the right attitude". That about sums it up, doesn't it? :)

All the best,

Jean

 

Prayer and Fear

Prayer Punishment and Fear Freedom

By John Taylor; 2007 May 01

Today's essay (or at least the version on the Badi Blog) begins with a photograph of Silvie's art work, pen on banana, drawn just after school yesterday. Her theme of terror -- the banana defies you to eat it -- is just what I find myself wishing to talk about this morning. I start off with prayer.

Prayer Punishment

"When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers."

This witticism of Oscar Wilde would have gone over like a lead balloon if he had said it in an Islamic country because the Muslim holy book, the Qu'ran, says virtually the same thing, repeatedly and in deadly earnest. Allah will punish us by giving us what we want, so ask what God wants. He and He only knows best what is good. This is why freedom was never given the same high value in Islamic lands as in Europe. Among Muslims there was much talk of just rule, but not of freedom. There are good spiritual reasons for that. If what we regard as good is really harmful, a good prayer cannot be for harm. Prayer must be for a middle way between greedy wish fulfillment and dull, slavish resignation to what we cannot change. Ask for the Golden Main. Prayer, ultimately is for inspiration. In prayer we find out what really is good for us. We may not know this consciously but in prayer we can ask God to energize us in working it out in the good life ...

Which raises the question: What is the most common human prayer?

My guess would be that prayers for money are the most common, by far. `O God give me a superabundance of money, a color TV, a Mercedes Benz.' But excess of prosperity, according to the Qu'ran, is among the most common and severe forms of divine retribution. For one thing, with possessions come fear, the constant dread, justified or not, that somebody will come along and take your hoard away. A society steeped in materialism is ridden by fear, by theft and rumors of theft. Fear mongers run rampant,

"Those in whose hearts is a disease - thou seest how eagerly they run about amongst them, saying: `We do fear lest a change of fortune bring us disaster.'" (Qur'an 5:55, Yusuf Ali)

No need to detail how important fear is in the governance of a materialist society. Defense spending is a good fear thermometer. Before the fall of the Iron Curtain, when the threat of nuclear attack from an ideological enemy was real, if somewhat exaggerated, America indulged in an astonishingly expensive arms race. When Communism fell, military funding dropped for a time but even before 9-11 and the subsequent military adventurism, the arms buildup had already topped Cold War highs.

After money, what is the most common prayer? Surely the answer to that is power. With great power fear is wrapped up. What is the greatest kind of absolute power? Surely, the answer to that is slavery. If I own a human being, I am in a position of power that few other posts, no matter how influential, can ever equal.

In the Caribbean, slavery fed the plantations that fueled the prosperity of industrial Europe. When it was colonized it was soon found out that the aboriginal peoples made poor slaves. They preferred to die rather than endure slavery. So slaves were imported from Africa. Slavery so scarred the imagination of the inhabitants there that, even after slavery had been outlawed, there arose a strange caricature of the slave economy, the quasi-religious practice of the zombie. A zombie is made, not born. A victim is drugged into a coma, passes for dead and is buried, then is dug up and kept in a stupor in order to be secretly used by the perpetrator as a totally compliant slave. This robot-like creature was made into the ideal slave by chemical means.

The zombie is surely the only kind of person who qualifies -- albeit artificially -- for what Aristotle held to be the only kind of creature who should be a slave, one whose very nature is slavish. Since Aristotle taught that man by nature desires to know it surely follows that no human should be a slave, since slaves blindly obey and knowledge as often as not interferes with obedience. A zombie was incapable in that drugged state to learn or know anything much, which made him the perfect slave. Needless to say, even the threat of being made into a zombie spread terror among the population, and increased the respect paid to the practitioners of this cult. Thus in a weird caricature the ghost of slavery continued to spread fear after its passing.

Fear is the heritage of slavery. Slave owners and their descendents were and are ruled by fear every bit as much as slaves, potential slaves and other victims of the slavery system had been. Reading last week about the life of Martin Luther King, I noticed that one of the benefits he held up to the White man from his "Freedom Now!" program of erasing racism was the prospect of freedom from fear. White America, he perceived, was in terror of the Black man -- not only the Black man, mind you; since 911 the fear has shifted over to the Brown man, the Muslim, as well.

But none can doubt that fear is the first symptom of gross inequality, of excess power and too much comparative wealth. Fear is the enduring product of the old slave-owning tyrannical order.

Fear Freedom

All this is by way of background to one of Baha'u'llah's most portentous statements, which He makes at the beginning of His Will and Testament.

"In earthly riches fear is hidden and peril is concealed. Consider ye and call to mind that which the All-Merciful hath revealed in the Qur'an: 'Woe betide every slanderer and defamer, him that layeth up riches and counteth them.' (Q104:1,2) Fleeting are the riches of the world; all that perisheth and changeth is not, and hath never been, worthy of attention, except to a recognized measure." (Tablets, 217)

This abjuration of wealth and power at the beginning is followed in the next two paragraphs by one of the most important divorce declarations in the history of religion. Baha'u'llah permanently abjures in His Order both wealth and power. He sets religion firmly on the grounds of the Unseen, not on earthly attachments or worldly influence.

The result is that there can never be conflict or interference between His Order and wealth and power. That is not to say that the wealthy and powerful may not for a while misperceive or ignore this clear declaration, leading to a temporary period of persecution. Baha'u'llah in fact has prophesied that this will happen. But in my opinion it is one of the most important jobs of the Learned to emphasize and re-emphasize the fact that the essential Baha'i spirit is to resolutely hold to the principle of non-interference of religion in politics, and explain the reasons why this is so.

Two of the best explanations of why faith must be cut off once and for all from wealth and power can be found in the deep, inner meanings of the two citations from the Qu'ran that we featured earlier. The first quote states that fear is the product of a kind of heart disease. Its victims "eagerly ... run about" crying that change will end in disaster. Fear sickness leads to obscurantism and reactionary politics.

The second Quranic passage, cited by Baha'u'llah in the above passage from the Kitab-i-Ahd, states that the hoarder defends himself using slander and defamation. Thus greed and fear-sickness lead to propaganda and other abuse of language, all of which tend to crank up the levels of fear in society. Swearing and loose, abusive words harm the soul first of all, and the world after that. Curbing one's own tongue is the first step, according to the Tablet of the Seeker, on the path to truth. A sincere seeker of truth starts by abjuring abusive, destructive words, and even idle and excessive speech.

This is an age when we can look forward to freedom from many former blights of the past, not least of which are fear and misuse of language. We have hope, but we must learn how to be free in order to be free. The Guardian wrote,

"That which was applicable to human needs during the early history of the race can neither meet nor satisfy the demands of this day, this period of newness and consummation. Humanity has emerged from its former state of limitation and preliminary training. Man must now become imbued with new virtues and powers, new moral standards, new capacities. New bounties, perfect bestowals, are awaiting and already descending upon him. The gifts and blessings of the period of youth, although timely and sufficient during the adolescence of mankind, are now incapable of meeting the requirements of its maturity." (Shoghi Effendi, The Promised Day is Come, 119)