Ridvan 2006 Commentary

Ridvan Message, 2006; Summary and Commentary

By John Taylor; 2006 May 17

The LSA has tasked me with summarizing and commenting upon the UHJ's annual Ridvan Message for our Haldimand feast tonight, so I will lay out my notes here. Last year's Ridvan Message was the shortest in my memory, but this time around it is of more medium length. This year's Message marks the end of the old plan and inaugurates a new five year plan.

"The entire Baha'i world is stirred at contemplating the scope of the five-year enterprise that lies ahead, the depth of consecration it will demand, and the results it is destined to achieve."

Note the language, reminiscent of another five year mission of another Enterprise. Now that I think of it, Star Trek was cancelled after only three seasons, it never made it through to the end of its five year mission. God's plan, on the other hand, always does. The next five year plan will end in 2011, just before the centenary of the beginning of the Master's travels in Europe and North America. The coming plan is heavily cluster and Ruhi oriented, aimed at setting in motion mass entry in these areas. The house says,

"We now call upon each and every one of you to bend your energies towards ensuring that the goal of establishing over the next five years intensive programmes of growth in no less than 1,500 clusters worldwide is successfully met."

The House points out that the fine points of the coming plan were set forth in detail in another communication late last year; their object in this Ridvan message is only to set them into context. They begin by invoking the World Order letters of the Guardian, written in the early 1930's, which describe two processes, one destructive and the other constructive, set in motion by the spiritual impulse of Baha'u'llah's revelation. The Guardian warns against being misled by increasing prosperity into thinking that the crisis is over. The forces of disintegration are turning the foundations of order and morality into sand, and we will be washed away if we do not build upon rock. The Guardian mentioned terrorism, materialism, power mongering and the decline of the family as signs of a grave malady.

"The perversion of human nature, the degradation of human conduct, the corruption and dissolution of human institutions," about which Shoghi Effendi forewarned, are sadly revealing themselves "in their worst and most revolting aspects."

Coincidentally, last night CBC Radio's show "Ideas" broadcast an assessment of Jane Jacob's last book, "Dark Age Ahead," which predicts the imminent fall of the West into forgetfulness and dissolution if major changes do not take place fast. As one Nobel Prize winning economist pointed out on the program, Jacobs is a bone fide genius and her five factors of decline are danger signs not to be ignored. These, almost point by point, were named by Shoghi Effendi way back in the 1930's.

True, certain details differ; for example, Jacobs points to the danger of the learned professions losing their ability to police themselves. The Guardian deplored the corruption of these professionals in letters to individuals but did not apparently see it as a big issue. But that is a minor variation. Jacobs even names the decline of religion and the urgent need of the oppressed, overworked average person for reassurance. She sees consolation and words of comfort as a major task for high ruling functionaries. Think the loving, generally phrased talks of the Master in the West. As the House points out, the Baha'i Faith holds religion even more central:

"The Guardian lays the greatest share of the blame for humanity's moral downfall on the decline of religion as a social force. "Should the lamp of religion be obscured," he draws our attention to the words of Baha'u'llah, "chaos and confusion will ensue, and the lights of fairness, of justice, of tranquillity and peace cease to shine." The decades that followed the writing of his letters have seen not only a continued deterioration in the ability of religion to exercise moral influence, but also the betrayal of the masses through the unseemly conduct of religious institutions. Attempts at reinvigorating it have only given rise to a fanaticism that, if left unchecked, could destroy the foundation of civilized relationships among people."

They point to the renewal of Baha'i bashing in Iran as a sign of overshadowing by the "forces of darkness." As in the late 1930's the "lights are going out all over the world," an ominous pall of dire events about to happen overshadows our every joy and carefree moment. The House goes over the list of problems that affront us, and I notice only one new addition to the list not gone over before, one that will delight the ears of Baha'i environmentalists and regional planners to hear: "the indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources..." Though sincere efforts are being made to solve these problems, not even world unification will be enough. They again invoke Shoghi Effendi's translation of a famous Writing pointing out that Baha'u'llah is the Ultimate Physician and His Cure is the only way to make it through a parlous era.

The House also point to an optimistic side of all this. We have reason to hope. The forces of integration unleashed by this Revelation are manifesting themselves in a new "spirit of world solidarity" that is rising from the confusion, the personification of Baha'u'llah's principle of the oneness of humanity.

"... today its effect is apparent in a range of developments, from the rejection of deeply ingrained racial prejudices to the dawning consciousness of world citizenship, from heightened environmental awareness to collaborative efforts in the promotion of public health, from the concern for human rights to the systematic pursuit of universal education, from the establishment of interfaith activities to the efflorescence of hundreds of thousands of local, national and international organizations engaged in some form of social action."

The growth and increased vitality of the Baha'i Faith itself is an even more significant sign of hope, at least for us believers. We are very widespread and are being listened to in world level fora. The administrative order has an unique structure; on one side the wing of the Learned, who constitute an effective neural network around the globe, a thousand Board Members under eighty-one Counselors, all guided by the ITC at the World Centre. They then mention the Huqquq, not as a dumb, inert funding mass but as a vital institution in itself. This was a bit of a surprise for me.

"The Institution of Huququ'llah has steadily progressed under the stewardship of the Hand of the Cause of God Dr. `Ali-Muhammad Varga, appointed Trustee by Shoghi Effendi fifty years ago, culminating in the establishment in 2005 of an international board designed to promote the continued widespread application of this mighty law, a source of inestimable blessings for all humanity."

They pay homage to the activities of the BIC at the UN, and then, like those PBS quasi-advertisements at the end of the show, pay tribute to the contributions of the little guy, "the contributions of viewers like yourself,"

"The loyalty and devotion that the members of a community reflecting the diversity of the entire human race evince towards the Covenant of Baha'u'llah constitute a storehouse of strength the like of which no other organized group can claim."

The covenant, like the Huqquq, is an invisible institution, a unique resource for the future of the human race. Then they mention the NSA's and their maturation under the many plans of past years. They have taught us how to teach the Faith, to consult and devise children's programs, for Baha'is and the "wider community." Our literature is expanding, we are starting development projects, and of course, Ruhi, which has become more central to the attentions of the House with every passing year. In their own words:

"Particularly since the opening of the fifth epoch in 2001, it has made significant strides in multiplying its human resources through a programme of training that reaches the grassroots of the community and has discovered methods and instruments for establishing a sustainable pattern of growth."

Very directly, the House tells us that promoting entry by troops in this way should be our "dominant concern." As this happens the World Centre address itself to "fields such as external affairs, social and economic development, administration, and the application of Baha'i law." The number of pilgrims there will be doubled in 2007. Gardens around holy sites will be expanded, building restoration will go apace, and the last continental Mashriq in Chile will be built. This will require funding appeals, above and beyond the needs of the plan.

As always, the House turns its best eloquence up to "high" at the very end of its message, merging its words closely with the stirring words of the Guardian when he initiated the first of these plans, the Seven Year Plan. Here is their closing paragraph.

"Dear friends: That the forces of disintegration are gaining in range and power cannot be ignored. It is equally clear that the community of the Greatest Name has been guided from strength to strength by the Hand of Providence and must now increase in size and augment its resources. The course set by the Five Year Plan is straightforward. How can those of us aware of the plight of humanity, and conscious of the direction in which history is unfolding, not arise to the fullest of our capacity and dedicate ourselves to its aim? Do not the words of the Guardian that "the stage is set" hold as true for us today as they did when he wrote them during the first Seven Year Plan? Let his words ring in your ears: "There is no time to lose." "There is no room left for vacillation." "Such an opportunity is irreplaceable." "To try, to persevere, is to insure ultimate and complete victory." Be assured of our continued prayers at the Sacred Threshold for your guidance and protection."

As you see, the House briefly cites several snippets from the Guardian's words at the fateful beginning of the plans. Since they ask us to "let his words ring in your ears," let me end this by reading one of these passages at greater length, the closing paragraph of a letter of January 28, 1939, entitled by Horace Holley, "The Rarest Privilege ever conferred upon the American Baha'i Community." This was the most fervent call for pioneers since the Master's "Tablets of the Divine Plan" that came out during the Great War, in 1916. The Guardian wrote:

"Dearly-beloved friends! What better field than the vast virgin territories, so near at hand, and waiting to receive, at this very hour, their full share of the onrushing tide of Baha'u'llah's redeeming grace? What theatre more befitting than these long-neglected nine remaining states and provinces in which the true heroism of the intrepid pioneers of His World Order can be displayed? There is no time to lose. There is no room left for vacillation. Multitudes hunger for the Bread of Life. The stage is set. The firm and irrevocable Promise is given. God's own Plan has been set in motion. It is gathering momentum with every passing day. The powers of heaven and earth mysteriously assist in its execution. Such an opportunity is irreplaceable. Let the doubter arise and himself verify the truth of such assertions. To try, to persevere, is to insure ultimate and complete victory." (Shoghi Effendi, Messages to America, pp. 16-17)

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

Trust Like a Spider's Web

Trust Like a Spider's Web

By John Taylor; 2006 May 16

My sister Patricia became a Jehovah's Witness around 1980, as did her husband and two sons, Daniel and Jason. She even converted her niece, my brother's daughter Rachelle, causing no end of disruption in that wing of the family. My brother will not hear the words "Jehovah's Witness" spoken in his presence, and I must say some of his dislike of that contentious congregation has rubbed off on me too. If you value unity and fellowship you cannot look with approval upon their attitude to non-JW family members as "heathen" and their practice of "disfellowshipping," which is the equivalent of being declared a covenant breaker in the Baha'i Faith -- the big difference being that disfellowshipping is done casually to any member who disagrees or disobeys, not just to those who oppose, disrupt and attempt to split up their unity.

Patty had been into pretty much every substance, controlled or not, in her youth not too long before converting; at one point when our father remonstrated her for entering such a simple minded sect -- the service consists in a long exercise in spoon-feeding data to the congregation -- she confided in him that this religion was the only thing that kept her off the dope. Sadly, her son Jason followed her in her earlier addictions, became a junkie and last anyone heard was on the streets of Hamilton; he is presumed dead. Daniel, to everyone's surprise, turned out better, became a physicist, and is now a grad student at McMaster. Unfortunately, getting an "edumuckation" is not a good thing in that faith because it forces uncomfortable questions upon them. Daniel was having doubts and decided to get himself "disfellowshipped" rather than just resign. He documented his ejection with photos, mp3 recordings, and the following website:

<http://www.quad-central.com/~dan2007/>

You can read his story "sick of lies" in his own words there, but I found it interesting that he knew just how to get himself booted out. All you do is ask questions. That is what he did, he phoned up several elders and asked about evolution and a few other touchy subjects and within days they were on his back and the process began. One question nephew Dan asked during the process was, "Do you take any responsibility when people, cut off from family and friends by disfellowshipping, commit suicide or otherwise fall into harm?" No, they told him, it is like failing a test, a teacher cannot be responsible for the failure of a student in an exam.

Those who know me will know that I have an irrational fear of getting a notice in the mail from the House of Justice that I have been declared a covenant breaker. There is no reason that I should, I just am afraid of Kafka-esq events, like waking up one morning and finding that I have turned into a giant cockroach. Anyway, I had just read the above information about the ejection of my nephew from his faith when I looked into my electronic mailbox and found a communication from the Universal House of Justice. It was a reply to my question last month about whether there are any Baha'i "blooks" published (a blook is a book arising from a blog). Here is their reply:

8 May 2006

Transmitted by email: badijet@gmail.com

Mr. John Taylor

Canada

Dear Baha'i Friend,

Your email letter dated 14 April 2006 regarding your Weblog has been received at the Baha'i World Centre, and your efforts in using it as a venue to share your thoughts about certain Baha'i teachings are appreciated. With respect to your query, no information has been received to date at the World Centre pertaining to the publication of Baha'i "blooks."

With loving Baha'i greetings,

Department of the Secretariat

So I need not fear being declared a covenant breaker, at least not for now. Not only that, now if I publish my blook (almost certainly I won't but it is fun to dream) I will be able to put on the cover a reliable claim that this is the first Baha'i Blook in the world. Isn't that just blovely?

One Badi' list member sent me a copy of an article published against the Baha'is in a newspaper in Egypt. I had seen it before but here it was again, like a boomerang, and I had to look again. Now I know where the expression "tissue of lies" comes from, because the whole article does not contain a number of lies that anybody could count, it lays lies upon lies until they become a patchwork quilt of layered untruths, half-truths and veiled and half-veiled insinuations. Anyone who tried to refute such a screed would be hard pressed to know where to start. My prayer from the Writings for this morning says it all about the nest of vipers in which our Lord was forced to dwell:

"Glorified art Thou, O Lord my God! Thou beholdest my low estate and the habitation wherein I dwell, and bearest witness unto my perplexity, my crying needs, my troubles, and the afflictions I suffer among Thy servants who recite Thy verses and repudiate their Revealer, who call on Thy names and cavil at their Creator, who seek to draw nigh unto Him Who is Thy Friend and put to death Him Who is the Best-Beloved of the worlds." (Baha'u'llah, Prayers and Meditations, CXX, p. 204)

I felt sad for Islam defended by mendacious betrayers of their own Faith. These are words that spill the blood of the innocent, the precondition of holocausts. How can any Muslim expect anything but the vilification of the world and divine wrath when God's Faith, their own Faith, not necessarily Baha'i, is besmirched by such liars in the guise of shepherds? The Qu'ran says it all and offers hope:

"The false gods which the idolaters serve besides God may be compared to the spider's cobweb. Surely the spider's is the frailest of all dwellings, if they but knew it." (Q29:41)

The spider's web is also the only dwelling made from its own body. When leaders lie like this they show that their own substance is a lie, they claim to believe in God but prove their own idolatry in word and deed. Lies are their home and what they are made of. As it says in Job (8:14), those who forget God have "trust (that) shall be a spider's web."

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

Big Cosmo and Women's Armpits

Big Cosmo and Women's Armpits

By John Taylor; 2006 May 15

A scientific study lately found that the custom of shaving their armpits raises the statistical chances that women will be stricken with breast cancer. Who would have thought? Somehow that tuft of hair in the middle of one of the body's sweatiest, most bacteria-ridden regions offers a mysterious front line bastion against a terrible disease, the killer that got my mother in 1978. Coincidentally, I just read a snippet of history about how underarm shaving got started. It seems that just after the Great War, as hemlines were rising and bathing suits got skimpier, some clever razor marketer got the idea of selling that product to women as well as men. It took only a few advertising campaigns to plant the idea in the mind of American women that hair in this region and on the legs is ugly and unfeminine. Once the thought was in their heads, advertising shifted away from their new, artificially manufactured need to the question of whose was the best razor for women's legs and armpits. Enough said.

Only much later did economist J. K. Galbraith make his famous studies of the corrupting role of advertisers. His thesis was that modern industry is powerful enough to go beyond the old capitalist dictum "find a need and fill it" and now they routinely create their own need in the minds of consumers, using mass media, and then step in to fill the custom-made need. The shaven armpit custom is an early example of what he was talking about; though I have read most of his books, I cannot recall whether he mentioned women's shaving habits or not. In any case, Galbraith died several months ago and now that a decent time has gone by a commentary in this week's edition of the Canadian newsmagazine "McLean's" criticized his thesis, saying essentially that it is trite and moot. Every power structure does exactly that, the critic points out, it instills an idea into the susceptible, mirror-like minds of those under its sway, and then sets out to fill that artificial demand. Governments and other power brokers invented the idea of polling to test the waters before floating an idea or proposal. Once a poll has been phrased right, their gun is loaded. "Well, 69 percent of Canadians have no objection to same-sex marriage, so it must be morally conscionable to start thinking about legalizing it." The entire educational system can be seen as a huge need creator and filler sustained by the powers that be for their own ends. Even the little guys, decentralized powers that be, have a huge impact on what is thought to be needed, and what is taught. Nobody can convince me that professional educators sat down and said, "What children should do is spend hundreds of hours in their primary years learning to spell (when a two bit word processor can spell check a document in nanoseconds) and add and multiply numbers (when a two bit calculator can do that in picoseconds) when they could be learning more urgent skills, and even, dare I say it?, virtues and problem solving techniques." No, this is not the work of Big Brother, it is Little Brother. It is the unthinking, complaining, outraged parent or employer who goes on self-righteously about all the years and money spent on schooling and they come out not even knowing how to add sums or spell the totally non-standardized orthography of the English language. Myself, I regret the loss of time, the wasted effort that my poor son and daughter have to undergo trying to get into their head this useless trivia. In any case this is a fact: whether a curriculum or a publicity campaign is educational or corruptive depends entirely upon whether you agree with what it is trying to put across.

In the case of armpit hair, until this study came out science had no opinion one way or another, though in retrospect it may have been wise to adopt a policy of leaving natural growths be unless they are proven on reasonable evidence to be harmful, not just unsightly in some eyes. European women apparently did that, they ignored the insinuations of advertisers and refused to shave their armpits. This saved the lives of who knows how many souls. But now that we do know that the practice is harmful, the situation is different. Now shaving armpits is no longer a matter of opinion, it is an educational issue. We need to create a need to not shave women's armpits, and then fill that need. How? By teaching girls in school why not shaving it is not necessary ugly and unfeminine, for example exposing them to photos of beautiful European stars with unshaved pits, and, as always, by actively discouraging advertising of razors made for women, for example by placing warning labels on their packages, like cigarettes.

I know what you are going to say, surely there are much more dangerous activities that are proven harmful, yet remain untouched. Many vices are not thought of as educational issues, like smoking, alcohol, drugs, and so forth. Nobody is planning to get rid of them, except in very narrow ways. But that is exactly my point. Maybe a start on little killers will allow us to work up to big, broad social planning goals. For example, it is well known that we could support ten times more people, or reduce the impact of human habitation to one tenth of present levels just by reducing the amount of meat we eat. But the meat industry has its defenses to even talking about that embarrassing fact all prepared. If anybody tries in the media to promote vegetarianism as a broad social goal, they step into action and stifle it. They know how to enlist Little Brother on their side too; the little guy likes his hamburgers, so he is their natural ally. Like the breweries, tobacco, Big Pharma and other merchants of death, they know exactly how to spring into action before the fire of common sense gets out of control. But the cosmetic shaving industry is probably not ready. They are vulnerable. Success in protecting women against little killers like shaven armpits might lead to greater things later on. And besides, it is not such a little killer anyway; I have been robbed of a mother for decades by breast cancer, so I do not regard "Big Cosmo" as a minor enemy.

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

Nearer Proposal

"Nearer My God to Thee," A Proposal

 

By John Taylor; 2006 May 14

 

May madness intensifies. Yesterday was dress rehearsal and today Silvie's last performance in Ontario Children's Theatre. Last night Marie sang in the Voices of Unity choir, and just after we get home this evening from the last theatre performance in Hamilton we will be having for the evening an Esperanto speaking guest, Yoichi, a tourist from near Tokyo. I only have a few minutes before starting to clean up the house... but I would like first to outline a proposal for a presentation about the Master that I would like to prepare, given suitable talent and interest among a group of performance minded Baha'is. What first attracted me to this idea was a remarkable statement of the Master about the greatest accomplishment possible. All around us we see productivity indexes and a universal desire to attain excellence and distinction, and here is the Master's take on all that:

"The greatest attainment in the world of humanity is nearness to God. Every lasting glory, honor, grace and beauty which comes to man comes through nearness to God. ... But nearness to God is not an easy accomplishment." (Promulgation, 147)

The biggest attainment is nearness to God. He goes on to list three things you need to accomplish that:

1, sacrifice

2, water of life, i.e. knowledge

3, baptism of fire, i.e. love of God

The Master stresses that until you attain to these three degrees, nearness to God is not possible. None of this depends upon time or place but rather the heart's purity and exhilaration at the "glad tidings of Kingdom." This is a barebones summary of what he says. At the end of this missive I will include the entire talk, which you can peruse to your heart's content.

The intriguing thing is that the Master gave this talk to a New York church that had just sung the favorite hymn of the Master, "Nearer My God to Thee." He was evidently responding in the entire talk to the lyrics of the hymn. The song has an illustrious history, it was written by a woman stricken down by a terrible affliction, it was sung by an assassinated American President just before he died, it was reportedly played by the band as the Titanic sunk, and on and on. The words seem based upon the following Psalm, prophesying perhaps this very moment when the Master talked to that New York Church:

"Unto thee, O God, do we give thanks, unto thee do we give thanks: for that thy name is near thy wondrous works declare. When I shall receive the congregation I will judge uprightly." (Ps 75:1-2, KJV)

You can read the lyrics of the hymn at the back end of this mail-out, and there is a link to its website -- every hymn has its own website these days -- where you can read the history of the hymn in detail.

I think that Baha'i musical performers might do a lot with that hymn, do a rap version, or whatever. Dramatists might do a one person show from the perspective of someone who attended that talk. A semi-fictional, semi-documentary film on the event might be made, featuring perhaps interviews with Baha'i scholars talking about the implications of what the Master said about nearness to God as the greatest distinction. I have asked our local baritone, Ron Speer, to sing it for me, so I have got a start on the project. God willing, something more may come of this.

 

Abdu'l-Baha's Talk at Mount Morris Baptist Church Fifth Avenue and 126th Street, New York

26 May 1912

As I entered the church this evening, I heard the hymn "Nearer my God, to Thee." The greatest attainment in the world of humanity is nearness to God. Every lasting glory, honor, grace and beauty which comes to man comes through nearness to God. All the Prophets and apostles longed and prayed for nearness to the Creator. How many nights they passed in sleepless yearning for this station; how many days they devoted to supplication for this attainment, seeking ever to draw nigh unto Him! But nearness to God is not an easy accomplishment. During the time Jesus Christ was upon the earth mankind sought nearness to God, but in that day no one attained it save a very few -- His disciples. Those blessed souls were confirmed with divine nearness through the love of God. Divine nearness is dependent upon attainment to the knowledge of God, upon severance from all else save God. It is contingent upon self-sacrifice and to be found only through forfeiting wealth and worldly possessions. It is made possible through the baptism of water and fire revealed in the Gospels. Water symbolizes the water of life, which is knowledge, and fire is the fire of the love of God; therefore, man must be baptized with the water of life, the Holy Spirit and the fire of the love of the Kingdom. Until he attains these three degrees, nearness to God is not possible. This is the process by which the Baha'is of Persia have attained it. They gave their lives for this station, sacrificed honor, comfort and possessions, hastened with the utmost joy to the place of martyrdom; their blood was spilled, their bodies were tortured and destroyed, their homes pillaged, their children carried into captivity. They endured all these conditions joyfully and willingly. Through such sacrifice nearness to God is made possible. And be it known that this nearness is not dependent upon time or place. Nearness to God is dependent upon purity of the heart and exhilaration of the spirit through the glad tidings of the Kingdom. Consider how a pure, well-polished mirror fully reflects the effulgence of the sun, no matter how distant the sun may be. As soon as the mirror is cleaned and purified, the sun will manifest itself. The more pure and sanctified the heart of man becomes, the nearer it draws to God, and the light of the Sun of Reality is revealed within it. This light sets hearts aglow with the fire of the love of God, opens in them the doors of knowledge and unseals the divine mysteries so that spiritual discoveries are made possible. All the Prophets have drawn near to God through severance. We must emulate those Holy Souls and renounce our own wishes and desires. We must purify ourselves from the mire and soil of earthly contact until our hearts become as mirrors in clearness and the light of the most great guidance reveals itself in them.

Baha'u'llah proclaims in the Hidden Words that God inspires His servants and is revealed through them. He says, "Thy heart is My home; sanctify it for My descent. Thy spirit is My place of revelation; cleanse it for My manifestation." Therefore, we learn that nearness to God is possible through devotion to Him, through entrance into the Kingdom and service to humanity; it is attained by unity with mankind and through loving-kindness to all; it is dependent upon investigation of truth, acquisition of praiseworthy virtues, service in the cause of universal peace and personal sanctification. In a word, nearness to God necessitates sacrifice of self, severance and the giving up of all to Him. Nearness is likeness.

Behold how the sun shines upon all creation, but only surfaces that are pure and polished can reflect its glory and light. The darkened soul has no portion of the revelation of the glorious effulgence of reality; and the soil of self, unable to take advantage of that light, does not produce growth. The eyes of the blind cannot behold the rays of the sun; only pure eyes with sound and perfect sight can receive them. Green and living trees can absorb the bounty of the sun; dead roots and withered branches are destroyed by it. Therefore, man must seek capacity and develop readiness. As long as he lacks susceptibility to divine influences, he is incapable of reflecting the light and assimilating its benefits. Sterile soil will produce nothing, even if the cloud of mercy pours rain upon it a thousand years. We must make the soil of our hearts receptive and fertile by tilling in order that the rain of divine mercy may refresh them and bring forth roses and hyacinths of heavenly planting. We must have perceiving eyes in order to see the light of the sun. We must cleanse the nostril in order to scent the fragrances of the divine rose garden. We must render the ears attentive in order to hear the summons of the supreme Kingdom. No matter how beautiful the melody, the ear that is deaf cannot hear it, cannot receive the call of the Supreme Concourse. The nostril that is clogged with dust cannot inhale the fragrant odors of the blossoms. Therefore, we must ever strive for capacity and seek readiness. As long as we lack susceptibility, the beauties and bounties of God cannot penetrate. Christ spoke a parable in which He said His words were like the seeds of the sower; some fall upon stony ground, some upon sterile soil, some are choked by thorns and thistles, but some fall upon the ready, receptive and fertile ground of human hearts. When seeds are cast upon sterile soil, no growth follows. Those cast upon stony ground will grow a short time, but lacking deep roots will wither away. Thorns and thistles destroy others completely, but the seed cast in good ground brings forth harvest and fruitage.

In the same way, the words I speak to you here tonight may produce no effect whatever. Some hearts may be affected, then soon forget; others owing to superstitious ideas and imaginations may even fail to hear and understand; but the blessed souls who are attentive to my exhortation and admonition, listening with the ear of acceptance, allowing my words to penetrate effectively, will advance day by day toward full fruition, yea even to the Supreme Concourse. Consider how the parable makes attainment dependent upon capacity. Unless capacity is developed, the summons of the Kingdom cannot reach the ear, the light of the Sun of Truth will not be observed, and the fragrances of the rose garden of inner significance will be lost. Let us endeavor to attain capacity, susceptibility and worthiness that we may hear the call of the glad tidings of the Kingdom, become revivified by the breaths of the Holy Spirit, hoist the standard of the oneness of humanity, establish human brotherhood, and under the protection of divine grace attain the everlasting and eternal life.

O Thou forgiving God! These servants are turning to Thy kingdom and seeking Thy grace and bounty. O God! Make their hearts good and pure in order that they may become worthy of Thy love. Purify and sanctify the spirits that the light of the Sun of Reality may shine upon them. Purify and sanctify the eyes that they may perceive Thy light. Purify and sanctify the ears in order that they may hear the call of Thy kingdom.

O Lord! Verily, we are weak, but Thou art mighty. Verily, we are poor, but Thou art rich. We are the seekers, and Thou art the One sought. O Lord! Have compassion upon us and forgive us; bestow upon us such capacity and receptiveness that we may be worthy of Thy favors and become attracted to Thy kingdom, that we may drink deep of the water of life, may be enkindled by the fire of Thy love, and be resuscitated through the breaths of the Holy Spirit in this radiant century.

O God, my God! Cast upon this gathering the glances of Thy loving-kindness. Keep safe each and all in Thy custody and under Thy protection. Send down upon these souls Thy heavenly blessings. Immerse them in the ocean of Thy mercy and quicken them through the breaths of the Holy Spirit.

O Lord! Bestow Thy gracious aid and confirmation upon this just government. This country lieth beneath the sheltering shadow of Thy protection and this people is in Thy service. O Lord! Confer upon them Thy heavenly bounty and render the outpourings of Thy grace and favor copious and abundant. Suffer this esteemed nation to be held in honor and enable it to be admitted into Thy kingdom.

Thou art the Powerful, the Omnipotent, the Merciful, and Thou art the Generous, the Beneficent, the Lord of grace abounding.

(Abdu'l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 147-150)

 

Nearer, my God, to Thee, lyrics

<http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/n/m/nmgtthee.htm>

Sarah Fuller Flower Adams

1805-1848

Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee!

E'en though it be a cross that raiseth me,

Still all my song shall be, nearer, my God, to Thee.

Though like the wanderer, the sun gone down,

Darkness be over me, my rest a stone.

Yet in my dreams I'd be nearer, my God to Thee.

There let the way appear, steps unto Heavn;

All that Thou sendest me, in mercy given;

Angels to beckon me nearer, my God, to Thee.

Then, with my waking thoughts bright with Thy praise,

Out of my stony griefs Bethel I'll raise;

So by my woes to be nearer, my God, to Thee.

Or, if on joyful wing cleaving the sky,

Sun, moon, and stars forgot, upward Ill fly,

Still all my song shall be, nearer, my God, to Thee.

There in my Fathers home, safe and at rest,

There in my Saviors love, perfectly blest;

Age after age to be, nearer my God to Thee.

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

First Hand accounts of the Master

ABDU'L-BAHA AT THE "SALVATION ARMY" SHELTER

London, England, Christmas Night, 1912.

By ISABEL FRASER.

(SW, Vol. 3, No. 18, pp. 8-9)

ON Christmas night Abdul-Baha visited the poor of the Salvation Army Shelter, Westminster, where each year a Christmas dinner is provided for those who have no homes and no friends, and but for the shelter would have no lodgings. There were about 1,000 present on this occasion. It was a most impressive scene -- the dinner for the homeless and the Master from the East delivering Christ's message to the poor. As a true test of attention, many of the hungry men forgot to eat and listened intently.

With that wonderful tact Abdul-Baha displays on all occasions, his message to the homeless was simple, direct and short. He said:

"I feel tonight great joy and happiness to be in this place, because my meetings and callings have ever been mostly with the poor, and I call myself one of them. My lot has ever been with those who have not the goods of this world. When we look at the poor of humanity, we behold a world of brothers. All are the sheep of God; God is the real shepherd. The poor have ever been the cause of the freedom of the world of humanity; the poor have ever been the cause of the upbuilding of the country; the poor have ever labored for the world's production; the morals of the poor have ever been above those of the rich; the poor are ever nearer to the threshold of God; the humanitarianism of the poor has ever been more acceptable at the threshold of God.

"Consider his Holiness Christ: He appeared in the world as one of the poor. He was born of a lowly family; all the apostles of Christ were of humble birth and His followers were of the very poorest of the community. This is what Christ states in the Gospels. 'It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God.' This testimony of Christ of the exaltation of the poor ones in the sight of God is sufficient. It is easy for the poor, very easy for them to enter into the Kingdom of God. In another place Christ speaks of the charity of the poor ones of the world as praiseworthy. The poor ones have capacity. They were favored at the threshold of God. If wealth were a necessity, Christ would have wished it for himself. He lived a simple life, and one of the titles of BAHAOLLAH was 'the poor one.' In Persian His title was 'darvish' and that means one who has not a slave.

All the prophets of God were poor, His Holiness Moses was a mere shepherd. This will show you that in the estimation of God, poverty is greater than the accumulation of wealth -- that the poor are more acceptable than the lazy rich. A rich man who spends his wealth for the poor is praiseworthy. Consider that the poor are not born in a state of solvency; they are not tyrannous. All the tyranny and injustice in this world comes from accumulation. The poor have ever been humble and lowly; their hearts are tender. The rich are not so.

"Sorrow not, grieve not. Be not unhappy because you are not wealthy. You are the brothers of Jesus Christ. Christ was poor; BAHAOLLAH was poor. For forty years he was imprisoned in poverty. The great ones of the world have come from a lowly station. Be ever happy; be not sad! Trust in God and if in this world you undergo dire vicissitudes I hope that in the Kingdom of God you will have the utmost happiness!"

At the close of his talk, Abdu'l Baha made a practical demonstration of his tactful love for the poor. In generous conformity with BAHAOLLAH teachings that "our words should not exceed our deeds," he left twenty golden sovereigns and many handfuls of silver with Colonel Spencer of the Army, so that the poor might enjoy a similar dinner New Year's night. Colonel Spencer told the men that they were to have this New Year's dinner in Abdu'l-Baha's honor. The Master was just leaving the hall when this announcement was made. With one accord the men jumped up and waving their knives and forks gave a rousing farewell cheer.

Before leaving Abdul-Baha was shown all over the shelter and at the outer door he said to the attendant officer in charge, "May God prosper you. May you all he tender the protection of the Almighty!

ABDUL-BAHA AT THE CEDAR CLUB, LONDON

BY L. HERON-OLIPHANT.

(SW, Vol. 3, No. 18, pp. 9-10)

THROUGH an insistent rain and blustering wind, the motor bore us across the Albert Bridge to the borough of Battersea. We turned from one of the important highways into a dark, narrow, drizzling street, to stop before an inviting open door. The Cedar Club House is maintained by the Women's Service League, a noble institution of devoted workers, who provide sustaining food to toiling mothers and see to it that their children receive the best nourishment during the first year of their lives. A similar stratum of this poverty is unknown to American communities. In London and other great cities of the Old World a pall of hopelessness seems almost to overshadow human effort that offers alleviation, for there are generations of pauperism with its deep rooted evils. The fine courage of these benefactors and their zeal in preserving life despite the ever hovering discouragement, mark their influence as a spiritual reality.

Here it was that Abdul-Baha chose to spend the remaining hours of an afternoon. We entered a large assembly room, radiant and warm with the spirit of Christmas cheer.

Masses of green and red decoration repeated, as it were, the season's welcome. At two great tables, spread the length of the long walls, were seated nearly sixty women with over a hundred little folk. There were evidences of a substantial high tea, the major part of the feasting being over.

A platform, near the door through which we passed, held the usual paraphernalia for speakers. Abdul-Baha was expected to deliver an address from this formal elevation, but as the real friend of the poor, he walked straight among them, into the body of the room. This, at once established the charm of comradeship.

With light characteristic step, he walked tip and down the center aisle, his eyes and smile beamed happiness. As he mingled with them, his words were translated: "I am very glad to be among you, who are blessed in God's name with children. They are the true signs of his spiritual love. The most divine gifts of God. These little ones will grow to be fruitful trees. We must look to them for the founders of many beautiful families. Let their education be directed in the ways of purity and useful service. Here are the seeds of the future race and upon them may be granted God's blessing."

Abdul-Baha stopped at the end of one table, patted the head of a wan little child in its mother's arms. A tiny hand stretched out and the Master gently closed it over a bright new shilling. Down the long rows of women and children he passed from one to another, pausing a few moments to bless each little upturned face, and bestow a silver coin. The remarkably tender hands caressed a baby's cheek or chin. One could hear him pronounce distinct words of comfort to the tiniest members of the audience. In the arms of one mother were twin children almost completely detached in sleep from the ceremonies of the moment. The Master bent over them, placing two pieces of money under the rosy chins -- two pairs of deep blue eyes opened wide in the spell of wonder.

The absence of tears from the many wee souls, who are not given to complacently accepting strange faces, singularly illustrates the infinite sincerity of the very young, who respond to the same quality that is ever present in matured spiritual character. One noticed, too, the thoughtful gaze of the women as they watched the distinguished visitor in white turban and brown burnous, moving in their midst. It is often too true that the very poor are keenly suspicious of foreigners, especially if their mission is a religious one, but Abdu'l Baha brings into every environment a profound truth and sympathy that seems to crush the barriers, raised by isolated imaginations.

The expression of tolerant, grateful, understanding was in the very faces of these people. No one could have desired a more cordial cooperation than was tendered to the Master by the assembled members of Cedar Club. A vote of thanks, followed by a volume of accordant cheers, marked the departure of `Abdu'l Baha.

As we drove away he said, "I am truly happy when among the gatherings of the poor. It brings full joy to my heart. I come in contact with those in high stations of life, and those rich in worldly possessions, but my joy is in being with those who are in material poverty, for their sufferings draw them nearer to God in spiritual gain."

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

Consultative Housing

Consultative Housing

 

By John Taylor; 2006 May 12

 

Our Philosopher's Cafe meeting in the Wainfleet Library had a topic suggested last month by Sharon, "Cooperative Housing for the Elderly." Sharon arrived late, and for a while we discussed general issues of old age and the plight of the elderly, not knowing precisely what the proposed topic was. Just before Sharon came, Mark gave his vehement opinion that we are living too long in this time for our own good; he and his siblings have taken care of an Alzheimer's Disease victimized mother for twenty years, and he so fears entering his dotage that he loudly declared that he would be better off initiating a fatal car accident or otherwise doing away with himself rather than go through what his mother has suffered. To lose your memory of everything, of who you are, your past, is, for him the ultimate indignity, a fate much worse than death.

 

Finally Sharon arrived and laid out in detail the topic that she had suggested for the evening. Her idea was inspired by a friend who all her life has taken in boarders and in an informal way match-makes roommates for a cooperative household. She has learned over the years who will fit in. She can test a potential roomer and know in a day or two whether that person's habits and proclivities are compatible. Sharon is middle aged but looks upon her upcoming senior years with more than the usual dread, though not nearly as much as Mark does; as an only child and a member of a childless marriage, she cannot look forward to the company and support of family in the years left to her.

 

So her purpose in coming to the Cafe was to float the idea of a cooperative rooming operation for the elderly. Instead of the way things are, a private company taking you into forcible custody and sucking away your last funds (this just happened to my Aunt Marguerite; much to the dismay of herself and certain acquisitive family members, her funds, their promised inheritance, is now being rapidly burned up by the caretakers in her "retirement home") in order to offer minimal professional support as you grow ever more feeble, she would like to arrange for something like her friend's rooming operation.

 

Stu mentioned a group called "Seniors for Seniors," which offers helping hands for chores around the house from hale and handy seniors to homebound older seniors at a minimal fee. Sharon said that this is a start on her idea, except that she would like to involve every age group in her coop. What she would like to do is actively plan her old age now; she would like to get together with other middle aged people and pool funds to buy a large building or farm compound in the country. The manager would be her matchmaking friend, who would judiciously introduce young families and other young people into the cooperative housing compound as required. The young families would benefit by babysitting and wisdom from the older coop members, as well as relatively cheap housing; in return they would provide chores and services to the old and feeble coop members.

 

Since we were speaking in a rural area, Wainfleet, the people there knew the obstacles to this very well. Few communes succeed longer than a decade, they break apart from within. Sharon objected, "Ten years, if it lasts ten years is that necessarily a failure?" But the most serious barrier, one that seemed to flummox Sharon, is the one that frustrated creative reformers like Buckminster Fuller and Jane Jacobs all their lives: interested bigwigs, complicating bureaucrats and lawyers, the plan eating plans and illusions of professional planners, public space eating private developers, ubiquitous red tape designed specifically to put the kibosh on alternative lifestyles. In a word, greed.

 

For one thing, zoning laws and building codes are designed to block the flexibility that such a coop would require. Even on a farm, you cannot put up more than one residence; those farm compounds that already have several residences cannot build and take away home units at will. Everything has to be approved. Such laws were intended, Mark pointed out, to avoid slums and shanty towns but are now used by municipalities and town governments to assure a lucrative tax base. In other words, corruption. The overwhelming conclusion of the evening was that greed and self interest on the part of those who make up or influence law making are blocking not only this scheme but all good ideas for social improvement.

 

Uncharacteristically, I said little that evening. I was put off by the orgy of blaming everything on money, blatant greed and profit making, especially at the end of the discussion. The only thing I squeezed in at one point was a brief mention of Fuller's idea of what he called a "black box," a modular room, not unlike a mini-motor home, self-contained and updated periodically, that everyone would be given at birth and would live in from cradle to grave. Being modular, of a standard size, it would be easily transported and fit into every dwelling, from a family compound in childhood to campus residences in schooling to work place residences, back to the family compound, and finally to special care retirement residences in old age. Sharon liked this idea, saying that she had always liked the idea of living in a trailer.

 

I have been reading two complementary books, both directly to do with housing, architecture and planning. I figured that since I tried abortively to write a book on it last fall, I might as well read up on the subject. Maybe my ideas are not as original as they seem in my ignorant illusions. Hope not. Also, although computer games have become anathema to me (too sedentary), I would like to try out again the old game, SimCity, as a testing ground for my ideas. Anyway, here are the books:

 

Moshe Safdie and Wendy Kohn, The City After the Automobile, An Architect's Vision, Stoddart Publishing, Toronto, 1997

Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Vintage Books, New York, 1961

 

Safdie is the designer of Habitat in Montreal, his book offers an up to date overview of town planning and promises a visionary proposal for the future, which I have not got to yet. Jacob's book is now a classic in the field, passionately written, truly a great work of literature. When she died recently I read the obits and tributes to her life and was enthralled.

 

To me Jane Jacobs is a sort of intellectual superhero. She leads grassroots campaigns in the 1950's and 1960's to save vital neighborhoods there from the plots of developers in New York, then does the same for Toronto, threatened by a superhighway cutting through its best features. She moves to T.O. and lives in one of the neighborhoods she saved until the end of her days. You see her on TV from time to time involved in the nitty-gritty decision making of City Hall, admired and consulted by all as a guru of good planning. It just doesn't get any better than that, unless perhaps you want to talk about a Baha'i martyr or pioneer. Now Safdie's book, not to mention just about everything you read or see on TV coming out of Toronto is suffused with the ideas in "Death and Life." Now that I am reading that book, I see where these ideas were born.

 

As a Baha'i, I am thrilled to see how consultation fits into her critique of the modern city. Until Jacobs came along, planners planned for cities and regions peopled by mindless sims, humans who did not plan for themselves but were mindless automatons. For example, seminal French planner in the 1920's and 1930's,

 

"Le Corboisier was planning not only a physical environment. He was planning for a social utopia too. Le Corboisier's Utopia was a condition of what he called maximum individual liberty, by which he seems to have meant not liberty to do anything much, but liberty from ordinary responsibility. In his Radiant City nobody, presumably, was going to be his brother's keeper any more. Nobody was going to have to struggle with plans of his own. Nobody was going to be tied down." (Death and Life, 22)

 

Compare this with the planning plans of the Universal House of Justice! The Baha'i plan is not the kind of autocratic planning that professional planners cookie cut into being, no, the basis of everything is this "Son of Being" statement:

 

"Bring thyself to account each day ere thou art summoned to a reckoning; for death, unheralded, shall come upon thee and thou shalt be called to give account for thy deeds." (Arabic Hidden Words, #31)

 

This is not the anomic mysticism you see spouted by would be mediation counselors, this is practical, it is an expectation, no, a demand for a life plan, a plan that you update and revise on a daily basis, cradle to grave. Yes God has plans, but He is a planning planner, not a utopian like Le Corboisier. Like Fuller's Black Box, this plan is something that you carry with you and revise constantly, a special haven of communion with God, a little shrine of responsibility from babyhood to seniority.

 

The reality of a living city is just what the traditional planner tries to stifle: people as planners, independent thinkers and entrepreneurs, acting together to develop on their own, thriving on diversity, cooperating in a thousand little ways to make and keep a better world. For example, she points out that professional protectors, police and security guards, are like band-aids compared to the much more sophisticated but invisible immune system of the protective operations of a vital neighborhood. In a poorly designed area nobody can stop crime from taking place; it soon empties out as people rightly learn to fear to tread there. But consider this poetic description of what it is like in a properly designed neighborhood. I will let this be the last word for today.

 

"In speaking about city sidewalk safety, I mentioned how necessary it is that there should be, in the brains behind the eyes on the street, an almost unconscious assumption of general street support when the chips are down -- when a citizen has to choose, for instance, whether he will take responsibility, or abdicate it, in combating barbarism or protecting strangers. There is a short word for this assumption of support: trust. The trust of a city street is formed over time from many, many little public sidewalk contacts. It grows out of people stopping by at the bar for a beer, getting advice from the grocer and giving advice to the newsstand man, comparing opinions with other customers at the bakery and nodding hello to the two boys drinking pop on the stoop, eying the girls while waiting to be called for dinner, admonishing the children, hearing about a job from the hardware man and borrowing a dollar from the druggist, admiring the new babies and sympathizing over the way a coat faded. Customs vary: in some neighborhoods people compare notes on their dogs; in others they compare notes on their landlords."

"Most of it is ostensibly utterly trivial but the sum is not trivial at all. The sum of such casual, public contact at a local level -- most of it fortuitous, most of it associated with errands, all of it metered by the person concerned and not thrust upon him by anyone -- is a feeling for the public identity of people, a web of public respect and trust, and a resource in time of personal or neighborhood need. The absence of this trust is a disaster to a city street. Its cultivation cannot be institutionalized. And above all, it implies no private commitments." (Death and Life, 56)

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

Limits of Being

The Limits of Being and the Greatest Gift

 

 

By John Taylor; 2006 May 11

 

 

"God, as some cynic has said, is always on the side which has the best football coach." -Heywood Broun

 

 

We have been considering the Oneness of God in the light of various Great Being statements strewn throughout the Tablet to Maqsud. Turning to the principle of education yesterday we touched upon the following pronouncement by the "Great Being," "Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom." (Tablets, 161) Although the metaphors are unrelated, this is thematically reminiscent of the eleventh Arabic Hidden Word,

 

 

"O Son of Being! Thou art My lamp and my light is in thee. Get thou from it thy radiance and seek none other than Me. For I have created thee rich and have bountifully shed My favor upon thee."

 

 

The concern in both is with the precondition of education, self-help, "teaching" oneself by establishing an inner spiritual struggle. This is the precondition that leads to efficient learning. No student gains anything from a teacher without establishing a desire, steeling a determination to learn alone and on his or her own. Once orientation and preparation for truth is stable, then the learning process begins. In the same way, doctors cannot "cure" anybody; only if the patient's mind and body choose to respond to treatment does recovery begin. Our Dunnville monthly fireside speaker last Tuesday, Linda Miller, compared this to the speech the airline stewards give at the beginning of each flight. It seems that they advise passengers in the event of a sudden loss of oxygen to put the mask on oneself before attempting to help anyone else, even a small baby. However urgently the baby apparently needs air, it is doomed if its rescuer loses consciousness.

 

Another similarity between these two mystical passages from the Writings of Baha'u'llah is striking. Both refer to God as a "Being;" they in some way address the divine Essence in Its existential aspect. Is the Lawh-i-Maqsud's "Great Being" the same Father of Being found in those Hidden Words that start off with, "O Son of Being"? No fewer than fourteen verses of the Hidden Words start with "O Son of Being!", which is surpassed only by "O Son of Spirit! (15) and "O Son of Man!" (35) I am in no position to judge or even speculate upon that question. Perhaps nobody is. But still, as an experiment this morning I sorted each of the fourteen "Son of Being" verses from the Arabic Hidden Words into each of the principles. Here is the verse, number forty three, that seemed most appropriate for our present principle under the magnifying glass, that of promoting education:

 

 

"O SON OF BEING! Make mention of Me on My earth, that in My heaven I may remember thee, thus shall Mine eyes and thine be solaced."

 

 

This cuts to the heart of educational goals. What is the purpose of education, the fundamental spiritual motivation behind it? Here is the answer to questions like: Why bother to teach? Why make the huge effort that it demands to learn something new? Think of it, the average child in school is being asked to take in the best that has been learned by the world's best minds over twenty thousand years of human development in a mere twenty or so years of schooling. Not only that, they are expected to improve upon that body of knowledge and then somehow convey that product in even more compressed form to the next generation to follow. And so on, Ad Infinitum. Why? In short, why dig that long tunnel under the ground just to unearth some pretty rocks?

 

The answer is reciprocity, the Golden Rule. Not an ordinary reciprocity between equals, but one with the Ultimate Being, God, who gave us our existence as a free gift. We live, we exist, we are, therefore the least we can do is, like Adam in the garden, give names to the wonders that God is constantly creating before us. We can summarize, verbalize, and express the experience of being in more compressed format. If we do that, if we are grateful and recount His blessings, God will in turn remember us, he will participate in our creation, he will make us geniuses of Spirit. The Kingdom of earth will be as it is in heaven, "in my heaven I will make mention of thee." Here is Being, life.

 

I will conclude with a qualification that `Abdu'l-Baha gave to this. Great as is the gift of existence, it is not the greatest. God given something much greater, more demanding, but sublime. In Washington on 25 April, 1912, just before coming to Chicago to dedicate the "Mother Temple of the West," the Master said,

 

 

"In the world of existence the greatest bestowals of God are His teachings. The other bounties of God are limited as regards their benefits and provision. Human existence itself is a divine bestowal, but it is circumscribed with limitations. Sight and hearing are bounties of God; both are limited. And so it is with all the other bestowals; the circle of their operation is confined, restricted, whereas the sphere of the divine teachings is boundless. Centuries and ages pass away, but their efficacy continues like the spirit of life which animates the world of existence. Without the teachings of God the world of humanity is like the animal kingdom." (Promulgation, 61)

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

OG and PE

One God and the Promotion of Education, Part One

By John Taylor; 2006 May 09

The passage from the Lawh-i-Maqsud bearing upon education is this:

"The Great Being saith: Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom." (Tablets, 161)

On the face of it, this can be taken as a cliché, a poetic way to state the obvious. Sure, everybody has talents and abilities and sure they are hidden. "You have got potential," the teacher tells you. Potential for what? That remains to be seen. Really, who knows? The teacher? The student? The school? Nobody knows. Yes, we go to school and work hard to bring buried abilities out, just like a mining operation. And yes, society supports education to make our potential into finished gems, which have value and are productive in the marketplace of human talent. But as always with a great creative mind there is a great deal more to this mandate of Baha'u'llah than meets the eye.

A mine is a planned operation, but at the same time it is fundamentally speculative. A dig may turn up nothing, or it may turn up something other than the gem sought. Even when it produces it may go dry at any time. The value of its gems, even on the ground, is still "inestimable," that is, the mining company cannot know the price of its commodity until it places it on the marketplace to be sold. The same thing is true of teaching. Schools are only as good as the knowledge they teach. If learning is based upon truth and reality, it will produce. Otherwise it is possible, indeed inevitable that teachers and students will teach and learn perpetually without doing good.

"Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." (II Tim 3:7)

History is full of examples of teaching doing more harm than good, of building foundations upon sand rather than rock. Astronomers made elaborate models of cycles within epicycles to explain the motions of heavenly bodies around the earth, until the likes of Copernicus, Galileo and Newton dumped the whole elaborate mess into the trash by showing that earth and the planets revolve around the sun. Medicine obsessed for centuries on elaborate maps and techniques of bloodletting, until finally doctors rejected this hard won body of "knowledge" and addressed the truth, the actual, invisible causes of epidemic illness. In both cases the great improvement was not in doctrine; it was not so much the specific change in perspective that made the big difference. It was not, in astronomy, going from revolution around the earth to the earth revolving around the sun, or in medicine switching from gains and losses of humors in the blood to a new microbial theory of disease. Rather the true revolution involved a broader shift from reliance upon dogma, opinion and tradition to placing first observation of things as they are, and then fitting the form of understanding and action to that.

This is why I think Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" is so important, for it signals a similar shift in history from reliance upon tradition to full application of the scientific method. Mark the following well, fellow Baha'i scholars, for it could have been lifted from or -- better still -- made into a footnote to `Abdu'l-Baha's Secret of Divine Civilization.

"A historian who had lived at any time between 8500 B.C., until the rise of Greece and then Italy after 500 B.C., almost all major innovations in western Eurasia -- animal domestication, plant domestication, writing, metallurgy, wheels, states, and so on -- arose in or near the Fertile Crescent. Until the proliferation of water mills after about A.D. 900, Europe west or north of the Alps contributed nothing of significance to Old World technology or civilization; it was instead a recipient of developments from the eastern Mediterranean, the Fertile Crescent, and China. Even from A.D. 1000 to 1450 the flow of science and technology was predominantly into Europe from the Islamic societies stretching from India to North Africa, rather than vice versa. During those same centuries China led the world in technology, having launched itself on food production nearly as early as the Fertile Crescent did." (Guns, Germs and Steel, pp. 409-410)

In the wonderful epilogue to this book, "The future of Human History as a Science," Diamond goes on to point out that the secret of Europe's eventual success was what he calls its "disunity." A Baha'i, holding that word "unity" sacred, would prefer terms like "decentralized power" or perhaps "political diversity." While Europe was politically split up and Balkanized, it was unified in many important ways, by religion, by the use of Latin for learning, by common royal families, by traditions and history. What separated them mostly was the mountainous nature of their terrain, which China did not have. Even at the height of the Roman Empire, Diamond points out, only a small percentage of Europe's land mass came under its sway.

In any case, Diamond says to look at this fact of history: the abortive attempt of China to explore and eventually colonize the world. This happened just before Europe began its own successful world conquest. If China had finished what it started, our world would be very different now, clearly. Instead, one or two voyages were financed, then all naval projects were cancelled and the shipping yards that built the ships were dismantled. The explanation that I had been familiar with was this: the Chinese were arrogant. They did not believe that they could learn anything outside of their own wonderful civilization, so they sent out a few ships and then thought better of it and shut the project down.

Diamond offers a much more plausible alternative explanation. Columbus, like the mariners in China, met with failure in his proposal for a voyage of discovery. The difference was that China was "unified," it was a central government where "no" meant no. An innovator had no court of appeal. Europe, on the other hand featured dozens of rival governments. Columbus was refused almost a dozen times before he finally got a "yes" from Queen Isabella of Spain. Europeans were just as arrogant, just as capable of refusing wild-eyed schemes, but their geography split up and isolated its peoples into many separate governments. If one leader refused him he could go on to the next little kingdom. Once Spain's coffers were full of American gold, every other government in Europe had to respond by exploring and colonizing or see itself fall behind its neighbors.

Hence what Diamond using clinical terminology calls Europe's "chronic disunity" and China's "chronic unity." In Baha'i terms this would be a case of decentralization and over-centralization. What Baha'is are looking at has never happened before, the best of both extremes, unity in diversity. Once history becomes a science I think that historians will construct simulations of alternative histories, for example a world where China and Europe met and exchanged their respective knowledge, then colonized the world in a more human, lovey-dovey fashion, reaching out their hands in friendship to hunter gatherers everywhere.

In any case, this new way of looking at history set me to thinking about the Administrative Order of Baha'u'llah itself. One problem that has troubled me is how to reconcile the centralized power structure of the Assembly or House of Justice with the need for diversity. Each region has one Baha'i authority, there has been no hint of the chronically balkanized but creative melting pot of diversity that Europe was for the past several centuries. Even Christians in a city or even a small town like Dunnville have a variety of churches with various differences to choose from. If one congregation does not suit them, they can walk around the corner and go to a different one. Then it hit me, that is why the House has been fiddling with the structure of the Administrative Order over the past three decades. That is why cities are being broken into clusters and Ruhi sub-groups and so forth. All this is to gain entry by troops, yes, but ultimately to attain a decentralized diversity within the unity of the Administrative Order that will appeal to a broader cross section of society.

I have wandered off topic, haven't I? Well tomorrow I will try to bring us back to One God and Education.

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

One God and Economics

One God and Economics

 

By John Taylor; 2006 May 08

 
Our topic is the Oneness of God manifested in economics. God is one, theory and practice. To believe in God is to act in God. There are no two ways about it, only one Way.

There is no single Baha'i principle of economics, but for convenience I lump them under the blanket term "economic readjustment." Here is the "Great Being" statement from Baha'u'llah's Tablet to Maqsud that I categorized under economics,

 "The Great Being saith: The learned of the day must direct the people to acquire those branches of knowledge which are of use, that both the learned themselves and the generality of mankind may derive benefits therefrom. Such academic pursuits as begin and end in words alone have never been and will never be of any worth. The majority of Persia's learned doctors devote all their lives to the study of a philosophy the ultimate yield of which is nothing but words." (Baha'u'llah, Tablets, 169)

 
The first question you may ask is, why did Taylor put this under economics and not education? Is it because there is no Great Being statement dealing directly with economics? Well, yes, but my excuse is that in our modern "knowledge economy" the behavior and attitude of academics and intellectuals is an important if not the most important of all economic base lines. No advanced nation in our time has failed to achieve a level of cooperation between university researchers and industry that would have astonished a denizen of the 19th Century. Indeed things have gone so full circle that many worry that traditional academic goals and values are compromised by the vast profits from patents and royalties coming out of university sponsored research.

 
And although Baha'u'llah here specifically singles out the "learned doctors" of Iran at the time, Western education of that age, though less priest ridden, was not much better off. The mind enslaving prejudices of ancient slave-owning empires held full sway in Europe, which by and large was still imperialist and profited from colonies, if not the slave trade itself. To turn from theoretical cogitation to practical work was beneath the dignity of the lofty, upper class intellectuals that universities catered to. So well into the first half of the 19th Century serious students with an eye for a university education devoted their time to Greek and Latin at the expense of science and mathematics.

This led to a peculiar reversal where women, excluded from impractical training in dead languages, could ignore them and turn their attention directly to research. As a result they achieved a prominence as field researchers that has yet to be matched, even today. This of course was not the result of esteem for women's rights but rather contempt for getting one's hands dirty. This inattention to results is just what Baha'u'llah's "Great Being" warns against.

 
Nonetheless, although today there is much more cooperation among "learned doctors" and corporations and government, a case could be made that there is still not nearly enough, especially on a macroeconomic scale.

 
I will cite only the two most urgent examples. The mounting evidence laboriously gathered by climatologists that the planet is undergoing slow but catastrophic weather shifts is nothing but words, "the ultimate yield of which is nothing but words," as long as policy makers persist in ignoring the need to respond immediately to their implications. If the practical implications of research findings are blocked, or obscured by corrupting science and the scientific method, no scientist or thinker, no matter how brilliant or dedicated, can do more than impotently spout words that generate nothing but more words.

 
Similarly, when the nuclear threat of an ideologically opposed Soviet Union disappeared one would have expected "learned doctors" to have turned government away from the capitalist versus communist mind-set and led a massive shift in spending from war materiel to economic readjustment, to equalizing the gap between rich and poor. The misuse of physics for nuclear destruction would have been expiated by complete disarmament, nuclear and otherwise. Instead nuclear proliferation not only to nation states but now among rabid, secret, amorphous terror groups is a real and present danger. The more ineffectual the thinking the better an excuse it becomes to increase rather than decrease military spending. The less security we gain the more it costs.

 
The fundamental finding and object of all knowledge is what Kant called "perpetual peace." Peace is the effect of one divine ruler, God, taking rightful first place in the mind of all, which leads to peace and composure, inwardly, socially and politically. This cannot be devalued or reprioritized. As long as it is our massively productive world economy, the product of thousands of scientific advances, will see the lion's share of its wealth siphoned away in military spending and arms races, to means of destruction rather than the salvation of the human race.

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

God and the Elimination of Prejudice

The Oneness of God and the Elimination of Prejudice

By John Taylor; 2006 May 06

Presuppositions about who we are and what we are worth inform everything. They filter what we think of those around us, and how we evaluate them. This has been compared to eyes that either light up our world-view; their negative form, denial of worth, acts as a cloud blocking out love and understanding among friends and societies. As always, this is territory blazed by Jesus Christ,

"...Take heed therefore that the light that is in thee be not darkness. ...the light of the body is the eye: therefore when the eye is single thy whole body is full of light: but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness." (Luke 11:33-7)

This primal principle of love is known, in intellectual form, as the oneness of God. Groups and societies that gain a grasp of its fundamental truth succeed together, and those who slip fail and fall apart. This has always been the case, from the first of the prophets to the last.

"For the idols have spoken vanity, and the diviners have seen a lie, and have told false dreams; they comfort in vain: therefore they went their way as a flock, they were troubled, because there was no shepherd." (Zechariah 10:2)

The same message of love and forgiveness leading to action, innovation and success is at the heart of the Qu'ran.

"To those who believe in God and His apostles and make no distinction between any of the apostles, we shall soon give their (due) rewards: for God is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful." (Qur'an 4:152, Yusuf Ali, tr.)

This basic spiritual truth is the basis of each and all of the Baha'i principles. We have been going through them in succession using the spotlight of Oneness of God. Today we will look at the negation of all principle, prejudice, the need to eliminate it.

As we have seen, to understand that God is One is the point of illumination. Jesus predicted that this light can enlighten the entire body of humanity. The next Great Being statement in the Lawh-i-Maqsud seems to me to be eminently suited for the principle of elimination of prejudice, the principle that addresses the problem of the "light that is in thee" becoming "darkness." Baha'u'llah says,

"O my friend! In all circumstances one should seize upon every means which will promote security and tranquillity among the peoples of the world. The Great Being saith: In this glorious Day whatever will purge you from corruption and will lead you towards peace and composure, is indeed the Straight Path." (Tablets, 171)

The twin books that I am working through now by Jared Diamond, "Guns, Germs and Steel," and "Collapse," seem written to elaborate, using the latest findings of science and archeology, upon what Baha'u'llah very succinctly is saying here. The first book points out that the great determinant of success is not race or genes but broad physical limitations such as geography, climate, germs and distance.

But that does not mean that all groups are equal. Some generate, some corrupt. He notices that even among tribes in New Guinea some are hidebound and others ambitious and willing to innovate and take up new technology. He was there when a helicopter flew by for the first time and the members of one group only looked up and returned to their field work while their neighbors were fascinated and began enquiring how much it would cost to charter such a vehicle. His second book talks about the corruptive forces that lead societies into extinction, the sort of dead ends that our whole species is facing now. We can either awake, unite and arise to, in Baha'u'llah's words, "seize upon every means which will promote security and tranquillity among the peoples of the world," or we can ignore the signs, go back to business as usual, and collapse.

The key to success is to open up our eyes to the actual situation, not to what we think it is, as individuals and then as groups. The "Great Being" saying says to do just that, to pay attention to whatever leads to heaven or hell, to generation or corruption, and to act upon that immediately. "In this glorious Day whatever will purge you from corruption and will lead you towards peace and composure, is indeed the Straight Path." (Tablets, 171) There is no reconciling tradition with science, the straight path of faith is whatever science determines will lead to success. As well, pollution is not just a sign of waste and inefficiency, it is the result of a state of war, a corruptive, "uncomposed" mind-set. In other words, corruption.

Corruption comes from within, it comes of the prideful belief that I and my people are better, smarter, better endowed than you and your people. Or it is the other side of the coin, the fear that I and mine are inferior to you and yours. Either way, these paralyzing beliefs are just another stage of prejudice, the illness of one's "light becoming darkness." Prejudice, pride and haughtiness are viral, infectious because they deny God's ability to create good in all humans. This denial and bigotry in turn infects the body politic and leads to self-destructive decisions. As Shoghi Effendi puts it, "... a blatent nationalism and racialism have usurped the rights and prerogatives of God Himself." (Promised Day is Come, 15) The blinder of difference keeps us from working and planning together, from bettering ourselves by learning from the many lessons that diverse groups have to teach one another.

Most particularly, prejudice has shut out "primitive" peoples, the hunter-gatherers in marginal territory from contributing to the world forum. Diamond tells one story of an outrigger canoe trade route among the islands around New Guinea that had endured over ten thousand years. It was possibly the oldest living relic of the very distant past. There were two or three fatal canoe accidents in the 1970's, and the Australian government shut the trade route down for safety reasons. The equivalent would be if an alien civilization witnessed some of our traffic accidents and made automobile travel illegal for our own good. Not that this would not be a good thing in the long term, or even in the medium term, but there would be severe dislocation in the short run. Something like one in ten jobs depend directly upon cars. More to the point, the rich elite have heavy investments in automobiles and in the process of political decision making, and not in outrigger trade canoe routes. In a less prejudiced world the most advanced peoples would be jumping over one another to learn from hunter gathering peoples, remembering the mandate of the fundament principle of One God, and the little guys would be similarly eager to learn together with the large and powerful.

"We fain would hope that the people of Baha may be guided by the blessed words: 'Say, all things are of God.' This exalted utterance is like unto water for quenching the fire of hate and enmity which smoldereth within the hearts and breasts of men." (Baha'u'llah, Tablets, 222)

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com

Strokes and Second Educators

Strokes and Second Educators

By John Taylor; 2006 May 05

 

Our third and newest local paper in Dunnville, The Sachem and Gazette, has a senior's column by one Joan Miller. In its 10 February edition she gives some interesting advice about strokes. It seems that the effects of an apoplexy can be reversed if the victim gets to the proper facilities within three hours. To do that the attack has to be correctly diagnosed by those in contact with the victim, who are not going to be qualified doctors in most cases. The authorities are therefore offering the following quick and simple three point test.

 

1. Ask the individual to smile.

2. Ask him or her to raise both arms.

3. Ask the person to speak a simple sentence coherently.

 

This is very useful, especially to those who are members of the one in four families prone to migraine, since these attacks mimic stroke symptoms closely. I like this test because even in a severe attack I would certainly pass these questions three. Just the same, migraine is a precondition for stroke, so it would be advisable for those around me to give me the test during an attack, just in case. Both my father and his sister, my Aunt Marguerite, made it into old age without realizing their periodic bouts of moody misery are "headache-less migraines." I learned to recognize a migraine long ago, but over the last few years (since Aunt Marguerite had her stroke) my father has periodically dragged me to the emergency room convinced that he is having a stroke. No, just migraine the doctor always says. If I had had that test I would have saved myself time waiting in hospitals, and steered my father from a great deal of anxiety.

 

Father as Second Educator

 

We are all familiar with this quote about the importance of mothers in education:

"For mothers are the first educators, the first mentors; and truly it is the mothers who determine the happiness, the future greatness, the courteous ways and learning and judgement, the understanding and the faith of their little ones." (Abdu'l-Baha, Selections, p. 126)

Conversely, the ignorance of mothers has a corruptive influence whose effects are usually overlooked. Many researchers interview serial killers to find out what led them astray, but the really interesting angle would be in-depth interviews with their mothers. Not that maternal influence on our present social plight is completely unrecognized. Observers like psychiatrist Theodore Dalyrmple remark that in the supermarket the typical way mothers handle the nagging of their children is to unleash a torrent of profane abuse, and when that has no effect (and it never does), to shut them up with chocolate. This attack followed by bribe method teaches a lesson about the effectiveness of violence that is searing and scarring the political landscape.

I am fortunate to have had an extraordinary mother, humble, grade three educated, unbelievably kind to children, totally dedicated to family. As we got older she held down three or four jobs and worked from early morning to late at night. She paid with her miserable wages my trips to England and Alaska, and similar indulgences for my siblings. If suffering were a credential she would have been in the first rank, and people felt it. I knew that she did not neglect her other friendships, especially with Aunt Amy, her sister. I thought she was a great mother as most sons do, but I had no idea of her effect on other people's lives until the day of her funeral.

They had the memorial service in a huge room and it was packed, standing room only. You had to fight to get into the room. She was a Baha'i for the last four or five years of her life and the service by the Hamilton LSA's Chairperson turned out to be a major proclamation. Close family members had to work our way into the room and up to the front row. Really, this was the first time in my life that I felt what it must be like to be a rock star, or at least a close relation to one. "Yes, Myrtle Taylor was my mother." "She was your mother?" they would say, with awe in their voices. "She was a wonderful soul." "Yeah, I thought I knew her but I was only her son." I could not believe that a non-celeb, an ordinary mother and housewife, or so I thought, could attract so many people to her funeral. Even today I remember that event, and I wonder at her invisible power and influence.

Anyway, just before the above quote from the Master comes something relevant to fathers of young children like myself, as well as mothers.

 

"...following the precepts of God and the holy Law, suckle your children from their infancy with the milk of a universal education, and rear them so that from their earliest days, within their inmost heart, their very nature, a way of life will be firmly established that will conform to the divine Teachings in all things."

 

Two things I notice, a "universal education" and a "way of life." In my recent experience the way of life part has come from me, and it has not been entirely successful. My perfunctory attempts at forcing prayer and reading from the Writings into the children's routine, usually at the last minute, meant that the forced devotions did little of their intended good. Only last night and this morning (having run into the above and following quotes yesterday) have I had some success making it a more pleasant and relaxing experience, rather than a duty done without feeling.

What helped most of all was adding a story about the Master at the end that tweaked the interest of six-year-old Tomaso. The stories are about Master at their age when He visited Baha'u'llah in the Siyyih Chal and was chased through the streets by street urchins. You remember how He ended it, when He turned around and chased them and they, thinking He had gone mad, turned and ran away. Tomaso was intrigued by that. Silvie then told a similar anecdote that her teacher had told her grade six class of how when he was camping a bear stole their food, so they hit pots and pans and chased it for a while. Then the bear turned on them. Here is how she tells the story. A few years ago she hardly spoke English, preferring Esperanto and Czech, now she speaks in unaccented teeny talk:

 

"And they were like Waaaa! And then the bear was like, Waaaa! And they they were like Waaaa! again, and then the bear was like Waaa..."

 

And so forth. Hearing it third hand like that one wonders how many times the bears and the campers turned the tables on one another. Perhaps she was mixing in something she saw in a cartoon. At any rate, I hope we can find more "boy-friendly" stories like this to keep Tomaso from his annoying resistance to the basic obligation of faith -- he says his prayers, usually, with anger and reluctance soaking his voice like syrup into pancakes. The second quote that impressed me yesterday was this:

 

"It is the bounden duty of parents to rear their children to be staunch in faith ... For every praiseworthy deed is born out of the light of religion, and lacking this supreme bestowal the child will not turn away from any evil, nor will he draw nigh unto any good." (Baha'u'llah, in Baha'i Education Compilation, 6)

 

What a revolutionary ethical statement! Frightening too. In a society so full of fear and fear mongering, this is the cure. If you look at the real dangers that are statistically most likely to bring us down, most are caused by immoral choices, and religion is the greatest protector against these, as the Master says. I am sure that ethicists would make themselves more effectual if they would look at moral choices in this way, as one's motive to turn away from bad and the desire to turn towards good. They should look at it statistically, what sort of education and background gives more resistive force against temptation and what encourages attraction to moral acts? I am going to have to put a great deal of thought into this.