folded within

As a person who can putter inside the house for days and not leave, I’m thinking about migration, how central that is to so many people’s lives in this day. Mainly in the sense of being born in say, Africa, and due to conflict, climate change, societal collapse, whatever, ending up uprooted and in search of a better life, often to find they’re not welcome where they end up. Or at least needing to learn a new language and trying to fit into an unfamiliar society.

Mike Solomon has done some artwork on this theme, and a short video on his thinking–worth watching just to see all the feet.

On a different scale is a long NYTimes article on migration from South/Central America north to the US border, how they get fleeced on the way, and probably not told that they won’t be entirely welcome at the border anyway.

And here I’m sitting in my house in Arizona, seemingly belonging here, but aware that if the water supply dries up due to climate change, we could become migrants too. And we all migrate from birth, through growth, to death and a different world and more growth.

All this ferment in the world will cause a gradual realization that “The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens”. Change takes time, but it does happen.

June 18, 2023 is the 40th anniversary of the martyrdom of 10 Bahá’í women in Shiraz, Iran, shortly after the Islamic revolution of 1979. Two of the women were mother and daughter, so they forced the daughter to watch her mother’s hanging, and then hanged her. This wanton cruelty gives religion a bad name, as they say. Islam was at one time an enlightening force in many cultures, e.g. Umayyad Spain, and my wonderful doctor is Muslim, but clearly the theocracies do not work today. Witness the riots and deaths this spring in Iran, again related to oppression of women.

Link to some of the Bahá’í activities related to this here.

Update: this video, Manya’s story, was posted June 23 on bahaiblog.net, as part of their Monthly Reflection series for Rahmat. — I found it very touching (15 min.).

Two links, to a book and a video, that struck me this week:

1. Our common humanity: reflections on the reclamation of the human spirit, by Michael L. Penn (2021). I haven’t finished it yet, but fortunately this quote was in the preface, and I got that far:
   

   “The most exciting breakthroughs of the 21st century will occur not because of technology but because of an expanding concept of what it means to be human.”
   –John Naisbitt

2. Race, Gender and Immigration: working towards equality while avoiding partisan politics / Layli Miller-Muro. A 49 min. talk given at the 2017 Association for Bahá’í Studies conference. I rewatched it yesterday to see if it still seemed as good as when I watched it in 2017, and I think it does. Two quotes I pulled out of it:
   

   My reading of the Bahá’í Writings is that one of the reasons that we are not to engage in partisan politics is because it is not radical enough. We are not simply about tweaking, or changing a little bit, or just having a different party, or having a new bill, or a new law in place in order to heal humanity. Partisan politics is not radical enough. Bahá’ís  are interested in the foundational transformation of the whole understanding of who we are as spiritual beings. (at ~18:00)

   … to ridicule any soul at all is to demean the human race … (at ~26:45)

I want to mention a new album by Zahyia Rolle, “Chapter 45“, named for her age now. Afro-Futurism isn’t my normal fare, but the last track, 25 minutes long, is the most moving rendition of the Long Healing Prayer I’ve ever heard. A meditative offering indeed.

The Local Bahá’í Assembly of Rochester, N.Y., decided to assist in the creation of Bahá’í music by local Black women, and this is one result. — via an article at Baha’i Blog recently.

The Bahá’í perspective on this time in history is, in part, that humanity is collectively in adolescence, with a vision of maturity on the horizon, but inability so far to actually act accordingly. The world’s reactions to the Russian invasion of Ukraine demonstrate this, I think — we’re doing better than in the past, but not yet there.

One glaring problem is the danger of a single individual having sole power over others, or a nation. This was normal in 19th century Europe (well, nominally in most cases) but isn’t safe or helpful now. Quoting from footnote 194 in Bahá’u’lláh’s Kitáb-i-Aqdas (Book of Laws):

… Further insight into this process of mankind’s coming of age and proceeding to maturity is provided by the following statement of Bahá’u’lláh:

One of the signs of the maturity of the world is that no one will accept to bear the weight of kingship. Kingship will remain with none willing to bear alone its weight. That day will be the day whereon wisdom will be manifested among mankind.

The coming of age of the human race has been associated by Shoghi Effendi with the unification of the whole of mankind, the establishment of a world commonwealth, and an unprecedented stimulus to “the intellectual, the moral, and spiritual life of the entire human race.”

Of course a group of leaders could go off the rails too, but it surely seems more likely that one isolated person can develop fever dreams. We can also see that nationalism by itself no longer works.

Another quote from Bahá’u’lláh, in the Súriy-i-Mulúk (Tablet to the Kings):

Be united, O concourse of the sovereigns of the world, for thereby will the tempest of discord be stilled amongst you, and your peoples find rest. Should any one among you take up arms against another, rise ye all against him, for this is naught but manifest justice.

This principle actually worked when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, and you can see it is what leaders now are trying to do, but there is still some disunity, and the threat of nuclear reprisal (which could happen anyway).