Category: baha’i

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).

Last week I was talking to a very bright and inquisitive 4th-grader, born in Africa and now living in Tucson. He was asking about “machines that make machines”, i.e. how factories can make all of the machinery we see around us (cars in particular), and the built-up nature of cities compared to simpler villages. He noted that large cities were springing up in Africa too, next to traditional villages.

Five or six years ago, I was looking forward to an eventual happier and more peaceful world, and I visualized it as like our existing environment–cars, technology, buildings, but distributed evenly and fairly throughout the world, with poverty and materialism eliminated through education and the Bahá’í Faith. The poor areas of the world would become more like us, of course.

Then in October 2017, the UHJ released a film honoring the bicentenary of the birth of Bahá’u’lláh (1817-1892), in the form of a survey of Bahá’í life in various areas of the globe. Much of it is what I expected to see–people in elegant cafes discussing the important issues in life, doing projects to help their neighborhoods, the Millennium as a do-it-yourself toolkit rather than a golden city in the clouds of Heaven.

But the opening scene was a “primitive” village, probably in Africa (why don’t videos have footnotes?), where people were preparing food in a very traditional way, and happy in the absence of the comforts I’m used to in the USA. It’s only about 1 minute, but I puzzled for a couple of years about why that scene was placed first, instead of the elegant urban Café of the next section. I didn’t think it could be accidental.

When I was around 4 or 5, I was staying at my grandfather’s in small-town Illinois. Although he was well inside the town, he still had a tractor in the garage, and a fairly large front yard where the grass would be allowed to grow to 6 or 8 inches. In the summer evenings we saw a lot of fireflys, “lightning bugs” as blinking lights throughout the twilight in that yard. It was a connection to the natural world I don’t have in the city now.

Whoso cleaveth to justice, can, under no circumstances, transgress the limits of moderation. … The civilization, so often vaunted by the learned exponents of arts and sciences, will, if allowed to overleap the bounds of moderation, bring great evil upon men. Thus warneth you He Who is the All-Knowing. If carried to excess, civilization will prove as prolific a source of evil as it had been of goodness when kept within the restraints of moderation. (Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings, CLXIV)

For another view on the question of having space to live alongside nature, a random news headline today:

Wealthy California town cites mountain lion habitat to deny affordable housing

At first glance, the town of Woodside may look more like a sprawl of mansions built on big-tech billions than crucial habitat for threatened California mountain lions.

But town officials might suggest looking again.

The wealthy San Francisco Bay area suburb has said it cannot approve the development of new duplexes or fourplexes to ease the statewide housing shortage because it encompasses the habitat of the elusive wildcats. …

Looks like this is not so much about having the natural world nearby as about keeping poor people further away.

Update Feb. 9, 2022

I left this post kind of disconnected because I didn’t know just how to tie everything together, and maybe I didn’t need to. But today’s BahaiTeachings post by English custom-furniture maker Philip Koomen better expresses what I was searching for, a balance between modern tech and local natural beauty.

Martin Luther King day is a good time to link to a 2-part article on The Bahá’í World site with a historical perspective on racism in the United States:

The Bahá’í response to racial injustice and pursuit of racial unity

Part 1: 1912-1996

Part 2: 1996-2021

This site is the online continuation of a series of “yearbook-like” compilations of Bahá’í history, published from 1926 on. I like the longer-form perspective articles it has. Two others I liked are:

A new cycle of human power: ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s encounters with modernist writers and artists

Reading reality in times of crisis: ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and the Great War

On a tangent, I’m making a list of recent new Bahá’í terminology with a goal of taking notes on their meanings. Often new developments need naming to be understood, and I hope this is what’s happening:

• building capacity
• elevated conversations
• involvement in the discourses of society
• reading the reality of […]

Julian, recording a vision of Christ she had ca. 1373:

“And in þis he shewed me a lytil thyng þe quantite of a hasyl nott. lyeng in þe pawme of my hand as it had semed. and it was as rownde as eny ball. I loked þer upon wt þe eye of my vnderstondyng. and I þought what may þis be. and it was answered generally thus. It is all þat is made. I merueled howe it myght laste. for me þought it myght sodenly haue fall to nought for lytyllhed. & I was answered in my vnderstondyng. It lastyth & euer shall for god louyth it. and so hath all thyng his begynning by þe loue of god. In this lytyll thyng I sawe thre propertees. The fyrst is. þt god made it. þe secunde is þet god louyth it. & þe þrid is. þat god kepith it.”

— chapter V, “Westminster Cathedral Treasury, MS 4”, ca. 1450, according to Wikipedia

in modern English:

And in this he showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, it seemed, and it was as round as any ball. I looked thereupon with the eye of my understanding, and I thought, ‘What may this be?’ And it was answered generally thus: ‘It is all that is made.’ I wondered how it could last, for I thought it might suddenly fall to nothing for little cause. And I was answered in my understanding: ‘It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it; and so everything has its beginning by the love of God.’ In this little thing I saw three properties; the first is that God made it; the second is that God loves it; and the third is that God keeps it.

What I find fascinating is this phrase: “I thought it might suddenly fall to nothing for little cause”. We expect to wake up on a solid planet with a predictable sunrise and stable objects, including our own bodies, houses, the moon in the sky. And yet there are signs that this is a teaching tool for the occasion, like a lesson written on a chalkboard, newer lessons will appear later.

• matter is mostly empty space, and our cell phones get signals that come through our bodies and walls, or they wouldn’t work. Atoms are little solar systems.
• normally we can sit back and observe that matter, and rely on it, but at the smallest levels (quantum), looking at their behavior changes that behavior — is that like a teacher saying “how can I help you?”
• if you visualized the world as a beach ball balanced on an invisible fountain of water, the water pushing just enough to hold the ball motionless, it would look stable. But in the journal from Julian, she did not at first see “all that is made” as stable at all, she knew it had to be “kept” by something, but needed reassurance that it would be.

I think this is a very impressive short film (23 min.). Via the article at bahaiblog.net: “Set in the 1800s, the film imagines a conversation between two bickering prison guards at the fortress of Chihriq in north-western Iran where the prophet known as the Báb was imprisoned”. I sent out an email calling this “Bahá’í Grunge” but that wasn’t really the best phrase.

From the interview with the writer/director, one thing that today’s audience might miss is that the female guard is actually playing a female disguised as a male, which happened sometimes in the past according to the histories, I think possibly in the US Civil War too. Personally I find that hard to imagine, but as far as I know, at that time no woman would have been allowed to leave the house alone and unveiled, let alone have a job; and often we see what we expect to see.