Trust in the capacity of this generation to disentangle itself from the embroilments of a divided society. To discharge your responsibilities, you will have to show forth courage, the courage of those who cling to standards of rectitude, whose lives are characterized by purity of thought and action, and whose purpose is directed by love and indomitable faith. As you dedicate yourselves to healing the wounds with which your peoples have been afflicted, you will become invincible champions of justice.

(The Universal House of Justice, message to the Paraguay Youth Congress, 2000)

Dr. Susan Moody, with Baha'i women and girls in Iran.

When I was in high school, I read a book that left an indelible impression upon my heart.  It was The Diary of Juliet Thompson, an early American Baha’i living in New York City who had the good fortune to have spent time with ‘Abdu’l-Baha in the Holy Land, Europe, and New York.  Juliet was loved dearly by ‘Abdu’l-Baha — He said that she would become the envy of future queens — but she was by no means perfect, and I think that’s why she appealed so much to me.

I read the book again this year, as summer turned to autumn: before going to sleep, my eyelids growing heavy as I tried to catch another chapter; on the city bus, almost missing my stop; at lunch breaks from work, sitting in a garden tucked behind high-rises and not wanting my hour to be up.  One evening, lying on the couch with dinner in one hand and my book in the other, I gazed out the window at the sunset, watching a plane descend at the distance.  I had the great feeling of wanting to sacrifice very much to help bring about a new civilization that Baha’u'llah taught of, borne out of the great love for ‘Abdu’l-Baha that Juliet transmitted through these pages.

And it occurred to me that I had had that very same feeling when reading it as a high schooler.  I wondered what I had sacrificed — it didn’t feel like very much, and it always felt like I had some excuse; that “it’ll come later.”  But later was now, and what could I show of it?

Juliet’s diary did something to me, for as the autumn progressed, I picked books up and couldn’t put them down.  Books of great heroes, who sacrificed and had faith in a cause that would bring a new world long after they had passed away.  One book became two which became four, and before I knew it, I had devoured ten such books, as the fiery leaves that lined my street shriveled to dust, and D.C.’s first silent snow turned to blizzards.

These were stories of women and men in far-flung places (Persia, Bulgaria, Libya, Australia) and those closer to home (New York, Washington, D.C., Berkeley). They were stories of men who risked their very lives by, openly and stealthily, sharing with others Baha’u'llah’s message; and of women sacrificed material comforts to travel, alone, to distant lands, at advanced ages.

There are my favorites: the Western women who, although single — some never married, others widowed — traversed the globe and performed great acts of heroism.

There was Ella Bailey who, at eighty-eight years old, did not let a bad fall and a recent hospitalization prevent her from alighting upon her pioneering post in Tripoli, equipped with an oxygen mask, only to pass away a month after her arrival.  Martha Root, the “archetype of Bahá’í itinerant teachers,” who circled the world twice.  Keith Ransom-Kehler, twice widowed, with her endless trunks packed with couture, sludged through the mud of East Asia.  Susan Moody, who, at the age of fifty-eight, traveled alone to Iran at ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s request to provide healthcare for women, likewise starting the country’s first school for girls.  Marion Jack, sixty-five years old, moved from Canada to Bulgaria, living in a small hotel room through ill-health, freezing temperatures, and the Second World War.

These names — Ella, Keith, Marion, Susan, Martha — echoed in the memory of my formative years, and growing up, I associated those names with, “Well, I could never do what they did.”

But as I read on, what became increasingly apparent was their great heroism despite their human frailties: impatience, feelings of inadequacy, struggling to work in unity with others.  A line I read from the foreward of one of these books summed it up:

As we read about these early Baha’is, we realize that they were in many ways very much like ourselves, for they too had human weaknesses and shortcomings.  Their greatness lay in the quality of their faith in Baha’u'llah and His Message. This was the secret of their victory– despite their shortcomings.

(Gloria Faizi, Fire on the Mountain-top)

I realized any of us could be like them, and that there were a lot more of such people around me — whose lives are yet to be recorded in books — than I had imagined.

As I leave this city which I have occupied intermittently for the past five and half years, for warmer climes — leaving the comfort of plentiful friendships, organic markets, rapid public transportation, and clean sidewalks — off to an unknown destination to follow in their footsteps; in moments of fear of what may lie ahead, I remember these individuals who, ever human, were champions of justice:

Though they themselves would not live to see that day, they were prepared to sacrifice all they had if by doing so they could raise the call to unity, and prove to an unbelieving world that the wolf and the lamb could truly drink from the same stream….

(Gloria Faizi, Fire on the Mountain-top)

Photo credit: Tom Dyson.

The older one gets, the more one’s own mortality becomes painfully evident.  I had a dream the other night that I was on a jet.  My sister was in the lavatory, and I was outside telling her a joke, wanting to make her laugh.

Suddenly, the plane began to plummet.  We both grew silent, on opposite sides of the door, and in my head, all I could think about was how much had been left undone.

Maybe I had that dream because recently, I’ve witnessed people around me, young and old, be afflicted with terminal illnesses.  I spent the weekend in Northern Virginia, at my pseudo-relatives’ home.  My father and another childhood friend of theirs were visiting D.C., and what was meant to be a jovial reunion weekend was tinged with a sense of how quickly life can change.

Mahin Khanum, my pseudo-uncle’s mother, had last week been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. She had been a feisty woman with a sparkle in her eye who lost her husband at a young age and, at a not-so-young age, picked up and moved from Iran to Brazil when her two sons moved there. Whereas only weeks ago she was meddling in the kitchen, piling endless tea glasses into the dishwasher and effortlessly whipping up steaming pots of Basmati rice, Mahin Khanum could now hardly speak or react, let alone bathe herself.

In a rare moment of calm at the kitchen table, which was littered with crumbs and crammed with plates of fruit and half-empty glasses of tea, Mahsheed joon, my pseudo-aunt, leaned her elbow on the table and placed her head in her hand.  “Zendegi chegadr zood migzareh,” she sighed.  “How quickly life passes by.”  Switching to English, sweetly accented with Persian and Brazilian Portuguese tones, she waved her fork in the air and said, “You are young! Enjoy your youth and don’t take so heavily what might come in the future.”

A few weeks ago, I might have dismissed that advice as frivolous.  But in the midst of another hectic workday, her words rung through my mind, and I wondered whether I was wrongly associating living a purposeful life with gravity and heaviness.  I remembered a quotation from The Secret of Divine Civilization:

It is clear that life in this fast-fading world is as fleeting and inconstant as the morning wind, and this being so, how fortunate are the great who leave a good name behind them, and the memory of a lifetime spent in the pathway of the good pleasure of God.
‘Abdu’l-Baha, Secret of Divine Civilization, page 70.

I can home tonight, and throwing myself on the couch, I picked up my weathered copy of The Secret of Divine Civilization, searching in vain for the passage.  And as I did, I flipped to the last page and stumbled upon this:

“Happy the soul that shall forget his own good, and like the chosen ones of God, vie with his fellows in service to the good of all…”
‘Abdu’l-Baha, The Secret of Divine Civilization, page 116

It seems that in the end, what everyone is seeks is a kind of happiness.  The way they go about obtaining that happiness, however, runs the spectrum of being of benefit to being harmful to others.  Some find happiness in shopping (harmless); some, in volunteer work (beneficial); and some, in vandalism (harmful).  When I think about it, I can’t help but think that some of the pursuit of happiness is linked with that nagging feeling we’re going to get old and die.

Well, we are going to get old and die.  And like that moment in my dream, many of us are terrified– not so much that it may be painful, but that we might die and regret that we didn’t live a full life.

In this ever-fragmented, ever-frantic city, these thoughts sometimes elude us.  Or sometimes, we may mistake a “full life” as being those things that, while wonderful, bring us elusive happiness.  I love Washington, with all its quirks, but sometimes it seems as if someone hit a fast-forward button and forgot to hit “pause.”  Those of us in this city sometimes live as if we’re invincible– and that when we do die, all that really matters is how many times our name appeared in print.

But I have to wonder that, when this life ends– and if you don’t believe in an afterlife, when you lie down at night and honestly assess what you’ve done and who you are– what can we say about a life in service for the good of all?  In this ever-fragmented city, it’s easy to be worn out, run ragged, pulled in many directions, and anxious about career prospects.

It was dusk on Saturday evening, the setting sun peeking through the drawn curtains.  Mahin Khanum’s granddaughter, weary-eyed from a sleepless week, grasped her grandmother’s hands in her own, swinging them and singing old Brazilian carnaval songs to her.  There, amidst the pain and exhaustion, was a token of ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s words– forgetting her own self, for the good of a loved one in the sunset of her life in this fast-fading world.

Wakili McNeill from Malcolm X Drummers and Dancers group at the 31st Adams Morgan Day Festival. (Photo Credit: Barbara Krawcowicz)

Maybe it was the graying of the skies, summer impatient to morph into fall.  A lively street festival, Adams Morgan Day, had descended upon my neighborhood on a sunny Sunday in early September– the air thick with smoke from grills sizzling with Jamaican jerk chicken, throbbing with the sound of drums from a Ghanaian dance troupe, as thick crowds of young and old and black and brown and white weaved through stalls selling scarves and jewels, and where local artists displayed their work.  The last day of summer hadn’t yet arrived, but the next morning, shuffling past sleepy cafes on the two-mile trek to work, it wasn’t raining but somehow the air felt damp, and clouds quilted the sky, making all gray and quiet.

My neighborhood is colorful and diverse in every sense, an eyeful and a story on every corner of every block.  But the part of town in which I work lacks some soul, a claustrophobic cacophony of steel and glass.  Men in black suits and ties lunch over terms like How Do We Get Our Work Onto the Agenda, and women practical heels punch at a Blackberry in right hand, cigarette in left.  Exit the polite double doors of any given office building, and one is welcomed by blaring of taxis honking, the whooshing of FedEx trucks and words, words, words about work in a language that I used to try to understand, but now seems so foreign.  There is a certain worldly power associated with this part of town– the World Bank, the IMF, the White House, the many lobbying firms and think-tanks that crowd the few blocks of downtown Washington, D.C.  And yet, I see so many blank stares, pinched faces, stressed countenances.  And many times I’ve thought: So many of them don’t seem happy.

***

I’m on a housing hunt these days.  I was barely a week back home from a trip when my roommate informed me that she was moving to a different part of town, giving me thirty days to scramble to find a place to live.  So my evenings have been packed with open houses, putting on a smile and nodding through chore expectations, and the obligatory small talk that characterizes the interview process.  And while I’d throw myself, exhausted, onto the couch in my half-empty apartment at night, I reflected on what I’d seen in the city.  The hunt took me to all corners, and while the rent was the same, the neighborhoods varied.  Rowhouses on quaint, tree-lined streets in quiet neighborhoods morphed into what some called the “rough” part of town, a fact which I conveniently hid from my parents.  My heart raced a little faster as I raced through these streets, and I wondered why the city was so fragmented.

One such neighborhood where my housing hunt has taken is the one in which I teach a children’s class.  On Saturday afternoons, with my co-teachers, we wave to neighbors as we collect the children, some of whom last week were dragging themselves to class.  I stopped by on a Wednesday evening, after looking at several homes in the children’s neighborhood.  And while I was already late for a class, I couldn’t help but linger on their street, where some of my students were teasing each other on front stoops, and scampering about the playground.  I was greeted with hugs and squeezes and laughter, as the obligatory drunken loiterers lounging in the playground muttered incoherently.  It isn’t an easy neighborhood, one where the children see and experience things that I hadn’t at their age.  And sometimes I see the struggles of immigrant families, of double-unbelonging, of making ends meet, and of the materialism so prevalent in American society pressing its finger upon their new lives in this country.  But despite the rough edges that characterize the neighborhood, I left that evening, prying the children’s arms from my waist and blowing kisses as I said goodbye, with a joy surging in my heart that I hadn’t felt for weeks.

***

And all of this — the stress of moving, the juxtaposition of materially poor and rich, and moving seamlessly between worlds seemingly apart– has made me think about happiness, a topic that has been covered in this space before.  As I mulled over this topic, I remembered a quotation by ‘Abdu’l-Baha that I’d read in The Secret of Divine Civilization:

…human happiness consists only in drawing closer to the Threshold of Almighty God, and in securing the peace and well-being of every individual member, high and low alike, of the human race; and the supreme agencies for accomplishing these two objectives are the excellent qualities with which humanity has been endowed.

(‘Abdu’l-Baha, Secret of Divine Civilization, page 60)

***

To be continued in Part II.

I’m a regular on the 16th Street bus.  On brisk autumn days, I dash to catch the S2; heave my boots through the February snow to find the S4 whizz by; my sticky flip-flops drag me to the stop at Irving Street on a sweltering August afternoon.

I love the 16th Street bus.  It’s a microcosm of D.C., the Washington that most people don’t know — those who are fed images on the evening news of middle-aged white men in drab suits fillibustering on the floor of Congress, or business-casual wealthy foreign ministers dodging protesters past the IMF.

“I don’t know,” I replied nonchalantly to my mom.  “There are all types.”

That conversation echoed in my mind as I shifted uncomfortably on the blue plastic bench, unable to concentrate on my book.  So I lowered my glasses and gazed through the window, past the girl sharing my seat.  She was a typical of the young professionals that descend upon this city, brown hair tied messily in a bun and stitching purposefully at her needlepoint.  The sun cast a nostalgic glow as I peered past her, its rays descending yawningly and twinkling through the dense trees at Carter Barron Park, where multihued children scurried on its vast lawn.

My roommate calls that stretch of 16th Street “The Avenue of Obscure Religions,” and it’s true—from the Third Church of Christ, Scientist to the Buddhist Vihara Society to the Tifareth Israel Congregation (and the D.C. Bahá’í Center, which is my reason for frequenting that route), it’s a veritable buffet of spiritual offering.  It makes me think, sometimes, of the concept of progressive revelation:

Whenever this robe hath fulfilled its purpose, the Almighty will assuredly renew it. For every age requireth a fresh measure of the light of God. Every Divine Revelation hath been sent down in a manner that befitted the circumstances of the age in which it hath appeared.
(Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 81.)

My contemplation was interrupted when the bus halted to a stop on Alison Street, to let on a gaggle of Ethiopian women heading toward church.  Draped in gauzy white, their gleaming eyes reflected the warm radiance of dusk as they shuffled onto the bus.  It made me remember a warm Saturday evening in Tel Aviv, when I waltzed into a Ethiopian restaurant owned by Jewish immigrants from Ethiopia, gelato in hand, to pick up take-out injera for friends, only to be stopped by the “We Keep Kosher” sign.

When Moses appeared, the tribes of Israel were in a state of disunion as captives of the Pharaohs. Moses gathered them together, and the divine law established fellowship among them. They became as one people, united, consolidated, after which they were rescued from bondage. They passed into the promised land, advanced in all degrees, developed sciences and arts, progressed in material affairs, increased in divine or spiritual civilization until their nation rose to its zenith in the sovereignty of Solomon. It is evident, therefore, that religion is the cause of unity, fellowship and progress among mankind. The function of a shepherd is to gather the sheep together and not to scatter them.

Jumping up to offer my seat to a young woman and her child, I clung tightly to the pole as the bus weaved its way through the early evening traffic, grabbing my bag lest it swing and swipe the elderly Salvadoran gentleman stooped next to me.  His lowered head didn’t hide the creases in his weather-worn cheeks, nor the cross around his neck that he absentmindedly stroked.

Then Christ appeared. He united varying and divergent creeds and warring people of His time. He brought together Greeks and Romans, reconciled Egyptians and Assyrians, Chaldeans and Phoenicians. Christ established unity and agreement among people of these hostile and warring nations. Therefore, it is again evident that the purpose of religion is peace and concord.

A chocolate-skinned man with an overbite cradled his toddler daughter, seated toward the front.  She was curled in his lap, her head resting against his chest, a pink Dora the Explorer backpack engulfing her back.  The bus heaved forward, and his hands tangled past his daughter’s dangling sneakered soles to catch the set of auburn glass prayer beads that slipped out of his pocket.

Likewise, Muhammad appeared at a time when the peoples and tribes of Arabia were divergent and in a state of continual warfare. They killed each other, pillaged and took captive wives and children. Muhammad united these fierce tribes, established a foundation of fellowship among them so that they gave up warring against each other absolutely and established communities. The result was that the Arabian tribes freed themselves from the Persian yoke and Roman control, established an independent sovereignty which rose to a high degree of civilization, advanced in sciences and arts, extended the Saracen dominion as far west as Spain and Andalusia and became famous throughout the world. Therefore, it is proved once more that the religion of God is intended to be the cause of advancement and solidarity and not of enmity and dissolution. If it becomes the cause of hatred and strife, its absence is preferable. Its purpose is unity, and its foundations are one.

I yanked the cord at Madison Street a little too late, and the driver screeched to a halt halfway past the block.  Tucking my book into my bag, I descended into the patch of weeds that separated the asphalt from the sidewalk, the evening dew dampening my leather sandals, acquired ages ago in Brazil and surviving a year’s worth of Friday afternoon paces around the Haram-i-Aqdas.  Stepping reverently toward the Bahá’í Center for the Ninth Day of Ridván celebration, my eyes lit up when little Skyy, multiple braids adorning her head, grabbed my hand and cautioned me not to step on the path of rose petals that welcomed us.

When Bahá’u’lláh appeared in Persia, violent strife and hatred separated the peoples and tribes of that country. They would not come together for any purpose except war; they would not partake of the same food, or drink of the same water; association and intercourse were impossible. Bahá’u’lláh founded the oneness of humanity among these people and bound their hearts together with such ties of love that they were completely united. He reestablished the prophetic foundations, reformed and renewed the principles laid down by the Messengers of God who had preceded Him. And now it is hoped that through His life and teachings the East and West shall become so united that no trace of enmity, strife and discord shall remain.

(‘Abdu’l-Bahá, The Promulgation of Universal Peace.  Talk at Church of the Divine Paternity, 19 May 1912.  Central Park West, New York.)

Like Washington, it was sticky this time last year in northern Israel.

I had awoken with a start to the chirp of my mobile phone at 2:00 a.m., the fluorescent light glaring “Nasim“.  My alarm had failed to go off, and I had sixty seconds to re-orient, get dressed, and splash some cold water onto my face.

Bahji, aerial view at night.

Harrison drove us to Bahji that night — one part chilly and two parts humid — in a decades-old hand-me-down Benz whose rear window was jammed halfway.  It was the evening commemorating the passing of Bahá’u'lláh, the Prophet-Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, and over a thousand of us — staff, pilgrim, and visitors — shivered in the Haram-i-Aqdas. The warm glow of the lamps that dotted the precincts of surrounding the Shrine of Bahá’u'lláh, adjacent to the mansion in which He passed away (in which He resided in the last years of His life, still a prisoner), gleamed through the wet air.  I struggled to stay awake halfway through the program.  But as the nocturnal birds chirped at the cusp of dawn, Bahá’u'lláh’s words on the eve of His declaration in the Garden of Ridván came to mind:

Consider these nightingales. So great is their love for these roses, that sleepless from dusk till dawn, they warble their melodies and commune with burning passion with the object of their adoration. How then can those who claim to be afire with the rose-like beauty of the Beloved choose to sleep?

***

The stickiness of the evening loomed as I rushed home at half past eight. Though it had ceased raining an hour ago, the neighborhood park, my shortcut home from the metro, was devoid of the life that had occupied it only yesterday: the wet benches where I had lazily lounged last night, reading a book; the dripping basketball hoop that had swooshed against the backdrop of middle-aged chocolate-skinned men disputing a call; the dampened and chewed-up soccer field where Central American jugadores breathlessly raced. I quickened my pace, mindful that I had to crawl into bed early for a nap.

Shastri’s call awoke me at 2:00 a.m.  His ambiguously accented voice — the kind I grew accustomed to last year (if not unknowingly adopting myself) amongst fellow staff members from across the globe — let me know that he was on his way. The air was warm and humid, and I absent-mindedly pulled my unruly hair into a braid as I stumbled out of bed to throw some cold water onto my face.

Kathleen and I crawled out of his car parked near the Best Buy in the Tenleytown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., the streets nearly deserted, and I remarked, “The humidity– it’s as if we were in Bahji tonight.”

“Right, and we’ll circumambulate America’s Qiblih of choice,” Shastri joked, gesturing toward the yellow sign screaming “Best Buy!”

There were just seven of us at the Rassekhs’ home that evening, and the peculiarity of being so awake and alive at 3:00 a.m. hardly registered as the flickering candles reflected in the coffee table’s glass pane.  We arose reverently in their cozy living room to read the Tablet of Visitation (read on Holy Days associated with Bahá’u'lláh) and, like the nightingales in the Ridván Garden, I had the feeling of not wanting to sleep for a very long time.

We feasted on watermelon and pound cake and flatbread with hummus afterward, and washed it down with tea.  And we told stories, animated and forgetting that it was 4:00 a.m. and we had hardly slept.  Mrs. Rassekh recalled the candle-lined pathways of Bahji in the early, darkened hours of May 29, 1992 — the centennial of Bahá’u'lláh’s passing — as one of the many guests invited from every country around the world (they were living in Mali then); Shastri, Kat, and I laughed as we recounted stories from our time working at the Bahá’í World Centre; and we all wistfully remembered the lamps that illuminated that evening in Bahji, and the inevitable rising of the sun on the drive back toward Haifa.

We certainly weren’t at the nerve-center of the Bahá’í world anymore (at the nerve-center of the so-called “free world,” maybe).  But as I arose to face eastward for the Tablet of Visitation, I remembered something that my friend had said earlier that evening that tempered my nostalgia, in a phone call prior to my nap.

We had been discussing plans for our Saturday afternoon children’s class in a mostly Salvadoran neighborhood.  Our class was composed of beaming children filled with the capacity for excellence, whose attention would drift as police sirens cackled by at intervals, who were unruffled by the drunken, muttering loiterers who occupied the urban playground where we lay our picnic blanket and discussed the light of unity being so powerful as to illuminate the whole earth.

As the conversation hovered to a close, it drifted to the topic of waking up in the middle of the night for this holy evening.  He recounted how, growing up, his family would go to the Bahá’í House of Worship in Chicago on that night.  His grandfather, among the last living Hands of the Cause and in the twilight of his years, never failed to remind him to say a special prayer on those evenings filled with spiritual potency.

And so we agreed to remember in our prayers those children that had come into our lives so fortuitously. The spirit of the teachings of this Manifestation, whose passing we were commemorating, were, sometimes gradually, touching their tender lives, and certainly infusing the world with a power, the source of which many are as yet unaware.

Bahá’u'lláh found the world in a ’strange sleep’. But what a disturbance His coming has unloosed! The peoples of the earth had been separated, many parts of the human race socially and spiritually isolated. But the world of humanity today bears little resemblance to that which Bahá’u'lláh left a century ago. Unbeknownst to the great majority, His influence permeates all living beings. Indeed, no domain of life remains unaffected. In the burgeoning energy, the magnified perspectives, the heightened global consciousness; in the social and political turbulence, the fall of kingdoms, the emancipation of nations, the intermixture of cultures, the clamour for development; in the agitation over the extremes of wealth and poverty, the acute concern over the abuse of the environment, the leap of consciousness regarding the rights of women; in the growing tendency towards ecumenism, the increasing call for a new world order; in the astounding advances in the realms of science, technology, literature and the arts — in all this tumult, with its paradoxical manifestations of chaos and order, integration and disintegration, are the signs of His power as World Reformer, the proof of His claim as Divine Physician, the truth of His Word as the All-Knowing Counsellor.

Tribute by the Universal House of Justice to Bahá’u'lláh on the Centenary of His Passing, http://info.bahai.org/article-1-3-6-2.html

On May 14, 2008, six of the seven members of the ad-hoc governing body of the Bahá’ís of Iran were arrested and taken to the notorious Evin Prison. Last week marked the one-year anniversary of their arrests (the seventh had been arrested on March 5, 2008). Since then, they have been held without access to their legal counsel, Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi.

They have been charged on the baseless accusations of “espionage for Israel, insulting religious sanctities and propaganda against the Islamic Republic” and, most recently, “spreading corruption on earth.”

They are men and women, mothers and fathers, some of whom have a history of persecution in their families. Among them are: a developmental psychologist, an agricultural engineer, an educator and school principal, a social worker, an optometrist, an industrialist, and a factory owner.

In a letter written on September 9, 2007 to Bahá’í students deprived of access to higher education in Iran, the Universal House of Justice wrote:

Service to others to others is the way. Let it be your watchword, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá being your exemplar. Like Him, you can find practical ways of serving your fellow citizens. Strive to work hand-in-hand, shoulder-to-shoulder, with your fellow citizens in your efforts to promote the common good.

As we keep them in our thoughts and prayers, and as we work, in whatever way we can, to speak out against this injustice, let us remember the poignant words of the Universal House of Justice to the Bahá’ís in Iran, in a letter written on November 26, 2003:

Your long night will end, and you will have the joy of witnessing with your own eyes the might structures your sacrifices have raised.

(For those in the U.S., find out how you can write to your representatives and senators regarding co-sponsoring House Res. 175 and Senate Res. 71: http://iran.bahai.us).

I asked this in my last post, and since then, I couldn’t help but notice a proliferation of angsty articles that asked: If not capitalism, then what?

There was Newsweek (“We are all Socialists now”), the Financial Times (“The Future of Capitalism”), and Time Magazine (“The End of Excess: Is this Crisis Good for America?”).

You may also note that I wrote my article an embarrassingly long time ago.  I could say that it’s because I’ve been busy (which is true), but it also has to do with the fact that I simply couldn’t find an answer to the question I posed.

Well, I still don’t know the answer.  But lucky for you all, I had a few “see the light” moments this week.

So I’ve talked about economics– most of us take as fact that economic activity is the central process of social existence.  And that knowledge– often labeled as “information”– is useful inasmuch as it’s an input for the production of goods and services.  This is reflective of a view of society that is rooted in materialism, one manifestation of which is the belief, held as truth, that economic development lies in economic growth, which is measured by GDP per capita.  Indeed, the idea of “economic development” has largely materialistic assumptions underlying the process: that growth and development is characterized by material well-being.

Material well-being is crucial, of course.  But is it really the end, or a means to an end?  What is the end we’re looking for?  Right now, it seems that economic activity and the creation of wealth is being placed at the center of everything.  But is the creation and distribution of wealth the end to which we should strive?

The Prosperity of Humankind, the 1995 document that I also quoted from in my last post, makes an interesting assertion:

The tasks entailed in the development of a global society call for levels of capacity far beyond anything the human race has so far been able to muster.  Reaching these levels will require an enormous expansion in access to knowledge, on the part of the individuals and social organizations alike.  Universal education will be an indispensable contributor to this process of capacity building, but the effort will succeed only as human affairs are so reorganized as to enable both individuals and groups in every sector of society to acquire knowledge and apply it to the shaping of human affairs.

In other words, rather than the creation and distribution of wealth as the center of development (development as the distribution of material wealth), what’s being posited is development as the endowment of the wealth of knowledge: not only the generation and acquisition of knowledge, but its application.  Given this, knowledge, rather than material wealth, then becomes the “currency” by which one needs to function, the wealth of a person, in a sense.  In this regard, ‘Abdu’l-Baha writes in His treatise to the peoples and rulers of Persia, The Secret of Divine Civilization:

…the happiness and greatness, the rank and station, the pleasure and peace, of an individual have never consisted in his personal wealth, but rather in his excellent character, his high resolve, the breadth of his learning, and his ability to solve difficult problems.

The generation and application of knowledge, then, becomes the center of humanity’s collective existence. What is necessary for this is capacity-building: that all participation of all, that all become the protagonists of their own development.  For example, the present state of the world is such that much of humanity are “users of products of science and technology created elsewhere.” But sometimes, these products of science and technology may, at best, not be applicable to the needs of a community or society, or at its worst, be detrimental to its environment, lead to the loss of livelihoods, of land, and so on.  But if individuals in a community were raised up with the capacity to examine and address challenges in their communities and societies, and apply the knowledge with which they’ve been endowed, then we’d shift away from a top-down model that, in many respects, has become quite problematic.

So what has started as a conversation on capitalism, communism, and a future models of economic has (rather unintentionally) turned into one that flips the way we look at economic activity– asking us, what if it isn’t the be-all, end-all?  If we’re seeking a world in which all have a part to play (as the present state of affairs is not reflective of that, where the materially wealthy holding a seemingly insurmountable advantage over the materially poor), then certainly the paradigm that exists today must undergo a change.

I’m not as confused as I was the night I was sipping borscht in the candlelight, but the fact that I’ve struggled to eke out this post means that we’ve still got a long way to go.  Thoughts are most welcome.

The five of us sat around a candlelit table, and I wrapped my scarf tightly around my neck, warming my hands over the tealights (“The heater never works downstairs!” Justin apologized), grabbing a glimpse of the world of three former Peace Corps volunteers in Ukraine and Nicaragua.

My friend Justin had invited me over that evening, via a message on Facebook: “I’m back in town! I live in a green row house on Capitol Hill! Come have borscht with us on Friday!” (I looked it up on Wikipedia. It was pink, and a soup. I almost backed out.)

So there I was, with an old friend from my carefree days as an intern, who used to wear thick black-rimmed glasses, dressed up as Borat for Halloween before Borat became a household name, and taught me how to play Coldplay on his electric piano. He and his roommate Kelly had just returned from two years of the Peace Corps in Ukraine, while Carly, Justin’s childhood friend, had spent her term in Nicaragua, warding off Dengue fever and attracting the indefatigable attention of locals who called her “La Chinita” (she’s of Korean descent).

As our ideas, experiences, and observations on the world– afar and in our backyard– mingled through the atmosphere that hovered above the tealights and the borscht, that one gray topic arose that has tinted many otherwise cheery Friday evening conversations: the financial crisis.

“I used to teach my students that our economy ran on debt,” Justin declared exasperatedly, of his post as a high school business class teacher in a small eastern Ukrainian town. “That a culture of debt was normal in the U.S. For two years!”

But as he and Kelly revealed more about their years in Ukraine, one thing became certain: The economic culture in that country, too, has its downfalls. Capitalist in name, to be sure, but the scornful looks they received when asking for correct change made them feel like Capitalist Pigs.

In a land where bronze Lenin statues still sprouted in town squares like stale dandelions from bygone seasons, the communism of its past still lingered in the air, it seemed.

With one foot in the realm of capitalism and another still dancing in the communist ways of decades past, its people still bore remnants of habits and norms of a discarded system. And, Ukranian and Russian media propagated exaggerated notions of excessive materialism in the United States, causing some to cling more tightly to their ways. While the capitalist system relied too heavily on “pulling oneself up by the bootstraps,” and American ways admittedly excessively individualistic, the Ukrainian culture’s emphasis on the collective and de-emphasis on personal responsibility wasn’t altogether healthy, they observed.

All of this made me wonder: In a certainly post-communist world, and with many capitalist assumptions crumbling that once held to be true– what might the economics of the future look like?

Now, I don’t profess to know much about economics, nor can I say much about post-Soviet economies. In fact, I know just as much about those two as I did borscht prior to that evening (which, by the way, is quite tasty if taken with a bit of sour cream, and in fact isn’t as pink as Wikipedia made it out to be).

But luckily, I’ve been reading the writings of Baha’u'llah, which has made my brain bubble the way Justin’s borscht did as I suspiciously stared at it stewing in the tin pot. So much so that much of what I want to say cannot fit into a meager blog post. And it’s gotten me thinking about: balance, dichotomous ways of looking at economics, how economic growth is defined, and where justice fits into all of this.

I’ll continue these nascent thoughts in Part II, but in the meanwhile, I’ll leave you with a quotation that asks us to shift our paradigm on economics and development. It’s from a statement prepared by the Baha’i International Community, the NGO representing the worldwide Baha’i community with its offices at the United Nations in New York and Geneva. Called The Prosperity of Humankind, it was first distributed at the U.N. World Summit on Social Development in Copenhagen in 1995. While written over a decade ago, the words are chillingly relevant to the present state of the world. Hopefully, it’ll get your brain bubbling, too:

This unprecedented economic crisis, together with the social breakdown it has helped to engender, reflects a profound error of conception about human nature itself. For the levels of response elicited from human beings by the incentives of the prevailing order are not only inadequate, but seem almost irrelevant in the face of world events. We are being shown that, unless the development of society finds a purpose beyond the mere amelioration of material conditions, it will fail of attaining even these goals. That purpose must be sought in spiritual dimensions of life and motivation that transcend a constantly changing economic landscape and an artificially imposed division of human societies into ‘developed’ and ‘developing’.

– The Prosperity of Humankind

In my quest to understand the nature of feeling inadequate, I derived some inspiration from a talk given a couple of weeks ago at the Regional Conference held for the Southeastern United States in Atlanta, Georgia.  What I learned shifted my perspective considerably:

There can be a wisdom in feeling inadequate.  But it can also potentially be destructive.  From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi, dated 13 October 1947, to an individual Bahá’í, we see why:

Each one of us, if we look into our failures, is sure to feel unworthy and despondent, and this feeling only frustrates our constructive efforts and wastes time. The thing for us to focus on is the glory of the Cause and the Power of Bahá’u'lláh which can make of a mere drop a surging sea!

We should also bear in mind that a few titles attributed to our Creator by Bahá’u'lláh, in some of the many prayers He has revealed, are: “the All-Merciful,” “the Most Compassionate,” and “the Ever-Forgiving.”  If that’s the case, then it follows that all we need to do is to call upon Him for assistance.  It’s a comforting thought: we can’t do it by ourselves!

Feelings of inadequacy and inner turmoil that stem from the demands and distractions of an increasingly busy, overly-committed lives, seem very 21st century.  But it is an emotion that has transcended time and place.  A story of a young man in 19th century Iran exemplifies this.

The young man’s name was Hájí Muhammad-Sádiq Khán, and he embraced the Faith of Bahá’u'lláh after attending gatherings held by his friend, a young poet who would recite his works at these meetings.  One evening, the young poet recited a poem depicting the cruel martyrdom of an early believer named Vahíd.  As the poem progressed, Hájí Muhammad-Sádiq realized with horror that the commander of regiment that killed Vahíd was his own father.  Filled with shame and remorse, he began to withdraw from the Bahá’í community.  Concerned for their friend, the young poet wrote to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, explaining the situation.  ‘Abdu’l-Bahá wrote a Tablet to Hájí Muhammad-Sádiq in response, in which He wrote:

The true morn dawneth from the depths of a darksome night, and the world-illuminating light of day poureth forth from the canopy of a night of gloom. The enchanting flower bloometh on a branch of thorns, and multitudinous plants grow out of the sad, sodden earth. The delightful fruit sprouteth upon a piece of wood…. be not saddened.

He continued:

Pray thou and supplicate at the threshold of the One True God, begging forgiveness for thine earthly father. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá will also, with utmost lowliness, implore at the threshold of God that perchance the musk-laden breeze of His forgiveness may waft over [him] and from the billowing sea of His grace a wave may pass over him and cleanse him of the defilement of sin and transgression. This is not far removed from the ocean of the grace of Bahá, His mercy, and His pardon.

(H.M. Balyuzi, Eminent Baha’is in the Time of Baha’u'llah, p. 27)

What I gathered from these thoughts is this: we can oftentimes be harder on ourselves than our own Creator is.  But this shouldn’t lull us into complacency.  We should act, of course, and reflect upon our actions.  We learn from our successes and shortcomings, and we make changes accordingly. And crucially, there is a spiritual component: study, prayer, and meditation upon the Divine Word, which in this day, is reflected in the Writings of Bahá’u'lláh.  A letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi sums this up succinctly:

Study of the Word, Meditation on its divine import, prayer, and then action are necessary. And then, perseverance in action. If these steps are followed, one will develop spiritually, and be victorious in service to the Cause of God.

My tongue parched, stomach growling; my body as if it had been mowed by a steamroller; I could hardly lift myself up from the living room couch, as Natalya sat across from me, sipping her tea quietly.

(Natalya was staying the night, en route back home to Singapore after an autumn internship in D.C.; my Kiwi friend Kat occupied my bedroom; and Wendy, a scientist by day who moonlights as a cellist, pianist, vocalist, journalist, and HIV/AIDS patient mentor, had already shuffled out the door.)

The inevitable had dawned: I was sick.

The early mornings and late nights didn’t help: getting up early to go to work after an evening of meaningful conversation with my friend in town from New Zealand, lasting until 1:00 a.m., left me invigorated but sleep deprived.

And the commitments: the days at work of course, and evenings and weekends, always doing something.  And while it was fulfilling, I somehow felt like I wasn’t doing enough.  We all feel that anxiety, at some point: about our jobs (that others are getting ahead, or that we’re not satisfied with our work); about friendships or relationships; about a society that is seemingly crumbling around us, and we feel powerless to fix it.  And, when we come in contact with the words of Bahá’u'lláh, we’ve been given the medicine to treat an ailing world — but we may sometimes feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task at hand.  Whether it’s the spiritual education of children, the moral empowerment of young adolescents, or study of and sharing the Creative Word with others, we feel pulled in many directions and struggle to work actively toward the betterment of the world.

Examining my course of action and the outcomes, then, I’d become increasingly frustrated with the fact that things weren’t “clicking” the way I expected them to.  It left me with a nervous knot in my stomach, sleeping little, eating less.  In short, I felt I was falling far short of my goals and expectations.

The stress culminated in my bulldozed, sick state this morning.

Unable to stomach the toast and honey that Kat had prepared for me, and sipping slowly on chamomile tea, I crawled back onto the living room couch, curling underneath the down comforter.

It’s now late evening, and as I chew on a vitamin C tablet, I mull over a letter written by the Universal House of Justice to those gathered at the six Regional Conferences held in the United States, of 41 held worldwide.  One statement in particular stands out:

Undeflected by the turmoil and distractions of the world around you, direct your energies to the task at hand with expanded vision and renewed consecration.

The turmoil and distractions of the world around us are self-evident: rampant materialism; a severe financial crisis; corrupt governance; to name only a few.  These are external distractions that often cause our actions to stray from that which we believe.

But, what about the distractions and turmoil that lie within us: those feelings of inadequacy?  Is there a wisdom behind it, or does it deflect us from accomplishing what we need to?

I derived some inspiration from a talk given last week at the Regional Conference held for the Southeastern United States in Atlanta, Georgia.  Stay tuned for Part II to find out what I learned.