Becoming Champions of Justice
leila April 6th, 2010
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)
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Person A walks around this maze with his eyes wide open. He sees the fire and knows to steer away from it. He sees the pot hole and knows to walk around it. He smells the roses but spots the thorns and knows not to lean in too closely. But the maze is also lined with gentle streams and giant waterfalls. Beautiful gardens and delectable delicacies. With all of his senses fully awakened, he partakes of its benefits as he makes his way through its many corridors. Making his way through it isn’t easy. Some bends are harder to come out of. Some elements are harder to easily identify as “splendor” or “horror. Yet, with eyes wide open, he is usually able to steer carefully away from the dangerous elements so often comingling with the beneficent ones.
Person B person walks around the maze with a giant blindfold over her eyes. Encouraged by the warmth she approaches the source; the flames spread too quickly for her to turn around unscathed. She didn’t realize it was fire. She manages to run away, skin raw and throbbing, only to fall directly into the pot hole. She breaks a leg but still manages to climb out. Her olfactory draws her near to the beautiful aroma emanating from the roses; she follows the scent, and before she knows it, her face is covered in thorns. In the meanwhile, the gentle streams and thornless flowers are all lost on her. She hears the roaring of the waterfall but is much too scared to approach it. She spends all her days wandering aimlessly through the maze, completely oblivious to all the beauty it has to offer, accruing little more than scars.
