We then proceeded to study the quotation from Lesson 3 of Walking the Straight Path, which we had read the previous week: “Say: Nature in its essence is the embodiment of My Name, the Maker, the Creator.” We gave examples of nature, embodiment and God’s Name. We tried to identify the attributes of Nature and then relate those to God, but it was challenging. They often focused on negative qualities such as natural disasters or on physical qualities, such as the bigness of the Grand Canyon. We then did a round of memorization during which some of them were able to memorize the whole quotation and the rest memorized most of it.

We then proceeded to do an art project that first involved taking nice photographs of nature. We divided into 2 teams and set out to walk around the front and back yards and the neighboring homes to take nice looking pictures that represented nature using a Canon camera and an iPhone. We came back after about 10 minutes of taking pictures and looked through all of them on the TV screen to pick which ones would be used for a video collage about Nature, the embodiment of His Name:

Then we went to Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center with 9 junior youth, 3 animators, 2 additional young adult friends, 3 dogs, a soccer ball, a beach ball, and 2 frisbees. Soon after we got there, we organized a soccer game with 5 players on each team. After about 30 minutes of game play, the score was tied 3-3 and it was time to go home. The conversation on the way home was about trying to meet on Sunday for the second social night. Everyone parted ways at about 5:30pm after a really joyful junior youth group session.

He talked about:

• The need for each neighborhood to have a team of friends living there and a group of visitors who come on a regular basis.
• The importance of working with junior youth in a neighborhood first then building down to children, so that you don’t lose the junior youth once they become youth. Junior youth in three years can become human resources in their communities with an immense capacity to serve.
• The need for all activities to be coherently introduced in the neighborhood in order to develop a pattern of life.
• The importance of knowing how to really train people using Book 1: it is a conversation with a group of people not a workbook.
• How community meetings open to all neighborhood contacts at the level of the neighborhood are providing a venue for reflection among the participants of process.
• The importance of sacrifice, dedication and a commitment to work in a neighborhood for a number of years in order to really be able to transform the community and see results.
• Neighborhoods that don’t have transient resident are preferred: how else can you implement a program that last’s 3 years?
• The Institute Process is 1 process that allows a whole population, from its smallest babe to the oldest adult to move towards a civilization that is fundamentally spiritual.
• How do we plan to build something new if we spend our energies in studying and working in institutions from the disintegrating world?

At the end of the Thursday gathering, he also shared this excerpt from talk from Universal House of Justice member, Dr. Farzam Arbab, which I find to be incredibly true.

There is such a thing as “the good life,” built around the concept of comfort. Any lifestyle chosen by a Bahá’í, of course, will only include behavior that is in accordance with the teachings. But even so, when comfort is the motivating force, one’s lifestyle begins to show great deficiencies that lead to stagnation. When life is not purposeful enough, when it is too centered on the idea of fun and entertainment, when it places too much value on enjoyment, it becomes unproductive. An intensive growth program in an area is not possible if those who take part in it are not engaged intensely in service. We are all familiar with these words of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá:

….look at me, follow me, be as I am; take no thought for yourselves or your lives, whether ye eat or whether ye sleep, whether ye are comfortable, whether ye are well or ill, whether ye are with friends or foes, whether ye receive praise or blame; for all of these things ye must care not at all. Look at me and be as I am; ye must die to yourselves and to the world, so shall ye be born again and enter the kingdom of heaven. Behold the candle, how it gives light. It weeps its life away drop by drop in order to give forth its flame of light.

And in the Tablets of the Divine Plan, He calls upon us:

….rest ye not, seek ye no composure, attach not yourselves to the luxuries of this ephemeral world, free yourselves from every attachment, and strive with heart and soul to become fully established in the Kingdom of God. Gain ye the heavenly treasures. Day by day become ye more illumined. Draw ye nearer and nearer unto the threshold of oneness….

How do we do this? How do we change ourselves and our communties? How do we build something that’s new? How do we increase our capacity? How do we walk with others? There are many questions. The only way to find the answers is initiate a process of learning that generates knowledge. This every person, every neighborhood, every community and every cluster has to go through individually. There are no shortcuts to this knowledge.

Five Year Plan Teaching Resources has just undergone a major visual upgrade. The old directory listing was useful because it was easy. The content listing was displayed on one page. It showed enough useful information. It allowed a contributor to upload. As more content got added, there soon arose a need to categorize this content better.

Thus, version 2 of pxl9.com/teaching was needed. Currently:

• Only Main Content is displayed. User-generated content will be reuploaded and new contributions allowed when the upload is fixed.
• Tags are displayed on every item and a Tag Cloud collects all of the tags at the top. Click on tags to see all the items that also have that tag.
• The file links no longer go directly to the file. The go through a download service that allows me to track the number of downloads –> will be displayed soon.
• It has an admin interface that allows the admin to add tags, rename the file, add a description, delete the file, etc. If you’d like to help, please let me know.

The public side will get updated very soon to incorporate some of what the admin side already has.

If you have any feedback, please let me know as this site is for all of you.

Recently, the Baha’i International Community has sent a letter to Iran’s Prosecutor General, which starts out:

Ayatollah Qorban-Ali Dorri-Najafabadi
Prosecutor General
Islamic Republic of Iran

Your Honor,

Your recent announcement regarding the administrative affairs of the Bahá’ís of Iran has brought to the arena of public debate issues which not only affect the safety and livelihood of the members of that community but also have profound implications for the future of every citizen of that esteemed nation. The steps that have been taken to formulate the response of the Iranian Bahá’í community to your announcement have surely been communicated to you. The Yaran and the Khademin, the small groups that have been attending to the spiritual and social needs of the several hundred thousand Bahá’ís of Iran, the former at the national level and the latter at the local, have expressed their willingness to bring to a close their collective functioning. This decision has been made for no other reason than to demonstrate yet again the goodwill that the Bahá’ís have consistently shown to the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran for the past thirty years.

The Universal House of Justice has assured us that the disruption in the functioning of these groups need not be seen as a cause for concern. There is no doubt in the minds of millions of Bahá’ís residing in virtually every country around the world—nor in the minds of many others who are watching these events with impartiality and who are aware of the historical development of the Faith—that the Bahá’ís in Iran will find ways of managing the spiritual life of their community, as they have done for generations over the past one hundred and sixty-five years of persecution. However, given the gravity of the accusations leveled against the Yaran and the Khademin, we feel obliged, as the representatives at the United Nations of one hundred and seventy-nine National Spiritual Assemblies encircling the globe, to bring certain fundamental points to your attention in an open letter and request that you examine them with the sense of fairness they deserve…

The full text of the letter can be found here: http://iran.bahai.us/2009/03/06/bahai-international-community-sends-letter-to-irans-prosecutor-general/

Another one, from the Wall Street Journal is a brief, but very accurate and current, exploration of the Faith, which contains some of the history of the persecution of the Baha’is, mainly in Iran. The author resides in Haifa, Israel, where the spiritual and administrative centers of the Baha’i Faith are found: the spiritual center because the physical remains of the Bab and Baha’u'llah are kept in Shrines in these properties and the administrative center because the Seat (meeting place) of the Universal House of Justice

Both are very good reads. At this point, I will pause and give you some time to go read them.

…

Reading the collection of blogs found on my favorite RSS reader today, I came accross a cool use of Google Insights for Search (it was new to me, mainly because I didn’t look into it much when it came out). TechCrunch was highlighting the use of this tool to track several Web 2.0 sites/concepts. The maps looked cool so I decided to try a few of my own. Let’s see what insights Google has for the search term: bahai

and

Top Ten Countries (by Search Volume Index)
Iran, Jamaica, Israel, Canada, Kenya, Australia, Bolivia, Panama, New Zealand, Norway

leads me to a few observations:

• Iran and Israel for sure (for reasons mentioned above and more)
• Kenya is a nice surprise (there are clusters in Kenya that are 4% Baha’i by population)
• Australia and Panama both have temples
• Jamaica, Canada, Bolivia, New Zealand, Norway cool!
• Two of the top three countries with largest Baha’i population: US and India didn’t make it, probably due to the normalization. Volume is probably up there, though.

Top Ten Cities (by Search Volume Index)
Vancouver, Chicago, Toronto, Sydney, Seattle, Washington, Melbourne, Los Angeles, Atlanta, San Francisco

San Francisco is #10!! Hmm… If you are from San Francisco and you searched because you are investigating, give me a call, or write at least a comment. We’ll meet up with you! :)

All these cities: it makes a lot of sense. They all are part of A clusters, which means many many prayers and energies are being dispensed to allow the message of Baha’u'llah to reach more and more people.

Thanks for revealing this Google!

One of the pictures stood out to me because I had never seen it before. It is a picture from “Le Petit Journal” (a small magazine?) presumably from France showing ‘Abdul’l-Baha giving a talk around a crowd of people in Constantinople (now Istanbul), Turkey.

The image came from the Mary Evans Picture Library which seems to be a collection of pictures/photos/images from one or two centuries ago.

The title may imply that ‘Abdu’l-Baha is a new prophet of Islam or that ‘Abdu’l-Baha is talking about a new prophet of Islam, Baha’u'llah. The perception at the time in many places around the world and even currently in many textbooks, news articles, essays, etc. is that the Baha’i Faith is a sect of Islam and that Baha’u'llah and maybe even ‘Abdu’l-Baha are prophets of Islam. Though it is correct that Baha’u'llah was raised in the Islam tradition, it is very clear that he came to establish a new and independent world faith. This says it best:

The Bahá’í Faith is a world religion whose purpose is to unite all the races and peoples in one universal Cause and one common Faith. Bahá’ís are the followers of Bahá’u’lláh, Who they believe is the Promised One of all Ages. As you know, the traditions of almost every people include the promise of a future when peace and harmony will be established on earth and humankind will live in prosperity. We believe that the promised hour has come and that Bahá’u’lláh is the great Personage Whose Teachings will enable humanity to build a new world. In one of His Writings, Bahá’u’lláh says:

“That which the Lord hath ordained as the sovereign remedy and mightiest instrument for the healing of all the world is the union of all its peoples in one universal Cause, one common Faith.”

After the passing of Baha’u'llah, ‘Abdu’l-Baha continued to spread the faith his father revealed to humanity throughout the world. In 1911, he went to Paris, France where he gave a series of talks, many of which were recorded and compiled in this book, Paris Talks:

In 1912, he came to the United States where he continued to give talks and to meet with the Baha’i Community that had recently started to grow here.

P.S. I’m back, hopefully to be more constant. BahaiNine has been keeping me busy, be sure to check it out.

The EARTH is one country and mankind its citizens.

Can your EAR HEAR this?

Can your HEART feel it?

Can you BEAR to understand it?

Are we BEARINGS in the axles of one wheel?

Are we RINGS on one hand?

Do we BRING joy to the hearts of the SOBBING, the SORROWFUL?

I am SORE from the walking…

I’m SORRY, I wish I could do more.

I WORRY everyday for the WORLD.

It looked better than it reads, and it didn’t look that good anyway. I’ll continue working on it.

That’s number 3. Peace.

Anyway, I was reading this About.com interview with Paul Van Dyk, number 1 DJ in the world for 2006 according to DJ Magazine and number 2 at the DJList.com, about his latest album “In Between” which is scheduled to come out on August 14th. He said this about title:

The music came together over a period of two or three years. There have been all these changes – the whole globalization thing, the climate change, and just as much me growing up. This is why it’s called In Between – as in between phases. Every single track has its own little story, and since I traveled all around the world through the timeframe of producing the music, the influences are from all over the world.

I’ve always been a fan of the smooth-sounding beats and incredibly-flowing transitions of trance. This album, I’m sure, will be just as good. Trance music, as expressed by this artist, now reflects some of the changes that this world is going through, that this world is in between phases… It’s so true.

History thus far, with the greed of man at its forefront, has led us to an organization of humans where billions are in poverty and a few thousand have the vast majority of the wealth. At the same time, we’ve seen in the last 50 years huge technological advances. How do we better the world with all this knowledge?

Baha’u'llah has said:

The world is in great turmoil, and the minds of its people are in a state of utter confusion. We entreat the Almighty that He may graciously illuminate them with the glory of His Justice, and enable them to discover that which will be profitable unto them at all times and under all conditions.

Shoghi Effendi, the great grandson of Baha’u'llah, said:

Beset on every side by the cumulative evidences of disintegration, of turmoil and of bankruptcy, serious-minded men and women, in almost every walk of life, are beginning to doubt whether society, as it is now organized, can, through its unaided efforts, extricate itself from the slough into which it is steadily sinking. Every system, short of the unification of the human race, has been tried, repeatedly tried, and been found wanting.

He also said elsewhere:

This will indeed be the fitting climax of that process of integration which, starting with the family, the smallest unit in the scale of human organization, must, after having called successively into being the tribe, the city-state, and the nation, continue to operate until it culminates in the unification of the whole world, the final object and the crowning glory of human evolution on this planet.

Disintegration to integration… Good thing we are optimists. :) For more discussion, join us this Sunday at my place at 7pm.

As for me, well I like this:

And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

“And what of Marriage, master?”

You were born together, and together you shall be for evermore.
…
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
…
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
…
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

Related to work:

Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with your distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy…

As my “hermanote” George would say, “What a genius.” :)

To be continued… (when I finish reading)

* *** *

Titled: Hidden

Another morning I am blessed to awake.

Day will be filled with sunlight and warmth and

I must ARISE and make the most of it.

Will I go out of my “cave” and experience life? or

Tell everyone that I did but stay behind instead.

My mind tells me “truthfulness is the foundation of all human virtues” but a

Secret is ok… is just for me… is my treasure… yet

To live without experiences is like having a blank sheet:

The hand can write, the pen has ink, the surface is sturdy, the

World is ready, ready for me to go out and… touch it.

* *** *

Hint: Read vertically too. :)

UPDATE: btw I’m straight. :)