Written at Open Mic SF at 9:34pm.
Spoken at Open Mic SF at 11:07pm.

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Titled: The Reason

This is a poem I just wrote.
It’s basically my heart, my mind and my soul,
trying to figure out,
trying to figure out how it all works.

If we are all just players in a soccer game,
do we get guided by the crowd?
Do we do what they say?
Or do we set our minds on the goal?
The reason for our creation.

If we are all just leaves of one tree,
do we let ourselves get guided by the wind?
Or do we hold strongly to our tree branch?
The reason for our being.

If we are all shells in one ocean,
do we let ourselves get guided by the waves?
Or do we make our way to the shore
and reach out?
The reason for our existence.

But I just wrote this poem,
and it’s basically me, my heart, my mind and my soul,
trying to figure out,
trying to figure it…
out…

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Be honest, do I have a future in poetry writing/saying? :)

Some Bay Area Baha’is and I have been working on this project called Bahai Top 9 (with precursor site bahainine.com). It’s basically going to be a popurls-look-and-feel, newsvine-styled-organization web portal with digg-like-capabilities in order to showcase user-generated content about the Baha’i Faith.

Our first phase in the project consisted of finding either personal blogs written by Baha’is or Baha’i-inspired blogs that are out there today. We also collected photos from flickr and videos from youtube which are tagged bahai (or baha’i). The design and backend of the site has been keeping us very occupied. :)

At this point, bahainine.com has a registration form for your blog and a map of the world with markers for the locations of the Baha’i blogs out there:

Thanks to those of you that have linked to us and encouraged your friends to register. Also, the Official United States Baha’i website has written a nice article about Baha’i Blogs.

For all the faithful “Kevin’s Blog” readers out there, I’ll include a screenshot of the design we are currently working on:

Keep in mind that it’s in a very early stage of development (alpha). Feel free to include your feedback as comments to this post. I will be sure to pass it on to the team.

A recent Lifehacker post linked to a great blog post over at YourCreditAdvisor.com’s Blog.

Here are some excepts from their Top 25 Personal Finance Myths:

I don’t deserve to be rich.
Why not? Intuition suggests that no matter which religion you follow, there are people who are successful and got there by honest means.

As Baha’is, we believe that a spiritual person should be rich. Abdu’l-Baha, the son of Baha’u'llah, the prophet-founder of the Baha’i Faith wrote:

Wealth is praiseworthy in the highest degree, if it is acquired by an individual’s own efforts and the grace of God, in commerce, agriculture, art and industry, and if it be expended for philanthropic purposes.

Another myth:

You have to have X dollars to be wealthy.
Wealthy is what you think it is for you. Don’t try to keep up with the Joneses. Keep things simple.

Which brings to mind one of the Hidden Words:

O SON OF BEING!
Thou art My lamp and My light is in thee. Get thou from it thy radiance and seek none other than Me. For I have created thee rich and have bountifully shed My favor upon thee.

A few more:

Becoming rich is hard work.
It can be easier than you’ve been told. Dr. Marsha Sinetar’s book Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow is one of the best guides for an organic approach to wealth.

Buying on-sale items saves money.
It’s that “use your coupons” myth in another form. What really happens is that the items you buy on sale are items you want, not need. It’s even worse if you drive out of your way to buy it.

Debt is bad.
Managed debt is actually good, and builds up your credit rating. On the other hand, credit card debt tends to be amongst the worst, so eliminate that first.

You need to earn more to save.
Try this. What happens if you suddenly start earning less money in your job? You adjust, right? So save a percentage of what you make and set it aside somewhere.

Lifehacker has computer tips as well as life tips and is an excellent blog to read daily for both the tech-savvy and the technically challenged :).

Back in December, my two sisters and my brother invited a family friend, my sister’s boyfriend and my other sister’s recently-arrived-from-Spain husband to take Ruhi Book 1, Reflections of the Life of the Spirit, with us.

We get together 2 or 3 Sundays a month and go through a series of quotes from the Baha’i Writings that pertain to topics such as virtues, unity and backbiting, as well as prayer and life and death. Each of the quotes has a series of questions to answer as a group and these usually lead to discussion. These discussions can become very intruiging and are always very friendly. I had never really spent an extended amount of time talking to my siblings about these issues and it has been a really wonderful experience to do so now.

About a week and a half ago we started the Study Circle with a potluck (cabuda) Salvadorean-style brunch. It was sooooo good. I felt right at home (meaning El Salvador, not my other homes Pasadena or Burlingame). Click on the Flickr photo to the right to see all the different foods we had labeled with notes. We had beans, fried plantains, sour cream, fresh cheese, bread, avocado, but I did forget the hot chocolate at home. :(

I’ll keep this photoset updated with future photos from our study circle.

Meet my mom. Her name is Gloria. She is home-front pioneering in a small town called San Juan Tepezontes in El Salvador. This is her with some of the kids from her children’s class and a goat:

Photo by Karen Rosel.

Home-front pioneering might not mean much to you so let me explain. First, pioneering was best explained by my dad in one of his autobiographical episodic accounts:

It is similar to what some other organizations do in that its followers are encouraged, but not required, to travel to other lands to spread the Word. Unlike many who do this from other faiths, a Bahá’í is not a missionary who is sponsored or supported financially by a home base. This means a Bahá’í “pioneer” must find a job in his or her new home, become an integral part of his or her new culture, hopefully speaking the language, etc.

Now, home-front means that she traveled to a different land within her same home country. Even though she was born and raised in a very small town called Dulce Nombre de Maria (Sweet Name of Mary), my family lived in the capital city, San Salvador since I was born in ‘83. Thus, she essentially pioneered from the capital to a very rural town about one and a half hours away. She lives there in a Baha’i-owned, little house. These are some of the things she does on a day to day basis:

• Teaches classes of moral education for children.
• Animates groups of junior youth (ages 12 to 14) to learn about spiritual topics and to do service in the community.
• Facilitates the study of courses from the Ruhi Institute with youth and adults.
• Organizes devotional gatherings for the whole San Juan Tepezontes community.

She loves being there (as you can tell) and I am very happy for her.