Archive for March, 2008

Nine views, one sun “Taken at Pune, India; Parvati hill range. These all were in a 15 min event. Just after the last one, the camera batteries conked off.” Uploaded on October 9, 2006 by Aditya Bhelke on flickr, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic

My favorite blog snippet (and pun) of the day. -gw

I visited the Baha’i community of Belguam using that Ottawa family’s good name and it eventually became a second home and a place to charge my Bahá’ítteries.

http://samuelbenoit.wordpress.com/2008/03/26/belguam-photos-posted/

I love Samuel’s stories and pictures from India. -gw

Blogging is fun and good exercise. -gw

Reading Steve Marshall’s “No Assembly Required” on his blog Cormorant Baker this evening after having participated in our Intensive Program of Growth here in Tacoma for the past nine days, constitutes a rather odd juxtaposition of experiences for me. I have viewed Steve Marshall as a long-time nay-sayer, whose intent has been to denigrate what the International Baha’i Community has been endeavoring to do. Here I am, reading Steve Marshall, having just had this really great Baha’i experience to promote the growth of the very same International Baha’i Community that he opposes.

Steve is best known for his primary website, Baha’is Online, which re-posts material that deals with Baha’i subjects from other sites, as does Baha’i Views. There are some big differences between my site and his, however. His mix includes marginal and apostate material which I don’t include. His sidebar claims almost a million and a third visitors, whereas my blog has drawn only about 54,000 in the year since I’ve had a visit counter, so big difference there.

David and Goliath come to mind, but this David is feeling sorry for the giant. Reading “No Assembly Required” I am struck by the fact that Steve is regularly posting about the Baha’i community, but, if I read him right, he has no opportunities to actually experience Baha’i community life.

This is the man who has come to my site on several occasions to say, “I am a Baha’i in good standing,” yet who, despite this “good” standing, has cut himself off from contact with a physical Baha’i community. According to his post, he stopped going to feasts, and has avoided social and devotional activities. How long has he been cut off? Eight years, he says.

No wonder his observations sound odd and outdated, in this post especially. Steve writes, “Arguably, mainstream Baha’is are becoming less adminocentric,” using a word apparently in use only among his circle of online friends. From my lived experience Baha’i administrative bodies perform at a higher level now than ever before, and Baha’is are more focused on their decisions. The Baha’i community is certainly more organized. There is no question that the collaboration between the institutions of the Rulers and the Learned has never been more successful. The degree of organization evident in the teaching campaign just completed today was extraordinary and clearly reflected that close collaboration.

Baha’is speak lovingly about the Baha’i administration brought into being by Shoghi Effendi. It is a topic we cover as part of Anna’s presentation, along with such basic subjects as the Covenant. For Steve and the others who together form an online oppositional coalition, Baha’i institutions and administration are bad, yet Baha’is love their institutions and administration and know that they are in place to facilitate the unification of the world.

“The Baha’i Faith is a world religion whose purpose is to unite all the races and people in one universal Cause and one common Faith.” That is how Anna’s presentation begins. Steve extols the virtues of so-called “unaffiliated Baha’is on the Internet” who “may pray, fast, carry on a trade or profession, do charitable work, look after their family, consort with the followers of all religions, and so on.” An Internet community is no substitute for a physical community, and the fact that “unaffiliated Baha’is on the Internet” do the things he lists outside of the very community that represents “one universal Cause and one common Faith” means they are … missing out. To unify the world, the Baha’i community itself must be united. There is no plausible Baha’i identity outside of membership in the Baha’i community and participation in Baha’i community life.

Steve writes accurately, “I’m guessing” and “I wouldn’t really know.” He comes to conclusions about so-called “mainstream” Baha’is and the communities they live in, yet he hasn’t had the experience of Baha’i community life in eight years to reflect upon, so all he knows is what he reads and what he imagines.

Over the past eight years Steve has nurtured an expectation that the International Baha’i Community would sputter and splinter, or come apart at the seams. That hasn’t happened. As Baha’i sister Bon used to say, “We’re here, we’re dear. Get used to it.”

Teaching is taking over in Baha’i culture. -gw

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The other day, I was doing my best to Spread the Word of God! I was fortunate enough to talk to someone that had already been touched by the power of love, energy and devotion.

Any way, so i was talking to this young lady about my Faith! She seemed interested so I just kept going with it. Then suddenly she stopped me and said ” You, your Friend, you JUST LIGHT UP, when you are talking about your Faith…I don’t know what it is…but it is something else..”

I had never realised that me or my friend or for that matter anyone of us in this world had such a potential to influence or touch anothers life. This is when i, myself, got moved at the thought of thinking, that through my words and actions i had the potential to help the world and in the process improve myself. I was touched that night into a state of Humility and Gratitude!Just something small i wanted to share with you all!

I have been so blessed to have met the people i have met in my lifetime and am excited at the prospect of tomorrow and the next day and the next and so on and so on, until my very last breath, I want to share the message of Baha with you all, with the world. It makes me happy and I feel it will also make you happy! I wish you a happy life!

http://lovenenjoylife.blogspot.com/2008/03/lightin-up.html

In eight days of door-to-door teaching on 45 blocks in the heart of Tacoma we have had three declarations and about 50 individuals identified for follow-up, out of which we expect about 20 to nurture in the months ahead. Today we complete our 11th Intensive Program of Growth.

Below are pictures taken on Friday in the Joseph home, our home base during the weekdays of the campaign. The teaching taking place during the IPG was not just on the streets, but in the Joseph home, too.

Here is Kit, on-fire with the Faith but not yet a declared Baha’i, doing Ruhi Book 1 with our Board Member Shawn and Baha’i youth Jason.

Here is Betty with child in her lap learning of the Faith from Chris who is doing Anna’s Presentation with her, and Sandy who is silently praying.

Grandma Shannon is holding Betty’s newborn while Betty takes in the presentation.

Fourteen year-old Baha’i youth Kierra is playing with Dylan, Betty’s oldest.

Here I am with Aloma, Shannon’s youngest.

Shadi is all smiles here, as is Kierra. -gw

“Panama,” Uploaded on March 24, 2006 by ChuckHolton on flickr, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

Michael of

Michael Frank photography fame brought to my attention a series of posts with mentions of the Baha’i Faith on a blog called true life planet, one woman’s journey traveling/volunteering around the world. The blogger travels to Panama to live with the Ngobe people. Michael writes: “I had to chuckle over the evangelical Baha’is comment! I don’t think she has met any in person yet, kind of lumping folks together…..” - gw

… Church here is really big-generally the first question many people asked me here is if I believed in God. Atheism is not a concept understood here-so even people who visit who don´t believe in anything in particular, tell people they are Christian. There are many different churches: The Manatata, which is the traditional church of the Ngobe, and has a woman phophet; The Catholic church; The Bahai church; the Jehovahs Witnesses; and countless Born Again sects. …

… In a community where everyone lives 10 to 20 feet from one another, and much of life takes place outside(since the homes are so tiny), it is rare not to hear all the goings on of your neighbors-and, at all times of the day and the night. You hear everything from the radio blasting the local Bahai´evangelical music (the Bahai´own the only radio station here), to domestic violence to a pig getting butchered. …

… He told me that they had three kinds of markers they used as headstones-one, a Christian cross(this being the most popular, as most people said they were Evangelical); a piece of wood cut into a star, for those people who were of the Bahai faith…; and for people who either believed in nothing or nothing was known about them, a tree was planted. …

http://blogs.bootsnall.com/gigirtw/?s=Bahai

The Baha’i Vietnam Community held its first congress in Ho Chi Minh City on March 21 to mark the Government’s recognition of the religion’s legal status.

http://english.vietnamnet.vn/social/2008/03/774707/

Vietnam recognized the Baha’i Faith a year ago, an anniversary just commemorated. A reader emailed me to note the following. -gw

“There are not that many places where the Baha’i Faith is not recognized anymore. Of the remaining places that would make real news, I think the first will be Iran. Don’t laugh! I think at the very least there will be a de facto recognition, if not de jure. It has been moving in that direction the last couple of years, in spite of the GOIRI’s hardest attempts to crush the Baha’i Faith. The messages of the Universal House of Justice to the Baha’i students in Iran and to the Baha’is of Iran make me think that it will be Iran…”

{Photo: “‘Memory of Imam’ highway,” uploaded on January 5, 2008 by nima s+ on flickr, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic}

http://static.ning.com/soultalk/widgets/index/swf/badge.swf?v=3.0.1%3A3917“ quality=”high” scale=”noscale” salign=”lt” wmode=”transparent” bgcolor=”#ffffff” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer” width=”100%” height=”242″ allowScriptAccess=”always” flashvars=”networkUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fsoultalk.ning.com%2F&panel=network_large&configXmlUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.ning.com%2Fsoultalk%2Finstances%2Fmain%2Fembeddable%2Fbadge-config.xml%3Ft%3D1206516245″ /> http://soultalk.ning.com/%22%3EVisit Soul Talk

Get it?! -gw

Exploring Concepts of Spiritual Import

Though we can never impose our opinions upon others it is incumbent upon us to engage in conversations on topics of spiritual import in an atmosphere of love and humility if we are to progress as one united race.

your soul talk box
We should strive for “…an etiquette of communication worthy of the coming maturity of humankind…” -The Universal House of Justice

http://soultalk.ning.com/
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To get your very own Soul Talk widget, go to http://soultalk.ning.com/main/embeddable/list. -gw

After months of patiently pounding away at their keyboards and staring at their screens, the legions of Baha’i Views staffers operating in the dimly lit backrooms of Central Headquarters have finally gotten behind the curtain. With this post the results of their collective efforts can now be shared. The Baha’i Internet Braintrust has been uncovered.

And you know, all this time we thought they were operating in secret, and what have we discovered? The Baha’i Internet Braintrust has a blog, for gosh sakes, for all the world to read. -gw

What we’d ideally like to have from a web presence. In our wildest dreams. IF we could do it all -
• Give Baha’i Youth an identity
• A kickass introduction to the Baha’i Faith (videocollage)
• Spark a spiritual conversation / engage in a newdialogue about God
• Spark a spiritual revolution, a youth movement
• Bring the focus to the core activities.
• Make the core activities cool
• Give Baha’i Youth a community, an identity to beproud of
• Use Baha’i arts celebrities to inspire
• Focus on creativity and arts as relates to spirituality
• Become an epicenter of Baha’i arts and spirituality
• Facilitate action and service
• Make spirituality cool

http://bahaibraintrust.blogspot.com/

{”The man behind the curtain,” uploaded on November 6, 2007 by drurydrama on flickr, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic}