Archive for July, 2009

More and more classes do their assignments via public blogs. Love it!  This student is in a master’s program in education. -gw

Diversity in Education - July 27: My assumptions and pre-concieved notions about people of the Baha’i faith

We have a ‘Cultural Encounter’ project in which we have to have an encounter with a cultural group that we have little to no experience with, and attempt to learn more about said cultural group. My group is doing the Baha’i faith. There is a Baha’i faith center right across the street from campus, and when I lived on 15th several years ago I walked past it most days. It’s small home, converted into a center with a fence around it and a welcome sign. It always seemed like a place I could feel comfortable walking into, but they also seemed a bit secluded. They never appealed to me personally because I imagined that they would be a religion (like many religions) that opposed drinking, pre marital sex, and other pastimes that undergrads often enjoy.

Due to the style of their signage and the few things I’d read or seen around, I assumed they were an Eastern religion, or perhaps Middle Eastern. I associated them with Sihks, another Eastern religion that I knew/know very little about.

My impression was always peaceful, mild mannered, and understated.

A new blog under construction, dear to my heart already. Thanks to the blogger whose initiative this is. -gw

I created this site for two reasons:

1. To create a centralized space on the internet where one could easily get an overview of the important and central role that Black Americans have historically played in the development of the American Bahá’í community.

2. To demonstrate the dedication to race unity that marks every era of the Faith’s growth in this country, both from the efforts of individual white and Black believers, as well as from the counsels of our higher institutions.

http://visionofraceunity.wordpress.com/

Nothing captures the flavor of an experience like video. Even a short clip. Even a shaky camera. Even lousy audio. Since I don’t know the first thing about editing video, here you have it raw and unexpurgated, the view from the Baha’i booth at Ethnic Fest, 2009, Tacoma WA. -gw

The Ottawa Citizen addresses the subject “What do you think of recent claims that the brain has a ‘God spot’?” Jack McLean, Baha’i scholar, teacher, essayist and poet, is one of several respondents. -gw

• We should not be surprised that spiritual consciousness involves stimulation of neural “spots.” All forms of consciousness and emotion, whether sublime or mundane, positive or negative, involve changes in brain chemistry.
• What is cause and what is effect are not clear; the two are linked.
• No experiment can produce faith in God, which depends on the activation of both the will and reason, and just as importantly, behaviour. If religious consciousness can result merely from brain stimulation, then one can jettison religion entirely and merely hook up the electronic headset!
• If there is a God spot, is there also an atheist spot, a good deeds spot or a crime spot?

The main God spot is the human heart. As Bahá’u’lláh reveals: “The heart is the throne in which the Revelation of God the All-Merciful is centred … It is the waywardness of the heart that removeth it far from God… Those hearts, however, that are aware of His Presence, are close to Him, and are to be regarded as having drawn nigh unto His throne.”(Gleanings, p. 186)

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/What+think+recent+claims+that+brain+spot/1756568/story.html

Photo: The Big Heart of Art – 1000 Visual Mashups
A celebration of the 1000th image being added to the Visual Mashups pool.
This image is a processed blend of some of the most “interesting” red hearts on flickr, then converted to a mosaic using almost every single one of the first 1000 images added to the Visual Mashups pool.
PLEASE VIEW LARGE, TOO!
To see the blended “interesting” hearts that this was based on, see here:
Windows Into the Heart
It’s been altered a bit, but you can still see the basic source!)
Also, see an entirely new version here:
Favoring the Heart
Finally, the Visual Mashups group is now 2 months old and has 200 members. You can see a new digital mosaic, containing 2000 works of art, in “Two of Arts” here:
Two of Arts – 2000 Visual Mashups!
Congratulations to the Visual Mashups group!

Uploaded by qthomasbower on 24 Apr 09, 10.12AM PDT.

India XLII The Lotus Temple in Dehli, India A house of worship built by followers of the Baha’i faith www.bahaindia.org/temple/ Uploaded by veee man on 20 Mar 07, 3.36AM PDT.

The Baha’i Houses of Worship around the world are silent teachers. -gw

Saturday, we had a much more peaceful spiritual experience, sitting in the mandatory silence of Delhi’s Lotus Temple – the Baha’i temple shaped like a giant, unfolding lotus flower. It’s made of white marble and is full of light, shining in through the many windows and streaming down through the petal openings above. It is a very impressive, comforting structure, much like the Baha’i faith itself. It’s a very accepting religion, believing in the unity of all religions and the unity of humankind. It welcomes and invites people of all faiths, it declares equality between men and women, and interestingly, it stresses the need for accordance between religion and science – because without science, religion is just superstition, and without religion, science is immoral and materialistic. I like that. Bahai’s are also very involved in development projects around the world. They consider development work an act of worship in itself. I really like that.

http://ashelsewhere.blogspot.com/2009/07/fac-finding-soul-cleansing-and-elbow.html

One of the special treats for me this year being at Ethnic Fest was being able to meet The Big Funny,  Travis Simmons, who is known as funny4food on YouTube. He was interviewing people for his video projects. It was only fair that I turn my camera at him. These are the clips. -gw

  . . . . . .

Another Ethnic Fest is over for the year. Was this the best one yet for the Baha’i booth? I think so. The friends are so confident in their teaching and knowledgeable as to what it takes for effective follow-up. There were dozens of connections made with visitors to the booth.

There was one immediate registration. One fellow, 29 years-old, stopped by the booth and picked up literature. On his bus ride home he read the material and was so struck by its content that he got on his cell phone and called one of the local numbers. Dawn, amember of the Area Teaching Committe, received his call. She immediately tried to line up someone to connect with this soul immediately. She was not able to reach the friends back at the booth, because they had their cell phones off, so she called Sandy, another member of the ATC, whose husband Mauricio, a member of the Auxiliary Board, was just getting back from a teaching effort in Port Angeles.

Without hesitation Mauricio called the dear soul and made an appointment to pick him at his apartment to go over to a local park to talk. Mauricio used “Anna’s conversation” to present the Faith systematically. After an hour-and-a-half and as dusk was descending they got back in the car, the seeker having embraced the Faith of Baha’u'llah.  At each stoplight the man would complete another line of his registration card.

We have a new Baha’i in Cluster 19. He is committed to begin a Ruhi 1 study circle. Other friends will be visiting him immediately to extend their welcome. -gw

 Making unity bracelets out of multicolored beads representing human diversity is a popular children’s activity at the booth each year.

He made a unity bracelet.

 And he made a unity bracelet, too.

 Filling out interest cards.

  All smiles. Radiant soul.   Elvis does balloon duty.  A Moldovan-American family that visited the Baha’i booth.

All Photos: Uploaded on July 26, 2009 by Baha’i Views / Flitzy Phoebie on flickr. Licensed under Creative Commons.

This weekend I am manning the Baha’i booth at Ethnic Fest in Tacoma along with a troop of the friends. Central to our booth is a banner outlining progressive revelation which conveys visually the evolution the of religion. “The essence of all the Prophets of God is one and the same.” Here is a short video up on Flickr that shows the banner.

In the middle of a YouTube video that is clearly partisan and political is a phrase “progressive revolution” which is reminiscent of the phrase used by Baha’is, clearly not political, “progressive revelation.” Thanks, Robert, for finding this and sharing. -gw

George,

FYI: Here’s a link to a song on Youtube re. the United4Iran Global demonstrations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD_ZqCsL7O4&feature=related

I found the lyric at 3:14 “progressive revolution” interesting.

Within political circles, this concept is common in nations that have progressed politically and been part of the world of positive change.

Within the larger global religious world, this concept would translate as “progressive revelation”, as Baha’is understand it.

Robert

Liam and I went walking last night, it being Wednesday night, when his mother gets together with Deb for Ruhi Book 4 study. It’s boy’s night out for him and me. We had a great time.

Tacoma has some great places of worship. While I would love to have a  Mashriqu’l-Adhkar, a Baha’i House of Worship as is portrayed here on enochvision.com, right here in Tacoma, the friends are going to have to wait a bit on that. In the meantime certain local edifices will have to suffice.

Liam and I encountered a church along our walking route yesterday. -gw

The Karlberg’s home in Whatcom County WA has been the site for many a gathering of Baha’i youth. My son Rahmat speaks with great reverence of the memories of being in the home on numerous occasions. Michael Karlberg spoke at Windsong 2009, the annual youth get-together in the Columbia Gorge.

Tomy mind Michael is most notable for the book he has authored, Beyond the Culture of Contest, which describes as aspect of Baha’i belief that is fundamental. Humanity must move beyond adversarial relationships. There can be no winners and losers, because we are one humanity, inextricably interdependent.  

Michael spoke at the Bellevue Baha’i Center recently in support of the Baha’is imprisioned in Iran currently, as noted here.

Michael has a new blog, as Sholeh pointed out to me in her heads-up email to me yesterday. I will be reading it with great interest.

about the blog

Agency - conscious action; free will; the exercise of human capacity.  Change – to pass from one condition to another; to develop;  to transform; to adapt; to evolve.

This blog is premised on the assumption that the prevailing global order is socially and ecologically unsustainable.  Humanity can no longer afford to live in a state of denial.  It is time to recognize our unity and interdependence and translate this recognition into a new social reality in which the self-interested pursuit of power and advantage gives way to mutualistic cooperation. The question is not if, but when, we make this transition. The longer we wait, the more costly the consequences will be in terms of human suffering and ecological devastation. The purpose of this blog is to explore how human agency can best be exercised in the pursuit of radical social transformation, guided by the principle of the oneness of humanity.

http://agencyandchange.com/about-the-blog/

Top photo: Uploaded on December 22, 2006 by Dr Phil on flickr, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic