Archive for November, 2011

• An authoritarian prime minister of a country once dominant on the world stage is booed by the crowd at a national mixed martial arts fight. His country is shrinking, due to emigration by its most educated and mobile and a death rate significantly higher than its birth rate.
• In another country the focus of a war for most of a decade, grievous crimes against women are rarely prosecuted.
• In this country… well, there is a lot of disturbing news to be read about problems of governance, cut-backs, and you name it.

…progress is achieved through the development of three participants—the individual, the institutions, and the community. Throughout human history, interactions among these three have been fraught with difficulties at every turn, with the individual clamouring for freedom, the institution demanding submission, and the community claiming precedence. Every society has defined, in one way or another, the relationships that bind the three, giving rise to periods of stability, interwoven with turmoil. Today, in this age of transition, as humanity struggles to attain its collective maturity, such relationships—nay, the very conception of the individual, of social institutions, and of the community—continue to be assailed by crises too numerous to count. The worldwide crisis of authority provides proof enough. So grievous have been its abuses, and so deep the suspicion and resentment it now arouses, that the world is becoming increasingly ungovernable—a situation made all the more perilous by the weakening of community ties.

And when the brokenhearted people

Living in the world agree

There will be an answer, let it be

Indeed, let it be this generation that inaugurates this glorious stage in the evolution of social life on the planet

And let it be known once more that until woman and man recognize and realize equality, social and political progress here or anywhere will not be possible….

Let your hearts be filled with the great love of God, let it be felt by all; for every man is a servant of God, and all are entitled to a share of the Divine Bounty.

As to the position of Christianity, let it be stated without any hesitation or equivocation that its divine origin is unconditionally acknowledged, that the Sonship and Divinity of Jesus Christ are fearlessly asserted, that the divine inspiration of the Gospel is fully recognized, that the reality of the mystery of the Immaculacy of the Virgin Mary is confessed, and the primacy of Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, is upheld and defended. The Founder of the Christian Faith is designated by Bahá’u’lláh as the “Spirit of God,” is proclaimed as the One Who “appeared out of the breath of the Holy Ghost,” and is even extolled as the “Essence of the Spirit.”

Content, like the birds, they give thanks for a handful of seeds, and the song of their wisdom dazzles the minds of the world’s most wise….