The Cormorant Baker

I wonder whether enough time has passed to allow the ideas dreamed up on Talisman9 to percolate through to the community and to become mainstream. My rough guess is that the process takes 20 years or so. Talisman began in late 1994, so I have a feeling it may be premature to study the full force of its effects on the community.

The ideas discussed on Talisman are many and various, and, let’s face it, much of what’s expressed there has the lasting power of a randy mayfly. It’s a big job to summarise the material in order to define the key, lasting ideas. Also, there’s a lot of scope for disagreement over whether such filtering could be done fairly.

I suggest going back 20 years and examining something more manageable, like A Modest Proposal. It should be relatively simple to analyse which of the proposals have since been adopted by the US community. Perhaps someone has already done that? I do know that the proposals look increasingly modest as time passes.

I’m not an academic, and certainly not a historian or sociologist, but I do wonder what conclusions could be drawn from such an exercise. Just because something is later adopted doesn’t mean it was timely when it was first suggested. I fully expect to see a few of the ideas currently talked about on Talisman becoming mainstream in around 2028. I think that’s just the nature of progress. Places like Talisman are where the early adopters congregate. Of course the new ideas will appear there first! But I accept that this concept may not seem as obvious to others as it does to me.

I read Sen’s The knower as servant and immediately thought of Roger White’s Bring Chocolate: Advice from a Poet. And now, Alison has just written her response to Sen’s post: The knower as an artist. She’s exploring the possibilities of writing fiction as a natural progression from her scholarly interests.

I’ve thought some more about the connections between art and scholarship, and about the conditions that led Roger White to write his article. One useful discovery was Robert Weinberg’s obituary to Roger White, taken from Baha’i Studies Review, vol. 7 (1997):

“Roger White believed committed artists would be a vital force in preventing inflexibility in the Bahá’í community. “They will,” he predicted, addressing a group of Bahá’í youth in Haifa in 1990, “be a source of rejuvenation. They will serve as a bulwark against fundamentalism, stagnation and administrative sterility…To the degree the Bahá’í community views its artists as a gift rather than a problem will it witness the spread of the faith ‘like wildfire’ as promised by Shoghi Effendi, through their talents being harnessed to the dissemination of the spirit of the Cause.”(8) To this end, White encouraged hundreds of budding writers and artists around the world, and called upon Bahá’í communities to assist the artists to find their place.”

I’m picking that Baha’i scholars and artists do have a lot in common.

I’m struggling to reconcile the various responses the Universal House of Justice has to the issue of freedom of expression

Here’s part of what it said in 1988 to the US Baha’is:

At the same time, Shoghi Effendi’s advice, as conveyed by his secretary, goes on to stress the point that “all criticisms and discussions of a negative character which may result in undermining the authority of the Assembly as a body should be strictly avoided. For otherwise the order of the Cause itself will be endangered, and confusion and discord will reign in the community.”
Clearly, then, there is more to be considered than the critic’s right to self-expression; the unifying spirit of the Cause of God must also be preserved, the authority of its laws and ordinances safeguarded, authority being an indispensable aspect of freedom. Motive, manner, mode, become relevant; but there is also the matter of love: love for one’s fellows, love for one’s community, love for one’s institutions.

The responsibility resting on the individual to conduct himself in such a way as to ensure the stability of society takes on elemental importance in this context. For vital as it is to the progress of society, criticism is a two-edged sword: it is all too often the harbinger of conflict and contention. The balanced processes of the Administrative Order are meant to prevent this essential activity from degenerating to any form of dissent that breeds opposition and its dreadful schismatic consequences.
Individual Rights and Freedoms

And here’s part of what it recently said in a letter to the Baha’is in Iran:

Undeterred by the voices which insist that you believe but in silence, as if belief and the expression of it can be separated, you are engaged, wisely and unobtrusively, in exchanging views with your friends on themes central to the progress of Iran and its glorification.

At a time when Iranian society is being torn apart by long-standing prejudices of religion, ethnicity, gender, and class, the experience of your community for more than a century and a half can serve as an abundant source of insight to the people of that land.
To the believers in the Cradle of the Faith, 28 July 2008 - Word document
To the believers in the Cradle of the Faith, 28 July 2008 - HTML document

The House spends many paragraphs in its 1988 letter showing how “belief and the expression of it” can and should be separated, particularly when the authority of the Baha’i administration might be undermined. Yet, in its more recent letter, it says the Iranian Baha’is should be undeterred by such talk, particularly when they see their society being torn apart.

A challenge was presented to the friends at a gathering to do something to teach the Faith within the next 48 hours. The area teaching committee for that cluster then passed on the same challenge to all the believers in that cluster. The result? The friends immediately arising to serve (and consulting on how to support each other). In other words, it led to enthusiastic and spontaneous action, and if one effort didn’t work out, the friends would then simply try something else.
Teach within 48 hours

Spontaneous - Performed or occurring without external cause or stimulus; coming naturally or freely, unpremeditated; voluntary, done of one’s own accord; (of literary style etc.) gracefully natural and unconstrained. (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary)

HAIFA — As the new Baha’i year got under way, Baha’is in the West again found the door to continued membership closed.

Although in its public stance the Universal House of Justice maintains that “individual understanding or interpretation should not be suppressed, but valued for whatever contribution it can make to the discourse of the Bahá’í community”, reports over the past few weeks indicate that the policy of arbitrarily removing Baha’is from membership remains in effect.

Baha’is attempting to regain admittance to membership found that their requests were refused. Baha’is, even those who have been enrolled or accepted as members for years, continue to be removed from membership.

And those who have sought redress through the Baha’i administration have been disappointed, their cases rejected.

“As has been the case for the last ten years, the Baha’i administration continues to use a series of devious ploys to prevent Baha’is from regaining their arbitrarily-removed membership,” said Mr. C. Morant-Baker

The effect of the Baha’i administration’s policies is to arbitrarily close the doors of the membership to certain Baha’is, despite the Baha’i Faith’s supposed commitment to the rule of law, natural justice and due process.

“Our plea to the international community, and especially to leaders and followers of religion everywhere, is that they raise their voices on behalf of Western Baha’i expellees,” said Morant-Baker.

According to reports from Haifa, the principal method this year by which authorities are preventing Baha’is from re-enrolling in the Baha’i Faith is by blocking their applications for re-admittance and declaring their cases “not honored”.

Full story…

Most of the Baha’i-related discussion lists I’m on are quiet, except for a few that have been re-hashing old controversies. Businesses are fairly quiet, too. Global financial uncertainty has been a very effective brake on all kinds of excess. And I’ve been quiet. I haven’t posted to this blog in a month or two.

I’ve decided quiet is good. Maybe it’s the old hippie in me. The world seems to be heading into a recession, and I’m thinking that’s a good thing. People and the environment will get a break, and various unsustainable practices are experiencing a reality-check.

Sure, a lot of people are hurting. I’m just saying that from my perspective I don’t see a down-side.

In 1992, a seasoned NZ reporter, Peter Jessup, checked out the Baha’is and wrote a half-page article for one of the major dailies. He found “a quiet, uncomplicated faith and a creed of equality”.

Door-knocking was obviously not part of the repertoire, and the faith appeared “to have a particular attraction to people from the entertainment field, the liberal, thinking middle class, and students”. Jessup observed that, “the faith has traditionally been kept quietly, in accord with teachings that people should seek it out rather than have it seek them”. He also noted that “Baha’ulla’h (sic) predicted a destructive end to the 20th century that would bring about a rebirth”.

Well, it didn’t pan out as anticipated, and perhaps the Baha’is got tired of waiting for folks to seek out their quiet uncomplicated faith. I’m certainly seeing a change of culture from what Jessup observed in 1992.

Two years later, Shoghi Effendi wrote:

A mechanism of world intercommunication will be devised, embracing the whole planet, freed from national hindrances and restrictions, and functioning with marvelous swiftness and perfect regularity.
Shoghi Effendi, World unity the goal, 1936

Or was Shoghi Effendi plagiarising the ideas of Hermia S. E. Nobileo, D.D., Ph.D, the founder of the First Church of Metaphysical Science?

We must have a mechanism of world inter-communication, embracing this entire “Earth” “Plane”, freed from inter-national hindrances and restrictions, and functioning with perfect regularity.
Hermia S. E. Nobileo, The Path to World Peace, 1927

Is it getting better
Or do you feel the same?
Will it make it easier on you now
If youve got someone to blame?

You said one love
One life
When it’s one need
In the night
One love we get to share it
It leaves you baby if you don’t care for it

Did I disappoint you
Or leave a bad taste in your mouth?
You act like you never had love
And you want me to go without

Well it’s too late
Tonight
To drag the past out
Into the light
We’re one but we’re not the same
We get to carry each other
Carry each other
One

Have you come here for forgivness?
Have you come to raise the dead?
Have you come here to play Jesus
To the lepers in your head?

Did I ask too much?
More than a lot
You gave me nothing now
It’s all I got
We’re one but we’re not the same
Well we hurt each other and we’re doin’ it again

You said love is a temple
Love the higher law
Love is a temple
Love the higher law

You ask me to enter
But then you make me crawl
I can’t be holdin’ on
To what you’ve got
When all you’ve got is hurt

One love
One blood
One life
You’ve got to do what you should
One life with each other
Sister
Brothers
One life but we’re not the same
We get to carry each other
Carry each other
One
One
One
One

About the song…