Mark's passing

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Category: Alison Marshall's Column

Created: Friday, 24 November 2006 15:36

Published: Friday, 24 November 2006 15:36

Written by Alison Marshall

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Mark Choveaux passed to the Abha paradise on Saturday 11 November at 2pm.

This was the first time I had ever watched someone die before my eyes. I still can't believe it happened. You spend years talking with a person and never thinking that, one day, you'll watch them die. And then, suddenly, they get very sick and everything changes. You can no longer talk to them like you used to; the relationship becomes one of nursing them through the difficult door into the next world. Then the day comes when they make the move for good.

Now, I look at people around me and wonder if, one day, I'll watch them die. I can't help it; you don't know what will happen. I guess I have been influenced by the fact that Mark died of cancer. So many people die of cancer and suffer terribly. Many people have witnessed their loved ones go through the nightmare that I saw Mark go through.

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Four Valleys: trans Juan Cole

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Category: Alison Marshall's Column

Created: Monday, 06 November 2006 00:16

Published: Monday, 06 November 2006 00:16

Written by Alison Marshall

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On my journeys recently, I discovered that Juan had translated the Four Valleys and put the translation up on Talisman. Of course, this was many years ago - October 1996 - and the translation was forgotten - shame! However, with the help of Sen, I have been able to put the whole translation together. And here it is, folks. What a treat! A new interpretation of the Four Valleys. Many, many thanks to Juan.

[1] I do not know why you have suddenly severed the bonds of love and betrayed the unbreakable covenant of friendship. But God forbid that the fault lay in your intentions or in a lapse in the sincerity of your good will, such that I vanished from sight and was forgotten.

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A new spirit

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Category: Alison Marshall's Column

Created: Thursday, 26 October 2006 17:36

Published: Thursday, 26 October 2006 17:36

Written by Alison Marshall

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It's been a month and a half now since we learned about Mark having cancer. This past week, Mark has shifted into a home, where he will get the ongoing palliative care that he needs. This time has been a roller coaster ride. It's been very emotional and busy. I've struggled to get my work done. It's weird how life on the 'outside' goes on and doesn't take into account the fact that someone is dying.

I keep thinking about Baha'u'llah's statement in Gleanings (below) that when a believer dies, they leave a spirit behind that leavens the world. I think the spirit of Mark is already having this effect.

Mark was married three times, each time to a Baha'i. Two of his wives, for their part, have each been married a few times to Baha'is (and still are). One of them was once married to my brother, and they had a son. The result is that, around Mark, is a large extended family that reaches right into the New Zealand Baha'i community, and that family includes Baha'is who are members of the community and those, like myself and Mark, who are not.

Already walls between people are breaking down. People who have not seen each other in years have come together, putting aside the past, and finding a common bond in their love for Mark and for the Faith. Bonds between people have been re-established in a way that was once thought unimaginable. It's the beginning of a spiritual change and healing.

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Mark's call from Head Office

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Category: Alison Marshall's Column

Created: Sunday, 01 October 2006 16:04

Published: Sunday, 01 October 2006 16:04

Written by Alison Marshall

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Those who know me well will know that one of my very dear friends is a Baha'i named Mark Choveaux. For over a decade now, he has been coping with poor health. In particular, his heart isn't good and he's had many operations for that. The doctors thought he was out for the count years ago, but he's defied them. In fact, as Mark and I worked to understand what Baha'u'llah meant by 'detaching from the world', Mark's health improved significantly. But it couldn't last. For several months this year, Mark was having trouble with his stomach. Eventually, the pain got so bad that he took himself off to hospital. After a couple of days of tests, the doctors told him that he had stomach cancer and that it was aggressive and already in his liver. They can do nothing for him.

Once the doctors sorted out the medication Mark was to take for his cancer, Mark came home from hospital. He is in good spirits. He struggles each day with the difficulties of eating and of feeling overall really lousy, but he knows he's off to Head Office and, as he puts it, he's heeding the call of She Who Must Be Obeyed.

Naturally, this has got me thinking a lot about death and the nature of it. It has confirmed for me the definition Baha'u'llah gives to the terms 'life' and 'death'. He discusses this at length in the Gems (see below), but the heart of the matter is that 'life' is nearness to God and 'death' is distance from God. When I look at Mark and what's happening to him, I can see that his body is dying, but I don't have a sense that he is dying so much as moving on. I feel that he is about to be born, rather than about to die. I can see clearly now that a person who is spiritually alive does not die when their body dies. They are simply taking a journey to another place. On the other hand, a person who is spiritually dead is already dead before their body dies. The only difference between the two worlds for them is that, in the next world, they have lost their chance to wake up of their own volition.

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Boxing above your weight

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Category: Alison Marshall's Column

Created: Saturday, 16 September 2006 03:32

Published: Friday, 15 September 2006 22:32

Written by Alison Marshall

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J. Gregory Dees

Over the last few days, I have been introduced to a new idea that I find very exciting. The idea is 'social entrepreneurship'.

The thinking behind this idea goes like this: society typically thinks of an entrepreneur as a person who is innovative in the business sector, but a person can be innovative in the social sector instead. In the paper The Meaning of "Social Entrepreneurship", J Gregory Dees runs through the various aspects of what an entrepreneur is. Here they are in brief:

1. The French economist, Jean Baptist Say, described an entrepreneur as a person who "shifts economic resources out of an area of lower [productivity] and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield". As Dees explains, this means that entrepreneurs create value.
2. The 20th century economist, Joseph Schumpter, argued that entrepreneurs were the people behind great changes and advances in production. They saw ways to do things differently and exploited these to bring about large-scale change in an industry or in the economy. This means that an entrepreneur isn't simply a person who starts up a business; it's a person who sees a new way of doing things and puts the vision into action, thereby generating significant change in the lives of many people.
3. Peter Drucker, an expert in management and business, argued that entrepreneurs are people who don't so much create change as exploit the opportunities that change generates. He says: "the entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity". He didn't think that a person needed to have the motive of making money to be an entrepreneur. It was exploiting opportunities in an innovative way that mattered.
4. Howard Stevenson, from the Harvard Business School, looked at the difference between entrepreneurs and those who are straight administrators. He concluded that an entrepreneur pursues opportunity "without regard to resources currently controlled". In other words, they are people who have a dream and don't let the lack of resources stop them from following their dream and making a difference. Those in common administrative management positions do not have the same vision or the drive.

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