Alison Marshall's Column

Alison is an unenrolled Baha'i, a business writer and a mystic. She lives in Dunedin, New Zealand.

Honouring the martyrs

I noticed, today, that Steve has more links down the left-hand side of his blog. One of the new links is called Baha'i Blog. It contains a lot of news about the events going on in the Baha'i world. One of the events I learned about was that a Baha'i was martyred in Iran in mid-December 2005. I didn't hear about it at the time. The man's name was Zabihollah Mahrami. He mysteriously died in his prison cell, after being in prison for 10 years. In 1996, the Revolutionary Court sentenced him to death for apostasy but, because of an international outcry, he was given life imprisonment instead.

Read more: Honouring the martyrs

Karen's musings on the Faith

Last night, Steve put Karen's lastest musing on my portable mp3 player and I sat and listened to it.

If anyone out there hasn't yet discovered Karen's audio musings on the Faith, I highly recommend that you listen to them. The URL is http://bahaipods.blogspot.com/.

Karen tells me that she is "trying to aim for something that would be understandable to non-Baha'is, while still remaining interesting to Baha'is." And she is very successful, discussing topics that would be new to, or forgotten by, enrolled Baha'is, while not talking over the heads of those who've never been Baha'is.

Read more: Karen's musings on the Faith

Finding Abdu'l-Baha

This is an audio of me discussing my search to find out who Abdu'l-Baha is. I was moved to go on this quest because I knew Abdu'l-Baha wasn't the person that some Baha'is make him out to be, by throwing his Will and Testament at other believers and accusing them of being evil people.

Many, many thanks to Marzieh Gail for writing her wonderful book Summon up Remembrance, published by George Ronald in 1987.

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10-minute MP3 audio of Alison discussing her search to find out who Abdu'l-Baha is

Contentment

I have been rereading Baha'u'llah's City of Radiant Acquiescence. I realised that what Baha'u'llah says in that tablet showed me the way to find my inner resolution over my disenrollment. The passage below sums up part of what I was trying to say in my podcast (Musings on my Disenrollment, below).

I have found what Baha'u'llah's says here very difficult to fathom; for example: "that you might ... ascend to the station wherein honey and poison are the same, since both are decreed by the mighty, the ordainer." It wasn't until I began to grasp the concept of detachment that this passage and others like it began to make sense. And, in fact, Baha'u'llah makes it clear here that no one can be content unless they have severed themselves from all in heaven and earth.

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Musings on my disenrollment

This is an audio of me explaining how I now feel about my disenrollment and the situation as it stands. I get e-mails from people about it and I find it hard to explain these things using e-mail.

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Passages quoted in this audio are:

Read more: Musings on my disenrollment