About Me
- RoutesofPresence
- Born in the US, raised on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, lived in Italy, the US, and Canada. Lover of language, travel, colour, and the natural world.
Showing posts with label Baha'i writings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Baha'i writings. Show all posts
Friday, March 2, 2012
Fasting & Interconnectedness
I woke this morning to the first day of the Baha'i 19-day fast. Woke before sunrise to eat and drink and sit in silence and pray and read from the Baha'i writings before I begin my day. I have now begun my first day of fasting. For the next 19 days I will be abstaining from food and drink from sunrise til sunset, and using this time to reflect on my relationship with God, how I can better serve hu...manity, and how I can grow spiritually. This is such a precious time for me as a Baha'i-- a time of prayer, reflection, and consciousness about what I am doing with my every hour and why. There is a quote by Baha'u'llah, the founder of the Baha'i faith, that I love. It says: "All praise be unto God, Who hath revealed the law of obligatory prayer as a reminder to His servants, and enjoined on them the Fast that those possessed of means may become apprised of the woes and sufferings of the destitute." I find that experiencing hunger and thirst for 19 days is only one of the blessings of this special time....but it is an important one for me because it helps me to better understand and appreciate what so many in the world are experiencing on a daily basis -- many of them for most of their lives. In this sense it is all about interconnectedness, this fast. About recognizing that I am a human being just like any human being, and that hunger and thirst are universal problems in our world today, and ones that those of us who are fortunate to not experience every day cannot and should not just brush aside as inconsequential because we have been blessed with plenty. This time helps me to be more compassionate, more aware of what I do have, more grateful, and more connected to all of my brothers and sisters around the world, and how my choices, voice, and actions influence their lives, and their experiences, courage, faith, patience and ongoing suffering influence mine.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Thoughts on friendship, tolerance, gratitude, and justice
"The divine friends must be attracted to and enamored of each other and ever be ready and willing to sacrifice their own lives for each other. Should one soul from amongst the believers meet another, it must be as though a thirsty one with parched lips has reached to the fountain of the water of life, or a lover has met his true beloved." ~Abdu'l-Baha, Baha'i World Faith, p. 426
"Consider the flowers of the rose garden. Although they are of different kinds, various colors and diverse forms and appearances, yet as they drink from one water, are swayed by one breeze and grow by the warmth and light of one sun, this variation and this difference cause each to enhance the beauty and splendor of the others. The differences in manners, in customs, in habits, in thoughts, opinions and in temperaments is the cause of the adornment of the world of mankind. This is praiseworthy. Likewise this difference and this variation, like the difference and variation of the parts and members of the human body, are the cause of the appearance of beauty and perfection. As these different parts and members are under the control of the dominant spirit, and the spirit permeates all the organs and members, and rules all the arteries and veins, this difference and this variation strengthen love and harmony and this multiplicity is the greatest aid to unity." ~Abdu'l-Baha, Baha'i World Faith, p. 295
I am sitting here typing this while I listen to a CD made for me by my dear friend, artist and musician, Louise Mould. The CD is one she made for my birthday. It just arrived in the mail last night. I have bugged her about making a CD of her songs for the past few years, and for the past few years she would just shake her head and walk away, so I did not actually think she would ever make a CD, but apparently my nagging must have actually had some positive impact because here I am, two years after I last asked about it, listening to Louise's beautiful voice and guitar playing. The songs on her CD are from a tape she made of her songs while living in Africa when she was a few years younger than I am now. In English, French and an African language that Louise will most certainly name in the comments section below this post, they are uplifting and resonate deeply, and I smile, imagining Louise in the Congo strumming away on her guitar in the strong, brilliant African sunlight.
I am not sure what I did to deserve such incredible friends. They are a constant source of inspiration, joy and encouragement to me. Like everyone, I have gone through ups and downs, but no matter what else is going on in my life, I have always been surrounded by incredible friends. Louise is probably going to have some strong words for me about sharing the following photograph of her with you, but I will deal with that when it happens ;-) I love this photo, taken by a friend of Louise's many years ago. It captures her calm, deep, gentle and wise spirit. There is an even more gorgeous photo on the cover of the CD she just sent me, but unfortunately I do not have a digital copy of that one. Perhaps Louise will rectify this ;-)
On Wednesday I drove down to Los Angeles with my mom's best friend, Cheryl. It is a seven hour drive through endless monoculture fruit and nut groves, cattle lots, and potato and pepper fields. As we looked out of the car to the west, caramel-coloured, arid mountains rose up out of the flat valley, velvet covered, undulating malleable contours. We climbed up through the grapevine pass, and then wound our way down into the mass of congestion that is L.A. Chery's home is a tiny, airy little place high on a hilltop in Redondo Beach. She has lived in the same house since I was a baby, and although I rarely get to visit, there is something grounding about being able to return to a place that is familiar -- such a contrast to my family's homes, which change every couple of years. The breeze from the ocean comes right up the hill and through her house, which is cool and light-filled. After a short rest, Cheryl and I headed down to the beach for a walk along the boardwalk. A Christian youth group sat in a cluster on the sand, singing praise songs; long-legged young girls roller-bladed up and down the boardwalk; joggers, walkers, and cyclists slid past, and groups of golden-skinned youth played beach volleyball on the sand. After our walk, we settled on the beach to watch the deep, blood-orange sun sink into the horizon line of the Pacific Ocean.
Yesterday Cheryl and paid a visit to the Museum of Tolerance. The museum's focus is to help educate people about prejudice, its horrific effects if left unchecked, and to help people to see that overcoming prejudice is a personal responsibility that ordinary people like you and I must be conscious of in our everyday lives. The Museum of Tolerance is a Jewish museum, and a good portion of the exhibits focus on the Holocaust, and how we can do things differently in the future to avoid repeating such horrors, but the museum also has a general tolerance section, which addresses past and current instances of injustice all over the world.
Upon entering the museum we walked down a walkway that spiraled its way all the way to the lower level. The wall along the right side of the walkway was painted white, and had black and white photographs of Holocaust Survivors, along with a short story about each individual, displayed one after the other all the way down to the beginning of the formal exhibits. There is something extremely powerful about seeing face after face of ordinary human beings who I could easily run into in the supermarket, as I walk downtown, or at the bus stop, and know that these seemingly ordinary peoples' lives have spanned multiple continents, are marked by profound loss and pain, and at the same time by a tremendous amount of hope and will to survive. Cheryl and I spent the first hour listening to a talk given by a Holocaust Survivor from Poland who lost his parents and two of his three sisters when he was just a young boy. The strength and resourcefulness that children who lived through the horrors of WWII have has always left me speechless, but hearing this man's account, as he stood two feet in front of me was intensely moving, and highlighted for me the complete chaos that shaped the lives of so many children who lived through the Holocaust.
After the talk, Cheryl and I perused a small section of the museum dedicated to objects that had belonged to children that did not survive the Holocaust. Some of Anne Frank's letters; a striped prison shirt; a journal. The item that I found most moving was a letter written by a young woman to a male friend who she had not been able to say goodbye to before the Nazis arrested her and her family. I am not sure where she wrote the letter, but she carefully folded it, pressing a photograph of herself into the pages, slid it into an envelope, and addressed it, probably hoping to be able to mail it at some point. She never did get to mail it. Her last act of dignity and independence was pushing the letter through the cattle bars of a transport vehicle that was carrying her to her death at one of Europe's many concentration camps. What amazes me is that someone actually found her letter on the ground and made sure that it got delivered to the address on the envelope in the middle of such a seemingly grim and hopeless war. It is these tiny gestures of faith and humanity in the face of so much hatred and pain that touch me deeply.
From there, Cheryl and I moved on to the Holocaust exhibit. It is an exhibit designed to enable visitors to actually feel as though they have been plunged into Europe in the 1930s and 40s. The museum has done an incredible job of it. One detail that helped me to connect to the experience was that we were given small cards that had photos of children living in Europe during the war on them at the beginning of the exhibit. We slid the cards into machines, a screen lighting up and telling us who this child was, where they were from, and what their situation was at the beginning of the war. Throughout the exhibit there were places to insert the cards that told us what was happening to the children at specific periods of time throughout the war, and then at the end we each received a printout of our child's story, telling us whether or not he or she survived the Holocaust.
There were many parts of the exhibit that will be hard to forget. One was the section where I had to pass through a tunnel labeled men or women and children, which led me into a replica of the gas chambers, where I watched a video of what happened in the chambers. Terror is an understatement of how I would have felt if I had been stripped naked and led into such a dark, cement room with my child, never to see the light of day again. The inhumanity made me weep as I sat there watching the video clip.
Another section that influenced me deeply was the liberation of Europe, and the images of few Jews that had survived to see freedom again emerging from the concentration camps like ghosts. A woman down on her knees kissing the hands of a US soldier was powerful -- I tried to imagine what it must feel like after so much torture and death and loss to have someone come give you a glimpse of hope again. I could not imagine it. I have never, and I hope will never experience anything even remotely like this in my life.
The exhibit highlighted the role that ordinary people played in the massacre of the Jews. Yes, Hitler led them, but his extermination program would not have been possible without the collaboration of thousands of ordinary citizens. The whole point, of course, being that situations like those that arose in Europe back in the 1930s and 40s arise all the time, but that they cannot and will not turn into the global human disaster that WWII did without the support of the general population.
We were about to leave the museum when we realized we had forgotten to visit a small exhibit of photographs of Muslim families in Albania that took Jews into their homes during the war. Apparently Albania ended up with the largest percentage of Jews that had been in the country prior to the war after WWII of any country in Europe. The reason for this is that the Muslim community refused to collaborate with the Nazis, risking their lives to save their Jewish friends and neighbours. When asked why they were inspired to save the lives of the Jews, the Albanian Muslims explained that they base their lives on something called Besa, which means faith and honour. As one of them explained: "For us there are no foreigners. There are locals and there are our guests. You do not kill your guests." Another woman put it perfectly when she said: "Our home belongs first to God, then to our guests, and finally to our family." The black and white photographs are uplifting, the photographer aiming to capture the spirit of the Albanians through their eyes. Many of them have managed to keep in touch with the Jews who stayed in their homes, despite the fact that many of these families ultimately left Albania and settled in Israel. Looking at the photographs, and reading the individual stories of people banding together and standing up for the Jews amongst them despite having different belief systems was a dramatic contrast from the images that I had just seen in the Holocaust exhibit. Again, the question that came to me was what would I do faced with such a situation. I imagine, of course, that I would take in as many people as I could. The Albanian Muslims have a lot to teach the world about tolerance and unity of belief and action. And the arts are such a great way to share the importance that individual choice makes in the world.
Yesterday evening I headed to L.A. international airport. I was supposed to be meeting friends of mine from Prince Edward Island who were heading to Australia to see their son Elliott, his sweet wife Della, and their first child, Haydar. Their itinerary had given them a seven hour layover in L.A., which was the reason I had made the trip down to the city for the day. Yes, I travel two days to hang out with friends in an airport for seven hours. I know. So I'm a little nuts. A little more nuts than I had intended, it turned out yesterday, as my friends ended up missing their connection to L.A., and by the time they arrived, they only had an hour and a half before they had to catch their flight to Sydney. Still, we made the most of it, and I have to say I am still glad I made the trip down there. For an hour and a half I felt like I was home for the first time in a year. At home in a fast food joint we had dinner at in the airport. It reminded me how important community and deep friendships are to creating a feeling of being at home in the world.
It is a sunny, blue skies Friday afternoon in Sacramento. It has been a week filled with much to be grateful for. Good friends. Reminders of the importance of justice and standing up for it even when doing so may mean sacrificing my own life. Beautiful landscapes. And more to come. Tomorrow I head out to the coast again with more friends and my parents to explore the coastline north of San Francisco.
I wish you a superb weekend. May you be surrounded by friends who make you feel you are at home!
"Consider the flowers of the rose garden. Although they are of different kinds, various colors and diverse forms and appearances, yet as they drink from one water, are swayed by one breeze and grow by the warmth and light of one sun, this variation and this difference cause each to enhance the beauty and splendor of the others. The differences in manners, in customs, in habits, in thoughts, opinions and in temperaments is the cause of the adornment of the world of mankind. This is praiseworthy. Likewise this difference and this variation, like the difference and variation of the parts and members of the human body, are the cause of the appearance of beauty and perfection. As these different parts and members are under the control of the dominant spirit, and the spirit permeates all the organs and members, and rules all the arteries and veins, this difference and this variation strengthen love and harmony and this multiplicity is the greatest aid to unity." ~Abdu'l-Baha, Baha'i World Faith, p. 295
I am sitting here typing this while I listen to a CD made for me by my dear friend, artist and musician, Louise Mould. The CD is one she made for my birthday. It just arrived in the mail last night. I have bugged her about making a CD of her songs for the past few years, and for the past few years she would just shake her head and walk away, so I did not actually think she would ever make a CD, but apparently my nagging must have actually had some positive impact because here I am, two years after I last asked about it, listening to Louise's beautiful voice and guitar playing. The songs on her CD are from a tape she made of her songs while living in Africa when she was a few years younger than I am now. In English, French and an African language that Louise will most certainly name in the comments section below this post, they are uplifting and resonate deeply, and I smile, imagining Louise in the Congo strumming away on her guitar in the strong, brilliant African sunlight.
I am not sure what I did to deserve such incredible friends. They are a constant source of inspiration, joy and encouragement to me. Like everyone, I have gone through ups and downs, but no matter what else is going on in my life, I have always been surrounded by incredible friends. Louise is probably going to have some strong words for me about sharing the following photograph of her with you, but I will deal with that when it happens ;-) I love this photo, taken by a friend of Louise's many years ago. It captures her calm, deep, gentle and wise spirit. There is an even more gorgeous photo on the cover of the CD she just sent me, but unfortunately I do not have a digital copy of that one. Perhaps Louise will rectify this ;-)
On Wednesday I drove down to Los Angeles with my mom's best friend, Cheryl. It is a seven hour drive through endless monoculture fruit and nut groves, cattle lots, and potato and pepper fields. As we looked out of the car to the west, caramel-coloured, arid mountains rose up out of the flat valley, velvet covered, undulating malleable contours. We climbed up through the grapevine pass, and then wound our way down into the mass of congestion that is L.A. Chery's home is a tiny, airy little place high on a hilltop in Redondo Beach. She has lived in the same house since I was a baby, and although I rarely get to visit, there is something grounding about being able to return to a place that is familiar -- such a contrast to my family's homes, which change every couple of years. The breeze from the ocean comes right up the hill and through her house, which is cool and light-filled. After a short rest, Cheryl and I headed down to the beach for a walk along the boardwalk. A Christian youth group sat in a cluster on the sand, singing praise songs; long-legged young girls roller-bladed up and down the boardwalk; joggers, walkers, and cyclists slid past, and groups of golden-skinned youth played beach volleyball on the sand. After our walk, we settled on the beach to watch the deep, blood-orange sun sink into the horizon line of the Pacific Ocean.
Yesterday Cheryl and paid a visit to the Museum of Tolerance. The museum's focus is to help educate people about prejudice, its horrific effects if left unchecked, and to help people to see that overcoming prejudice is a personal responsibility that ordinary people like you and I must be conscious of in our everyday lives. The Museum of Tolerance is a Jewish museum, and a good portion of the exhibits focus on the Holocaust, and how we can do things differently in the future to avoid repeating such horrors, but the museum also has a general tolerance section, which addresses past and current instances of injustice all over the world.
Upon entering the museum we walked down a walkway that spiraled its way all the way to the lower level. The wall along the right side of the walkway was painted white, and had black and white photographs of Holocaust Survivors, along with a short story about each individual, displayed one after the other all the way down to the beginning of the formal exhibits. There is something extremely powerful about seeing face after face of ordinary human beings who I could easily run into in the supermarket, as I walk downtown, or at the bus stop, and know that these seemingly ordinary peoples' lives have spanned multiple continents, are marked by profound loss and pain, and at the same time by a tremendous amount of hope and will to survive. Cheryl and I spent the first hour listening to a talk given by a Holocaust Survivor from Poland who lost his parents and two of his three sisters when he was just a young boy. The strength and resourcefulness that children who lived through the horrors of WWII have has always left me speechless, but hearing this man's account, as he stood two feet in front of me was intensely moving, and highlighted for me the complete chaos that shaped the lives of so many children who lived through the Holocaust.
After the talk, Cheryl and I perused a small section of the museum dedicated to objects that had belonged to children that did not survive the Holocaust. Some of Anne Frank's letters; a striped prison shirt; a journal. The item that I found most moving was a letter written by a young woman to a male friend who she had not been able to say goodbye to before the Nazis arrested her and her family. I am not sure where she wrote the letter, but she carefully folded it, pressing a photograph of herself into the pages, slid it into an envelope, and addressed it, probably hoping to be able to mail it at some point. She never did get to mail it. Her last act of dignity and independence was pushing the letter through the cattle bars of a transport vehicle that was carrying her to her death at one of Europe's many concentration camps. What amazes me is that someone actually found her letter on the ground and made sure that it got delivered to the address on the envelope in the middle of such a seemingly grim and hopeless war. It is these tiny gestures of faith and humanity in the face of so much hatred and pain that touch me deeply.
From there, Cheryl and I moved on to the Holocaust exhibit. It is an exhibit designed to enable visitors to actually feel as though they have been plunged into Europe in the 1930s and 40s. The museum has done an incredible job of it. One detail that helped me to connect to the experience was that we were given small cards that had photos of children living in Europe during the war on them at the beginning of the exhibit. We slid the cards into machines, a screen lighting up and telling us who this child was, where they were from, and what their situation was at the beginning of the war. Throughout the exhibit there were places to insert the cards that told us what was happening to the children at specific periods of time throughout the war, and then at the end we each received a printout of our child's story, telling us whether or not he or she survived the Holocaust.
There were many parts of the exhibit that will be hard to forget. One was the section where I had to pass through a tunnel labeled men or women and children, which led me into a replica of the gas chambers, where I watched a video of what happened in the chambers. Terror is an understatement of how I would have felt if I had been stripped naked and led into such a dark, cement room with my child, never to see the light of day again. The inhumanity made me weep as I sat there watching the video clip.
Another section that influenced me deeply was the liberation of Europe, and the images of few Jews that had survived to see freedom again emerging from the concentration camps like ghosts. A woman down on her knees kissing the hands of a US soldier was powerful -- I tried to imagine what it must feel like after so much torture and death and loss to have someone come give you a glimpse of hope again. I could not imagine it. I have never, and I hope will never experience anything even remotely like this in my life.
The exhibit highlighted the role that ordinary people played in the massacre of the Jews. Yes, Hitler led them, but his extermination program would not have been possible without the collaboration of thousands of ordinary citizens. The whole point, of course, being that situations like those that arose in Europe back in the 1930s and 40s arise all the time, but that they cannot and will not turn into the global human disaster that WWII did without the support of the general population.
We were about to leave the museum when we realized we had forgotten to visit a small exhibit of photographs of Muslim families in Albania that took Jews into their homes during the war. Apparently Albania ended up with the largest percentage of Jews that had been in the country prior to the war after WWII of any country in Europe. The reason for this is that the Muslim community refused to collaborate with the Nazis, risking their lives to save their Jewish friends and neighbours. When asked why they were inspired to save the lives of the Jews, the Albanian Muslims explained that they base their lives on something called Besa, which means faith and honour. As one of them explained: "For us there are no foreigners. There are locals and there are our guests. You do not kill your guests." Another woman put it perfectly when she said: "Our home belongs first to God, then to our guests, and finally to our family." The black and white photographs are uplifting, the photographer aiming to capture the spirit of the Albanians through their eyes. Many of them have managed to keep in touch with the Jews who stayed in their homes, despite the fact that many of these families ultimately left Albania and settled in Israel. Looking at the photographs, and reading the individual stories of people banding together and standing up for the Jews amongst them despite having different belief systems was a dramatic contrast from the images that I had just seen in the Holocaust exhibit. Again, the question that came to me was what would I do faced with such a situation. I imagine, of course, that I would take in as many people as I could. The Albanian Muslims have a lot to teach the world about tolerance and unity of belief and action. And the arts are such a great way to share the importance that individual choice makes in the world.
Yesterday evening I headed to L.A. international airport. I was supposed to be meeting friends of mine from Prince Edward Island who were heading to Australia to see their son Elliott, his sweet wife Della, and their first child, Haydar. Their itinerary had given them a seven hour layover in L.A., which was the reason I had made the trip down to the city for the day. Yes, I travel two days to hang out with friends in an airport for seven hours. I know. So I'm a little nuts. A little more nuts than I had intended, it turned out yesterday, as my friends ended up missing their connection to L.A., and by the time they arrived, they only had an hour and a half before they had to catch their flight to Sydney. Still, we made the most of it, and I have to say I am still glad I made the trip down there. For an hour and a half I felt like I was home for the first time in a year. At home in a fast food joint we had dinner at in the airport. It reminded me how important community and deep friendships are to creating a feeling of being at home in the world.
It is a sunny, blue skies Friday afternoon in Sacramento. It has been a week filled with much to be grateful for. Good friends. Reminders of the importance of justice and standing up for it even when doing so may mean sacrificing my own life. Beautiful landscapes. And more to come. Tomorrow I head out to the coast again with more friends and my parents to explore the coastline north of San Francisco.
I wish you a superb weekend. May you be surrounded by friends who make you feel you are at home!
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Iron into steel
"...those who journey in the garden land of knowledge, because they see the end in the beginning see peace in war and friendliness in anger." -Baha'u'llah, Seven Valleys and the four Valleys
I am contemplating the Valley of Knowledge. The Valley of Knowledge is one of seven valleys in a book called 'The Seven Valleys and the Four Valleys,' written by Baha'u'llah. It is a mystical story about the stages the the soul passes through as it grows through life. I have been thinking about the Valley of Knowledge because I think I may be in it right now. In fact I am pretty sure I am in this valley. I know this because this valley is all about being able to see the end in the beginning. Being able to recognize that everything that happens in life is happening for a reason, and that instead of complaining and cursing tests, I should not only welcome them, I should actually be blessing their arrival at the time I am actually experience them.
I have come a long way over the last year. There have been many tests. Tiny tests in the grand scheme of things, really, but for me they were really, really huge. The first few I feel like I was being dragged through kicking and screaming. The next few I may have moved through on my own feet, but I am pretty sure I was stomping and cursing as I went. The last few tests have been about letting go of people and things that I love deeply, and these tests have been associated with a lot of sadness. It has been a bit of a roller-coaster ride, to be honest, and I have been through so many ups and downs that I KNOW there are more to come. But I am slowly....ever so slowly learning to find joy and beauty in the valleys, and to move forward with the knowledge that the tough times, just like the peaks and celebrations in life, are only temporary. To embrace change and growth gracefully.
It is really tough to stay cool in the valleys of life. Easier to look back down on them from the side of a hill or a mountain top and say: "now that was a just a temporary valley." But the true growth comes not from being able to look back and realize the purpose of tests, but to be grateful for them when they are actually happening.
I have a very good friend who I have written about so many times over the last year in this blog, for many reasons, none of which can be mentioned without mentioning all the others. Pascale moved back to her hometown of Christchurch, New Zealand this past Fall. She had been living in Japan for a number of years, and was ready to move home and establish her own personal training business. Pascale arrived in New Zealand, got her business website going, made up business cards, and started working just before a massive earthquake hit Christchurch. You may remember hearing about it, or seeing it in the news. Pascale was living with her parents at the time, and one wall of their house collapsed onto their next-door neighbour's car during the earthquake. The house was so badly damaged that the family was forced to abandon it, and move in with Pascale's brother, his wife, and their two children. I don't know if you have been keeping up with the news, but Christchurch has been experiencing aftershocks and tremors ever since February, pretty much non-stop. They have had thousands of smaller tremors since the major quake that destroyed so many peoples' homes. Then, this Monday, they had two more larger quakes. Since the last quake, Pascale and her parents had moved into a tiny apartment, leaving her brother and his family to enjoy their small home. But Monday's fire shook the microwave in her brother's apartment off of the wall and onto the stove, where it short-circuited, starting a fire that spread to other areas of the house, damaging it badly. As a result of the damage, Pascale's brother and his family ended up having to move out of their apartment, and move back in with Pascale and her parents in their new small two-room apartment.
If this sounds a bit tumultuous to you, then you would understand if the Battrick family were feeling a bit discouraged right about now. Maybe a little frustrated with all the moving and losing of belongings, and the upheaval, over and over, disruption of work and school, and the lack of privacy that living in such small quarters with seven people implies.
What you would probably not expect is what I have seen as I watch Pascale and her family confront the tests that these disasters have thrown at them, over and over in the last five months, which is courage, unity, compassion, kindness, generosity, an attitude of service, and a tremendous amount of laughter. Yes, laughter. The Battrick family has been laughing and making others laugh all the way through their tests and challenges. When they evacuated their home back in the winter, carrying only what they could fit in a wheelbarrow, they filmed the whole process, and the humour in having to carrying everything of value out of their home in a wheelbarrow. Pascale went back to the old house not to try to salvage belongings, but to feed the ducks in the creek next to their house. She went on to cook and bake for her neighbours, friends who were experiencing equally difficult times, and volunteers who were helping with the cleanup effort; to make tea to cheer people up, and to offer free personal training sessions to lift the spirits of her community.
I have thought that how they have handled, and continue to handle all of this, is incredible. To me it reflects a tremendous amount of faith in God, trust, patience, acceptance, and a deep recognition of the great bounty of tests to help us grow. Apparently, I am not the only one who has been impressed by the way that the Battricks have been handling their situation. This week a television crew turned up to interview the family. Impressed by how joyful they have remained throughout these many months of uncertainty, the anchorwoman was curious to know what was keeping Pascale's family from giving up, packing it in and moving elsewhere, or from becoming cynical about their situation.
I could tell you what Pascale and her family had to say about how they have remained joyful and mutually supportive and hopeful no matter what transpires, but I would rather let you see for yourself, because I think their attitude toward tests has a lot to inspire and teach all of us. Here is my dear, radiant friend Pascal, and her unified and incredibly loving family, on Christchurch's daily news. I hope you are just as inspired as I am to keep working toward remaining focused on the larger picture. To learning to be grateful for tests, and continuing to focus outwards -- on serving others, and bringing joy into the lives of your family, friends and neighbours. Have a very joy-filled Thursday!
I am contemplating the Valley of Knowledge. The Valley of Knowledge is one of seven valleys in a book called 'The Seven Valleys and the Four Valleys,' written by Baha'u'llah. It is a mystical story about the stages the the soul passes through as it grows through life. I have been thinking about the Valley of Knowledge because I think I may be in it right now. In fact I am pretty sure I am in this valley. I know this because this valley is all about being able to see the end in the beginning. Being able to recognize that everything that happens in life is happening for a reason, and that instead of complaining and cursing tests, I should not only welcome them, I should actually be blessing their arrival at the time I am actually experience them.
I have come a long way over the last year. There have been many tests. Tiny tests in the grand scheme of things, really, but for me they were really, really huge. The first few I feel like I was being dragged through kicking and screaming. The next few I may have moved through on my own feet, but I am pretty sure I was stomping and cursing as I went. The last few tests have been about letting go of people and things that I love deeply, and these tests have been associated with a lot of sadness. It has been a bit of a roller-coaster ride, to be honest, and I have been through so many ups and downs that I KNOW there are more to come. But I am slowly....ever so slowly learning to find joy and beauty in the valleys, and to move forward with the knowledge that the tough times, just like the peaks and celebrations in life, are only temporary. To embrace change and growth gracefully.
It is really tough to stay cool in the valleys of life. Easier to look back down on them from the side of a hill or a mountain top and say: "now that was a just a temporary valley." But the true growth comes not from being able to look back and realize the purpose of tests, but to be grateful for them when they are actually happening.
I have a very good friend who I have written about so many times over the last year in this blog, for many reasons, none of which can be mentioned without mentioning all the others. Pascale moved back to her hometown of Christchurch, New Zealand this past Fall. She had been living in Japan for a number of years, and was ready to move home and establish her own personal training business. Pascale arrived in New Zealand, got her business website going, made up business cards, and started working just before a massive earthquake hit Christchurch. You may remember hearing about it, or seeing it in the news. Pascale was living with her parents at the time, and one wall of their house collapsed onto their next-door neighbour's car during the earthquake. The house was so badly damaged that the family was forced to abandon it, and move in with Pascale's brother, his wife, and their two children. I don't know if you have been keeping up with the news, but Christchurch has been experiencing aftershocks and tremors ever since February, pretty much non-stop. They have had thousands of smaller tremors since the major quake that destroyed so many peoples' homes. Then, this Monday, they had two more larger quakes. Since the last quake, Pascale and her parents had moved into a tiny apartment, leaving her brother and his family to enjoy their small home. But Monday's fire shook the microwave in her brother's apartment off of the wall and onto the stove, where it short-circuited, starting a fire that spread to other areas of the house, damaging it badly. As a result of the damage, Pascale's brother and his family ended up having to move out of their apartment, and move back in with Pascale and her parents in their new small two-room apartment.
If this sounds a bit tumultuous to you, then you would understand if the Battrick family were feeling a bit discouraged right about now. Maybe a little frustrated with all the moving and losing of belongings, and the upheaval, over and over, disruption of work and school, and the lack of privacy that living in such small quarters with seven people implies.
What you would probably not expect is what I have seen as I watch Pascale and her family confront the tests that these disasters have thrown at them, over and over in the last five months, which is courage, unity, compassion, kindness, generosity, an attitude of service, and a tremendous amount of laughter. Yes, laughter. The Battrick family has been laughing and making others laugh all the way through their tests and challenges. When they evacuated their home back in the winter, carrying only what they could fit in a wheelbarrow, they filmed the whole process, and the humour in having to carrying everything of value out of their home in a wheelbarrow. Pascale went back to the old house not to try to salvage belongings, but to feed the ducks in the creek next to their house. She went on to cook and bake for her neighbours, friends who were experiencing equally difficult times, and volunteers who were helping with the cleanup effort; to make tea to cheer people up, and to offer free personal training sessions to lift the spirits of her community.
I have thought that how they have handled, and continue to handle all of this, is incredible. To me it reflects a tremendous amount of faith in God, trust, patience, acceptance, and a deep recognition of the great bounty of tests to help us grow. Apparently, I am not the only one who has been impressed by the way that the Battricks have been handling their situation. This week a television crew turned up to interview the family. Impressed by how joyful they have remained throughout these many months of uncertainty, the anchorwoman was curious to know what was keeping Pascale's family from giving up, packing it in and moving elsewhere, or from becoming cynical about their situation.
I could tell you what Pascale and her family had to say about how they have remained joyful and mutually supportive and hopeful no matter what transpires, but I would rather let you see for yourself, because I think their attitude toward tests has a lot to inspire and teach all of us. Here is my dear, radiant friend Pascal, and her unified and incredibly loving family, on Christchurch's daily news. I hope you are just as inspired as I am to keep working toward remaining focused on the larger picture. To learning to be grateful for tests, and continuing to focus outwards -- on serving others, and bringing joy into the lives of your family, friends and neighbours. Have a very joy-filled Thursday!
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Believing in the door I do not (yet) see
"...your own knowledge that a certain event is to occur, or your desire that it should happen, is not and never can be the reason for its occurrence." -Baha'u'llah-
I am going through one of those periods in life where I am obviously supposed to be learning something very important. I know that I am going through one of those periods because I have set some very clear goals for what I want to be accomplishing, and so far no matter how hard I work at achieving them, none of them are materializing in the way that I had hoped. The biggest of these is supporting myself. Although I am not someone who has career goals like many of my friends, I am at a point in my life where it is very important to me to have full time, long-term, stable work. When I arrived in California last spring, my intention was to remain for a few months and then move to China or elsewhere for a while to work. But as I reflected, I realized that while my nomadic lifestyle has been amazing, and I do want to travel more, I am really ready to have a home to return to, and work that is ongoing. So I set my priority as finding life-giving work that I love and am passionate about, and have spent the past few months writing proposals for magazines, sending my resume to companies whose ethics reflect my own, and spending hours and hours job hunting.
I have never before placed my work as my priority in life, so this decision to stay put until I am certain that my next move will lead to stable and sustainable work has been a big one for me. Life has always been for living and enjoying, and although I have been fortunate to have work that I loved quite a bit in my life, opportunities have always seemed to come to me relatively easily. Sure -- I did work hard, but I always ran into the right person at the right time, and a job would materialize out of the conversation. So having made the commitment to pursue work that involves writing, and poured my energy into this effort for so long now with very little result thus far, the fact that I am feeling rather discouraged is not surprising. While the intention to pursue work that I am passionate about and love was one that my friends and family supported wholeheartedly when I started on this journey, many of them have started suggesting that maybe it would be a good idea to find work doing any old job to pay the bills -- at least until things start falling into place with my writing.
I am inclined to think that they are probably right. Maybe this whole writing idea is just not the right thing for me. Maybe I should go get an office job. Maybe I am just being stubborn. Maybe I need to get over the fact that what I think I want is not what God intends for me to do with my life. Maybe...but maybe it is time for me to learn that when you really want something in life, it requires some struggle. Maybe this is my time for learning how to dedicate myself to my dreams and not back down even when things aren't working out. It is easy to say "this is just not working...I give up." But it is harder to recognize that I am feeling uncertain and insecure and fearful. It is hard to face up to the reality that maybe the lessons I need to learn are not when to give up and go do something else, but how to be content with the things I have been given at this time in my life. How to recognize the small accomplishments. How to be patient with the fact that things do not seem to be going how I had hoped, and at the same time persevere in my job search. Because the truth is that while I have had to stop eating meals out, shopping and spending multiple days a week in coffee shops; have not been able to travel internationally for a while now, and have to borrow a car when I need to travel long distances, I have gotten to know many new friends since arriving here. I attend a devotional gathering every Friday night that is usually followed by a great evening of socializing. This Friday I looked around me and realized that there were 19 people in the room who I would now call good friends. Nineteen people that I did not even know this time last year. Last night, after returning from a full day of Baha'i activities in San Francisco, I was just too tired to go out gallery hopping with friends, and two other friends decided to come keep me company, and spent the evening chilling out and drinking tea and chatting. My parents have very generously offered me a place to live until I figure stuff out, and I currently have a lot of free time that I am using to volunteer on a local farm helping to educate children and youth about how food is grown, why the environment is so vitally important, and how a personal relationship with the land changes one's perspective on life completely. I have time to cook meals for my parents who are working very hard, and come home tired. I have more time to read books and educate myself about new areas of agriculture and free-trade products; I have more time to write friends hand-written notes, and I have more time to pray and meditate. I am not doing what I think I should be doing, but I am doing quite a lot, and I have a great deal to be grateful for.
I have been thinking a lot about how important it is to find a balance between my dreams and desires and the will of God. We all want things in life. My dear friend Pascale just started her own business as a personal trainer in New Zealand, only to have her entire city destroyed by an earthquake leaving few people with extra funds to hire personal trainers. My friend Alanna back on PEI had applied for, taken multiple exams for, and been offered a year-long job posting in France that she was very excited about, only to be told a month before she was due to leave that those hiring her had not realized that they should not have even allowed her to interview for the position because it would be a demotion, and they had no mechanism for demotions of higher-paid employees. I imagine that those in Japan who just lost loved ones, property, agricultural fields, and livelihoods had other things in mind for their lives. But ultimately it is our will versus a larger Will. What we want versus what is best for us. How we think we would best be of service to the world versus how the world needs us to be of service.
I have yet to figure it all out, but I do have a sense that learning to put my will into line with a larger will gracefully, energetically, courageously, and with perseverance, enthusiasm, contentment and humility may just be a greater priority right now. And who knows. Maybe practicing bringing my will into line with His Will more is the element that is not yet in place. Perhaps shifting my understanding and perspective will make a door appear that I had not previously noticed. Obviously, I cannot know for sure. I am focusing on continuing to move forward with faith that something unexpected could very likely be right around the next corner. As my friend Ahava said before she left on the train, "anything is possible."
Monday, February 21, 2011
Envisioning unity
"...political life everywhere has continued to deteriorate at an alarming rate...the very conception of statesmanship has been drained of meaning, policies have come to serve the economic interests of the few in the name of progress...hypocrisy has been allowed to undermine the operation of social and economic structures...in a world that rewards dishonesty, that encourages corruption, and that treats truth as a negotiable commodity." -Universal House of Justice, Letter to the Conference of the Continental Boards of Counsellors dated 28th December, 2010.
We should manifest "complete freedom from prejudice in [our] dealings with peoples of a different race, class, creed, or colour." -Shoghi Effendi, quoted by the Universal House of Justice in its Letter to the Conference of the Continental Boards of Counsellors dated 28th December, 2010.
"The corrosion of [racial prejudice] has bitten into the fibre, and attacked the whole social structure of...society...Racial prejudice should be regarded as constituting the most vital and challenging issue confronting the...community at the present state of its evolution." Shoghi Effendi, quoted by the Universal House of Justice in its Letter to the Conference of the Continental Boards of Counsellors dated 28th December, 2010.
"While it is true that, at the level of public discourse, great strides have been taken in refuting the falsehoods that give rise prejudice in whatever form, it still permeates the structures of society and is systematically impressed on the individual consciousness." -Universal House of Justice, Letter to the Conference of the Continental Boards of Counsellors dated 28th December, 2010.
I have been reading a book about Haiti and the Dominican Republic over the last week, trying to better educate myself about a country that I will be spending two weeks in this spring. As many of you already know, the history of both of these countries is characterized by violence, prejudice, corruption, hatred, greed, abuse, and fear. I had a general idea about the history of Hispaniola, but not the finer details of the island's history and peoples.
I still have a great deal I hope to learn about the island. While I am usually a very fast reader, I am only on page 150 of my book, and I still have 150 to go. I am finding that I have to put it down more regularly than I ordinarily would, because I am overwhelmed by the descriptions of the scale of human suffering that the people who inhabit this island have endured. Prejudice has been a constant part of my reality for most of my life, but I have never lived in a country where I was conscious of facial structures, hair colour and texture, and skin colour actually having been given names and corresponding social classes. According to Michele Wucker in Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola
, the "sociologist Micheline Labelle has counted twenty-two main racial categories and ninety-eight subcategories used among Haiti's middle class in the 1970s." Some of the words used to describe these categories are "cafe au lait, bonbon siro (candy syrup), ti canel (little cinnamon), ravet blanch (white cockroach), soley levan (rising sun), banane mure (ripe-banana), brun pistache (peanut brown), and mulatre dix-huit carats (18 carat mulatto)" (p.34). That people can be divided up into separate groups based on such debasing names is truly disturbing to me. Hispaniola's history has been characterized by a steady effort to "whiten" the population by encouraging the immigration of light-skinned peoples, and abusing, degrading, and all-out massacre of those who happen to have been born with darker complexions. Ever since the arrival of the first colonizers from Spain and France, the island's Native peoples have been systematically and brutally all but eliminated, African slaves brought to the island to work in the island's plantations have been abused, tortured, and killed, and anyone attempting to improve conditions for ordinary citizens in either country has been overthrown, and expelled or killed.
The main crop grown on the island has traditionally been sugar cane, and generation after generation of Haitians and poor Dominicans sacrificed their lives and their freedom to line the pockets of exploitative plantation owners and government officials. Thousands of Haitians migrated across the border into the Dominican Republic to try to make a living in the sugar plantations only to find themselves working in extremely harsh conditions that often resulted in severe injuries, for extremely low pay. Since the United States has a quota for how much sugar it buys from the world market, and it consumes most of the island's sugar, it dictates the amount needed, and the price that will be paid for sugar from the Dominican Republic. This meant that sugar prices rose and fell according to local and international political upheaval, changes and shifts in national interests, and consumer demand. The result has been an economic activity that is extremely volatile. When demand is high, workers are brought or come by choice into the Dominican Republic to work on the plantations. When demand for sugar drops, excess immigrants are deported back to Haiti with little consideration for the impact on their family or community. In the past deportation was the most mild form of solving the "Haitian problem". Many plantation workers were simply killed. Those who remained on the plantations had no rights, and uprising and demonstrating on the plantations was repressed with the constant threat of violence and death.
In addition to the instability in the sugar industry, the political climate in both Haiti and the Dominican Republic has been non-stop upheaval since the first settler set his foot on the island's shore. Many of the political leaders from both countries have led corrupt governments, draining the island's economic resources for personal benefit, and leaving the majority of the population to live in abject poverty.
Reading the story of the lower and working class Dominicans and Haitians -- of the experience of Haitians who had been living in the Dominican Republic for years and years without having any legal status; of their children who were born with no legal papers and therefore were considered people with no place; of Haitians being rounded up and killed when it was deemed that they were becoming a strain on the economic structure of the Dominican Republic; and on the other side, of the poverty and struggle to survive of so many Dominicans themselves; of the blame and the fear and the never-ending violence and desperation -- I find myself amazed that people have survived on the island at all. Is it possible to survive so much physical, verbal and emotional abuse, and still have the capacity to build a happy, successful country? I wonder. I also wonder how much of an impact the diversification of agricultural crops being grown today is having on the lives of islanders. How many lives are improved by the free-trade cocoa farming business, for example? Is this a model that is being replicated for coffee and other crops? Is there a movement to grow organic and free-trade sugar cane in a sustainable way on the island? Obviously, I have a lot more reading to do.
I also find myself reflecting on having been born white. My great-grandparents came to North America as poor immigrants also. Immigrants from Italy. But they did not remain poor. Would my ancestors have struggled more if they had been born with a different skin colour?
I am finding that the process of learning about how much the people of Hispaniola have suffered is a hard one. The more I learn, the greater sense of responsibility I feel I have been given to stand up for justice. To work towards the elimination of all forms of prejudice. To root out my own prejudices, many of which I am not even conscious of, but which I am sure exist simply by virtue of having been raised surrounded by people who are very much like me. To educate myself and others.
The Universal House of Justice, the international administrative body of the global Baha'i community, sends letters out to the Baha'i community on a regular basis. These letters help to focus our service efforts in our respective communities so that they all work together to build a global community that is cohesive and characterized by unity of vision. The quotations at the beginning of this blog entry are from one such letter, which we received this past December. Reading about Haiti and the Dominican Republic, I find myself reflecting on the tumultuous history of this island within the context of the Baha'i vision for unity, justice and honesty. Much has changed over the past one hundred years on Hispaniola, but from what I read in the newspapers every day, a great deal of change still needs to occur if Hispaniola and her peoples are to manifest their true capacity in the world.
As I sit here thinking about everything I have read, and all the questions that I have yet to answer about the future for the people of Hispaniola, what comes to mind is a quote from Abdu'l-Baha, son of Baha'u'llah, the founder of the Baha'i faith. He said: "Just now the soil of the human heart seems like black earth, but in the innermost substance of this dark soil there are thousands of fragrant flowers latent. We must endeavour to cultivate and awaken these potentialities, discover the secret treasure in this very mine and depository of God, bring forth these resplendent powers long hidden in human hearts. Then will the glories of both worlds be blended and increased and the quintessence of human existence be made manifest." (from The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 294).
We should manifest "complete freedom from prejudice in [our] dealings with peoples of a different race, class, creed, or colour." -Shoghi Effendi, quoted by the Universal House of Justice in its Letter to the Conference of the Continental Boards of Counsellors dated 28th December, 2010.
"The corrosion of [racial prejudice] has bitten into the fibre, and attacked the whole social structure of...society...Racial prejudice should be regarded as constituting the most vital and challenging issue confronting the...community at the present state of its evolution." Shoghi Effendi, quoted by the Universal House of Justice in its Letter to the Conference of the Continental Boards of Counsellors dated 28th December, 2010.
"While it is true that, at the level of public discourse, great strides have been taken in refuting the falsehoods that give rise prejudice in whatever form, it still permeates the structures of society and is systematically impressed on the individual consciousness." -Universal House of Justice, Letter to the Conference of the Continental Boards of Counsellors dated 28th December, 2010.
I have been reading a book about Haiti and the Dominican Republic over the last week, trying to better educate myself about a country that I will be spending two weeks in this spring. As many of you already know, the history of both of these countries is characterized by violence, prejudice, corruption, hatred, greed, abuse, and fear. I had a general idea about the history of Hispaniola, but not the finer details of the island's history and peoples.
I still have a great deal I hope to learn about the island. While I am usually a very fast reader, I am only on page 150 of my book, and I still have 150 to go. I am finding that I have to put it down more regularly than I ordinarily would, because I am overwhelmed by the descriptions of the scale of human suffering that the people who inhabit this island have endured. Prejudice has been a constant part of my reality for most of my life, but I have never lived in a country where I was conscious of facial structures, hair colour and texture, and skin colour actually having been given names and corresponding social classes. According to Michele Wucker in Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola
, the "sociologist Micheline Labelle has counted twenty-two main racial categories and ninety-eight subcategories used among Haiti's middle class in the 1970s." Some of the words used to describe these categories are "cafe au lait, bonbon siro (candy syrup), ti canel (little cinnamon), ravet blanch (white cockroach), soley levan (rising sun), banane mure (ripe-banana), brun pistache (peanut brown), and mulatre dix-huit carats (18 carat mulatto)" (p.34). That people can be divided up into separate groups based on such debasing names is truly disturbing to me. Hispaniola's history has been characterized by a steady effort to "whiten" the population by encouraging the immigration of light-skinned peoples, and abusing, degrading, and all-out massacre of those who happen to have been born with darker complexions. Ever since the arrival of the first colonizers from Spain and France, the island's Native peoples have been systematically and brutally all but eliminated, African slaves brought to the island to work in the island's plantations have been abused, tortured, and killed, and anyone attempting to improve conditions for ordinary citizens in either country has been overthrown, and expelled or killed.The main crop grown on the island has traditionally been sugar cane, and generation after generation of Haitians and poor Dominicans sacrificed their lives and their freedom to line the pockets of exploitative plantation owners and government officials. Thousands of Haitians migrated across the border into the Dominican Republic to try to make a living in the sugar plantations only to find themselves working in extremely harsh conditions that often resulted in severe injuries, for extremely low pay. Since the United States has a quota for how much sugar it buys from the world market, and it consumes most of the island's sugar, it dictates the amount needed, and the price that will be paid for sugar from the Dominican Republic. This meant that sugar prices rose and fell according to local and international political upheaval, changes and shifts in national interests, and consumer demand. The result has been an economic activity that is extremely volatile. When demand is high, workers are brought or come by choice into the Dominican Republic to work on the plantations. When demand for sugar drops, excess immigrants are deported back to Haiti with little consideration for the impact on their family or community. In the past deportation was the most mild form of solving the "Haitian problem". Many plantation workers were simply killed. Those who remained on the plantations had no rights, and uprising and demonstrating on the plantations was repressed with the constant threat of violence and death.
In addition to the instability in the sugar industry, the political climate in both Haiti and the Dominican Republic has been non-stop upheaval since the first settler set his foot on the island's shore. Many of the political leaders from both countries have led corrupt governments, draining the island's economic resources for personal benefit, and leaving the majority of the population to live in abject poverty.
Reading the story of the lower and working class Dominicans and Haitians -- of the experience of Haitians who had been living in the Dominican Republic for years and years without having any legal status; of their children who were born with no legal papers and therefore were considered people with no place; of Haitians being rounded up and killed when it was deemed that they were becoming a strain on the economic structure of the Dominican Republic; and on the other side, of the poverty and struggle to survive of so many Dominicans themselves; of the blame and the fear and the never-ending violence and desperation -- I find myself amazed that people have survived on the island at all. Is it possible to survive so much physical, verbal and emotional abuse, and still have the capacity to build a happy, successful country? I wonder. I also wonder how much of an impact the diversification of agricultural crops being grown today is having on the lives of islanders. How many lives are improved by the free-trade cocoa farming business, for example? Is this a model that is being replicated for coffee and other crops? Is there a movement to grow organic and free-trade sugar cane in a sustainable way on the island? Obviously, I have a lot more reading to do.
I also find myself reflecting on having been born white. My great-grandparents came to North America as poor immigrants also. Immigrants from Italy. But they did not remain poor. Would my ancestors have struggled more if they had been born with a different skin colour?
I am finding that the process of learning about how much the people of Hispaniola have suffered is a hard one. The more I learn, the greater sense of responsibility I feel I have been given to stand up for justice. To work towards the elimination of all forms of prejudice. To root out my own prejudices, many of which I am not even conscious of, but which I am sure exist simply by virtue of having been raised surrounded by people who are very much like me. To educate myself and others.
The Universal House of Justice, the international administrative body of the global Baha'i community, sends letters out to the Baha'i community on a regular basis. These letters help to focus our service efforts in our respective communities so that they all work together to build a global community that is cohesive and characterized by unity of vision. The quotations at the beginning of this blog entry are from one such letter, which we received this past December. Reading about Haiti and the Dominican Republic, I find myself reflecting on the tumultuous history of this island within the context of the Baha'i vision for unity, justice and honesty. Much has changed over the past one hundred years on Hispaniola, but from what I read in the newspapers every day, a great deal of change still needs to occur if Hispaniola and her peoples are to manifest their true capacity in the world.
As I sit here thinking about everything I have read, and all the questions that I have yet to answer about the future for the people of Hispaniola, what comes to mind is a quote from Abdu'l-Baha, son of Baha'u'llah, the founder of the Baha'i faith. He said: "Just now the soil of the human heart seems like black earth, but in the innermost substance of this dark soil there are thousands of fragrant flowers latent. We must endeavour to cultivate and awaken these potentialities, discover the secret treasure in this very mine and depository of God, bring forth these resplendent powers long hidden in human hearts. Then will the glories of both worlds be blended and increased and the quintessence of human existence be made manifest." (from The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 294).
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Reverb10, Day 28: Achieving economic prosperity
Prompt: Achieve. What’s the thing you most want to achieve next year? How do you imagine you’ll feel when you get it? Free? Happy? Complete? Blissful? Write that feeling down. Then, brainstorm 10 things you can do, or 10 new thoughts you can think, in order to experience that feeling today.
The author of this prompt is Tara Sophia Mohr:
The Women's Seder Sourcebook: Rituals & Readings for Use at the Passover Seder
@tarasophia
"The best of men are they that earn a livelihood by their calling and spend upon themselves and upon their kindred for the love of God." Bahá'u'lláh
"...cooperation, mutual aid and reciprocity are essential characteristics in the unified body of the world of being, inasmuch as all created things are closely related together and each is influenced by the other or deriveth benefit therefrom, either directly or indirectly." 'Abdu'l-Bahá
"Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and centre your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements." Bahá'u'lláh
"...the implications of the law of Huqúqu'lláh for the realization of a number of the principles of the Faith, such as the elimination of the extremes of wealth and poverty, and a more equitable distribution of resources, will increasingly become manifest as the friends assume in ever greater measure the responsibility for observing it...this mighty law, a source of inestimable blessings for all humanity." The Universal House of Justice, Ridvan 2006, Huqúqu'lláh Compilation 2007, 104.
Two words: Economic prosperity. No more scraping by. It was fine to have to fall back on my savings when I was in my twenties. It is no fun now that I am in my thirties. I have lots to offer the world, and I am prepared to work hard, but from now on I expect to be compensated accordingly. There are things that I would like to do with my life, such as raising children, paying off student loans, contributing to the Baha'i fund, buying a piece of land, and building a home. I do not want to live excessively, but I do want to know that I can provide for myself, and, someday, for my family. I feel strongly about being capable of being financially independent. I need to know that I can stand on my own two feet. As a Baha'i, I have a spiritual and moral responsibility as a member of the human race to be contributing to leveling out the current economic inequalities that exist between the wealthiest and the poorest members of our global community. I am not alright with the differences between my quality of life and the quality of life that I saw many people living in Cairo when I was there in 2006. And I know that the citizens of many countries, like Haiti, fair far worse. Achieving personal economic prosperity means I will have the freedom to contribute more generously to the many global efforts that are working to level out these inequalities. Economic prosperity has both material and spiritual implications.
I imagine that being economically prosperous would mean that I would feel more peace of mind, because I would have the means at my disposal to be an agent of change at a level that I currently do not possess. Of course I always have my time and my skills, and I give of these whenever I can. But sometimes making things happen in life means having the material resources to do so. I also imagine that being economically more prosperous would mean feeling freer to travel, to pursue business ideas, to give to charities, and to attend family gatherings and important life events such as a close friend's wedding every now and then. Other states of being that I associate with economic prosperity are feeling less stressed, and more independent; possessing a greater degree of self-confidence, and having the ability to pursue a wider range of creative and educational projects that will benefit my community.
So I am obviously not there yet. I have goals, and I am working towards them, but I have a ways to go before I will be able to be making large contributions to charities in Haiti. I will keep working towards my long term goals in the new year, but in the meantime, there are small things that I can do now to help me progress towards my goals.
I have come up with a list of 10 things I can DO or THINK RIGHT NOW that will empower me, give me peace of mind, help release stress, and make me feel more independent and self-confident (most of the feelings I associate with financial prosperity). Hopefully some of these will inspire you on your path towards your own goal!
1. Pray. Baha'u'llah, the founder of the Baha'i faith, says that our prayers have a profound effect on our lives, even if we cannot at first see the effect:
"Intone, O My servant, the verses of God that have been received by thee,
as intoned by them who have drawn nigh unto Him,
that the sweetness of thy melody may kindle thine own soul,
and attract the hearts of all men. Whoso reciteth, in the privacy of his chamber,
the verses revealed by God, the scattering angels of the Almighty
shall scatter abroad the fragrance of the words uttered by his mouth,
and shall cause the heart of every righteous man to throb.
Though he may, at first, remain unaware of its effect, yet the virtue
of the grace vouchsafed unto him must needs sooner or later exercise
its influence upon his soul." -Baha'u'llah
2. Compile a list of positive affirmations and quotes. By repeating certain ideas or thoughts on a regular basis, they become an integral part of how I think. Two of my favourites, which I repeat to myself regularly, are:
"I give you a commandment which shall be for a covenant between you and me — that ye have faith; that your faith be steadfast as a rock that no storms can move, that nothing can disturb, and that it endure through all things even to the end;...As ye have faith so shall your powers and blessings be. This is the balance---this is the balance---this is the balance." -Abdu'l-Baha
and:
"The greatest divine bounty is a confident heart. When the heart is confident, all the trials of the world will be as child's play. Should they throw him into a prison, should they cast him into a black well, should they heap him all manner of afflictions, still his heart is content, peaceful, and assured." -Abdu'l-Baha
3. Do yoga. I was never into yoga. I have always thought that the only sports worth my attention were the vigorous ones that required considerable huffing and puffing, like running and gymnastics. But I am finding that yoga not only keeps my body strong (and sometimes very sore!!), it also does truly amazing things to my mind and heart. It helps me to keep my attention focused on my goals, which brings me closer and closer to achieving them.
4. Pick the brains of people who are economically prosperous. I have been learning the immense value of role models lately. Surrounding myself with people who are where I want to be is a tremendous encouragement and learning experience. I may not have my dream job yet, but there are plenty of people living all around me who do. I just need to find them and flash my angelic smile ;-)
5. Give myself a break. I can be incredibly hard on myself. Every now and then, stopping and actually saying out loud "thank you for sharing that opinion/criticism/comment -- but personally I think I am a rock star," is always helpful. Anything that lightens the heart and makes me smile at myself is a positive step towards achieving my goals. I was just at an an exhibit of post-impressionists in San Francisco the other day, and was reflecting on the fact that Van Gogh only sold ONE painting during his lifetime, and he sold it to his own brother. I mean, really. How many famous people have stories like this? tonnes, that's how many.
6. Re-read Marianne Williamson's quote, made famous by Nelson Mandela. I won't quote it all here, but you will know what I am talking about by the this short piece: "We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, out presence automatically liberates others." If that does not make you feel hopeful, I do not know what will. Sheer genius, I tell you!
7. Celebrate the small steps. Whenever I first start trying to work towards something, my goal feels really far off. Celebrating the small accomplishments along the way breaks up the distance between where I am standing right now and where I want to be standing. It also encourages me along the way!
8. Talk to a friend. Friends are the best thing to ever walk the surface of the earth, in my opinion. Whenever I am feeling like none of my plans are going to work out, and as though I would be better off to crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head, I put in a call to a friend who points out all of my assets, and how much progress I have made, and how valuable my contribution to the world is, and the world suddenly gets much brighter. Works like a charm every time.
9. Serve. Offering service is like a magic salve to any of life's problems. Serving others always makes me feel ten times better about my own life and capabilities. I feel peace of mind and heart, less stressed, and far more optimistic about what I have to contribute to the world.
10. Have a little faith. Having faith when I am feeling shaky sometimes feels almost impossible, but when I push myself a little, and assure myself that if I have a little more faith, things will work out, I usually find that things start looking up.
So there you have it! I will end this blog with a poem that lifts my spirits every time I read it. It is by Amatu'l-Baha Ruhiyyih Khanum:
THIS IS FAITH
To walk where there is no path
To breathe where there is no air
To see where there is not light-
This is Faith.
To cry out in the silence,
The silence of the night,
And hearing no echo believe
And believe again and again-
This is Faith.
To hold pebbles and see jewels
To raise sticks and see forests
To smile with weeping eyes-
This is Faith.
To say: "God, I believe" when others deny,
"I hear" when there is no answer,
"I see" though naught is seen-
This is Faith.
And the fierce love in the heart,
The savage love that cries
Hidden Thou art yet there !
Veil Thy face and mute Thy tongue
yet I see and hear Thee, Love,
Beat me down to the bare earth,
Yet I rise and love Thee, Love !"
This is Faith.
The author of this prompt is Tara Sophia Mohr:
The Women's Seder Sourcebook: Rituals & Readings for Use at the Passover Seder
@tarasophia
"The best of men are they that earn a livelihood by their calling and spend upon themselves and upon their kindred for the love of God." Bahá'u'lláh
"...cooperation, mutual aid and reciprocity are essential characteristics in the unified body of the world of being, inasmuch as all created things are closely related together and each is influenced by the other or deriveth benefit therefrom, either directly or indirectly." 'Abdu'l-Bahá
"Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and centre your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements." Bahá'u'lláh
"...the implications of the law of Huqúqu'lláh for the realization of a number of the principles of the Faith, such as the elimination of the extremes of wealth and poverty, and a more equitable distribution of resources, will increasingly become manifest as the friends assume in ever greater measure the responsibility for observing it...this mighty law, a source of inestimable blessings for all humanity." The Universal House of Justice, Ridvan 2006, Huqúqu'lláh Compilation 2007, 104.
Two words: Economic prosperity. No more scraping by. It was fine to have to fall back on my savings when I was in my twenties. It is no fun now that I am in my thirties. I have lots to offer the world, and I am prepared to work hard, but from now on I expect to be compensated accordingly. There are things that I would like to do with my life, such as raising children, paying off student loans, contributing to the Baha'i fund, buying a piece of land, and building a home. I do not want to live excessively, but I do want to know that I can provide for myself, and, someday, for my family. I feel strongly about being capable of being financially independent. I need to know that I can stand on my own two feet. As a Baha'i, I have a spiritual and moral responsibility as a member of the human race to be contributing to leveling out the current economic inequalities that exist between the wealthiest and the poorest members of our global community. I am not alright with the differences between my quality of life and the quality of life that I saw many people living in Cairo when I was there in 2006. And I know that the citizens of many countries, like Haiti, fair far worse. Achieving personal economic prosperity means I will have the freedom to contribute more generously to the many global efforts that are working to level out these inequalities. Economic prosperity has both material and spiritual implications.
I imagine that being economically prosperous would mean that I would feel more peace of mind, because I would have the means at my disposal to be an agent of change at a level that I currently do not possess. Of course I always have my time and my skills, and I give of these whenever I can. But sometimes making things happen in life means having the material resources to do so. I also imagine that being economically more prosperous would mean feeling freer to travel, to pursue business ideas, to give to charities, and to attend family gatherings and important life events such as a close friend's wedding every now and then. Other states of being that I associate with economic prosperity are feeling less stressed, and more independent; possessing a greater degree of self-confidence, and having the ability to pursue a wider range of creative and educational projects that will benefit my community.
So I am obviously not there yet. I have goals, and I am working towards them, but I have a ways to go before I will be able to be making large contributions to charities in Haiti. I will keep working towards my long term goals in the new year, but in the meantime, there are small things that I can do now to help me progress towards my goals.
I have come up with a list of 10 things I can DO or THINK RIGHT NOW that will empower me, give me peace of mind, help release stress, and make me feel more independent and self-confident (most of the feelings I associate with financial prosperity). Hopefully some of these will inspire you on your path towards your own goal!
1. Pray. Baha'u'llah, the founder of the Baha'i faith, says that our prayers have a profound effect on our lives, even if we cannot at first see the effect:
"Intone, O My servant, the verses of God that have been received by thee,
as intoned by them who have drawn nigh unto Him,
that the sweetness of thy melody may kindle thine own soul,
and attract the hearts of all men. Whoso reciteth, in the privacy of his chamber,
the verses revealed by God, the scattering angels of the Almighty
shall scatter abroad the fragrance of the words uttered by his mouth,
and shall cause the heart of every righteous man to throb.
Though he may, at first, remain unaware of its effect, yet the virtue
of the grace vouchsafed unto him must needs sooner or later exercise
its influence upon his soul." -Baha'u'llah
2. Compile a list of positive affirmations and quotes. By repeating certain ideas or thoughts on a regular basis, they become an integral part of how I think. Two of my favourites, which I repeat to myself regularly, are:
"I give you a commandment which shall be for a covenant between you and me — that ye have faith; that your faith be steadfast as a rock that no storms can move, that nothing can disturb, and that it endure through all things even to the end;...As ye have faith so shall your powers and blessings be. This is the balance---this is the balance---this is the balance." -Abdu'l-Baha
and:
"The greatest divine bounty is a confident heart. When the heart is confident, all the trials of the world will be as child's play. Should they throw him into a prison, should they cast him into a black well, should they heap him all manner of afflictions, still his heart is content, peaceful, and assured." -Abdu'l-Baha
3. Do yoga. I was never into yoga. I have always thought that the only sports worth my attention were the vigorous ones that required considerable huffing and puffing, like running and gymnastics. But I am finding that yoga not only keeps my body strong (and sometimes very sore!!), it also does truly amazing things to my mind and heart. It helps me to keep my attention focused on my goals, which brings me closer and closer to achieving them.
4. Pick the brains of people who are economically prosperous. I have been learning the immense value of role models lately. Surrounding myself with people who are where I want to be is a tremendous encouragement and learning experience. I may not have my dream job yet, but there are plenty of people living all around me who do. I just need to find them and flash my angelic smile ;-)
5. Give myself a break. I can be incredibly hard on myself. Every now and then, stopping and actually saying out loud "thank you for sharing that opinion/criticism/comment -- but personally I think I am a rock star," is always helpful. Anything that lightens the heart and makes me smile at myself is a positive step towards achieving my goals. I was just at an an exhibit of post-impressionists in San Francisco the other day, and was reflecting on the fact that Van Gogh only sold ONE painting during his lifetime, and he sold it to his own brother. I mean, really. How many famous people have stories like this? tonnes, that's how many.
6. Re-read Marianne Williamson's quote, made famous by Nelson Mandela. I won't quote it all here, but you will know what I am talking about by the this short piece: "We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, out presence automatically liberates others." If that does not make you feel hopeful, I do not know what will. Sheer genius, I tell you!
7. Celebrate the small steps. Whenever I first start trying to work towards something, my goal feels really far off. Celebrating the small accomplishments along the way breaks up the distance between where I am standing right now and where I want to be standing. It also encourages me along the way!
8. Talk to a friend. Friends are the best thing to ever walk the surface of the earth, in my opinion. Whenever I am feeling like none of my plans are going to work out, and as though I would be better off to crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head, I put in a call to a friend who points out all of my assets, and how much progress I have made, and how valuable my contribution to the world is, and the world suddenly gets much brighter. Works like a charm every time.
9. Serve. Offering service is like a magic salve to any of life's problems. Serving others always makes me feel ten times better about my own life and capabilities. I feel peace of mind and heart, less stressed, and far more optimistic about what I have to contribute to the world.
10. Have a little faith. Having faith when I am feeling shaky sometimes feels almost impossible, but when I push myself a little, and assure myself that if I have a little more faith, things will work out, I usually find that things start looking up.
So there you have it! I will end this blog with a poem that lifts my spirits every time I read it. It is by Amatu'l-Baha Ruhiyyih Khanum:
To walk where there is no path
To breathe where there is no air
To see where there is not light-
This is Faith.
To cry out in the silence,
The silence of the night,
And hearing no echo believe
And believe again and again-
This is Faith.
To hold pebbles and see jewels
To raise sticks and see forests
To smile with weeping eyes-
This is Faith.
To say: "God, I believe" when others deny,
"I hear" when there is no answer,
"I see" though naught is seen-
This is Faith.
And the fierce love in the heart,
The savage love that cries
Hidden Thou art yet there !
Veil Thy face and mute Thy tongue
yet I see and hear Thee, Love,
Beat me down to the bare earth,
Yet I rise and love Thee, Love !"
This is Faith.
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