This devotional program was presented at the Bahá'í House of Worship on September 5, 2010. Before going upstairs into the temple, I joked to my friend that I wanted to go downstairs to the bookstore, to be material before being spiritual. The architecture is inspiring enough, but the devotions and music were, well, heavenly :-).
Did you know that many Bahá'í books are available for free download onto your computer, smartphone, or e-reader?
I've done my alloted time now: taught a Bahá'í children's class at a St. Paul public housing community center two weeks running, with around 10 children each time. None of whom are Bahá'ís, and neither are their parents. We learned about service and truthfulness. Well, I learned, and I hope they did too. And they taught me about karma. Perhaps I'll go back and help out some more.
It's about time. That was my first thought when I heard, late last year, that the Bahá'í International Community had endorsed the Interfaith Declaration on Climate Change. My next thought was: when will this trickle down to us, the people, as a meaningful directive to change our habits? A few weeks ago, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of the United States sent a letter to all American believers, calling their attention to the Declaration, and to a Seven Year Plan of Action on Climate Change. They encouraged us to actively incorporate sustainable practices into our community life, in a manner more direct than ever before.
A while back I received an e-mail: a Spanish-speaker in my area had called 1-800-22-UNITE to learn more about the Bahá'í Faith, could I return the call? I got in touch with the individual, and nervously chatted for a few minutes in a mixture of Spanish and English (her English was better than my Spanish). She had already read about the Bahá'ís online and wanted to know more. So we agreed to study a book called Reflections on the Life of the Spirit together. This small but profound workbook is composed of three units: Understanding the Bahá'í Writings, Prayer, and Life and Death. Each one contains a number of passages from the Bahá'í writings as well as questions designed to help the person remember and apply the text.
Amid turmoil, Iran set to try 7 Baha'i leaders
(CNN) -- A trial for seven Iranian Baha'is that has come to symbolize the persecution of followers of the faith is set to unfold next week with added controversy and global attention.
An interesting little discussion on the intersection of science and religion has unfolded in Special relativity and the Bahá’í Faith (dead link removed; SF 2025). In references in Some Answered Questions and elsewhere, 'Abdu'l-Bahá speaks of "ether," a concept that was abandoned by the majority of scientists with the acceptance of Einstein's special relativity. The question then is, which should we adhere to? The religious truth or the scientific one?
Fortunately I believe this is a false dichotomy, at least in this specific situation. Despite having a masters degree in physics, I’ve never been bothered by the "ether" quotation. For example, 'Abdu'l-Bahá writes:
"Reflect that light is the expression of the vibrations of the etheric matter: the nerves of the eye are affected by these vibrations, and sight is produced. The light of the lamp exists through the vibration of the etheric matter; so also does that of the sun, but what a difference between the light of the sun and that of the stars or the lamp!"
I was recently watching a show on PBS wherein the narrator was traveling the lands of ancient Canaan, illustrating the paths of Abraham in the book of Genesis. At one point he and his guide climbed a slope next to the Dead Sea, and, having entered a tunnel in the cliff-side, found themselves staring up an immense shaft blasted by salt. Due to a confluence of geographic and climactic factors, the pressure from the Sea will often push great fountains of salt up from the seabed through this shaft, and thence cover the plains above the cliff.
These very plains are one of the rumored locations of the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. The film crew left the tunnels and returned to the cliff top plains. The land was harsh; the uneducated eye would have no idea that salt covered all, preventing growth. Was this spray of salt perhaps the origin of the Bible's story of the destruction of these cities? Even more interesting to me, however, was the pillar of salt that the crew passed – just bigger than a person. "But Lot's wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt" (Gen 19:26). Could this be she?
"To love what was is a new thing under the sun, unknown to most people and to all pigeons," writes Aldo Leopold in his Sketches Here and There. "To see America as history, to conceive of destiny as a becoming, to smell a hickory tree through the still lapse of ages — all these things are possible for us, and to achieve them takes only the free sky, and the will to ply our wings. In these things, and not in Mr. Bush's bombs and Mr. DuPont's nylons, lies objective evidence of our superiority over the beasts."
Yesterday's Minnesota Public Radio story Finding culture and history in the suburbs was perhaps the most poignant I've ever heard, spotlighting a wonderful program in a Minneapolis suburb and displaying the full power of audio to move the heart in ways text alone cannot.
The slam against suburbs is they lack culture or history. Wrong and wrong. Eden Prairie school children are discovering their suburb is loaded with culture and history, but it takes some digging to find it. Students at Eden Prairie's Oak Point Intermediate School interviewed elders in their community including people from other countries. They've put the stories to song.
