95 posts tagged with "discourse"

Lately I've been wondering if the Keystone Pipeline isn't more of a NIMBY than anything else. NIMBY stands for Not In My Backyard, and is typically a reference to well-off individuals and communities decrying the building of some unwanted facility "in their backyards" — that is, just down the street or in the general vicinity. For example, in St. Paul, MN there has been an outcry over plans for an electricity-generating incinerator (dead link removed; SF 2025 removed) on the edge of the neighborhood in which I used to live. Now, that is a blue collar neighborhood, not particularly well-off. A classic NIMBY situation is where the well-funded are able to fend-off development, pushing it to some location where the project's opposition are not so well funded. Thus, the NIMBY-effect becomes a matter of eco-justice: the poor end up saddled with the polluting plant, though the rich derive at least as much benefit from the project.

This year's drought (new link; SF 2025) has brought the stark reality of water availability front-and-center in Texas. The state has faced droughts before — but by all accounts, this is one of the most severe, and the population continues to expand rapidly. Water is not entirely taken for granted in this state, especially in central and west Texas, but this year's experience seems to have struck home for people in a profound way. Even as we have begun to get some sporadic rain, the talk of stage 4 water rationing continues. And yet there are also stories of people flouting the rules, watering away in their yards. I wish I could accompany those folks on a visit out to John Bunker Sands Wetlands Center.

The organic-bandwagon (and "green" in general) can often seem like a holier-than-thou verbal assault to the average consumer who does not take production processes into account when making purchasing decisions. Moralizing and preaching from the crunchy-granola crowd is not appreciated. And yet there is a point to it all, and we granola eaters need to be armed not merely with facts but also empathy and moderation. That said, often times we are armed merely with anecdote and conjecture, not even fact. Two recent pieces of research present compelling additional facts behind American society's — and by extension, increasingly the world's — over-reliance on technology without consideration of the long term effects:

This afternoon I heard an interview with Thich Nhat Hanh, from the public radio Humankind program, that is helping me frame a response I've been thinking about over the last few days. On Facebook, I posted: "Over-preparation only guarantees that you don't have time to live in the moment. That you don't have time to make a better world today, or to appreciate God's handiwork just beyond your nose and all around. From a comment to a friend after I asked for advice on pursuing an MBA. Thoughts?"

Letter to Congresswoman McCollum, and Senators Franken and Klobuchar:

The recent harrowing arrest of faculty and administrators of the Baha'i Institute for Higher Education in Iran has once again highlighted the subtle and extreme actions in which the current Iranian government is willing to engage in order to suppress the free expression of worship by the Baha'is of Iran.

This world is sadly riven with manifest injustice, often in the form of a government's abuse of its own people. Our most potent weapon against injustice is truth, in speech and deed. In a free land, who can deny that the treatment of the Iranian Baha'is -- unable to administer their affairs, to attend the official schools, to gather in communal worship of that same God to whom most of the world's peoples turn in prayer -- is unjust and unworthy of any nation?

When I became a Bahá'í in the 90s, perhaps the second deliberate change I made (prayer being the first) was to act with greater respect and appreciation towards my parents. I have long remembered that there was a particular passage that prompted this change; the "Bahá'í Faith" quote service on Facebook has brought that long-sought quotation back to me today:

Last Sunday I attend my first interfaith passover seder, at Mount Zion Temple in St. Paul. There were around 150 people present, from many different religions (though almost entirely white), commemorating together the Jewish liberation from Egyptian slavery. In addition to a traditional Haggadah "liturgy", representatives from six other faith communities were given an opportunity to speak about liberation or an exodus from their religious perspectives, and at the tables we had an opportunity to speak from our own perspectives, particularly with the "questions" aspect of the seder.

A particular comment in Louis Gregory's biography struck me as illustrating the combination of personal responsibility and material detachment in Reinhold Niebuhr famous prayer, "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference."

It was about three years ago, while attending a conference at Green Acre Bahá'í School in Eliot, Maine, that I had the bounty of making a sunrise pilgrimage to the burial site of Louis Gregory, Hand of the Cause of Bahá'u'lláh. At the time I knew little about him — that he was an early African-American adherent of the Bahá'í Faith, a fantastic and tireless teacher, well-loved by 'Abdu'l-Bahá, and thanks to the Master’s encouragement, one-half of perhaps the first black/white Bahá'í marriage in the U.S.

A friend asked about the need for the concept of "fear of God" in the Baháí Faith. Can one be a Baháí without it? More generally, do Baháís accept that there can be compassion and altruism without this "fear"? I found the simple answer today: no (read on for the references). But as with so many concepts, it seems important to dig into the words, exploring their literal and symbolic meaning both inclusive of and apart from our pre-conceived notions.