Tag Archives: Universal House of Justice

The Road to Diamond, Day 111: Yin/Yang

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Posted by on in Assistance, children, collaborating, Community, Family, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

March 19,2025- The little girl holding an arm load of red and green tennis balls looked plaintively at me, through the chain-link fence of the tennis court, as I was walking back from downtown. There, near my feet, was a stray ball, with the same yin/yang design as the ones she was holding. I picked up the ball and tossed it, underhand, over the fence to her waiting, appreciative father.

Earlier, while I was on the way downtown, a man and his three sons were riding their bicycles, with a good heady speed, up the slight hill. This sort of exercise is vital to people, especially children, so I gladly stepped aside. Kids on bicycles or on skateboards, deserve all the support they can get, from adults. It was a joy to see the father engaged with his children.

These families are not uncommon in Prescott. People are always gathered outdoors, in this manner. It made the message I read when I got home, from the Baha’i Faith’s Supreme Body, all the more cogent. The Universal House of Justice wrote us on the subject of the importance of family, as the basic unit of society. ‘Abdu’l-Baha said, in the early 20th Century, that the family was the miniature of a nation. In today’s letter, the Institution noted that there is a struggle between forces, which are pulling society in opposite directions. The family, in its functioning, needs to steer a middle path between the two extremes, and focus on building character in its children-a character which will serve the person well, throughout life.

Towards evening, I learned that someone in our neighbourhood, an obviously troubled individual, had to be jailed for lewd and lascivious behaviour. There are small children next door to Home Base I and two teenage girls live in houses across the street. I look out for these kids, while knowing they have loving and dedicated parents. The miscreant will not harm any of them, even if released for some reason.

There is always a yin and yang.

The Road to Diamond, Day 64: Adoracion

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, Education, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, Service Activities, Social, Spiritual, Striving

January 31, 2025, Manila- She completed a veritable mountain of translations, of Baha’i scriptures and guidance, from English to Tagalog, over a 40-year career. This, without a college degree, relying on a high level of intuition and native linguistic intelligence. Some of the texts she translated are quite challenging to read and comprehend in English. Her husband said she worked on translating letters from our Supreme Body, the Universal House of Justice,as soon as they were distributed. She anticipated the letters and set aside time for the work. This was the way of Maria Adoracion Inowe Newman, who died today at age 64.

The news came to me early this morning, about four hours after her passing, and so the day, which might otherwise have been rather quiet, became busy with messages back and forth, and a taxi ride across town to the high speed rail, which brought us to Antipolo, the Prescott of Luzon, and the city where Ador lived. After five of us took a motorcycle cab from the city center to the cemetery, we spent about an hour in reflection and some conversations, before the service was held, in gentle sunlight and a cool mountain breeze. Ador had chosen the prayers, a balance of English and Tagalog verses, reflecting her life’s work.

A life well-lived begets a personage well-loved, or perhaps the two are intertwined. Ador seems like a fitting name for the lady, judging from the quiet flow of sorrow this afternoon.

The Difference Made

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Posted by on in collaborating, Community, Family, Inner Struggles, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, Service Activities, Social, Spiritual, Striving

November 3, 2024- On February 24, 1981, I called my mother and told her that I had become a member of the Baha’i Faith, letting her know the basics of the then-138-year-old religion. The most important of these, to her, was that use of mind-altering substances, including alcohol, was prohibited. Baha’u’llah teaches that presence of mind is essential and that anything which interferes with such mindfulness is to be avoided.

He was born Husayn Ali, to Mirza Abbas-i-Nuri (Mirza Buzurg) and Khadijih Khanum, on November 12, 1817, in Teheran. Despite being a member of a noble family, Husayn Ali eschewed a life of privilege, and became associated with a new religious movement, based on the teachings of al-Bab, which taught that “One greater than Myself” would appear and unveil teachings that would in turn unite mankind. When al-Bab was imprisoned, and subsequently executed in 1850, Husayn Ali became a leader of the inchoate Babi movement and was Himself incarcerated in a dungeon known as Siyah Chal (“Black Pit”). While there, shackled among a hundred or so others, many of whom were violent criminals, and with no personal space, Mirza Husayn Ali had a vision. A maiden-like presence appeared to Him and revealed that it was He to Whom al-Bab was referring. The title Baha’u’llah was conferred on Him, in that moment.

Over time, through three exiles, the last of which brought Baha’u’llah and His family to Akka, in what is now Israel, and through the ministries of His eldest son, ‘Abdu’l-Baha, and of His eldest great grandson, Shoghi Effendi, the Baha’i Faith grew to several million people, spread over all six inhabited continents. When Shoghi Effendi died in 1957, without leaving an heir, the Faith was briefly led by a council of stewards, known as the Hands of the Cause of God, until a nine-member Universal House of Justice was elected in 1963. This last was in accordance with the terms of Baha’u’llah’s Will and Testament, also known as Kitab-i-Ahd. The Universal House of Justice has been elected by the members of Baha’i national assemblies every five years since 1963. It remains the Head of the Faith.

Getting back to my own situation: In 1981, I was at the tail-end of a long personal struggle. Baha’i teachings have gradually guided me to shed lots of personal baggage. It has not been a walk in the park. Change involves a lot of work-physical, emotional and spiritual. As with any transformative effort, there are successes and there are setbacks. I was blessed with the love of a good Baha’i woman, until her passing in 2011. I am blessed with a son who has grown into a strong, well-balanced man. I am also blessed with many friends, across the United States and around the globe, including a woman who has captured my heart. I am, most of all, blessed with the transformative power of a Messenger’s Teachings that have given me the strength to shed baggage that has bedeviled me since childhood.

I have taken ‘the road less traveled and that has made all the difference’. (apologies to Robert Frost)

A Growing Circle

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Posted by on in collaborating, Community, Family, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

October 16, 2024, Manila- I stood at the entrance to Heritage Memorial Garden, after a service for a long-standing member of the Philippine Baha’i community, waiting as directed, for someone who would arrange a ride for me to return to the Regional Baha’i Center. It wasn’t hot, and the breeze was actually quite pleasant.

A vehicle stopped, and out came Kathy and her two sons. K told me that we would all ride together, in a GRAB taxi (the Philippine version of Uber). I assured her that I would pay for the group. We had a pleasant ride back to mid-town Makati, with minimal small talk, as none of us was much for yakking, after the lengthy funeral, in which Kathy and I each had speaking parts. She was also one of the main organizers of the event, having been close to the woman who passed on. I had not met the woman, but am impressed with her vitae. So, I read a message from our Universal House of Justice and a short prayer.

When it came time to pay the driver, K’s eldest son revealed that he already had covered it. This is no big deal to the members of my growing family. The young man had just met me, yet was perfectly glad to make sure of my well-being. Considering who his mother is, I ought not be surprised. It has not taken long for her to be one of the brightest lights in my sky.

A short while earlier, I had been introduced to K’s siblings, who took me to the gate of the Memorial Park, about a kilometer from the burial site. Two brothers and a sister, two pensive men of few words and a chatty lady, they are each nonetheless of pleasant mien. Thus, in a brief period, I came to be introduced to the family members of one of the most important people to enter my life, in the past ten years.

Maybe it had to do with the energy of the person who was being honoured. Martha Taylor was always bringing people together, herself being of Persian descent, married to an African-American and living in five Asian nations and the U.S. Territory of Guam, over the past fifty years. There was scant anonymity left, after any gathering she hosted-and she had friends in the highest and lowest places alike. I would have liked to have met her; yet in Kathy, I feel like I’ve met her mirror image.

At any rate, I have rarely experienced the expansion of my circle, in such a meaningful way and in such short order. I will take every other affirmation that comes, in the next 1 1/2 weeks, in every Facebook chat that she and I have during the next six months and in all that transpires here on out. My circle is not only growing; it’s getting deeper and stronger.

Quiet Advent

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, distraction issues, impediments, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

December 3, 2023- This day sees the tumult of the Christmas season, and all the interplay between materialism and spirituality come to the fore. The plethora of appeals to share one’s real and imagined wealth has come and gone-or at least run out of dedicated days for one aspect of materialism or another. The liturgical aspect of the season, though, has begun for Catholics and other Christians, with this first Sunday of Advent. So, we may expect more caroling-hopeful voices adding to calls for peaceful resolution of the Israel-Hamas conflict, a move towards rebuilding Gaza and an end to displacement of people-anywhere, for the benefit of a chosen few. We may also expect resistance. What privileged class has ever gone quietly into that good night?

By the above, I note the Iranian clerics and their Revolutionary Guards, as well as the West Bank settlers. I note the raiders who attack the people of Darfur, the “monks” who still harass the Rohingya people of Myanmar and all those who amass fortunes, at the expense of the working people. Where is the evidence that any of you have been wronged by those you assail? Savaging the weak and helpless is no guarantee that you will achieve your goals in perpetuity. There is a place for you in the world, but only if you cease and desist your greed-based, power-hungry depredations.

It is a quiet Advent, as the survivors of the MIndanao earthquake and the Wrangell landslide assess their losses and mourn those who didn’t make it out of the wreckage. It is a cheery day for some elsewhere, including three friends who went to a Baha’i wedding in Manila. It is a calm day for me, with a nice breakfast at Post 6, a devotional online and three sets of leg lifts at Planet Fitness. The most important part, though, was reading nineteen pages of an interesting and hopeful letter from our Universal House of Justice. Upshot: We will make it through whatever is headed our way, provided we stick together and don’t let ego delude us.

Magical, Again

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, distraction issues, impediments, Inner Struggles, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

August 14, 2023- The leading candidate for the Presidency of a South American nation has issued an agenda that would, for all intents and purposes, dismantle the government of that country and coupled it with proposals that promise nothing but even more misery than the long-suffering citizens of that land have already endured, which is considerable.

About seven months ago, I misread the slogan on a tee-shirt, worn by a community activist, the first word of which was slightly hidden. It read “Make America Musical Again”. I thought the first word was “Magical”.

I would be quite okay with a renewed sense of, magic in this country and in the world. Don’t get me wrong. Easy solutions are not in anyone’s best interest, nor do I believe in the Dark Arts. Rather, I would like to see a foundation of innocence, in the childlike manner,a renewed belief that anything is possible.

As it is right now, we are being given a choice between retreads and rehashing of shopworn notions and practices, on the one hand, and cynical, manipulative sleight-of-hand, on the other. The upshot is same old, same old or “anything goes”. Nowhere in either set of dogmas is there an appeal to real co-operation, to the actual honouring of human agency, across the board. Neither “camp” truly honours the other, and thus, by extension, no one is honoured.

In the Fall of 1985, the Supreme Body of the Baha’i Faith, the Universal House of Justice, issued a document, “The Promise of World Peace”, which cautioned against holding on to outworn practices and beliefs that only deepen divisions. It noted that “a paralysis of will” is in play, keeping the natural forces of unity and co-operation in check. The Universal House of Justice ties this to both self-interest of many leaders and to lack of education among the masses of people.

This tells me that there is a welter of overthinking, combined with lack of trust, in either one’s own abilities or in that of the human race as a whole. People tell themselves that they are overwhelmed by life-and a good many honestly are. This puts them at the mercy of those who have thought things through, to a certain point, and have devised ways of achieving their own self-serving agendas.

Vladimir Lenin regarded his followers as “useful idiots”. The current crop of demagogues has a similar mindset. People in the aforementioned country, and several others across the globe, including this one, are likely to fall for the tropes, the deceptions and the legerdemain of the manipulative class-but for the opportunity in front of each of us, to re-look at matters with eyes of confidence, commitment to both self and others and a turning away from those limited notions that foster division.

If that entails a “magical” belief in unconditional love, co-operation and the endless capacity of human beings for good, then so be it. In this vein, I give you a video of mothers of Downs Syndrome children, lip-syncing Christina Perri’s “A Thousand Years”.

Touching Bases

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Posted by on in collaborating, Community, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

December 18, 2021- I frequently refer to Prescott, AZ, where I live, as Home Base. There are several other “bases” that mean the world to me: Grapevine, TX, where my son and daughter-in-law live; Dineh Bikeya (Navajo land) and Hopi, where I came of age, spiritually; Flagstaff, where I was “birthed” (my term) as a Baha’i; Saugus, MA, where I learned basic life lessons; Arlington, VA, where I learned intermediate life lessons; Rouen, FR, from whence several of my paternal ancestors came and Jeju, Korea, where I learned patience, fortitude and the right way to face adversaries.

There are whole regions where I feel at home- virtually all of Arizona; northern New Mexico; southern and central Colorado; northwest Nevada; coastal California; the entirety of Oregon and Washington; southeast Alaska; the western and eastern areas of Canada; New England and the Appalachian Crest. Then, too, there is no place where I’ve been that seems truly foreign or hostile. In that sense, Mother Earth is a Base unto herself.

So, as this calendar year fades, slowly but surely, I feel a deeper connectedness with each of the elements that make life not only possible, but meaningful: Air, water, fire and mineral, on the physical side; Reverence, emotion, intellect, curiosity and proactivity, on the spiritual side. A great spiritual plan is in process, from the Universal House of Justice, and spanning nine years (2022-2031). With that, my own bases will become both deeper and more numerous.

May the coming Solstice, Christmas and Kwanzaa be fruitful and fulfilling to all who cherish them.

Forging Ahead

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Posted by on in collaborating, Community, Family, Hiking and Nature, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

November 25,2020, Plano-

On a fine and comfortable late November morning, it’s a nice touch to hit the trail, even if the trail in question happens to be paved. So it was that the three of us headed over to Spring Creek Recreation Area, in neighbouring Richardson.

November, in the northern hemisphere, is something of a shoulder month, with leaves having mostly fallen (the cottonwoods of the Southwest, in their golden glory, are an exception). Nonetheless, Nature is healing, sustaining, even in its time of faded glory.

So it was, this morning, at Spring Creek.

This ramp leads down onto the trail.
Most of the trail is flat. This is, after all, a forest situated in a prairie.
Spring Creek, a small stream, is muddy in times of low precipitation.

There were relatively few people on the trail with us. A family of five, with a mildly mischievous adolescent boy teasing his older sister, and a couple of loud younger boys from another family, punctuated an otherwise quiet, self-absorbed coterie of joggers and T’ai-Chi practitioners, who wanted nothing but privacy.

Returning back to Plano Home, Yunhee treated Aram and me to freshly- made bowls of bibimbap, a Korean dish in which is placed rice, ground meat, leafy greens, shredded carrots, mushrooms and, if one wishes, either hard-boiled or over-easy egg in an individual bowl. The diner mixes the ingredients to own satisfaction. Often, the ceramic bowl is heated, so that a raw egg will cook as it is mixed with the other contents. Today, though, all was cooked in advance. It was, nonetheless, delectable-along with her home-made kimchi and seasoned dried minnows.

Bibimbap

As will be occasional, throughout this week’s visit, I felt it proper to join a couple of Zoom calls. One was with a small group of kindred spirits, in a guided meditation. The other, celebrating the life of ‘Abdu’l-Baha, was based in Prescott. Today is observed as the Day of the Covenant, which was the wish of ‘Abdu’l-Baha for those who expressed a desire to celebrate His birthday. As He was born on the very day that al-Bab proclaimed His Mission to humanity, ‘Abdu’l-Baha randomly selected this day (November 25 or 26, depending on the lunar calendar) as a day during which Baha’is could celebrate His life, and Baha’u’llah’s Covenant with His followers.

As it happens, November 28, 1921 was the day on which ‘Abdu’l-Baha ascended to the Spiritual Realm. Thus, in a short span of days, we honour His life and commemorate His passing. Next year, as you might imagine, our focus will be on that extraordinary life and legacy.

So it is, that the governing body of the Baha’i Faith, the Universal House of Justice, has given us a rough outline of the decade ahead- a One -Year Plan, focusing on the above-mentioned life and legacy of ‘Abdu’l-Baha, and a subsequent nine years of helping to build a more sustainable and peace-focused society. So it is, that we forge ahead.

Seeking Light

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Posted by on in Education, Inspiration, Personal goals, Spiritual

January 22, 2017, Prescott-

I spent much of today in spiritual study, first attending a Baha’i group, which is focusing on our Supreme Administrative Body, the Universal House of Justice.  Afterwards, I continued a simultaneous reading of “Apocalypse:  A Spiritual Guide To The Second Coming”, by Dr. Jim Richards and “The Standing Stones Speak”, by Natasha Hoffman and Hamilton Hill.

Many of us are on a spiritual quest, of one sort or another.  My purpose, in reading the two, rather divergent books, is to find the common cord, which Baha’u’llah says exists in any faith that is based on Divine Revelation.  Dr. Richards cautions the reader against taking everything, in conventional religion, at face value.  He offers a good compendium of religious trappings that appeal to one’s ego, or are drawn from darker practices of the past.  Ms. Hoffman and Mr. Hill advise the reader to open spiritual channels and meditate, deeply, on the positive and pure  elements that reveal themselves to the discerning, while being wary of negative forces.

In other words, both the conservative Christian and the spiritualists are warning us away from negative forces, and pointing us towards the forces of light.  This is what I’ve seen, so far, and verifies my learnings from Baha’i Scripture.  It’s important, to me at least, to not be too attached to names and titles, but to look, carefully, at the lives of the Great Spiritual Teachers and to sift out any indication of self-aggrandizement, on the part of the writers.

All I have read, thus far, encourages more comparative study- including a simultaneous study of the New Testament and the Quran, later this Spring, Summer and Autumn.  Baha’u’llah teaches that each individual is to learn spiritual truth for her/himself.