Planet Baha'i: The Blog

Future Trials

noreply@blogger.com (Dale) — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 00:27:00 +0000

A little over a year ago, I wrote an article on the Planet Baha'i web site (as opposed to this blog) titled "Another Disaster Tries to Loom". It dealt with predictions of not one but two predicted "end of the world" events: a claim that Jesus will return in March, 2011 and the December 2012 hoopla connected with certain claims about the Mayan calendar.

A few days ago, I received an email commenting on that article. The author, a fellow named David from Wisconsin wanted to share his comments, so I'll post them here:

Excellent article!

One point I must add is the fact that Baha'u'llah, 'Abdu'l-Baha and Shoghi Effendi all have written about events in the near future which would be very difficult for humanity to take and which would shake mankind to its depths, impelling us into the new age. There is a great deal of evidence that two factors are coalescing: the degradation and depletion of our basic resources and the mounting array of harmful substances that pervade our life due to industry playing such an unfettered roll in our development.

There are many groups who are looking deeply into these conditions and pointing out that we are running out of options. So much topsoil flows out to sea from the Mississippi river that a years worth would fill a train that could wrap around the world seven times. The middle east was once a lush and verdant system of rivers, forests and prairies but is now largely desert for the same reasons that we are facing decreasing production all over the world now.

I would recommend to all Baha'is that the most fertile soil for teaching is among the many sustainability groups forming around the world. In particular are three: The Natural Step, Permaculture and The Transition Town Initiative. I seriously urge you to seek them out and look into their efforts and provide them with the spiritual underpinning that is still the missing element in what they are trying to achieve.

They are all aware of a concept called Peak Oil, which points out that we are on target to experience a decline in the cheep oil that has been underpinning our "growth economy" and all our material endeavors. This will be causing numerous difficulties all over the world - the implications are truly enormous since so little preparation has been made. The oil industry has denied this up till one month ago (Nov 2010) when the International Energy Agency announce in its yearly report that "by the way" conventional crude oil peaked in 2006.

In other words, that was the highest rate of production of normal, easily accessible crude oil, that will ever be achieved! We will be going downhill from now on, using more and more expensive, hard to find and process oil. It just barely preceded the bursting of the housing bubble and the resulting economic commotion that continues to spread.

Thanks for your comments, David!

Teaching and Reaching Online

noreply@blogger.com (Dale) — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 16:09:00 +0000

One of the goals I've always had for Planet Baha'i (the web site, the forum, and this blog) is that it be a way of reaching out beyond the Baha'i community to teach others about our religion and invite them to look at their own religion in a new light. Conversion is not really my main concern (although of course I'm always happy when I hear that someone has decided to become a Baha'i). There are, to my way of thinking, many reasons why people should have a chance to learn about the Baha'i Faith. Way back in 2001 (kind of scary that 2001 qualifies as "way back"!) I wrote an article listing ten such reasons: Why Learn About the Baha'i Faith? If you read it, you'll see that only the last two reference conversion at all, and one of them is simply along the lines of, "If you're actively looking for a religion, you ought to look here while you're at it."

But after 10+ years of experience, online discussion forums seem to me to be a somewhat clumsy way of going about it. Their strength is that they offer human interaction. Questions can be asked and answered, relationships (to a degree, at any rate) can be forged, and people can get at least a bit of a sense of what the Baha'i community is actually like. Their weakness is that they offer human interaction in a rather limited way. Much of human communication is nonverbal, but online all we get is the verbal, and sometimes people aren't incredibly good at expressing themselves in a way that conveys their real intent. It's so easy to get the wrong impression. Moreover, none of us posts in a vaccuum. If we're having a bad day (or a bad week, or a bad life), our posts are easily colored by our our anger, frustration, despondency, etc., over other things.

For awhile today I found myself sucked into a series of searches to find mentions of the Planet Baha'i forum elsewhere on the web. I ran across an interesting variety of references and links, ranging from our presence in link lists to positive recommendations (usually links to specific posts that might answer questions being asked) to complaints and sharp criticisms (one person was "raising an alarm" about a thread they felt was based on outrageous misinformation). In the course of this, I was been led back in time to threads that played themselves out seven or eight years ago and which read almost exactly like threads recently active. It's almost as though we've been stuck in a time loop, except some of the characters have changed.

Anyway, clearly we are getting noticed, at least from time to time. And if we are noticed, then we are teaching, even if only in subtle ways. But what are we teaching?

Without a doubt, sometimes we teach Baha'u'llah's Message. We use quotations extensively, and in the main I feel we do a pretty good job of exemplifying His teachings in terms of how we relate to each other and our guests. But also without a doubt, sometimes we don't. I have no delusions about this being avoidable. I'm not always happy with how I have conducted my own self, and I'm sure most of the rest of us have had moments when we wish we hadn't posted as we did. These things, unfortunately, happen. And I'm sure this extends to people of other faiths as well. If you happen to be a Christian reading this, for example, I'm sure you want to be a good ambassador for Jesus Christ. And I'm sure that often you are, but also that sometimes you feel you have not been.

So the question (and I open this up to everyone regardless of religion affiliation), is what if anything can be done to make a forum such as this a good and successful vehicle for teaching about a religion? Are we already as good as it gets, or can it get better, and if so how? If not, why not? And does it matter?

You can post comments on this blog if you like, but in the interests of having a conversation, I've also created a thread in our forum to ask the same question. I invite you to visit it and post your comments there.

E-Books and Baha'is

noreply@blogger.com (Dale) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:52:00 +0000

Since we're working towards the launch of One Voice Press, I've been giving a fair bit of thought to e-books and how they might be transforming the publishing world. I happened across this post at a blog called Mobile Opportunity comparing the previous hype over e-books ten years ago with that of today. Author Michael Mace offers some thought-provoking observations here.

One thing that I keep wondering, however, is to what degree people really want to read books on a small blinking box. As Mace notes,

Paper books simply aren't broken, from the perspective of most users. S. David Mash had a good quote on this: "The reading device for the paperback is widely available for free (sunlight). This device can be used for other tasks as well."

There are undoubtedly some materials for which electronic readers make sense. I can see it for reference material, periodicals, textbooks, and materials that you might regularly want to be able to search quickly. But personally, I can't see curling up on the sofa with a cup of tea and a good e-book. (For one thing, being a klutz I'd probably spill the tea and that would be the end of the reading device!) I've talked to a number of other people who share this view, not all of whom are quite as old as I am. (So I have to believe it's not simply an age thing.)

Where Baha'i publishing is concerned, I can certainly see a prominent place for electronic versions of the Holy Writings, other authoritative materials (a lot of which is used for reference and regularly searched; I myself have used Ocean for that very purpose for about a decade), and for periodicals. There would be a lot of value in having teaching materials available in electronic form, too. But would people choose to read a biography that way, or an inspirational work, or a Baha'i-inspired work of fiction?

I'm not entirely sure. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts, however. Will the bound book still have a place in an electronic world?

Oh Yeah, the Name Is . . .

noreply@blogger.com (Dale) — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:50:00 +0000

One Voice Press. That's the name of the Baha'i press Kathy and I are working on starting. We got the trade name registration letter from the state yesterday, so that part is official, at least.

We have a friend working up a logo for us based on an idea I had and that my daughter Jocelyn elaborated into a great prototype.

If you want to write for us, we would love to hear from you. See the previous post for details...

A New Venture and Whatnot

noreply@blogger.com (Dale) — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:48:00 +0000

Okay, so I'm now down to one post per year. That might be a record of some sort.

Anyway, those of you who follow PB regularly know that Kathy and I stopped putting new material on the Planet Baha'i web site at the end of 2009. The discussion forum is still in full swing, but we have been slowly working towards a new venture: a small Baha'i publishing company. We still have a lot of work to do, but we are now looking for manuscripts and book proposals.

So here's the deal . We're accepting submissions of nonscholarly, non-introductory book length manuscripts and book proposals with a Baha'i theme. We are particularly interested in inspirational materials, fiction, memoirs, and general works showing faith in action. We'll be happy to provide submission guidelines. Just drop us an email.

Feel free to spread the word. Further news will be posted as it becomes available...

Oddly Enough, Almost a Pilgrim

noreply@blogger.com (Dale) — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 02:58:00 +0000

Bad blogger, Dale. One post a month or less?? Well . . . in my defense, all I can say is I have too many irons in the fire, and I keep finding new things to do on top of it all.

But that's not what I'm writing about today. (Not intentionally, anyway.) Last week while I was minding my own business at work, Kathy called me up and asked for my Baha'i ID number. For those of you who don't know what a Baha'i ID number is, it's just a number that Baha'is are given by their National Spiritual Assembly when they enroll as members of the Baha'i Faith. It's like an account number. The reason for having a Baha'i ID number is, basically, that computers like account numbers. Makes it easier to keep track of things like mailing lists.

So anyway, Kathy calls me at work and asks what mine is. I tell her. I don't ask why. I just tell her. She's my wife. I trust her. After a pause and sounds of typing on a computer keyboard, she says, "You're probably wondering why I asked."

No, actually I'm not. But I suggest that she may want to use it to log on to National's administrative web site to look up some information. She says no, but doesn't give an actual answer for a moment or two, then she announces, "There. We're signed up for pilgrimage!"

Cool.

If you've been paying attention here, you'll notice there was absolutely no consultation involved. She just decided it was a good time to sign up, so she did it. So sometime in the next two to three years or thereabouts, assuming our finances work out (which they never do exactly, but that's never stopped us before), we'll be headed for Haifa, Israel and the Baha'i World Center.

Okay, now pertaining to all this, there is this thing called Ning which is used to build social networking sites. Baha'is seem to have fallen in love with it over the past couple of years. There are all kinds of Baha'i sites based on Ning. Many of them are (as I understand it) invitation-only affairs, and some are used for administrative purposes. There is one created for Baha'is who have been on pilgrimage, are on the list to go on pilgrimage, or maybe are just thinking about going on pilgrimage. About the same time as Kathy signed us up for pilgrimage, a Planet Baha'i member named Cathy sent me an invitation to join the pilgrimage Ning site.

Two things about this. (1) Cathy didn't know we hadn't yet been on pilgrimage. She just thought the site would interest me. (2) Cathy has the same name as Kathy, only spelled differently.

What's up with that? Is there some otherworldly connection between women whose names are variants of Cathy/Kathy?

I dunno. All I know is, it is late and I am tired. ;-)

Trials, Questions, Reboots, and a Fast Fast

noreply@blogger.com (Dale) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:47:00 +0000

I have to admit that I still haven't gotten the hang of this blogging stuff yet. Still, I guess it's time for a few more updates from Crooked Mile. (That's what Kathy and I have taken to calling our house.)

Those of you who are also members of the Planet Baha'i Forum will know that I spent a few weeks out of work from mid-January to early February. Fortunately that didn't last too long, but since I also spent a couple of months out of work at the end of 2007, our resources have been stretched pretty thin these days. Add to that a computer crash and various other tests and trials, and by now it's a miracle I know my own name.

Oh, well. At least the science and religion survey I mentioned in my last post is going well. Thus far I've had over 270 responses. I'd like a lot more, though, and I'd like to get considerably more participation from people who are not Baha'is, so I have a good basis for comparison. If you haven't taken the survey, please do, and please spread the word to friends, family, total strangers, etc. Please consider posting a link in your blog if you have one. There are 40 questions on the survey and you should be able to complete it in about 15 mintues, I hope. Thanks!

The new Planet Baha'i is behaving well so far (we haven't received any real complaints anyway), and we have restarted our regular publication schedule. We'll be putting new content online and emailing newsletters biweekly instead of weekly, but we hope that will be sufficient to keep everyone happy and keep us from going insane. If you haven't seen it yet, please check out Kathy's new article, "Fashion Unconsciousness" and my new book review on Legacy of Courage: The Life of Ola Pawlowska.

Also, make sure you are a Planet Baha'i member. (If you get the newsletter, you are, but you may not remember your user ID and password. If you aren't sure, you can either email me for help or just set up a new account.) The Member Center not only lets you subscribe to our newsletter, it also has a number of special features for you. For one thing, there is an email course titled "Introduction to the Baha'i Faith" which we think will be of interest to anyone not terribly familiar with the religion.

With all the foregoing excitement, it seems to me that the Fast has been going awfully . . . well, fast this year. Only four and a half days left as I write this.

Or maybe it's just that I'm getting older. ;-)

A Science and Religion Survey

noreply@blogger.com (Dale) — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 20:04:00 +0000

I'd like to invite you to participate in a small research project I've undertaken. As you may know, I have a keen interest in science and religion issues, and after many years of online discussions with Baha'is and others, I've come to realize that opinions within the Baha'i community on the relationship between science and religion are all over the place. We all accept the idea that science and religion are harmonious, of course, but the devil (if I can invoke such in this context) is in the details.

So I've constructed a survey to make a first stab at gauging exactly what "harmony of science and religion" means to Baha'is. But this is not a survey for Baha'is only. I would also like to have input from people of other faiths and of no faith to see how their opinions compare to those of Baha'is.

The survey is now online at http://www.my3q.com/go.php?url=lehket/59790. Please pay a visit and fill out the questions. It's not too terribly long. Please note that the site where I have hosted the survey limits me to 250 responses per month. If you attempt to fill in the survey but get an error indicating that I may be over that limit, please let me know. The survey will be online for some months, probably at least through June, 2009 if not July, but if necessary I may be able to set up a second copy of the survey to capture more responses.

Thank you for your help, and please spread the word. If you have a Baha'i blog or any other type of blog where this information might be appropriate, please do post it.

Art and Spirituality Worksop

noreply@blogger.com (Dale) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:16:00 +0000

I got an email the other day from Annick Elziere announcing a 5-day "Art and Spirituality" workshop February 2 - 6, 2009 at the Desert Rose Baha'i Institute in Eloy, Arizona. The workshop will be presented by Hong Foo Tat and will explore the essence of spirituality through art using eastern and western techniques and philosophy.

Born in Penang, Malaysia, Hong Tatt Foo is an internationally known artist whose paintings are cherished in many public and private collections around the world. After receiving a Masters degree in Art Education at the University of Illinois, Mr. Foo taught art in New York, Malaysia, and Africa. In April 2003 he had a retrospective show of his paintings sponsored by the Penang Art Museum, Penang, Malaysia, followed by several major exhibits in China and Singapore. A second book of his works Poetic Impulse and Fragrance of Spirituality has been published. For more information, visit foogallery.com.

This workshop is for beginners as well as advanced students and artists. Please register early as attendance is limited. Registration fee is $150.00 plus lodging (dorm $15/night, private $40night) and meals ($35/day).

Students will be required to bring their own art materials, but it looks like they will also be available for purchase at the workshop for $50. Materials include:

1) Basic set of acrylic paints (primary colors plus black and white)
2) Set of water color and watercolor pad about 10"x14"
3) Chinese (Sumie) black ink
4) Different sizes bamboo brushes
5) Rice paper
6) Foam core board and poster board
7) Plastic container for water and a roll of paper towel.s
8) Painting mat or an old bath-size towel
9) 2-B Pencil and kneaded eraser
10) Spray water bottle

For further information, please visit drbi.org.

More on the New Planet Baha'i

noreply@blogger.com (Dale) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:59:00 +0000

I've gotten a lot done on the new Planet Baha'i design since my last post. Coding is basically complete for all but two new features. One of the things we're pretty exicted about is the addition of some new features for PB members. In the past, all members could do was subscribe to the newsletter and vote on articles. Now as a member you'll be able to:

1. Vote on articles and book reviews. Voting builds both personal lists so you can easily find the articles and reviews you liked, plus builds "Most Popular" lists to help visitors find our best stuff.

2. Set up custom RSS feeds to be displayed in a margin. We'll provide a few standard feeds for everyone, but members will be able to add whatever feeds they want to their personal list.

3. Subscribe to an "Introduction to the Baha'i Faith" e-course and access supplementary materials. We hope this will entice people not familiar with the Baha'i Faith to sign up, learn, and stay connected.

4. Access some "extras". Right now we only have one, but we think it's a good one: a 19-day sunrise/sunset calculator that interfaces with Google Maps to make it easy to determine sunrise and sunset times for the Fast as well as for any other time of the year. (Trust me, I've looked around on the Web and this is a big step forward in this kind of tool.) We hope to add other extras as we think of them or as they are suggested to us. (Feel free to make suggestions!)

5. The last item that will be added, and owing to its potential complexity we may not have this fully implemented at first, will be a mechanism for members to connect with each other through the site. Although we aren't turning into a full-blown social networking site, we think it may be of some value for our members to be able to get together if they wish.

About the RSS feeds. We've been trying to identify which feeds would be good to have in our standard list. Obvioulsy the Baha'i World News Service feed will go there. Are there others that you regularly follow? If so, we'd like to hear about them.

I could say more, but I don't want to give too much away. ;-) So that's it for today.

A Flat Tire by the Will of God?

noreply@blogger.com (Dale) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:58:00 +0000

It always amuses me when some misfortune turns out to have positive consequences that could be viewed in a negative light if one were so inclined.

I suppose that makes no sense. Let me illustrate.

This past Saturday, Kathy and I got up and headed out to do our usual round of boring shopping: Wal*Mart, Petsmart, and the local grocery store. (This is in no way meant as an endorsement for these establishments. They are just places we had to go. Just in case you were wondering.) After picking up what we needed at Wal*Mart, we returned to the car to discover that the rear passenger-side tire was flat.

I changed the tire and, inspecting it, found a largish screw embedded in the tread. "Let's go up to Sears," I suggested. "They should be able to repair this." So off we went to the mall, which was actually in the general direction of Petsmart and therefore not much out of the way. When we got there, they took a quick look, said yeah, they could repair that. About 45 mintues to an hour and it would be done.

Since we were there with some time to kill, Kathy wanted to look at washing machines and driers. Our drier broke earlier this year, but since she likes to dry clothes on the line during the summer months, it wasn't much of a problem. With the arrival of cooler weather, however, it was going to be. So we went to appliances, and she found a pair of machines she liked, and the salesman told us all about the sale that was just about to end and how they would take another 10% off if we opened a charge account, and how we could also get free delivery . . .

So, yeah, we bought a washer and drier. By this time, of course, the car should have been done, so we went back to the auto shop only to find that they'd been trying to call me on my cell phone, which had not been able to locate a signal while we were in appliances. Turns out my two front tires were in rather bad shape, too. We have a long trip coming up soon, so I decided I'd have to get them replaced. That would be another hour.

By this time, Kathy and I were getting thirsty, so we walked towards the food court. On the way, we passed Dress Barn, where Kathy noticed a sweater sale was in progress. "I was just looking at my sweaters yesterday," she said, "and thinking I needed some new ones."

So, yeah, we went in and she bought a couple of sweaters and a blouse to go under one of them, and then of course she saw a beautiful green dress for not too much money and decided to try it on. And of course she looked gorgeous in it, so while she hemmed and hawed about whether or not to spend the money I told her to go ahead.

At the checkout counter, I said to her, "We're certainly doing our part this morning to help the economy recover."

The clerk replied, "Thank you!!"

While Kathy had been trying on clothes, the auto shop called to say the car was ready, but we hadn't gotten our drinks yet, so we went to the food court first, stopped at Annie's Pretzels, and Kathy ordered two Cokes and, what the heck, two soft pretzels, which we took our time eating before going back to get the car.

Bear in mind that this trip was supposed to be Wal*Mart, Petsmart, grocery store. It was by now 1:00 PM and we had only crossed the first of those off the list. We were supposed to be meeting Andrea and Melissa's families at a local farm market to buy pumpkins at 2:00. So we buzzed Petsmart as quickly as possible, went home and dropped of such stuff as we had bought, and took off for the farm market. We bought pumpkins in the not-quite-pouring rain.

This could be viewed as a very annoying sort of day. We didn't get our groceries bought. We had to change a tire, fix a tire, and replace two more tires. We spent a ton of money we hadn't counted on spending.

On the other hand, if we hadn't gone through this, we would probably have been floundering around trying to figure out how to get a new drier, when we actually bought one it would have cost rather more (or we would have gotten one that didn't really meet Kathy's criteria), and somewhere between here and Chicago during Thanksgiving weekend we probably would have blown out a tire. So we end quite by accident taking care of a couple of big things that really needed to be taken care of.

And actually, because we realized it and were rather grateful for the chance to deal with these things before they became huge problems, we had a reasonably fun time doing it.

So was this a happy accident, or divine intervention? We think we know which. But that's just us.

Coming Soon: A New Planet Baha'i

noreply@blogger.com (Dale) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 19:55:00 +0000

Those who follow Planet Baha'i regularly will know that Kathy and I decided late in August to take a break. We've been running the site for eight years (counting the About.com days) without taking more than a week off here and there. We were getting to the point finding something new and interesting to say was almost impossible. So we decided to stop for an undetermined amount of time.

For awhile, we really didn't do anything. But lately we've been (slowly) working on a few new articles, and I, being the family geek, have been working on a complete redesign of the web site. It was a bit slow going at first, but things are starting to pick up. I've made some significant progress in the past week, to the point that I can offer you a sneak preview. Well, at least a sneek preview graphic. Here it is:

The new site will be markedly different from the former incarnations, not only in look and feel but also in content. We've decided to eliminate a lot of stuff that is hard to maintain and which other sites offer in sufficient quantity. The main thing that will go away is our link library.

However, we are going to introduce some new things, too. As before, the core of our site will be our original articles, but we are upgrading the book review section to a core element as well. We hope to do many more reviews, and get some guest authors to contribute some as well.

Also, we will be introducing some new member features, including an ecourse introduction to the Baha'i Faith, 19-day-Fast-oriented sunrise/sunset calculator with an integrated Google Maps interface, and a few other tidbits.

A lot of this must still be designed, coded, and debugged, so the site won't be going live for a little while still. But progress has been good, and I figured it was worth spreading the word a bit, so you'll all be salivating to see it. ;-)

Comments and suggestions for the site are always welcome, of course, so please let us know if you have any ideas. Thanks!

Dawn Breakers International Film Festival

noreply@blogger.com (Dale) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:26:00 +0000

I got an email yesterday about the Dawn Breakers International Film Festival. I've never heard of this before, but it sounds like it could be interesting, especially for those who work in the film industry or take a keen interest in how Baha'i principles and teachings can be expressed through the arts.

The DBIFF web site provides all the details, but let me give you the gist of it here. There will be two "takes" for the festival. Take 1 will be held in San Diego on November 29, 2008 at the Sheraton San Diego, 1380 Harbor Island Drive, San Diego, California 9210. Take 2 will be held in Phoenix, Arizona on December 27 - 28, 2008 at the Marriott Hotel, 5350 E. Marriott Drive, Phoenix, Arizona 85054.

Both events are free of charge, the former if you attend San Diego's Divine Art of Living Converence (sorry, I don't have information on that) and the latter if you attend the Grand Canyon Bahá'í Conference in Phoenix, which will be held December 26 - 28, 2008. Unfortunately, there is no plan at this time to provide tickets independent of the conferences.

Films can be entered into the festival free of charge. They must be by, for, or about Bahá'ís. Films by Bahá'ís should be written, directed and/or produced by a Bahá'í. Films about Bahá'ís must protray the Bahá'í Faith in a dignified manner. The festival accepts films from around the globe and in any language. English subtitles for non-English films are preferred, but not required. Categories include feature, documentary, short, animation and music video. The submission process is given on the DBIFF web site. The deadline is November 25, 2008.

This year an international audience of 3,500 is expected, so it's a great way for filmmakers to showcase and promote their work. If you have questions that are not answered on the aforementioned web sites, you can email dbiff@kdkfactory.com.

By the by, my apologies for not putting much online over the past year. If I have a chance, I'll talk more about that later. Meanwhile, I hope to be slightly more active here henceforth . . .

It's Been Awhile

noreply@blogger.com (Dale) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 23:10:00 +0000

It's been rather a long while since my last post here. A lot has happened in the interim, but I haven't had much time for blogging, and probably haven't had much to say that I haven't said in my Planet Baha'i articles. Even they've been a bit of a struggle sometimes.

What happened was, I lost my job at the end of October (not entirely unexpectedly, given how things had been going, but we had all been hoping against hope that it wouldn't go that way). It took me a couple of months to land a new position, but it's a good one offering me a shorter commute, a chance to learn some new skills, and good people to work with.

You'd think that with two months off, I could have caught up on my sleep and gotten a few things done around the house, things I'd been putting off for awhile. No such luck. Although I didn't realize it at the time, I think the whole experience drained me considerably, and I haven't entirely recovered as yet.

A few people have been clamoring for me to get this blog going again, so I figured that while I had a moment tonight, I'd give it a shot. You can blame the clamorers for the result. ;-)

Clamorers. Is that a word?

Anyway, Naw-Ruz is only minutes away. Have a very happy one, and may the new year bring you many wonderful opportunities to serve God and humanity.

And maybe a dish of ice cream or two along the way.

Wedding Bells

noreply@blogger.com (Dale) — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:38:00 +0000

Our daughter Melissa is getting married this weekend. As you can imagine, things have been rather busy at our place, made more so by the motorcycle accident that her fiance TJ's father was in last month. I've been neglecting this blog due to all of that chaos, plus just not being able to find very much to say.

A brief update on TJ's father: He woke up yesterday for the first time since the accident and was looking around. I gather he didn't understand much of what people were saying to him, but at least it's a positive sign that he was able to get that far.

Back to the wedding for a moment, and what it has to do with Planet Baha'i. In the past, I've written several articles on the subject of marriage in honor. The first, "By the Will of God" was written when Andrea and Bill got married and was sparked by a question Bill, who was not then a Baha'i, asked about the Baha'i marriage vow: "We will all, verily, abide by the will of God." Based on our statistics, that article has proven to be one of the most popular on our site.

A second article, "Marriage as Spiritual Union", followed a couple of years later. It actually was written on the occasion of Melissa's first marriage. Somewhat ironically, given the theme of the article, that marriage didn't last. Nevertheless, life goes on and yet another article on marriage followed earlier this year, "How Do You Do It?", written the week Kathy and I celebrated our 30th anniversary in response that very question, asked by one of our Planet Baha'i forum members and the very next week by "Building the Fortress", a follow-up that Kathy and I co-authored.

Melissa and TJ's wedding gives me yet another opportunity to explore the subject of marriage, but having written so much about it I now have to go back and see what I wrote before so I don't repeat myself! I think I might explore the image of marriage as a "fortress for well-being" if I didn't already do that. I don't think I did, but these days the old memory unit isn't quite as reliable as it used to be...

Cups Sweet and Bitter

noreply@blogger.com (Dale) — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 15:39:00 +0000

Such is this mortal abode: a storehouse of afflictions and suffering. It is ignorance that binds man to it, for no comfort can be secured by any soul in this world, from monarch down to the most humble commoner. If once this life should offer a man a sweet cup, a hundred bitter ones will follow; such is the condition of this world. The wise man, therefore, doth not attach himself to this mortal life and doth not depend upon it...
('Abdu'l-Baha, Selections from the Writings of 'Abdu'l-Baha, #170, p. 200)

We just took our youngest daughter, Elizabeth, to college. We drove from Baltimore to Cincinnati and back under ideal weather and fairly light traffic. The college had the move-in process well organized, we got to visit with some of Kathy's relatives, and we brought home plenty of Skyline chili (seasoning packets for us, cans for a few friends). It was a wonderful trip and a welcome break from the routine.

And then we arrived home to the news that our son-in-law TJ's father had been in a motorcycle accident earlier that day. Although he was wearing a helmet, he hit the road face-first, sustaining multiple fractures. He developed several blood clots in his brain. He's now in a neurological intensive care unit at Johns Hopkins and is described as "unresponsive". Although he has moved a bit and seems to react to people talking, it's not clear whether he knows that people are with him or if he's just reacting to the noise.

All family and friends can do is pray and wait.

I've never bothered to count to see if the Master was literally right about the proportion of "sweet" and "bitter" cups handed me in the course of my life. It certainly is the common perception that the latter grossly outnumber the former, but maybe it's not always so. I doubt that it much matters. We can't really tally up good on one side and bad on the other to easily arrive at a final score. Life's moments come in a variety of colors and intensities. Sometimes (to borrow a phrase from the old nursery rhyme) the good is very, very good and sometimes the bad is horrid. But sometimes the good is just nice and sometimes the bad is just inconvenient. How do we score them?

One way is, perhaps, in what they teach us. Good things can teach us to be thankful, but they can also lead to attachment and greed. Bad things can teach us detachment, but they can also leave us bitter and disillusioned. The events themselves may be less important than our reaction to them. We've explored this theme time and again from different angles in articles such as these:

Given the nature of this life, odds are that we will end up writing many more.

Iranian Memo Proves Denial of Education to Baha'is

noreply@blogger.com (Dale) — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 16:24:00 +0000

To the left you see a copy of a confidential Iranian government memo from 2006 directing Iranian universities to expel Baha'i students. Iran has previously denied that Baha'i students are shut out from higher education, but in fact over half of the Baha'i students who enrolled in Iranian universities for the 2006-2007 academic year were expelled in the course of the year. This memo, which was recently received by the Baha'i International Community, proves that this is part of a pattern of activity aimed at undermining and if possible destroying the Baha'i community in Iran. (See this news story for complete details, including all relevant documents.)

The larger policy dates back to a February 25, 1991 letter drafted by Iran's Supreme Revolutionary Council. This letter sets forth the details of how Baha'is are to be treated in that country. The letter states that while Baha'is are not to be expelled from the country or imprisoned "without reason", the government will nevertheless deal with them "in such a way that their progress and development are blocked".

Among the specific provisions set forth in this policy is one that states, "They must be expelled from universities, either in the admission process or during the course of their studies, once it becomes known that they are Baha'is." Other provisions call for the denial of employment to Baha'is and preventing Baha'is from holding any positions of influence in Iran. (Ironically, the document also calls for Baha'is to be allowed "a modest livelihood". How this is to be done while denying them employment is not explained.)

Baha'is have been persecuted in Iran since their religion's origin in the mid-1800's. Try as they might, the leaders of that country have never been able to destroy the Baha'i community or the Baha'i Faith, and since today it has spread far beyond their borders to encompass all reigions of the Earth, they never will be able to. Yet sadly, they continue to try. Please make your family, friends, and colleagues aware of this situation. Maybe once Iran's reputation suffers enough its leaders will realize that their worst enemies are themselves, and not the Baha'is who wish only peace and honor for their homelands no matter where they reside.

Off to the ABS Conference!

noreply@blogger.com (Dale) — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 14:24:00 +0000

For those of you attending the Association for Baha'i Studies conference in Toronto later this week, here's what Kathy and I will be doing:

Arriving sometime Thursday afternoon/evening. Not sure exactly when
We will be doing a book signing on Friday from 5:30 PM to 6:15 PM in the conference bookstore (Britannia Room) along with several other authors. (Spiritual Telemetry will be available for purchase in the conference bookstore after we deliver the goods Thursday evening through the end of the conference on Sunday. It will be selling for an unfortunately inflated price, but the Canadian Baha'i Distribution Service has to get their cut, soooo... Anyway, the extra money goes to a good Cause, right?)
Our presentation, "Planet Baha'i: Reflections on an Online Community" will be on Saturday from 4:15 PM to 5:15 PM in the Credit Valley room (I'm not sure if I should be nervous about that room's name or not!)

Please stop by and introduce yourselves to us!

Balancing Act

noreply@blogger.com (Dale) — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 17:20:00 +0000

Life is a balancing act, and I spent a lot of time falling flat on my face. I don't suppose I'm the only one. This past week has been a case in point, but before I explain I need to go back in time, way back.

I was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1958. We lived just to the west of Toledo, in a town called Sylvania. I seem to recall that when I was very young most of the kids on my street, at least the ones of the right age to play with a pre-schooler, were girls. My brother and I had a very good friend named Calvin who lived behind us (my dad built a small ladder up one side of the wooden-rail fence and down the other so we could get from one yard to the other without snagging our clothing). A boy named Mike lived just across the street from us. Mike's family moved to Lansing, Michigan at some point. I'm not sure if my brother would even remember him. I barely remember him myself, except for his name. Once I was in school I of course acquired a few friends there. But for a few years at least I seem to have spent a bit more time with the girls than the boys.

When I was 8 years old, we moved to the Chicago suburbs, leaving behind the friends we had acquired. Probably the only one my brother and I really missed was Calvin, since we had been more or less constant companions. We made some new friends in our new location, but then three years later we moved again, this time to Sacramento, California. Again we made a few friends, and three years later we moved back to the Chicago suburbs and started over once more.

In hindsight, it appears that two things happened to me as a result of all this. First, I seem to have acquired a rather excessive nervousness about females. Part of this I believe had to do with something I can't quite remember from my very early childhood, possibly some teasing I took about having so many "girlfriends". Nothing specific comes to mind, but I do have this persistent sense that something like that may have happened.

Second, I learned not to form too many close attachments with other people. It was a lesson that in a sense served me well through the rest (so far) of my life. After returning to Chicago, I finished high school and in three years moved from home to a dorm at Northwestern University. There I met Kathy, we fell in love, and before we could turn around we were married and raising a family. We moved frequently as our family grew, inhabiting three apartments, one townhouse, one rented house, and one bought house in the first 18 years of our marriage. If you do the math, that averages out to three years in each place. Go figure. We never got to know our neighbors very well, but that was okay because we moved so frequently that it just wasn't worth becoming too attached to the people around us. If you have too many attachments, you aren't ready to pick up and go when the time comes to move on.

My professional life worked out much the same way. In those 18 years I worked for three different companies in four different locations among five different groups of coworkers. (That's 3.6 years, on average, among any one group of people.) After we moved to the Baltimore area in 1995, we have stayed put but I nevertheless have worked for five more companies in that time, an average of only 2.4 years in any one place.

The upshot of all this is that subconsciously I do not expect to know any given person for much more than 3 to 5 years, on average. I have known a few people longer than that, but because the expectation is there of moving on, I don't find it easy to get very close to people outside of my own family. And although there is emotional survival value in that when you're always on the move, it does make it tough to fully participate in the life around you.

In other words, it's not entirely a balanced approach.

When we speak of balance, of course, we have to consider both sides of the metaphorical balance beam. In my case, the other side is what happens when I do manage to get close to someone. I don't have too much experience in that. One obvious case is Kathy. The two of us nearly fused together into one person rather early in our relationship, or at least some of our friends so joked. After 31 years (30 of which we have been married), it's often hard for us to do things as individuals. Of course some things we have to do as individuals. She doesn't follow me to my office every day. But aside from that, being apart from each other is a trial. Our longest separation was in 1995 when I was in Baltimore for a month working at my new job and she and the kids were in Chicago trying to sell our old house. We had to call each other daily, sometimes a couple of times a day, to get by.

That's probably not exactly a balanced approach, either.

Which brings us to this past week. I presently work for a mortgage company. I've only been here for a bit over a year. A few weeks before I started, a woman named Michelle also was hired. We are both software engineers, both working on the same system. There had been a third member of our team, but she left to have a baby and after that her husband took a job in New Jersey, so she never returned. For most of a year, then, Michelle and I have been working closely together. Our personalities "clicked". We became good friends, although we never did much outside of work. (She came to devotions at our house once.) For me, a great deal of the joy of working at this place was because of my friendship with her. Aside from Kathy herself, I have never been such good friends with a woman. Ever.

Then last week the company experienced a sudden and unexpected financial downturn, and about three-quarters of the IT staff lost their jobs. We found out about it on Wednesday and the axe actually fell on Friday. It was a horrible three days for all of us. Now Michelle is gone, and I am left here staring at her empty desk.

I can write this today because I've mostly worked through the loss. Besides, I haven't totally lost her. We still are in contact and we will see each other from time to time. That helps. But the emotional trauma has taken a lot out of me. I got to thinking at one point that if this is how I react to not being able to see a dear friend on a daily basis, what kind of shape would I be in if I lost Kathy? I almost think I'd have to lay down and die. (Aside: It is not at all comforting that there's about a 50/50 chance that such will happen. If I don't die first, she will. It's not likely we'll both go at the same time. )

Does that imply a lack of balance?

I either hold people at arm's length or I draw them in very close. I don't seem to know how to go halfway. Then again, I'm not sure that I should worry about it. Consider these two passages from the Baha'i Writings:

Know thou of a truth that the seeker must, at the beginning of his quest for God, enter the Garden of Search. In this journey it behoveth the wayfarer to detach himself from all save God and to close his eyes to all that is in the heavens and on the earth. There must not linger in his heart either the hate or the love of any soul, to the extent that they would hinder him from attaining the habitation of the celestial Beauty. He must sanctify his soul from the veils of glory and refrain from boasting of such worldly vanities, outward knowledge, or other gifts as God may have bestowed upon him. He must search after the truth to the utmost of his ability and exertion, that God may guide him in the paths of His favour and the ways of His mercy. For He, verily, is the best of helpers unto His servants. He saith, and He verily speaketh the truth: "Whoso maketh efforts for Us, in Our ways shall We assuredly guide him." And furthermore: "Fear God and God will give you knowledge."
(Baha'u'llah, Gems of Divine Mysteries, para. 36, p. 25)

O children of men! Know ye not why We created you all from the same dust? That no one should exalt himself over the other. Ponder at all times in your hearts how ye were created. Since We have created you all from one same substance it is incumbent on you to be even as one soul, to walk with the same feet, eat with the same mouth and dwell in the same land, that from your inmost being, by your deeds and actions, the signs of oneness and the essence of detachment may be made manifest. Such is My counsel to you, O concourse of light! Heed ye this counsel that ye may obtain the fruit of holiness from the tree of wondrous glory.
(Baha'u'llah, The Hidden Words, Arabic 68)

What do you think?

Bankyo Dokon

noreply@blogger.com (Dale) — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 12:37:00 +0000

At the April meeting of the Baltimore Bonsai Club I acquired an azalea in a raffle. There was a tag stuck in the soil, hand-labeled with the word "Bankyo." Thinking it was the cultivar name, I embarked on a quest to confirm my suspicion, but instead a web search led me to a Japanese religious movement called Oomoto. Among the tenets of this belief system is one called "bankyo dokon", which means "all religions spring from the same root".

For a Baha'i, this was a rather stunning discovery, made even more so by the fact that Oomoto began in 1892, the same year that Baha'u'llah passed from this life. Moreover, many of its teachings are strikingly similar to those of the Baha'i Faith and its development may even have been influenced by an encounter between one of its most prominent early figures and a Baha'i.

What's even stranger is that "bankyo" is not actually the name of an azalea cultivar. The correct name is apparently "banko". From what I've been told, it's very common for names of plant material coming into the U.S. from Japan to be rendered in all kinds of different ways, sort of like what used to happen with the names of immigrants coming into the country through Ellis Island. How odd that that particular misspelling should be on a plant destined to fall into the hands of a Baha'i!

In any event, I'm going to name my azalea Banko Dokon and will try to develop it to reflect this teaching. It seems fitting.

For a more detailed version of this story, see my article "Bankyo Dokon" on the Planet Baha'i web site.

Three Decades Together

noreply@blogger.com (Dale) — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 17:50:00 +0000

Yesterday Kathy and I celebrated our 30th anniversary. It's amazing how 30 years can seem so long and so short at the same time. We never could have foreseen the twists and turns our lives would take, and we can't foresee what the next 30 years will bring, but we both agree that the trip so far has been worth it and that it will continue to be worth it.

We weren't Baha'is when we met at Northwestern University in 1976, although we could see the dome of the Baha'i House of Worship from one spot on the campus. The House of Worship, or rather a poster of it bought by my roommate Roy, did figure rather curiously in how I became a Baha'i, but that's another story. We were only at the university for a year before we married. We never finished our degrees, although I did make one attempt a couple of years later to go back to school. That didn't work out so well. Fortunately, I fell into a career as a software developer. There may have been some divine intervention there, too, for all I know. At the least, the old saying, "God looks after all fools," seems to have fit our life together!

Reaching our 30th anniversary prompted two Planet Baha'i articles, one published last week ("How Do You Do It?") and one that is due to appear tomorrow if all goes according to plan. Watch the PB home page for its appearance, or better yet subscribe to our newsletter so you don't miss out on any of our new articles. We've also done articles on marriage in the past, which you can find by searching the site or using the "further reading" links in one of the aforementioned articles.

We hope that our insights, drawn from experience and our study of the Baha'i Writings, can offer a few insights and assistance to others desiring to create and preserve strong marriages. We may not be "experts" in the usual sense, but we have been around the block a time or two and with any luck know whereof we speak. In the modern world marriage often receives a bad rap, but it shouldn't be that way. Baha'u'llah calls marriage "a fortress for well-being and salvation". It can be, and it is. We know. We've seen it in action.

Bahaikipedia

noreply@blogger.com (Dale) — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 18:19:00 +0000

I received an email the other day pointing me to Bahaikipedia: The Baha'i Encyclopedia. Bahaikipedia is, as the name implies, an online Baha'i encyclopedia patterned after the well-known Wikipedia. It's new and doesn't yet have vast amounts of material online, but as a work in progress it holds great promise, I feel.

I gave it a test run today, setting up an account (which was very easy) and adding myself and Kathy to the "Authors" category and adding our book Spiritual Telemetry to the "Books" category. If you've edited material on a wiki site before, you'll be comfortable doing it at Bahaikipedia. If not, you may have to learn a few things, because special markup is required to achieve various effects, although there are editing buttons that make some of it fairly easy.

Even if you don't plan to add or edit material, however it's probably worth bookmarking this site and checking back with it from time to time. The only negative comment I have is that I really wish they'd thought up a more mellifluous name!

Birth and the Moon

noreply@blogger.com (Dale) — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 16:48:00 +0000

I tend to view nature as a huge metaphor for spiritual reality. This morning as I was leaving for work I looked up (as I always do) and saw the moon riding high in the southwest, a waning gibbous just a few days past full. It started a curious train of thought.

I don't know what other people think when they see the moon. Being an amateur astronomer, I often think of the amazing fact that it is another world, a quarter of a million miles away, or consider how it is one of the largest satellites in our solar system (how big would Ganymede, the largest, look if it were hanging there instead?), or that it is the largest in proportion to its parent planet. Since reading The Big Splat, or How Our Moon Came to Be, I frequently cast my mind back to the ancient past, when the Earth was newly formed and a huge object collided with it, spewing matter far and wide, some falling back to Earth, some rocketing into orbit, and some blasted entirely out of the local gravity well. The moon formed from a small fraction of the detritus of that collision.

Today astronomers use observations of protoplanetary disks surrounding very young stars and computer models to build theories about how solar systems form. Their models predict astonishing things. A not-quite-born solar system is a violent place, where collisions are commonplace, small objects are smashed to rubble even as large planets are assembled, and gravitational interactions between new planets can radically alter orbits, shuffling them around and even ejecting planets out of the system forever. Life could not exist in such a place, or at least not life in any way remotely as we know it.

The chaos and violence of solar system birth mirrors similar upheavals seen in other kinds of birth. Although we like to think of the birth of a human child as a wonderful and beautiful process (and it is, as is the birth of a solar system), it nevertheless is undeniably a time of upheaval for both mother and child, involving radical changes, pain, and even a certain degree of physical danger. Before the advent of modern medicine, women often died in childbirth or from complications following childbirth, and infants themselves faced a high mortality rate.

In the social arena it seem that the same thing prevails. How many social advances were born through or in the midst of chaos and violence? We need only think of the many fights for racial and ethnic equality that have taken place around the world to see this.

And that brings us to religion. The tales told of the births of most of the world's great religions speak of persecution and battles. The crucifixion of Jesus and the subsequent persecution of early Christians by the Romans may be the best-known to western readers. Muhammad and His early followers likewise suffered at the hands of their enemies before the Prophet was given the mantle of civil leadership and became responsible for the protection of the community.

The genesis of the Baha'i Faith offers perhaps the best documented and most vivid example of violent birth. Almost from the outset, the followers of the Bab suffered intense persecution, with some 20,000 of them going to their deaths before the Bab Himself was executed. The mission of Baha'u'llah was marked by continued persecution, which has continued to this day, although sometimes abated for a time.

So it seems this is a universal theme, one that applies in the physical, social, and spiritual realms alike. Coincidence? It seems unlikely!

Planet Baha'i at the ABS Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Dale) — Wed, 30 May 2007 16:03:00 +0000

Well, it's official. Kathy and I have been put on the agenda for the annual Association for Baha'i Studies Conference [August 16 - 19 in Toronto (actually Mississauga) Ontario]. We will be talking about online community-building using Planet Baha'i as an example. We have also received approval to sell our book, Spiritual Telemetry, at the conference bookstore.

Now all we have to do is figure out exactly what we're going to say. Oh, and how to pay for the hotel . . .

The Declaration of the Bab

noreply@blogger.com (Dale) — Wed, 23 May 2007 19:41:00 +0000

On may 23, Baha'is around the world celebrate the Declaration of the Bab, one of eleven holy days in the Baha'i calendar and one of nine on which work should be suspended. On May 22, 1844 at about two hours after sunset the Bab revealed His mission to His first disciple, Mulla Husayn.

The Bab is regarded as the "Herald" of the Baha'i Faith and one of its "central Figures". As such, His story is a key part of Baha'i history. At Planet Baha'i we've presented articles on the Birth of the Bab, the Declaration of the Bab, and the Martyrdom of the Bab (all three of which are Holy Days), as well as a more detailed article on the life of the Bab.

The Bab's followers were known as Babis. The term Baha'i only came into existence later, after Baha'u'llah publicly declared His mission in 1863. However, the Baha'i calendar marks 1844-1845 as its year 1, and so closely are the revelations of Bab and Baha'u'llah linked that we generally regard the Declaration of the Bab as the inception of the Baha'i Faith. We are now in the year 164 B.E. It's interesting and a bit sobering to consider how far the Baha'i Faith has spread in only 163 years. With the help of modern technology it has acquired a global reach faster than any other independent religion, yet it is still arguably still in its infancy and has a lot of growing to do.

Where will it be in another 163 years?