Well this statistical curiosity of mine somehow switched on email notifications for my old, much-neglected reddit account, so I received a notice from reddit concerning the passing of Dr. Farzam Arbab. I clicked the link, saw a few comments, and added my own:
A little while later, I received a second notification, which led to this:
Continue readingI’ve been neglecting this blog again. Lately I just can’t find much to report or comment upon. The Bahá’í community seems to have gone quiet. Maybe I’ll collect some social networking numbers to maybe measure some signs of life?
Let’s look at Reddit, that is, subreddit membership.
Continue readingBahá’ís around the world are presently celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of one of their two founding prophets. On such an auspicious occasion, it is perhaps meet and seemly to bring thyself to account—so to speak.
When I left the Bahá’í Faith in May 1988, things looked pretty good for “the Faith,” though some folks could see the moon of fundamentalism on the rise. Still, on the up-side, resurgent persecution of Bahá’ís in Iran had given the the Faith a new burst of media exposure. That majestic Lotus Temple had recently been completed, and the Bahá’í firmament still had its stars, though they may have been fading.
Continue readingDuring all the time that Shoghi Effendi spent in Switzerland, I wonder whether he ever ventured out to Mainau, a famous garden island on Lake Constance (just over the German border). Mainau is famous for a variety of features, one of which is a water staircase lined with cypresses. One quick look at the staircase is likely to remind any Bahá’í of the grand terraces on Mount Carmel.
© 2018 Dan Jensen
I am of the general opinion that each of us has a religion. Each of us holds something to be sacred, though not all of us choose to follow self-proclaimed infallible guides. Not all of us involve prayer as part of our religion, but for those of us who do, prayer can take the form of a poem. For Bahá’ís, sunlight is a favorite metaphor for right guidance from God, but not everyone thinks that light is necessarily the best guide. For Robinson Jeffers, a prayer to a Goddess of darkness is more appropriate than a prayer to a God of light.
@ 1925 Robinson Jeffers
Jeffers Literary Properties
Stanford University Press
Reading © 2017 Kaweah
Here’s one of my favorite aspects of Zoroastrianism. Why mess with success?
Published posthumously in 1963.
Jeffers Literary Properties
Stanford University Press
Reading © 2017 Kaweah
For more discussion on this and other Jeffers poems, see Robinson Jeffers: Fire from Stone.
© 2017 Dan Jensen
Remember the Alamo?
While recently looking for images for a video project featuring the poem “Dawn” by California poet Robinson Jeffers, I came upon the painting “Dawn at the Alamo,” a rather imaginative and partisan depiction of the fall of the Alamo.
For those readers who aren’t familiar with the story, a band of Anglo-American Texans, apparently disregarding the urgings of their general Sam Houston, holed up in a Spanish mission after taking a Mexican town. They were doomed from the start. Major General Houston had no interest in holding the town, regarding it a strategic liability. The defense of the town did little or nothing for the cause of Texan independence, rather more likely harmed it—at least tactically, yet the defenders of the Alamo are remembered as martyrs of the cause, probably because they had to be remembered as such. They fought bravely, probably knowing that General Santa Anna, a bloodthirsty tyrant by all accounts, had no intention of sparing the lives of any of them. Continue reading
You may be familiar with some of the more startling things said about homosexuality in the Bahá’í writings. If not, here’s a sampling:
Homosexuality is highly condemned … (6 October 1956)
… through the advice and help of doctors, through a strong and determined effort, and through prayer, a soul can overcome this handicap. … it is forbidden by Bahá’u’lláh, … (26 March 1950)
… [the homosexual] must mend his ways, if necessary consult doctors, and make every effort to overcome this affliction, which is corruptive for him and bad for the Cause. If after a period of probation you do not see an improvement, he should have his voting rights taken away. (20 June 1953)
You know those people who knock on your door to introduce you to God? That used to be me. I have knocked on doors in the San Joaquin Valley of California, Los Angeles, South Carolina, North Carolina, and even on an Indian Reservation in South Dakota. I did it to “teach” the Bahá’í Faith, as recently as the mid 1980s. I’d been told a few years ago that Bahá’ís don’t go door-to-door anymore, but apparently that is not entirely true.
I recently heard that Bahá’ís in the Pacific Northwest had been running door-to-door “expansion campaigns” (a rather aggressive form of what Bahá’ís call “direct teaching”) as recently as two years ago, so I went out into Googlespace to see what I could scare up. There is ample evidence that Bahá’ís in Idaho, Oregon, and Washington State were knocking on doors in the years 2008–2010. I have also found videos about “direct teaching” from 2011, but I don’t see much in the years since then.
I think this activity was prompted by the Universal House of Justice in the wake of the 2007-8 Global Financial Crisis. Bahá’ís, like some other religious groups, beam with anticipation at the first rumor of crisis. The failures of others are their reassurance that they have the answer and that the world will soon come begging for help.
In the following video, a poster board street map is presented during a 2009 planning session during what was called the “17th Intensive Baha’i Program of Growth.”
It is commonly known that Muslims, for the most part, shun images of their prophet. They certainly do not approve of images of God, though Islám is perhaps as stained by idolatry as any religion. Muslims worship the Qurán as an uncreated being (the word of God exists before creation), they revere Muhammad as the perfect man, and they circumambulate a black stone in what is perhaps their foremost expression of worship. In addition to all that, the Qur’án itself reduces the will of God to a very specific image that can stifle the imagination.
Qur’án 2:115 (Muhammad al-Qtayfani)
But when it comes to the actual Face of God, the Qur’án anthropomorphizes God in a rather non-idolatrous way which I find quite inspired (“your mileage may vary”). It arises in the way that the Qur’án speaks of “the Face of God.” The Qur’án makes reference to this specific construct only twice. In one passage, the point is made that the Face of God can been seen everywhere, and presumably, in everything:
To God belong the East and the West; whithersoever you turn, there is the Face of God; God is All-embracing, All-knowing. [2:115]