Karen's Thoughts

What Regular Teachers Probably Don't Know About Their Sub

2011-03-19T20:27:00.001-07:00

1. I have to take my house phone and my cell phone with me when I take a bath, because I might miss work calls. I’ve missed work calls because I don’t answer my cell phone while I’m driving, until I can pull over. Sub clerks want the spot filled, and aren’t going to mess with voice mail unless I’m specifically asked for by the teacher.

2. I have to get up at 5 a.m. or even earlier in order to fit in all my morning routines, before I have to leave for work. Sometimes things get skimped on, like my exercise program or breakfast.

3. I have to prepare myself for work, scheduling all appointments around it, even when it turns out that no calls come.

4. If I don’t get a work call, I don’t get paid. That means I get a tiny paycheck in July, nothing in August, and another tiny paycheck in September. January and February are also pretty lean because of Christmas break. Easter break and testing week can also disrupt the cash flow, although not so severely because there is some variation between school districts.

5. Rising gas prices will influence how far I’m willing to drive for a half-day.

6. I can get work calls so late that I already think I have the day to myself, and then have to shift gears at the last minute.

7. I like being scheduled beforehand, but few teachers do that, even when their absence was for an event planned months ahead of time. If you really want me in your class, call me early, otherwise you’ll have whatever sub happens to be available that morning.

8. One of the many skills I’ve acquired is the ability to figure out where tiny country schools are in the middle of nowhere, and where the portable buildings are for alternative education. I’m never given a key for the latter and sometimes have to wait in the rain for the aide to arrive. (An umbrella is in my backpack at all times.)

9. Sometimes the first challenge of the day is figuring out the little “trick” to unlocking the door. Technical difficulties in general can make a good day go down the tubes in a hurry.

10. Once inside the classroom, my first challenge is locating the lesson plans -- which may be on the teacher’s desk, on the overhead projector, stuck with a magnet on the white board, or on any table in the room.

11. Subs should not be required to do morning yard duty. They need that time to look over the lesson plans, and simply find where materials are in an unfamiliar environment. Also, bear in mind, I won’t know I’m required to do morning yard duty until I find the lesson plans. On rare occasions that’s happened either just before or even after the morning bell rings.

12. Next is figuring out the roll procedure. Even if computers are used, it is helpful to give me two paper lists of the class -- one to take roll on if I can’t get the computer to work; one to make sure all kids returned after lunch. (Subs have tragically overlooked a missing child -- remember, we don’t know these kids by sight.) I try to make sure I know how many kids I have that day, but late arrivals and early departures can sometimes get that number a bit confused. Besides that, having to huddle behind a computer takes me out of my “power position” in front of the class, which may be crucial in establishing my authority. (Remember, these kids don’t believe I’m in charge until I convince them.)

12. Please leave the lists and signs I need for any sort of drill or emergency -- by the door or some other very obvious place. I will call the office at the first opportunity if I can’t find them. Because I don’t know the kids, this sort of preparedness is even more crucial for me than it is for you.

13. Please let me know where the extra pencils are, and where I can find the type of paper needed for all assignments ( or leave out a stack). I’ve never yet been in a class where somebody didn’t need a pencil, and if I have to hunt for one, I’m not teaching, and impaired in my ability to supervise the class.

14. Seating charts are hard to read when you‘re trying to find out the name of that kid with the big mouth in the middle of the math lesson; names on desks are better; name tags that I can actually put on the kids are best. Leaving me without anything that identifies the kids is not a nice thing to do.

15. When writing lesson plans, please be aware that I might not be familiar with the materials you use. If you just say “Kids do their Flapdoodle”, I might not know what the hell you’re talking about. If the kids know, please tell me where it is (in desks, or stacked on the counter, etc.); it reduces my anxiety level.

16. If a lesson is incomprehensible to me, or just isn’t working, I will do something different. Overplanning is better than under planning, but I can pull a lot out of my bag o’ tricks if I have to.

17. Because I’ve worked in a lot of Special Ed classes, I can usually distinguish between the kids who have learning disorders and kids who are just being obnoxious and react accordingly, but it’s nice if you give me a head’s up.

18. If kids are 2nd grade or younger, I will let them go to the bathroom, regardless of what your policy is. (One girl and one boy at a time.) Accidents at school are no fun for any of us. The system I like best for older kids is giving one “Potty pass” per day, then having them suffer a consequence in exchange for any more than that.

19. Do not tell your aide to take over the class for the day. It’s insulting, and I’d rather be teaching than just following an aide around. Your class can endure minor variations in the usual presentation for one day.

20. Please give me a list of which kids ride the bus, which get picked up and which go to SERFF (the after school program). It’s especially important to tell me if a child is forbidden to go with a non-custodial parent. Remember, I’ve just spent a day with these kids and I’m lucky if I’ve got their name memorized; I don’t know their parents either by name or by sight. I have to trust the kids for that.

21. I’m usually happy to do your correcting for you, except for writing (I don’t know what your rubric is), or math where there isn’t a key (quickly going down a row of math facts is fine, but I’m not going to calculate answers to a whole page of problems). I usually won’t stay past 3:30 to do this, unless we have an exceptionally good working relationship. If your kids have been really horrible and my nervous system is fried, I might not stay even if you want me to.

22. I will give you a report about behavior -- if your class is really terrible, I won’t sub for you again until next year. My favorite teachers are those who put the fear of dire consequences into the kids should they get their name written down by a sub.

23. I will have a bad attitude if I see:

A.) Lesson plans that include the insinuation that I’ll do nothing all day but show movies and play games if not warned otherwise.
B.) School policies that threaten to take you off the sub list if teachers complain about you. Your principal will get any warm body with a credential in there rather than teach all day, and we all know that, so cut the crap. Besides, I resent the implication that I won’t do a good job unless threatened.
C.) Principals that create menial jobs for subs to do in order to keep them around until 3:30, even when I’ve taught 4-hour Kindergarten or on minimum days. By this I don’t mean clearly useful things like correcting and copying, but I don’t appreciate being told to rearrange bookshelves, sweep floors, or to ask if I might “help” in other classes (teachers always say “no” in the afternoon, and are annoyed at the interruption) just so you can feel like you’ve gotten the last ounce of work out of me for your money. It’s not like we’re paid that extravagantly. Any principal that tries this, by the way, eventually gives it up as more trouble than it’s worth.

24. I will have a good attitude if I see:
A.) Principals and staff that say things like “Thank you for coming on such short notice.”
B.) Secretaries that tell me that teachers asked to have me back.
C.) Kids who clearly fear what I might tell the teacher because they know they’ll be in big trouble when she gets back, if I give a bad report.
D.) Well-written lesson plans with the materials logically organized, including any teacher’s manuals and keys I might need. The best arrangement I ever saw had materials in piles labeled “morning”, “after recess”, “after lunch”, and “extra”, including everything that was needed for me and the kids for each lesson.

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American Veda

2011-01-07T07:53:00.000-08:00

I've been reading a lot of books lately about the history of yoga, and alternative spirituality in general, but I thought *American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles, to Yoga and Mediation -- How Indian Spirituality Changed the West" was worth a review. I don't usually review books here, but this one really grabbed me.

Goldberg’s main thesis is that what he calls “Vedanta-Yoga” has had a profound impact on American religious thinking. The book starts, as all books on alternative religion in America seem to, with Emerson, and traces the Vedic thread through New Thought, Theosophy, Vivekenanda and the Vedanta Society -- as well as a full chapter on the prominent intellectuals influenced by them, then on to Yogananda and his Autobiography, and the Baby Boomers and Beatles visit to India in the Sixties. There is also a chapter about the dark side -- the scandals associated with some of the prominent gurus in the ‘80s, as well as the deep disillusionment of their followers. Then, the impact of “practitioner/pundit” -- just as the best and the brightest of young Baha’is did in the same era, some of the kids that turned to Vedanta-Yoga became professional academics in order to study their new religion.

One thing is made clear from the beginning: We aren’t talking about normative Hinduism as it is practiced in India. Goldberg asked us to picture the situation if someone had introduced a Christianity into the East that was “ a mixture of the intellectual rigor of the Jesuits and the contemplative practices of mystics.” That is, it would be barely recognizable to its original adherents, and much adapted to the soil in which it was planted.

In fact, the teachers that brought Vedanta and Yoga to our shores made a point of telling us we did not have to abandon our Judeo-Christian heritage in order to benefit from them. One of my favorite stories in the book involves a Westerner who went to India to consult with a guru, who asked him if he prayed to Jesus. When he said “No”, that he’d left the Catholicism of his childhood behind, the guru slapped him in the face and told him that he’d just swapped one narrow viewpoint for another, and to start praying to Jesus again! Others who abandoned their churches (or synagogues) returned enriched by their detour through Hindu spirituality, with a renewed interest in Western mysticism. Along with putting Sanskrit words like “karma” and “guru” into the dictionary, Vedanta has influenced virtually every form of “alternative religion” in America, including the “spiritual, but not religious” trend. Every time you hear someone refer vaguely to “the Universe” or “Higher Power” instead of God, you’re hearing Vedanta. The idea that there are many ways to God is another popular Vedantic idea -- the one which led me to abandon the Eastern path for the more Abrahamic Baha’i Faith, which puts a very different spin on it. (Some of the ideas that Goldberg describes as coming from Vedanta are also found in Sufism -- which with Baha‘i has a lot of affinity, but there’s no doubt that it’s the Indian influence that has popularized them in the U.S.)

One of the most interesting points the book makes is that many times people aren’t even aware of the source, and may not have arrived at the door of Vedanta-Yoga through spiritual seeking at all -- a person could be just looking for relief from an ailment, addiction, or stress. Hatha yoga, certainly, is generally presented as a purely physical practice, almost completely separated from its roots as an aid to meditation, but nevertheless exposing practitioners to Vedantic ideas, however vaguely. And, it sometimes acts as a springboard into a deeper investigation of Hindu spirituality. Goldberg even talks about the appeal that Vedanta has in the scientific community -- a group which is usually thought of as being indifferent, or even hostile, to religion. Indeed, one of the major advantages that Vedanta-Yoga has is that it does not require one to take scriptures literally even where they conflict with science. It’s very pragmatic -- you try it yourself and experience the results, much like a scientific experiment.

One thing that Goldberg mentions is changing is that younger generations, while still interested in Vedic religion, are far less naïve and less inclined to give themselves over completely to a guru. In fact, my guess is that some of the scandals emerged as the Baby Boomers themselves matured enough to say “Hey, that behavior’s not o.k.” and were willing to blow the whistle. One thing I’m seeing, that Goldberg doesn’t mention is that more overt adherence to Hinduism is becoming acceptable, especially with women seeking feminine forms of the divine. On the Internet, I’ve found comments like “Lakshmi is my home girl” and “I’m so glad Durga came into my life.”

I found the whole book fascinating, and found myself clicking my Kindle highlighter every few pages in some chapters. And, I couldn’t help but think about the impact that the phenomenon had on my own spiritual development. I was introduced to it at the age of 14, by my uncle -- he’s at the older end of the Baby Boom generation, and I’m at the youngest cohort (depending on how you define it). I read, and still have a copy of the Isherwood translation of the Bhagavad-Gita. The idea that God allows souls to come to Him through many paths was an exciting revelation, and a principle I continue to hold to after all these years. But I eventually abandoned Eastern religion as a dead-end , attributing the nightmares I had to my meditation practice. Even more significant, the way Vedanta was presented to me back then was very intellectual, and in my heart I missed the devotional and emotional side of spirituality -- a history that made me an almost perfect candidate for conversion to the Baha’i Faith.

But the more I read about alternative religion in America, the more I have to confront the depressing truth that Baha’is are barely a blip on the radar. (That probably doesn’t come as a surprise to non-Baha’is, but when you’re in the Faith, it seems like the whole world.) Not only has Vedanta-Yoga permeated American culture to an extent that even the non-religious are influenced by it, the Hindu-Inspired Meditation Movements (HIMMs) started by individual gurus had more initial success, more long-lasting and stable communities (in spite of some rocky moments), and more American followers than the Baha’i Faith has ever been able to achieve, in spite of nearly constant effort for the last 120 years. I don’t suppose the Baha’i administration will ever ask itself why.

Foundational Yoga Books from Yoga Vidya

2010-08-24T09:16:00.001-07:00

I’ve been asked to review four foundational yoga texts from Yoga Vidya. Brian Akers saw my blog post on Yoga history, and liked it well enough to send me copies. Which is a surprise, because I’m neither an expert on Dharmic religion nor even on hatha yoga -- outside of practicing it every day. My curiosity about how hatha yoga became transformed from an obscure, often secret, practice into something that soccer moms do at their local gym is just a quirk of mine -- I’m always interested in the history of whatever I happen to be into. And, of course, as all my friends know, I love to read books on religion and religious history. My only claim to expertise is the two journal articles I got published on the Baha’i Faith, which were very specifically focused, and a far cry from examining medieval spiritual texts.

Undaunted, however, I decided to begin with the oldest, and most familiar of these books, the Bhagavad Gita, which I first read back in high school -- as many others did -- in Christopher Isherwood’s translation, which is still on my shelves.

I compared Lars Martin Fosse’s translation with the one I have, and found, to my surprise that a whole phrase out of one of my favorite verses had disappeared -- or rather, the earlier translator must have invented it to make it sound more pleasing. In translation, there is always something of a trade-off between eloquence and literal meaning, and Fosse, as he says himself, leans towards the literal -- although his translation is quite smooth and lucid. The Sanskrit original is there for comparison, for those who know it -- or become inspired to learn it.

Fosse‘s introduction is definitely worth reading, to understand the history and context of theBhagavad Gita, as well as its place in the classic scriptures of the world. Again, I found myself fascinated at the interplay of ideas between India and the West, and how, as in hatha yoga, they have become not simply “Eastern“ or “Western“, but a product of several exchanges between the two.

The word “yoga” occurs nearly 150 times in theGita, but we are not yet talking of any form of physical culture, but a type of mental discipline, based upon knowledge, selfless service, or devotion. One could almost use it as a synonym for “spiritual path” or “spiritual practice”. So, in this sense, we can see the book as a foundational text -- maybe *the* foundational text, for yoga.

It seems to me more practical to consider the three hatha books together, since there is a good deal of overlap between them. Unlike the Gita, which has been read as sacred scripture in India for over a thousand years, and has been a source of inspiration for spiritual seekers in the West since the time of the Transcendentalists, these medieval (dating between 1300 and 1700 C.E.) hatha texts were meant to be secret teachings for spiritual aspirants that worked with a guru, and are not particularly well-known even among the millions who practice yoga today.

Westerners are accustomed to an asana-based practice i.e. mostly consisting of physical poses, with maybe a little easy pranayama or a few minutes meditation, depending on the teacher. These traditional texts relegate the asanas to only one section, giving equal or greater prominence to meditation, pranayama, cleansing practices, etc. Seasoned yoga practitioners who are at least familiar with the idea of these practices will find these books interesting. They would be overwhelming, even shocking, to beginning yoga students, or those who think of yoga as primarily a tool for fitness and relaxation.

Here we find a hatha yoga that is presented as a necessary foundation for Raja yoga , so they would be of most interest to those who are pursuing yoga as a spiritual path.

I found myself rather put off by some of the extravagant benefits promised the hatha yogi -- that this or that pose or breathing technique will destroy disease, grant magical powers (known as siddhis), or even conquer death. Any Western reader is going to find some of the practices bizarre, like Khecharimudra, which encourages the yogi to lengthen his tongue by various means so he can stick it into the hole behind the soft palate, where, it is promised, he will find sustaining nectar. (Nectar? More like post-nasal drip.)

However, to be fair, one would be hard put to find any religious text that isn’t jarring to modern sensibilities in some way. Christian gnostic texts can get pretty weird in places, too, but this does not negate their value. Unlike earlier translations, those published by Yoga Vidya don’t omit the less appealing passages.

I found it interesting just to compare what I was reading with the yoga I’m familiar with -- for example, I had no idea that a one-legged forward bend and the shoulder-stand were considered mudras, not asanas -- I thought mudras were hand gestures that were used in meditation. But other things strike me as being quite familiar -- the dietary advice, for example. All three books have black-and-white photos demonstrating the asanas described, and like Yoga Vidya’s translation of the Gita, the Sanskrit original is also included.

The Hatha Yoga Pradipika is the best known of the the three, Yoga Vidya’s version is translated by Brian Dana Akers . The Pradipika was written in the 15th century by Yoga Svatmarma, who describes asanas as the first step, which enables the practitioner to gain “steadiness, health, and lightness of body.” Some of these poses will be familiar to even the most casual yoga student; others are extremely difficult and way out of range for anyone who hasn’t been practicing for many years. My guess is that Svatmarama assumes that the aspirant will be guided by his guru as to preparation for these advanced positions. He regards Siddhasana, sometimes known to us as “Half-lotus“, to be the most important asana of all, reinforcing the purpose of hatha yoga as a physical preparation for mental discipline. After asana, the book presents pranayama (breathing practices, bandhas(energy "locks"), mudras to movekundalini, and finally meditation to attain samadhi.

I was also pleased to see in the Pradipika a recognition that women can also be yogis, or more properly called, yoginis. Most of the time, these classical writers assume the practitioner is male. In the West, most yoga students are women.

The Gheranda Samhita was composed around 1700; Yoga Vidya’s version was translated by James Mallinson. “Gheranda” is the teacher in the text, the author is unknown. The book presents a sevenfold path, instead of the familiar eight levels outlined by Pantajali (None of these hatha books spend any time on yamas or niyamas, i.e. the restraints and observances that constitute the ethical part of classical yoga.) I found the Gheranda Samhita to be very comprehensive and clear -- indeed, of the three classical hatha books, I enjoyed this one the most. It begins with purification practices, then asana, mudras, pratyahara, pranayama, meditation, and samadhi. The chapter on meditation (dhyana) includes specific visualizations that the aspirant should practice.

Before reading the Gheranda Samhita, I had been wondering exactly how yoga was tied into Aryuveda medicine: Well, here it is; various cleansing practices are said to balance the doshas, a concept that seems to me akin to the “humours” of medieval Western medicine. I also have enough trouble trying to maintain a healthy diet without being told that a kapha type like myself should eat more beans and avoid nuts; I’m still trying to get as much plant protein as I can. But that’s my own bias -- Aryuveda seems to be growing in popularity among those interested in alternative medicine, and the Gheranda Samhita would be useful for them.

I’m afraid that the Shiva Samhita was my least favorite of the three. Besides being badly organized and confusing at times, it also has more elements that are going to seem odd or even repulsive to most of us. The book is framed as a conversation between the Hindu God Shiva and his consort, Parvarti. The first two chapters are philosophical explanation. Even when it does get around to presenting yoga practices, this book has the least emphasis on asana practice of the three hatha books. On the one hand, it insists on devotion and obedience to one’s guru, on the other it will promise that some of those practices will allow the aspirant to avoid any penalty for sins, even those so heinous as killing one’s guru or sleeping with his wife. While reading it, I couldn’t help but think it’s no wonder that hatha yoga had such a bad reputation in the 19th and early 20th centuries, because there seems to be a clear thread of yogic thought that holds you can sin all you like as long as you perform the proper asanas and mudras. Then, the book will turn around and tell us that the greatest obstacle to liberation is “enjoyment.” This muddling is due to the book being a compilations from several authors, and there seems to have been no attempt by any of them to explain these contradictions.

There is a detailed explanation of meditation on the chakras, so a person interested in this approach might be interested in this book. I also was intrigued to notice that the schedule recommended for pranayama (morning, noon, evening, midnight) is exactly the same as one of Sivananda’s early books that I recently ran across. So, in spite of its faults, the Shiva Samhita is a historically influential hatha yoga text -- and the historically-minded may value it simply for that reason.

Overall, Yoga Vidya has done a terrific job in making foundational yoga texts more accessible to the Western reader. I hope to see more from them in the future -- maybe a translation of Pantajali’s Yoga Sutras?

Yoga History

2010-07-27T11:39:00.000-07:00

Ever since I’ve got my Kindle, I’ve been spending a lot less time surfing around online, and a lot more time, reading -- reading actual books, instead of drifting through snippets of information here and there. It’s a higher quality experience. I’d mentioned in an earlier post that I was curious about the history of hatha yoga, and I’d been unable to find very much online about it, but I’ve just finished reading Mark Singleton’s Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice. This is a scholarly book, published by Oxford University Press, which answered a whole lot of things that I’d found confusing in my own poking around in used bookstores and the Internet on the subject. His main thesis is that there is no evidence of an asana-based yoga practice existing before the 20th century. He says “Posture-based yoga as we know it today is the result of a dialogical exchange between para-religious, modern body culture techniques developed in the West and the various discourses of “modern” Hindu yoga that emerged from the time of Vivekananda onward.” It isn’t news that today’s yoga practice mixes Hindu tradition with Western ideas, but what’s really fascinating in this book is that the mix of West and East began in India itself, where groups like the YMCA who believed that virtue could be taught through physical exercise sought to enlighten a people they regarded as backward and feeble. It is this mixture that was brought to American shores as “Hatha Yoga”, and explains why, when I bought Yogi Ramacharaka’s 1930 book on the subject I did not find the familiar asanas we know today, but gentle calisthenics. What Indians did was counter this condescension with fitness regimes of their own. The familiar Sun Salutation(Surya Namaskar), that some Christians object to as sun worship, was created by the Raja of Mysore, purely as a fitness regimen that wasn’t even associated with yoga until later.

Now, of course, some of the poses are old, from the hatha yoga tradition. But a close reading of the medieval Hatha Yoga Pradipika reveals that cleansing practices (called kriyas) and pranayama are given more prominence than the physical poses, and half of those described are sitting meditation poses. All of the standing poses, with the possible exception of Tree Pose, are 20th century creations. I’ve noticed that even some older yoga systems created for Westerners have few, or even no, standing poses. You can, however, find standing poses that modern practitioners would identify as yoga asanas, in Western books on “harmonic gymnastics”, which was a spiritualized form of exercise for women in the early 20th century.

Another thing that had puzzled me, when I went looking for the roots of American yoga, was that the first books on yoga, at the turn of the last century, by Vivekananda and Blavatsky, did not so much as mention physical postures, but were books on philosophy and meditation. It turns out that these early yoga teachers distanced themselves from hatha yoga, which was associated with charlatans and ascetics with bizarre practices. This association was quite justified -- hatha yogis in India had, historically been religious fanatics with a penchant for violence. Under the British, they drifted from town to town, gaining money for doing astonishing postures and tricks. One objection Vivekananda had was that hatha yoga was done primarily to gain physical immortality and magical power, which he rightly did not regard as spiritual goals. The picture of the ash-covered disheveled yogi holding one arm up so long that it withered, or the mountebank contortionist was an object of morbid fascination and revulsion in the publications of that era.

Even as late as 1969, Richard Hittleman thought it necessary to distinguish himself from this stereotype in his book Yoga: 28 Day Exercise Plan: “those groups of people of the Far and Near East who do strange things such as walking on hot coals, sticking needles into their bodies, allowing themselves to be ‘buried alive’ and so forth are known as Fakirs and are never to be confused with Yogis.” (p.204) But, in 19th century India, the terms ‘fakir” and “yogi” referred to pretty much the same group of people (Fakirs were Muslim and Yogis Hindu, but these religious lines were often crossed), and there was no such thing as a physical yoga practice that, as Hittleman claims, was “designed solely for the development of human potential.” This also explains why ‘Abdu’l -Baha’ was so disdainful of yoga, and the Indian gurus that taught at Green Acre; he had some solid basis to dismiss yoga as “superstition” in 1912. The irony of it is, of course, that although yoga teachers were shoved out of Green Acre, which remains a Baha’i school to this day, it was yoga -- in its revised form -- that became a major influence in the lives of millions of Americans.

More Calories Out than In? It's Not that Simple.

2010-03-22T08:15:00.000-07:00

I wrote the following sometime last week, and decided not to post it because I figured maybe folks were getting tired of my talking about my diet and exercise thing. However, I ran into this and now I can’t resist. In the comments section a lady talks about her experience:

I invite you to come and spend a week with me, while I weigh and measure and record every GD thing that goes in my mouth; while I walk, swim laps, or ride my bike and also do resistance training WITH a personal trainer (who is also a nutritionist) EVERY DAY EXCEPT SUNDAY (that's the day I do a spring water fast).
I also invite you to observe my weekly weigh ins, which, sadly, produce nothing in the way of LOSS--which confounds my trainer, but even SHE is slowly coming to the realisation that NO, you can't just necessarily change your body with sheer will power and self control--something she and I argued about a lot our first couple of weeks.

But, as this woman mentions, when an overweight person says this, we are assumed to be lying. No matter how healthy we claim our diet is, it is assumed that we are like the guy in the song “Junk Food Junkie” -- presenting a pious face to the world while secretly pigging out on Ding-Dongs. So, here’s my take:

Everybody knows the drill about weight loss, right? You have to burn more calories than you take in. One pound equals 3500 calories that you’ve not used and stored away in that spare tire around your middle. To get rid of it, you’ve got to exercise more or eat less -- preferably both.

Now, I’ve been working on this for the past few years -- initially, I was quite successful and took off 30 pounds, and to date, have kept them off. I’m still, however, medically obese -- which is a lot thinner than what is generally thought to be “obese”. I’m not, nor have I ever been over 230 pounds. I’d have to get down to 170 to be medically just “overweight”. (Just picture me shouting “Hooray! I’m overweight!”) That’s a weight I haven’t seen since my mid-20s.

According to Nutrition Data (which I really like and recommend), a woman of my age, size, and activity level is burning between 2300 and 2600 calories a day, depending on what exercise I happen to get done. I eat between 1600 and 1800 calories per day, pretty consistently. That means, if the formula of “burn 3500 calories to lose a pound” works that I should be losing a pound a week, at least. I’m not; I’m stuck in the same 5 pound range I’ve been going up and down in for the past three years. This is not the notorious “diet plateau” -- this is the weight I’ll stay at, unless I start going to starvation level calories. The depressing thought that torpedoed dieting in my youth -- that in order to be thin, you have to eat like a Third World famine victim for a lifetime-- turns out to be actually true. And who but an obsessive-compulsive would voluntarily starve themselves for longer than a few months? My husband thinks I’m already obsessive enough. .

However, every number other than the one on the scale is great. My last blood sugar test results were “excellent”, according to my doctor. My blood pressure and cholesterol are down where they should be -- with the help of medication. (The blood sugar I control without meds.) Nutrition Data, which tracks your actual nutrition as well as calories, shows me that I’m eating a very healthy diet, chock full of protein, vitamins, and minerals -- and where there are gaps, I supplement. (I’ve discovered one reason you see 2000 calories as a standard is that it’s almost impossible to get all the RDA of your nutrients from food alone unless you eat that much.) I almost never go beyond the recommended amount of fat, and seldom go over with carbohydrates. I really can’t eat healthier than I’m eating right now.

When it comes right down to it, I don’t think any of the diet or nutrition experts really know all that much about weight loss. My doctor once told me, in another context, that if you have a dozen remedies for a disease then it’s a sure sign that nothing really works. God knows there’s more than a dozen contradictory theories about what will make people lose weight permanently.

So, maybe a little kindness is in order. I get a little resentful of the “just stop stuffing your face and get out and exercise once in a while” attitude you get from the obsessive types who think that if you don’t run five miles a day and totally renounce any form of dessert you aren’t really trying. My injured back muscles won’t take running for five minutes, and I‘m working on healthy ways to satisfy my sweet tooth. Even when I eat something “bad”, I’m very careful to have only a small portion. In fact, one of the major changes I’ve made is that I never “pig out” any more.

But I’m not losing weight. Nor will I, unless I eat a diet that is less healthy than I eat now.

The Difference Between Asperger's Syndrome and High-Functioning Autism

2010-03-10T09:52:00.000-08:00

I find it somehow comforting to read articles about Asperger’s Syndrome -- to read about the symptoms and characteristics and be able to say “Aha! There’s Trevor!”. I guess it makes me feel more able to deal with his differences to know that they are part of his disorder and not some kind of unique weirdness that only we have to live with.

A story hit the news a while back that they (whoever “they” are) are considering getting rid of the Asperger’s label altogether and simply lumping them in with high-functioning autism. According to Dr.Tony Attwood, the only real differences are in early development, but as they grow older, there really isn’t much difference between them.

Some quotes that struck me:

They also noted that the profile of social skills in children with autism includes self-isolation or rigid social approaches, while in Asperger's syndrome there can be a motivation to socialise but this is achieved in a highly eccentric, one-sided, verbose and insensitive manner.

In other words, autistic children really don’t care if they socialize, whereas Asperger’s kids do -- they just don’t know how. Trevor’s approaches tend to be awkward -- when he was younger he tended to open with inappropriate questions like “How old are you?” to an adult. He’ll talk your ear off with details about a story he’s writing -- he’ll do that even to strangers, and he really doesn’t appear to care whether or not they are interested. He can be insensitive -- then when he makes someone angry, he gets very frustrated and down on himself, even self-punishing.

There is general agreement that children with Asperger's syndrome may not show any conspicuous cognitive delay in early childhood. Indeed, some can be quite precocious or talented in terms of learning to read, numerical abilities and in some aspects of their constructive play and memory. Children with autism can be recognised as having developmental delay in their cognitive abilities from infancy and diagnosed as young as 18 months of age with a mean age of diagnosis of five years. Children with Asperger's syndrome are often not diagnosed until after they start school with a mean age of diagnosis of eleven years (Howlin and Asgharian 1999). However, the signs of Asperger's syndrome in very young children may be more subtle and easily camouflaged at home and school

With autistic children, it’s usually quite clear early on that something is wrong. Every autistic child I’ve seen in my work as a substitute teacher starts Kindergarten in a Special Education classroom. Even the highest-functioning one I know of started there, even though by fourth grade he was in a general ed classroom with an aide who helped him, and I’ve heard that in middle school, he didn’t even need the aide any more. However, I’ve never seen a child with an Asperger’s diagnosis in Special Ed or with a one-on-one aide; they are in regular classrooms and get the support they need from pull-out programs. (Speech, for example.) As far as the disorder being “camouflaged”, you can check out my own
story on just how long it took for us to understand that something was wrong with Trevor. The school never diagnosed it, either. As I've said before, Trevor's precocious abilities in reading and math misled us into thinking we were raising a budding genius, not a kid with a learning disorder.

The DSM criteria refer to children with Asperger's syndrome as having, in comparison to children with autism, no clinically significant delay in age-appropriate self-help skills and adaptive behaviour. Clinical experience indicates that parents, especially mothers of children and adolescents with Asperger's syndrome, often have to provide verbal reminders and advice regarding self-help and daily living skills. This can range from problems with dexterity affecting activities such as learning to tie shoelaces to reminders regarding personal hygiene, dress sense and time management.

Trevor was ten before he could tie his own shoes, and we’re still working on “self-help and daily living skills”, even though he's a young adult. He's made a lot of progress with hygiene, taking care of himself without reminders now. But it was an issue throughout adolescence.

The final, and to me, the most important difference that Attwood mentions is that a diagnosis of autism gets help; a diagnosis of Asperger’s does not. The reason that Far Northern put us through all their testing, even though they knew they couldn’t help a kid with Asperger’s, is that they were hoping they could re-categorize him. But, to no avail; he has Asperger’s Syndrome, and the state won’t pay. Virtually every agency I’ve contacted asks me if we have gone to Far Northern, which appears to be the funding conduit for most forms of assistance for learning-disabled adults. Not qualifying there closed a lot of doors for us.

Anyway, I have mixed feelings about getting rid of the Asperger’s diagnosis. I know I would have been a lot more resistant to a diagnosis of autism -- and Trevor is definitely different than the autistics I have known, both in his history, his abilities, and his problems. On the other hand, if Asperger’s were not considered a separate disorder, he would qualify for a whole smorgasbord of programs -- SSI, independent living assistance, job training, etc. The label isn't nearly as important to me as getting the help he needs to become a functional, independent adult.

Substitute Teaching in Rural Northern California

2009-08-23T11:56:00.000-07:00

I meant to do a write-up on this last week, when I thought I would have the leisure -- because I almost never get called during the first week of school. But, I got called for a three-day job on the second day of school, and then again for Friday. That's substitute teaching -- you never know what's going to happen, and your day's plans can change by a simple phone call.

From what I hear, subbing in a rural area is quite different from doing it in a city -- even a small city. There, you pretty much work for a single school district, which keeps you working every day. It's almost like having a full-time job. All the large districts are now automated, so you can pick an assignment online, or you get a recorded message by phone.

I work mostly in Tehama County, but I'm also on the list in Glenn County, going as far south as Orland. I don't work every day -- and that's not from choice. If I don't get a call, then I don't work, and there's no way I know of to make there be a job when there isn't one. I have run into subs who claim they work every day, but I have no idea how they manage it. As a new sub, I hardly got work at all, in spite of running around to all the schools and dropping off a card. It takes time before you establish the relationships that get you onto the "short list".

One of the districts I work for has just started an automated system. In some ways, it seems great to be able to just pick a job out of a list -- although none have appeared, so far. On the other hand, if my most regular districts did that, I'd miss the personal touch. There are some teachers who call me first, then when I assure them I'm available, they tell the sub clerk about the arrangement. Can't do that kind of thing when it's all taken care of by computer. Most of my jobs come from "regulars" i.e. teachers that ask for me.

Another thing that's different from urban subbing is that you have to work for several districts -- unless you don't mind a lot of days off or have a special relationship with a particular district. It's a bit complicated at tax time, because I get W-2s from each individual district -- and they vary from year to year. I don't get *a* paycheck. Each district sends me a check separately. If anybody had reason to attach my wages, they'd have a helluva time chasing them down.
Each of these districts does their accounting differently, too. In a rural area, a district can be quite small, containing only one little elementary school, in contrast to a city where a school district can have dozens of schools. Red Bluff is the largest that I sub for, and it has three elementary schools and a middle school.

I didn't start out to be a sub -- almost nobody does. Almost all substitute teachers are either just out of school and hoping to get into a permanent position, or they are retired teachers who are just earning a bit extra. For one thing, the pay is extremely low compared to having a full time job. I make between $85 and $115 per day, and there are only 180 days a year I can work -- and I don't work all of them. You do the math. Most people who don't get a permanent job move on to something they can make a living at. It wasn't so bad for me, really -- once I got past the disappointment. Before becoming a sub, I was a stay-at-home mom, so we were used to getting by one income. And I love the job.

One of the great things about being a sub is the variety. I normally work in K-5, but in special education I've worked with every level from preschool to post-high school. I've worked in resource (which is mostly tutoring for kids in regular classrooms), and in community day school (which is for kids with behavior problems.) I normally avoid the larger middle schools, but in the one I do work in I've taught every subject, including fly fishing and calf roping. (Only in Red Bluff would you get an elective class in calf roping!) A job can be for half a day; the longest I've ever worked in one place has been three months.

And I love the kids -- the eager kindergartners wanting to share their achievements, the autistic kid making a breakthrough, the middle-schooler just developing an interest in politics or science fiction or whatever.

You have the bad days. One probably isn't supposed to say this, but there are some classes that are just impossible. When I get one of those, I don't sub for that teacher for the rest of the year. That's the reason I don't do middle school any more; I'm not so desperate for a day of work that I have to put up with spitballs, rudeness, and refusal to stay on task. After seven years of substitute teaching, I'm fairly skilled at getting kids to do what I need them to do, but I'm not a miracle-worker. Part of it is my own temperament -- I can deal with an autistic kid in full meltdown better than a snotty group of 7th graders who decide it's fun to give the sub a hard time. But mileage varies from teacher to teacher. I've known teachers who are at a total loss with little kids, and some are downright scared of special ed. (Oooh, yuck, diapers!) Some teachers just love teenagers.

Anyway, another school year has started. I'm not scheduled for tomorrow, but that could change the next time the phone rings. With substitute teaching, you never know . . .

Of Course Exercise Won't Make You Thin

2009-08-15T09:18:00.000-07:00

The Time article "Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin" is getting a lot of discussion out there. Apparently, like those who drink diet soda, Americans who hit the gym just make up the lost calories by eating more. It's big news, I guess, that vigorous exercise makes you hungry. That's why ranchers used to serve huge dinners at lunch time to their hands -- after a morning of hard physical labor, they were ravenous.

O.K., I'm going to come out with a dictum: Do not think about weight loss, do what is healthy for your body. Don't exercise to lose weight; exercise because it makes you healthier and especially resistant to the maladies of middle age. Don't eat right to lose weight, eat right because your body needs you to. Now, if you do this, you may very well take off some weight, in a slow, sustainable way. It probably won't make you acceptable in anyone's weight table, or get you into size 5 jeans -- but if you put your focus on that you'll only make yourself crazy, which doesn't improve your chances.

Like most overweight people, I have a history. I was small as a little kid, and around the age of 8 I started getting chubby, probably due to emotional overeating and Mom's lack of cooking skill that led us to eat out quite a bit. But when the courts sent us to live with Dad, my step-mother put me on a diet, and as it happens, I was just hitting puberty. So, the summer I turned twelve, I lost ten pounds and grew three inches. The fat, rejected, teased 6th grader turned into a cute 7th grader who got whistled at when she walked to school. It was a catepillar-to-butterfly metamorphosis, made even better by the fact that starting school in a new town meant that no one knew I'd ever been fat.

At fifteen I was full-grown, and perfect: five foot four-and-a-half, 125 pounds -- and an emotional basket case. All the folks who just say fat people just need to summon up enough will power to stay away from the donuts really don't have a clue. You don't get anywhere by lecturing someone who is depressed; you have to take care of the depression before they can get their act together, on anything.

The weight began creeping up: "Oh my gosh, 130 pounds!" So, I dieted -- 1000 calories a day, lunching on an apple and a can of diet Pepsi. I did that several times through high school and college, literally shedding tears over it. Fat meant nobody would like me. Fat meant I was a horrible person. Fat meant I didn't have the right to exist on the planet. It was a huge emotional trip.

Frankly, that why MeMe Roth makes me mad: She's really just an adult version of the playground bully, who makes it her business to tell the overweight that they are disgusting and shouldn't exist. (She was complaining about plus size panty liners, for heaven's sake!) Her health message -- and some of her points are valid--gets lost in her finger-pointing.

But I digress. The weight crept up, and I dieted. Then it crept up again. Somewhere in there I pretty much decided I had to live on starvation-level calories for the rest of my life, or I was doomed to fatness -- faced with that choice, I gave up. I was around 140 pounds when I graduated from college, and afterwards, I quickly plumped up like a Ball Park Frank.

Healthy eating takes cooking skill, and money, and I had neither. It also takes a certain amount of emotional stability, and those post-college years were really the low point of my life. Somewhere, as I matured, I began shifting my focus towards health, rather than recovering my adolescent beauty -- which by that point would become impossible, thin or not. I'd go on an occasional "health kick", then it would slip away. At this point, I resented the amount of mental attention it required; I'd get bored and want to go on to something else. The problem with fitness gurus is that health is their profession, or at least, their main hobby. Normal people have other interests they'd like to pursue.

A few years ago, I started working on making sustainable changes -- things I could live with. For six months, I didn't lose any weight, but I felt better. Then, I was diagnosed with diabetes. This gave me a motivation -- I'd really just as soon keep my eyesight, and my toes. With further dietary changes, strict watch over my blood sugar, and water pills for high blood pressure, I took off thirty pounds. Slowly, over a period of a couple of years -- and to date, I've kept them off.

But the weight loss stopped. I don't know if it's accurate to call it a plateau, because I've been stuck in it for close to two years. I eat around 1800 calories a day, and every time I try to go lower than that, I just get crazy hungry and am in bigger danger of eating the wrong foods. I'm still working on where I can sustainably cut.

Anyway, the focus these days is health -- whole grains, veggies, good fats, exercise. Health is something I can feel good about, and it distances me from the emotional traps involved in losing weight.

It's My Birthday and I'll Blog if I Want To

2009-08-14T20:33:00.000-07:00

I turned 49 today -- an age that doesn't get much in the way of special attention. And August is invariably the bottom of the year for us financially -- I haven't had a paycheck since early July, and there are back-to-school expenses for the kids. Not a good time for going out to dinner in a nice restaurant. So, I celebrated by going to see "Julie and Julia". I don't mind at all going to see a movie alone -- I never really got why some people think that going to the movies is a social occasion. In fact, I like just being out on my own, doing my thing. The last movie I saw was "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince", and my kids, who are old enough to know better, talked so much that I found another place to sit, feeling rather that it was a mistake to bring them along.

"Julie and Julia" is definitly a chick flick, and judging by the audience, an old chick flick. In fact, most probably remember Julia Child being on public television. But unlike most films of that type, I laughed most of the way through it. Meryl Streep was as terrific as all the reviews say she was. I was reminded very much of my Grandma, who liked Julia Child because, in spite of the fancy cuisine she taught, she was very much a *real* person. Grandpa could never stand her voice -- but he had a thing about voices. I never got to watch "All in the Family" as a kid 'cause the second Edith hit the high note in the opening song, Grandpa would change the channel.

But Grandma loved Julia, and she loved cooking. "You cook by feel", she'd say. And I found she's right -- at least the way I cook. I don't have much use for making my way through a fancy recipe which requires a lot of special and expensive ingredients that I don't normally have around my kitchen. I make things, like soup, where I can just use what I have. No canned tomatoes? Fine, I'll just throw in some V-8 juice. Beans, onions, celery, carrots and some herbs will make a soup of some kind -- and if I have fresh parsley, so much the better.
So, for me, Julia Child is more fun to watch in action than to actually try to emulate. She was a character -- and in Streep's performance, at least, I got the picture of a woman who really loved life.

Also, from what I understand, she didn't think much of the current fears about fat and carbs -- and she lived to be 92. I wouldn't dare add all that yummy butter to anything nowadays -- I use olive oil on my breakfast toast, and that sparingly. (Locally processed olive oil -- good stuff!)

The reviewers were rather negative about the parts of the movie that dealt with blogger Julie Powell -- and I think that's a bit unfair. A well-loved personality like Julia Child played by an actress like Meryl Streep is an unfair comparison to just about anybody. Julie Powell took on a tough project, and wrote a good blog about it. If I was trying to cook fancy and unfamiliar cuisine in what Grandma would call a "t.v. dinner kitchen", I'd probably be reduced to a meltdown or two myself.

Anyway, I had fun watching a lot of talk about fine dining, without actually having a birthday dinner.

Meme Roth Just Hates Fat, or Even Slighly Plump, People

2009-07-26T12:11:00.000-07:00

I've been seeing quite a bit of this woman around lately, particularly on Fox News. And, as my husband said "The woman's a bigot. It's like putting the head of the KKK on t.v."

The Guardian interview (click on the blog post title) reveals a woman with *huge* hang-ups who needs to get her own house in order. She's not concerned with health -- nobody who refuses to eat until she does her four-mile run, no matter how late in the day that might be,is really concerned with health. She has a terror of being fat and is mostly concerned with looks and vanity. There is already a great deal of shame and stigma associated with being overweight; Roth is a victim of it as much as a perpetrator. She appears to be personally offended by fat people being in public, as in her condemnation of American Idol winner Jordin Sparks -- who is not even fat and just fails to meet Meme's rail-thin ideal. She was on Fox News yesterday griping about Obama's nominee for Surgeon-General, Regina Benjamin, who isn't thin enough to suit her. The impression one gets is that Meme would prefer that all fat people just slink away and hide from the public eye, preferably unemployed so they can't afford to eat.

Fortunately, most professionals who deal with obesity know that education and positive encouragement work a whole lot better than shame and stigma.

Just recently I ran across a magazine in a doctor's office that told a story of a woman who lost 100 pounds -- o.k., terrific for her. But I noted that, not only does she diet, she works out two or three hours every day. And I couldn't help thinking just how large a chunk that is out of a person's leisure time. Most people have little enough time between work, taking care of their families, and just the necessary things we have to do in life, without filling in most of our free time with exercise -- particularly if you don't really enjoy exercise. It's kind of a hopeless message to tell the overweight that diet and exercise have to become an obsession or we are just worthless hunks of flab. We are human beings -- who need time to think, to do something creative, maybe to have a relaxed conversation or watch a movie. I'd rather die of a heart attack than live that kind of a life, where I'm so frightened of putting on an ounce that I can't enjoy anything.

I can't help but wonder how long it's been since MeMe Roth watched a movie or read a book, or spent time on a hobby -- or would she consider such mind-engaging activities a waste of time?

As far as healthy habits go, it's far better to make small, sustainable choices than to make it an obsession. That's what I did -- and I lost 30 pounds and got such good control of my blood sugar that I could go off medication. I exercise a more moderate half-hour to an hour a day -- yoga, tai chi, walking. I don't do exercise that I hate; I found types of exercise that I enjoy, and that I will stick with because I enjoy it. I'm not yet thin enough for MeMe to let me out in public, and maybe never will be, but I eat a healthy diet with little meat or junk food, lots of veggies and whole grains -- and I have time to do other things in my life that I like a whole lot better than the treadmill.

Twitter vs. Blogging

2009-07-02T07:10:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I jumped aboard the latest Internet bandwagon and got a Twitter page. I really had low expectations of the experience -- after all, what can you write in 140 characters that's worth reading?
But I'm finding some advantages -- the biggest being that because I have to keep it short, I can make more comments on a wider variety of topics. On my blogs, I usually feel like I have to write a relatively well-thought out essay -- which means, in practice, that many ideas, or even draft posts, never are actually posted. The blog just sits there, as the most recent post gets older and older. Most visitors who arrive usually do so from a search or link, not because they are regular followers of the blog. Sometimes, I don't have time or thought to spare for writing. It's easier to find five minutes several times a day, than an hour once a day, or even once a week.

This gives me the space to comment on a wider variety of topics -- Baha'i stuff, Asperger's Syndrome, yoga, teaching, whatever I'm reading, or whatever topic in the news takes my fancy. When you don't have to write well, it's easier to to write broadly. It always bothered me, back when I was entangled in forum debates, that people tended to put me in a kind of box, based upon whatever impression my posts on Baha'i issues gave them. If I was angry, they saw me as an irredeemably angry person. If I was inspired, they saw me as spiritual. If I was concerned they saw me as compassionate. No doubt, if I stumbled, they dismissed me as a fool. The truth is that I'm all of those things -- sometimes. Human beings are complicated, and always in flux. Twitter captures that, I think, whereas other forms of online communication remain frozen in time.

There are disadvantages, though. Because Twitter is short and fast, it also tends to be more trivial. Do people really want to know the small details of my day? Probably not -- but I put them down anyway. Twitter begs to be constantly updated. When I read it, I tend to gravitate towards links, which lead me into a more in-depth discussion of a topic, but more personal tweets will sometimes make me smile.

I tried to get my Twitter updates put here on Karen's Thoughts, but Blogger put it on Unenrolled Baha'i -- my guess is because it has a more up-to-date layout.

Looking for Asperger's Resources in Tehama County

2009-06-03T12:41:00.000-07:00

I haven't talked about this much online, only privately to friends, but my 19-year-old son, Trevor, has Asperger's Syndrome. It's really been a long journey with him -- he was diagnosed late, but he was always "different". When he was little, I thought I was the mother of a budding genius. He knew his alphabet and numbers by the age of two -- in fact, he had an extraordinary fascination with them. He would ignore pretty pictures of bunnies and duckies to point at the page number, or the beginning letter. He used to read license plates. When he was two, he began reading words -- the first being "Sears" and "Raley's". When he got money for his 4th birthday, he chose a toy clock, and within a few months could tell time -- he'd already learned digital time from the microwave clock. He knew the times tables when he was six.

When I took my little genius to pre-school, the teacher suggested he had speech delays, and really pushed for him to be tested. Trevor got speech help from preschool clear until sixth grade, and it was this speech teacher that first suggested that he had some characteristics that were similar to high-functioning Asperger's kids.

Trevor remembers his school years with intense bitterness. Kids played tricks on him because he was naive, or just teased him for being different. Once he said to his speech teacher, while they watched the kids on the playground, "They're playing. I'd like to play, too, but I don't know how." By middle school he routinely spent his recesses just pacing the perimeter of the playground, alone. The few rare friends he had would inevitably dump him after a while -- in one instance, at a parent's insistence.

My thought, for most of those years, was that Trevor just had the social awkwardness you often see in nerdy kids, and that as he matured, things would get better. Then, one day, he became frustrated with something or another, and started screaming and hitting himself in the head, and I could no longer deceive myself: Normal eleven-year-olds don't do that. In fact, with the hindsight gained in my experience as a substitute teacher in Special Ed classes, I can see that this is fairly typical autistic behavior.

So I went searching for information on autism-spectrum disorders -- and in my amateur fashion it seemed like Trevor was hyperlexic. And, actually, I wasn't wrong -- hyperlexia is characerized by the kind of intense interest in letters he had as a young child. It was just one of the cluster of characteristics that make up his disorder.

In his Freshman year of high school, Trevor had a severe bout of depression that required professional intervention. It was around that time, I found that Sacramento State did low-cost testing, and I finally got the official diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome. At this point, having the label was important so that he could get help when he stated attending community college.

That's where he's at now. College has been better than high school, with it's social pressures -- but it is not problem-free. In spite of his high intelligence, Trevor's grades are pretty average. He has trouble with organization and needs support from me to take care of the paperwork involved in attending college. When confronted with a new situation, he just freezes like a deer in the headlights.

Trevor desperately needs job experience. It's too much to ask to just have him go around town filling out job applications. We've tried nagging him to do that and gotten nowhere. He's afraid of new situations, and nagging just makes him feel bad about himself, which paralyzes him even more.

Another factor is that his odd mannerisms mark him as "different" and most potential employers would just roll their eyes and dismiss him. And his difference is noticeable: One driver's training instructor chewed me out for even thinking about allowing him to drive, comparing him to her retarded daughter. It has been really hard for me to see my early-reading math whiz grow up into a teenager that people mistake as retarded. They say that people with Asperger's Syndrome have about a 50/50 chance at being able to live a normal life -- but the older he gets, the worse the odds seem to be.

He also has big emotional hang-ups about being rejected because of his "difference" -- and job-hunting is 99% rejection. To just push him out into the world is a sure way to send him into depression. Besides that, Trevor tends to make mistakes that mark him as lacking "common sense" and bosses are unlikely to put up with that. So what he really needs is a program that takes account of his disability. He's quite capable of working, but he needs very clear and specific instructions about what he's supposed to do, and what he should not do. He's not a kid that will simply see what needs to be done and jump in there -- a bad thing in the job market where being a "self-starter" is so highly valued.

However, the local job programs for people with disabilities don't deal with Asperger's -- for them, Trevor is not severly impaired enough. We wasted all last summer trying to get him into one -- and after much testing, discussion, expense and paperwork, we were just told what we were told when I first called: "We don't do Asperger's". I think they figured that they could somehow recategorize him into another disorder on the autism spectrum, but no such luck.

So, we're just stuck. I really want to find some alternative to just keeping him in school as long as we can before just giving up to allow him live his life back in his room -- to write his stories, surf on the 'Net, and play video games.

Working Just for the Health Insurance

2009-04-18T17:07:00.000-07:00

There's been some talk lately about the slowing economy, and the big drop in the stock market, forcing retirees back into the job market. But there's a problem that the media seems to have overlooked, and surprisingly, I couldn't find much about it on the web at all, and that's folks who could retire, but don't, because they'd lose their health insurance and wouldn't be able to afford to carry it on their own. Everything I could find was on working people who can't get health insurance at all -- which I suppose puts us in a luckier category. But, the older I get, the more people I run into who can't retire. The days are gone when someone could retire and look forward to 20 years of comfortable leisure afterwards, like my parents' generation did.

My Jim is 57 years old and has worked for the Probation Department for 30 years. The total cost of his insurance is $1000 per month -- largely paid by his employer. He's nine years older than I am, so even at 65, when he could get Medicare, he couldn't quit work because then I wouldn't have health coverage. So, my husband can't retire until he's 74 -- and we'd better pray that his health allows him to do that, because there's no way I could ever replace him as primary breadwinner at this stage of my life. Substitute teachers don't get health insurance; we're considered to be independent contractors.

*sigh* Life is fragile, you know? A perfectly decent, hardworking, responsible family can just go straight down the tubes when disaster strikes -- and health-related disasters are one of the biggest factors sending people into bankruptcy.

My online friends in other countries are continually astonished at the American disdain for taxes, I know -- but it would take a revolution to change it. No way are we getting a "one-payer" system -- maybe small adustments here and there, covering certain classes of people, but not the full-scale socialized medicine. The voters in this country will never stand for it. To tell you the truth, I'm not entirely sure that should happen, myself, although there are some good arguments for it.

I guess, in spite of liberalizing tendencies as I've grown older I still do have that conservative streak -- I can't help but feel that my health care shouldn't be somebody else's problem. If I can't afford to go to the doctor, then I don't go to the doctor -- just like I don't get things like dental implants that my dentist thinks I should have but insurance doesn't cover; I just live without a couple of molars. Just like I can get accupuncture for my TMJ (which insurance partially covers), but not the dental treatment from a specialist (which insurance doesn't cover at all).

Maybe it's generational -- my grandma and Jim's mother would both say, in such situations, that "There ought to be something there" or "They ought to have this" -- meaning a government program to take care of whatever problem was under discussion. But I never had that sense of outraged entitlement. If I had my act together enough to have developed a career, we wouldn't have this problem -- and that's an easy stone to throw for anyone who cared to. So, I can worry -- but I don't really feel like I have the right to bitch.

It's strange -- I wouldn't be resentful if there were public programs for other people; I just don't feel like I should be asking for one for myself. An American thing? The way I was raised? I don't know.

Covenant Talk

2008-09-05T15:03:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I've written anything about the Baha'i Faith on Karen's Thoughts; most of my Baha'i Writing these days is over on Unenrolled Baha'i -- and I made a promise for that blog that I wouldn't talk about the Baha'i administration. I wanted it to be a positive place, focused on "living the life". However, several days ago, my friend Baquia has posted a talk from former house member 'Ali Nakhjavani, which obliquely mentions folks like me. The first half talks about "Baha'is and non-Baha'is" advancing the idea that the Covenant is not important -- which is a distortion of what's being said out here. The second half refers to "freethinkers" who go "back to Baha'u'llah." So, I think I'm pretty safe in my assumption on who he's talking about.

*sigh* I have been hesitant to address this; I know what I'm letting myself in for. I really have no wish to go back to the old days when all these issues were constantly argued out on email lists , but they did have one advantage: liberal positions on those issues were very visable to a regular audience. These positions are now so much part of my universe that to talk about them is a bit like teaching the ABCs, but there are people who don't know them. It disturbs me to see people who give up on Baha'u'llah because they accept the conservative stance as the only possible stance. I'll never understand the fundie preference that a person renounce Baha'u'llah rather than be a liberal Baha'i.

Anyway, Mr. Nakhjavani's talk is really quite a standard spiel about the Covenant -- I doubt if anyone in his audience heard anything that they already weren't familiar with. It all sounds fine, even inspiring, except that this "domino theory" of the Covenant when it gets down to brass tacks means you must accept every single decision of the UHJ as right and good, or all the dominos fall down and you aren't a Baha'i. People can get really absurd about it -- you don't like Ruhi? What's the matter, do you have a problem with the Covenant? Worried about the environmental impact of the terrace gardens? You aren't loyal to the Covenant. In its extreme form, "the Covenant" has devolved into a form of taqlid -- the blind obedience forbidden in the Writings of Baha'u'llah.

First and foremost, my "problem with the Covenant" has always been the appalling way that a number of people have been treated -- from the editors of Dialogue magazine to the disenrollment of Sen McGlinn. I just can't get behind this unspiritual suspicion, looking for "internal enemies" in every corner, and seeing "agendas" in every email conversation. That unreasoning fear just sucks all the compassion out of the religion and leaves it an empty husk. I want no part of it. I didn't just wake up one day and decide "Hey, it would be cool to be a freethinker, because I'm just not down with those stodgy old authorities"; it was a painful ethical choice that I wish I didn't have to make.

I've kept Baha'u'llah, Mr. Nakhjavani; it's only the paranoia I've left behind. My covenant with Baha'u'llah doesn't require it.

Democracy Now! Staff Arrested

2008-09-02T07:57:00.000-07:00

This was just an astonishing story to wake up to this morning. After wading through the news reports, it appears that there was some mischief at these protests -- thrown objects, vandalism and the like. However, several reports are saying that the police were way out of line, gassing, pepper-spraying, and arresting even peaceful protesters.

According to Amy Goodman's interview, made just as she had been released from jail, she'd heard that two members of her staff had been arrested as they were filming the police as they cracked down on the protesters. She went to find out why they were arrested, and was told to back off -- and she didn't.

Generally, if you don't follow a police officer's instructions, you are at risk for arrest, even if you think those instructions are unreasonable. I'm aware of that, having a husband in law enforcement, but most law-abiding middle-class people may not be. If you refuse to listen, they'll slap the cuffs on you, and you can sort it out in court later. We drilled our kids in two rules: Do whatever a cop tells you and never piss off a judge.

But, as Amy points out, we're talking about the press here -- the freedom of which is so vital to our democracy. I'm really concerned about why reporters filming the protests would be arrested. These are professionals, and just doing their jobs. Amy's press credentials were plainly visible; the cops should have let her through.

These charges will almost certainly be dropped -- the actions of these reporters are going to look very different in court than they did to cops whose minds were on crowd control and adrenaline was pumping.

I couldn't find a way to embed the video of her post-arrest interview which tells the story, but here's the more dramatic video of her arrest, which is all over the web this morning:

Here's an update: Producers Nicole Salazar and Sharif Abdel Kouddous were arrested while trying to get out of the way. Before that, they were just doing their jobs, filming what was going on. Several other journalists were arrested as well, including one who yelled "It's a Republican paper, for Chrissakes!" Press passes were consfiscated. Amy, in her upset at what had happened to her producers, took what she should have known was a risk. But, the arrest of Nicole and Sharif is legitimate cause for some real outrage -- they were backing away, not challenging the officers at all.

I'd like to know what the cops' orders were. This thing needs to be investigated.

Digging Up Yoga History

2008-09-01T09:39:00.000-07:00

I tell students who complain that history is boring that whatever they are into, it has a history: music, sports, fashion. The most boring way to approach history is the way we're forced to do it in school -- broad, sweeping survey courses where you have barely time to get the gist of what was happening before moving on to the next chapter. History buffs are invariably into small slices of history -- like the Civil War, or local history.

Grandma still laughs about my tendency, as a kid, to look up the history of whatever I was doing. When she taught me to crochet, I tried to find out where it came from. I haven't changed much.

I've found myself curious about the history of yoga in America. As far as I know, nobody has written a book about that, and I've only been able to get bits and pieces. I know that it was brought here by Swami Vivekenanda after the World's Parliament of Religions in 1893, and that it was enthusiastically promoted by Sara Bull, Sarah Farmer's friend at Green Acre. Yoga was one of the many new religious ideas floating around at the time, and arguably the most influential in the long run -- although it has achieved that status partly by being separated from its religious roots.

Anyway, my husband and I happened to be cruising a used bookstore with a large metaphysical section. I found some old Baha'i books there, too, like Horace Holley's *Religion for Mankind*. (Baha'i books always end up in the metaphysical section of used bookstores, although they really don't belong there.) I found a couple of old yoga books. One was from the 1960s, rather quaintly old-fashioned, like Richard Hittleman's books seem now. (Hittleman dominated the yoga bookshelves when I was young.) Iyengar's *Light on Yoga*, written around the same time, holds up better.

A more interesting find was *Hatha Yoga* by Yogi Ramacharaka, which was copyrighted 1930, although I found mention of an earlier edition in 1906. I went digging through Project Gutenberg, and found a few more very early yoga books, ranging from 1906 to 1922 -- and it's clear that yoga was taught very differently back in the early days. Annie Besant's book on yoga is entirely metaphysitcal and focused on meditation. She mentions Hatha Yoga, but doesn't give any clues on how to practice it. These early yoga books, when they do mention the physical practices, spent many chapters on diet and healthy living. Pranayama, or breathing exercises, are emphasized a whole lot more than asanas, or the actual yoga poses. Ramacharaka's book has one small chapter of thirteen exercises, only four or five of which were familiar to me. Another startling omission is the static hold -- one of the things that differentiates yoga from other forms of exercise is that you stretch into a position and hold it for a period of time, sometimes several minutes. There is not a hint of that in these books. In fact, a couple of the exercises reminded me of warm-ups I've learned in tai chi class.

So, when Sara Bull was practicing yoga at Green Acre, she was certainly doing something that looked very different from my morning practice. I find myself wondering when the more familiar yoga poses began to be practiced. What's curious is that these early teachers were from India, and one would think that an older, more authentic yoga would have been taught in those early days, with Western adaptations gradually creeping in as it became popular. Of course, another thing we don't know is how much reliance there was on oral instruction -- it could be that some things were considered too esoteric to be published for a general audience.

Anyway, I'm just collecting information as I come across it.

These Boots Are Made for Walkin', but Everything's Too Far Away

2008-07-18T15:37:00.000-07:00

I found this website, Walkscore.com kind of fun -- put in your address, and it will rate your neighborhood's "walkability" i.e. how many places you need to go that are within walking distance.

My own address is, of course, dismally car-dependent. That's life in the country: you go back to nature, but the whole project is completely dependent upon fossil fuels. Even the places that the map rated as being within walking distance require a trip along rather pedestrian-unfriendly roads. And, of course, there's the time it takes -- for me to walk would expand a short errand into a morning-long project.

Now, the writers of this site claim that there are many small towns that are walker-friendly. I'm sure that's true -- in fact, the address where we lived when first married was rated "very walkable", and I did walk a whole lot more back then. But there's some realities of small town life that are missing, the biggest one being the fact that some goods and services are either limited or nonexistent in a small town and require a trip to a bigger one. The most outstanding one is medical specialists. A person could manage to get to a dentist or a doctor through public transportation, but if they need an endodontist then it means a trip to Chico or Redding.

And if one wants to reach another small town for some reason, then you have to have a car. If you wanted to visit me, you could manage it by public transportation, but it would be very inconvenient. You can take Amtrack from San Francisco to Sacramento, then you'd have to take an Amtrack connecting bus, to a town 10 miles from here. Then, if it's between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. you could catch a local bus that will take you to a connecting point to another local route that will take you within walking distance to my house. Believe me, you're really going to want to come by car, no matter how high the gas prices get. If your starting point is another small northern California town it gets even more complicated.

There are towns you can't even get to at all, without a car, inconveniently or not.

Part of it is that my husband always wanted to live out of town; he'd be even happier if we were surrounded by enough acreage that the neighbors weren't visible. (The other part is that buying a house was more affordable here.) But I'll confess that I find it irritating that nearly everything I want to do requires a trip. If the gas prices get much higher, I'm going to do more shopping by mail order.

Anyway, the walkability maps are fun -- and I can daydream about living in San Francisco, where everything you'd ever want in the world is within a seven square mile area.

How I'm Spending My Summer Vacation

2008-07-04T11:13:00.000-07:00

I've often said that there's nothing more boring than someone else's diet and exercise program. On the interest scale, it's like listening to Aunt Martha go on about her aches and pain and doctor visits -- one may resign oneself to being sweetly patient, but there are a whole lot of other things you'd rather be listening to.

However, the same project can be quite absorbing when we ourselves are the subject. It actually requires a certain amount of attention, whether there are calories to be counted, or blood sugar numbers or monitoring one's resting heart rate. Lately, I've had that little warning voice in my mind not to become over-enthusiastic, which leads to burn out and abandonment of what is, at this stage of my life, a necessity.

A couple of weeks ago, I went surfing on the web for local yoga classes. I've gotten to the point where I feel like I can benefit from having a teacher, to make sure I'm doing the poses correctly, etc. I found some at the local fitness center, and Jim says "Why don't you check out the family rates for joining the gym?". As it turns out, we get a deep discount because of his job with the county -- Blue Cross figures they come out ahead financially if they encourage their clients to exercise. I'm especially pleased that Jim is getting involved in this, because his health is a cause for worry.

Anyway, now I'm doing cardio, and weight training, and taking not only yoga classes, but tai chi as well. The classes will necessarily become quite hit-and-miss once school starts, but they're set up so you can just drop in any time. I'm learning a lot, the most important lesson being that exercise drops my blood sugar like a rock. I ate a chili dog last night, just as a rare indulgence, and my blood sugar stayed at such an incredibly low level I thought something was wrong with the tester.

Most days I manage a healthy, pescetarian diet -- sometimes leaning to the super-good and being vegetarian, other times being a bit bad and having a little meat and white flour (as in the aforementioned chili dog). I've discovered that, for me, there are three main diet killers: convenience, boredom, and the "God ,I miss that" moment -- as in "God, I haven't had a chili dog in ages!" The convenience part comes about because my beloved husband thinks the whole notion of vegetarianism is silly, and so he keeps sandwhich meat around, tempting me during hurried lunches, or worse, he decides to make or bring home dinner. And, I give in because it's just easier. The boredom, I suppose, is self-explanatory -- there are times when I just can't look one more veggie stir-fry in the face.

I've actually gained back a little bit of weight, and since my diet has been good, I suspect that I'm putting on muscle because of all this activity. One more reason to stay away from the scale.

I've also been trying to get a handle on my TMJ, which is the painful aftermath of grinding your teeth in your sleep. The mouth guard I paid 400 bucks for is virtually worthless. At best, it keeps me from breaking my teeth, but I'm still enduring a very sore jaw muscle. So, I went to a massage therapist and had a long consultation with one of the yoga teachers. What mostly came out of that is that I am not physically over the car accident I had in January. So, I've been focusing my home yoga practice towards the therapeutic, since I figure I'm getting exercise elsewhere, working on the traumatized and knotted muscles in my jaw, shoulder, neck, and hips. And just trying to relax which, as it turns out, actually requires a good deal of effort.

I was going to put this piece on my private blog, but there are so many folks out there who are looking up exercise and diet stuff on the web, that I figured I'd have my 2 cents out there for the search engines.

No Surprises

2008-04-30T11:35:00.000-07:00

International Teaching Center members Gustavo Correa and Shariar Razavi have been elected to the Universal House of Justice in their recent election -- something that was not only predicted by Baquia, but some quite conservative Baha'is were joking about the fact that it was patently obvious who would be elected. The problem is that there are probably few other Baha'i officials that would be known to all of the members of the world's National Spiritual Assemblies. In a Baha'i election, where any sort of campaigning is forbidden, and you can win by plurality, name recognition is everything. And the ITC deals directly and frequently with the NSAs -- in fact, I've been told that it never corresponds with ordinary individuals, only institutions and appointed officials. NSA members may not know much about NSA members in other countries, but they all know the Counsellors in Haifa.

As Baquia notes, this is the first year where all members of the UHJ are former ITC members -- the House, in essence, appoints its own future members. It's a closed system. Now, I've heard some hardliners venture the opinion that the composition of the House doesn't matter -- but this is utterly foolish. You have nine men consulting on the direction of the Baha'i world and making decisions about it -- of course the attitudes of the individuals matter, their experience and background. They aren't sitting around a table in Haifa taking dictation from God; they talk about things, and express their own opinions in those discussions and through a vote. And now, all of them come from a background where they engage in "protection" i.e. heresy-hunting, and are appointed to their positions instead of being elected .

I've heard it, only half-jokingly, suggested that the only way out of the dilemma of the international Counsellors being the only ones well-enough known to be elected is to make the ITC all-female, so that the members of that body would be ineligible to be elected. But I wouldn't hold my breath. . . .

Breaking Baha'i News Stories

2008-04-24T07:56:00.000-07:00

Besides the one on Iran below, there are two other news stories making the rounds of Baha'i cyberspace:

The Baha'i News Service has just announced the retirement of Harmut Grossman and Glenford Mitchell from the Universal House of Justice. Mitchell, of course, has been on the UHJ for many years and is due for retirement, but Grossman was elected just a few years ago -- although, at age 74 it seems reasonable for him to retire as well, even if he's served only a single term. It seems to me that there has been more turnover on the House than there once was, which is a good thing. What's not so good, and has been much discussed on various forums, is that all the new House members have come from the ITC, making appointment to that body a virtual nomination to the House. Here's to hoping that the next election is a deviation from that trend. In the only case where I was given the opportunity to observe the upper institutions closely, it seemed to me that the appointed ITC -- which has "protection" as part of its explicit job -- was far more harsh and condemning than the House itself, which was trying to stay more neutral, even distant, and in the end it did the right thing for the particular person involved. The appointed wing is scary: Although technically without power, it wields a tremendous influence that has had a negative impact on some people's lives -- the ramifications of which are still being felt. Anyway, I hope the NSAs elect someone from their ranks this time.

The second story is that the
US NSA court case against two Remeyite groups has failed.. Apparently, the NSA was arguing that these groups were in contempt of a 1966 court decision against Remey's original group disallowing them from using Baha'i copyrighted symbols. The court found that these successor groups are materially different from the original one set up by Mason Remey. Of course, there's nothing stopping the NSA from suing each of these groups individually, as far as I can tell -- and I suspect that's what will happen. But if their complaint is based upon web pages, they're going to have to not only sue the leadership of these groups, but every individual member who is using these symbols. This all could be in court a long time.

I have very little sympathy with these splinter groups -- one is fundamentalist and the other just plain nuts. Nevertheless, I'm uncomfortable with the notion that religous symbols are copyrighted; it seems very sectarian. Nobody owns the cross or the crescent, after all. And I don't think there is a significant danger that anyone who is halfway paying attention is going to confuse these groups with the mainstream Baha'i Faith, so all this litigation seems like a lot of time and effort for very little gain.

The Rising Generation in Iran

2008-04-24T07:06:00.000-07:00

I seldom say much about the persecution of Baha'is in Iran -- besides the fact that I'm certainly no expert on Iranian affairs, there's very little to say, except what a horrible violation of human rights it is. And, I've been hearing predictions of the Islamic Republic's fall my whole adult life, so I'm a bit skeptical about yet another one. However, no regime, however totalitarian, is immune from the change of the generations -- even if there isn't a counter-revolution, there is bound to be counter-evolution.

From the article The Mullah's Achilles' Heel: Iran's Youth:

Notwithstanding the Mullahs' pretensions, the Islamic Republic is built less on the sublime spirituality of religion and more on the profane temptations of power. In placing so much focus on demonizing the peaceful Baha'i minority and threatening human rights champions, such as Dr. Ebadi, the hardliners betray the emptiness of their beliefs and ideals, which must be imposed through violence and intimidation.

Instead of celebrating the transcendent values of compassion and justice, which inspired a glorious and pluralistic Islamic civilization for centuries, Iran's self-appointed clerical rulers promote a hateful and ignorant totalitarian ideology. Some of the most vigorous dissent against clerical rule is by clerics themselves, both orthodox and reformist, calling for separation of religion and state, consistent with 500 years of Shia tradition. Many Islamic clerics are persecuted and there is even a special court for the prosecution of dissident clergy.

A regime that does not enjoy a democratic mandate, and which is unresponsive to popular demands for a prosperous and open society, desperately needs foreign conspiracies, heresies and other enemies within to legitimize its rule. But time is not on the hardliners' side. The reality is that 70% of Iranians are less than 30 years of age, many are Internet-savvy, glued to satellite television and have very little toleration for the Islamic utopia promised by their leaders when the evidence of national decline is apparent everywhere.

Karen's Now on Facebook

2008-04-17T13:13:00.000-07:00

Just thought I'd give folks a head's up, in case any of my online friends are into the whole social networking site thing. It took me a while to get around to it -- my main exposure to the phenomenon was scolding my teenage daughter for the kinds of things she puts on hers, and occasionally insisting on deletions.

Right now, I'm mostly having fun messing around with the applications, putting books and music on the site. I don't have many "friends", i.e. folks who are allowed to see the site, but then, neither do most of my friends. I admit some shyness about requesting "friends" on there, even though people do it all the time. I don't have a picture up yet, either.

So, it's not profound -- even kind of silly, but that's what I've been up to lately.

Click on the title of this blog entry for the page -- but I think you have to join Facebook yourself in order to see it.

Refusing to Take Men for an Answer

2008-04-05T10:13:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I know I said yesterday that folks don't seem to come here to read news stories, but I couldn't resist this one:

Many years ago, when she was still a tiny girl in braids, and not the professional she is today, Eufrosina Cruz heard the story of how her father married off her sister to a stranger at age 12: She wondered if a man might come to claim her too.

Being a girl isn't easy in Santa Maria Quiegolani, a poor rural village where Zapotec is the native language and most girls are lucky to complete grade school.

Cruz left to eventually become a college-educated accountant. But now, at age 27, she has returned to her old village in the mountains of Oaxaca, and stirred up a gender war.

This is a woman with a heck of a lot of guts. Click on the title to read more.

How Privileged Are You?

2008-04-04T11:07:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about posting a news story today, but I'm finding that folks aren't visiting the blog for news stories -- the Baha'i posts get far and away more visits. The only non-Baha'i subjects that get any significant traffic are those on education and Maggie Ross. So, there's no sense in me posting news stories just to keep the blog updated.

This has been doing the rounds of the blogosphere, though, and I thought I'd chime in. It was based on an exercise about class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. If you participate in this blog game, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright.

Some of these were difficult to answer because I had four different "childhood homes" before I was 18 -- and they were quite different from each other: 1. My brother and I lived with Mom and Dad (birth to age 9); 2. My mother and us kids lived with my maternal grandparents during my parents' divorce and ensuing custody battle(age 9 to 11); 3. My brother and I lived with my dad and stepmother, and her two kids(age 11 to 14); 4. I left my dad's house to live with Grandma and Grandpa again. (age 14 to age 20).

So, answering something like this gets a little complicated for me. (Probably that in itself makes me less "privileged". ) Dad had more money than my grandparents, but they were more likely to have an interest in things this test marks as high status, like books, art, and music -- in spite of not having finished high school. My paternal grandmother had some college education, as well as musical training, but I didn't live with her -- and Dad had a different attitude.

Everybody else who has this on their blog bolds the ones that apply, so I'll do the same.

1. Father went to college
2. Father finished college
3. Mother went to college
4. Mother finished college
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home. (Probably my grandparents had this many.)
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.
9. Were read children's books by a parent. (This one's really a "maybe". I have memories of reading to my mother, but not vice versa.)
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18 (Swimming lessons)
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18.
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively.
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18.
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs.
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
16. Went to a private high school
17. Went to summer camp
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18.
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels. (Dad liked to travel, but he always pulled a trailer.)
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18. ( I had hand-me-downs when I was living with Dad and stepmom -- where there were four kids to take care of, but not in the other homes I lived in.)
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them. (I bought a hand-me-down car -- Grandma's Mustang.)
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child.(I had a great-grandmother, my maternal grandmother's mother, who loved to paint. The smell of oil paint always reminds me of her, and one of her paintings adorns my wall to this day. But she wasn't a professional artist or anything.)
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house.
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home.
25. You had your own room as a child.(from age 10, although for a brief period when I was 12 I didn't have a room and slept on the couch.)
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18.
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course.
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school.(not in high school -- my brother and I had a little black-and-white tv when we were little kids, but I never had one after that.)
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college.
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16. (Once, I think. Actually my flying experience was mostly on my paternal grandfather's Cessna.)
31. Went on a cruise with your family.
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family.
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up.(I went with people other than my parents.)
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.( I find this one kind of weird -- how many parents tell their kids how much their bills are?)

So, I only have nine of the 34, so that makes me approximately 26% privileged? I'm actually uncertain as to how this is supposed to be scored -- I wonder what the original authors actually did with this exercise. Just count up how many kids in the class had their own rooms growing up or had parents who bought them cars?

This appears to exclude anything that would be considered a necessity -- like food, shelter, or medical care. Compared to much of the world, just the fact that we have those means we're in the upper tier. Also, there would be a significant difference between generations here -- my grandparents wouldn't have been able to answer "yes" to any of these, and my parents to very few, and my children to several more.

The World's Fastest Growing Religions

2008-04-02T08:50:00.000-07:00

My friend Baquia, has mentioned on Baha'i Rants that
Foreign Policy has named the Baha'i Faith as the second-fastest growing religion. What I found interesting was *why* it was so listed -- that is, because about a quarter of Baha'is live in India, and there are high birthrates there. In fact, four of the religions on the list -- the Baha'i Faith, Sikhism, Jainism and Hindusim -- have high growth rates attributable to the fact that a large percentage are in India.

A few years back, there was a lot of discussion about how solid the numbers of Baha'is in India actually are. There's over a million on the rolls, but in India there tends to be a more inclusive Baha'i identity, so that many Baha'is still bring Hindu practices and identity with them. My guess would be that you have a range of commitment, just like you do in the U.S. No doubt there are some on the rolls that have reverted to Hinduism, some who are wholly Baha'i, and a portion in the middle with a mixture. I've heard reports of Indian Baha'is having pictures of 'Abdu'l-Baha' right next to Hindu gods on the family altar, or of them performing puja, which is Hindu worship. I recall one book speaking of "distinctive Hindu-Baha'i forms of worship". In such a case, a person looking in from the outside might have a hard time figuring out what religion these folks belong to.

As Baquia mentioned, the Indian census put the Baha'i numbers very low, but I think it likely that some were missed -- it depends on how the census was done. If assumptions were made about certain areas being Hindu, so that the whole population was attributed to that religion, rather than census workers going door-to-door, then certainly a lot of Baha'is were missed. If every household was carefully accounted for, like they do in the U.S.(although, of course, our census forms don't ask about religion), then that low number would have to be accurate and the Baha'i rolls are way off base. But I think the former case more likely.

Another thing that struck me about this article is the key factor of population growth. I always think of "growth" in a religion as being conversion -- people decide to join. But that comes from my experience, I guess. The only religion named on FP's list where conversion was a major factor was Christianity.

The notion of growing up in a religion is foreign to me. It's not that I didn't have some religious training -- I was sent to church at various times during my childhood, although it was not a regular thing. My interest in religion was very personal, even as a child. And, as time went on, the Protestant Christianity I grew up with became less dominant within the family. I used to joke with friends that I'm a heretic in my family, not because I'm a Baha'i, but because I don't believe in reincarnation! Actually, the notion that family pressure could influence my spiritual decisions makes me very uncomfortable; I've always charted my own path. I can't imagine just parroting my family's ideas about anything -- religion, politics, the role of women, child-rearing, or whatever. In fact, I was raised to be independent and wary of authority.

But I guess my experience -- and my family -- is unusual. According to the stats, most people do identify with the religion of their parents, even if they don't stay active practitioners. I expect the rates would be even higher in traditional societies in the global South.

Growing Up Online

2008-03-28T13:39:00.000-07:00

Last week, we watched a Frontline special on the Iraq War, and I got the notion to go looking through Frontline's many fine episodes, and found one on kids and the Internet -- not just the dire warnings, but talking to kids about what it means to them and so on.

I have a very sociable teenage daughter, and technology has definitely made things different from when I was young. Not only does the phone ring all afternoon, beginning from when school lets out, kids will also call at ungodly hours of the night. The reason for that is that they are on cellphones, parents are asleep, and they don't stop to think that the number that they are calling is not a cellphone kept on vibrate, but the main phone in the kitchen that will disturb the whole family. I've seen Tory talk with the house phone on one ear, and her dad's cell (which she shares) on the other.

And all of this isn't enough; Tory's also got MySpace -- the 21st century teenage hangout. Now, she's never done anything as extreme as the kids described on the program. For that matter, neither have the vast majority of kids online. And, I'm probably a bit more web-savvy than most parents -- that, and my daughter doesn't have her own computer, and tends to be rather careless about signing out. I usually am unhappy at what I find when I do have the opportunity to peek. (She objects strenuously to this parental intrusion, of course.) The way kids talk to each other is *disgusting*, at least to my middle-aged eyes. It's not the lurking pedophile, either -- it's just local kids, who she also knows in real life. As for control, she got herself banned from my computer, but still has access to her brother's laptop -- a tool he needs for college.

But the Frontline program made some good points:

*The Internet has brought about the biggest generation gap since the invention of rock-and-roll. I personally think it's technology, in general, and includes things like cell phones, texting, IMs, etc. Kids that age always have wanted to create an identity seperate from that of their parents -- but technology makes it so much easier now. They not only create their own identity, but their own world. There's some truth to this, but it's possible to make too much of it. Changing times always create kind of a gap. I grew up with television; my parents didn't. I had the opportunity to go to college; my parents didn't. My generation of young women grew up with the Pill and legal abortion; my parents didn't. I don't know if the Internet represents a more startling change than those things.

*The only major study done on the subject indicates that most kids know to just delete any sexual solicitation, so the fear about predetors may be overblown. The only time a guy suggested Tory meet him in real life got put down quick. Tory called him a pedophile and told him to get lost. In reality, he sounded more like some young guy trying to pick up on a girl he thought was closer to his own age -- but her reaction was reassuring. The many known-in-real-life guys who talk to her on MySpace, I'm less reassured about. I consider them much more worrisome than the dirty old man trolling for kids.

*Kids make plans to party and do other things they aren't supposed to online. Duh! Teenage cyberspace is teenagers without adult supervision, which spells teenage stupidity every time. Not to be unfair, but even good kids are dumb -- young necessarily means lacking in experience and wisdom. If we're honest about our own youth, we can certainly see some stupidity there, particularly when we figured our parents weren't looking.

*The Frontline special talked about cyber-bullying, which has, in some well-publicized cases, led to teenage suicide. From what I can tell, that hasn't been a problem with my daughter's friends. There doesn't even appear to be much in the way of the catty squabbling that I remember from my high school days. I see an awful lot of vulgarity, but I don't see meanness. Maybe that's just the crowd my kid hangs with. My experience with online meanness is with adults. I can see how an emotionally vulnerable teenager could get into trouble out here, though.

Anyway, it was an interesting look at the teenage cyberworld. Click on the title of this blog entry; you can watch the entire thing on the web.

A Humor Break

2008-03-24T10:51:00.000-07:00

I wasn't always a Baha'i, you know. When I was a kid, I went to church -- and around the year 1972 the movie "Thief in the Night" was all the rage. I was twelve, not eight as the song says -- but I always remembered the lyric:

Two men walking up a hill
One disappears, and one's left standing still
I wish we'd all been ready
There's no time to change your mind
The Son has come
And you've been left behind

Randy Bonifield remembers it, too, and pokes gentle fun in this song:

Correcting "Baha'i Views"

2008-03-22T17:07:00.000-07:00

Here's something that I wrote some time ago, but was holding on to until after the Fast -- I generally make an effort to stay out of controversy during that period:

Ever since Moojan Momen's paper "Marginality and Apostasy" came out, George Wesley Dannells of Baha'i Views has become inordinately fond of the term "apostate", and has posted several times about how terrible we all are. But you know who else is fond of that term? The Iranian government, who applies it to all Baha'is. Google "Baha'i apostates" sometime and see what comes up. Yes, the term can be used in a social science context; it is also a vicious epithet on the lips of the orthodox. Baha'i Views is not a social science journal and George is not studying us. He is using "apostate" in the exact same sense that an Iranian mulla would -- as a way to condemn and to warn others about the people in question.

In any case, some of the things he says seem to indicate a profound ignorance of who we are, and what we're saying. So, at the risk of putting myself in the middle of the maelstrom, I think some corrections are in order:

Claim: The "apostates" don't teach the Faith.

False. Alison Marshall has a teaching website. Baha'is Online and Baha'i Rants have a variety of positive stories about the Baha'i community, as well as critical ones.

Claim: "Have you noticed they never post about children?"

False. I have a lot of posts here about education -- I am. after all, a teacher. This critique seems particularly bizarre to me, because the lack of resources for my kids is one issue that greatly frustrated me when I was enrolled. No use talking about "core activities" now -- childhood passes swiftly; they can't wait years for the local community to get its act together. Our children's classes here were active when my kids were infants, then largely dropped out of sight. It's true my kids aren't Baha'is, but most of the kids that attended those long-ago classes are estranged from the community now. So, it's not like the Baha'i community has done such a stellar job at retaining these children after they grow up. The old saying about people who live in glass houses not throwing stones come to mind.

Claim:"Death to Baha'is" is being scratched on doorways even today in Iran. And yet the Internet Anti-Baha'i Society is not moved, and is focused instead on its own apostate narratives and mythology."

False. Both Baha'i Rants and Baha'is Online, the two main websites that George complains about, are replete with stories about what the Iranian Baha'is are suffering -- almost every news story that comes out finds its way to one or the other. Several on the list of Moojan's "apostates" have made public statements about the Iranian government's shameful violation of human rights and religious freedom that Baha'is must endure in that country.

There is also another jab, that while not exactly false is exceedingly silly: George put both "Baha'i" and "unenrolled Baha'i" into a search, and found that the latter had an infinitesmal percentage of the "Baha'i" total. I'm not sure what this is supposed to prove, but search engines look for words, and even on unenrolled sites, the word "Baha'i" is likely to be used far more often than the specific term "unenrolled Baha'i" -- so a comparison like that tells you nothing. Not only do I use the word "Baha'i" much more often, I also use the abbreviation "UB" which wouldn't be picked up on a search. In any case, not all religionists are as obsessed with numbers as the administrative Faith is. For example, nobody knows how many Sufis there are in the U.S., because they simply don't keep those kinds of statistics; trotting out numbers to prove their progress just isn't important to them. I don't see why it ought to be important to unenrolled Baha'is, either -- I wouldn't even try to hazard a guess at the numbers.

Besides, the whole premise of this kind of numbers game is wrong: I don't view unenrolled Baha'is as being in competition with the Baha'i Faith organization. Why should we be? We're all believers in Baha'u'llah, after all. But not everyone's a joiner -- as the growing number of unaffiliated religionists in this country indicates. It would be nice if Baha'is took the approach that Christian churches do towards unchurched Christians -- they ask themselves how they can attract such people into community activity, instead of sneering about how "insignificant" they are.

There are other things I could get into -- it seems that George feels the need to mention the apostates/marginals/opposition about twice a week. But one thing I will agree with him on: The Internet is changing; people have backed away from the turmoil of debate that seems almost inevitable on forums. It's one reason I started blogging, and I'm sure that's true for others as well. I'm sure that's all to the good -- may we all generate more light than heat!

Common Tables: Breaking Bread and Boundaries

2008-03-19T15:36:00.000-07:00

Here's a project that I think would warm the cockles of any Baha'i heart:

CASTLE ROCK, COLO. -- The four couples were just settling into small talk over appetizers when Kenneth Holloman cleared his throat.

"Would the group permit me to ask an impertinent question?" he said. "How many here believe there's a hell?"

It was not your typical icebreaker.

But then, this was not your typical dinner party.

The couples, strangers to one another, had been brought together by Common Tables, a nonprofit that aims to nurture interfaith friendships. Holloman is an atheist; his wife, a Methodist. Their group included a Jewish couple; a Baptist minister and his wife; and a couple who left the Mormon Church and now belong to a New Age movement called Religious Science.

Common Tables puts together group rosters and asks members to meet for dinner at least four times. Participants can talk about theology or the weather. They can share prayers or photos of their children. Nothing's required. And nothing is off-limits, except proselytizing. The point is simply to reach out, to shake hands with a Buddhist, enjoy a glass of wine with a Wiccan, share laughs with a Sikh or an agnostic or a Jain.

"We're not trying to solve academic or theological problems," said Randy Harris, who co-founded Common Tables last spring in Denver's suburbs.

"We just want to help people realize they can honor and respect each other. They can get along."

Traditionally, interfaith work has been left mostly to religious leaders, who gathered a few times a year for a unity breakfast or panel discussion. Where grass-roots groups existed, they often focused on drawing together diverse congregations for service projects, such as cleaning up a neighborhood park.

Since Sept. 11, however, veteran interfaith activists have noticed a hunger among Americans for more personal, one-on-one connections across religious lines. For many, it began with a desire to meet Muslims, to work past the fear and anger raised by the terrorist attacks. Since then, the movement has broadened. In some cities, parents are even organizing interfaith Sunday schools to teach their children Bahai, Zoroastrian or Greek Orthodox values.

"People know they have to develop the capacity to get out of their comfort zone," said Jill Carroll, executive director of Rice University's Boniuk Center for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance.

Harris and his co-founders believe in the concept so passionately, they all quit their jobs to devote themselves to Common Tables. They hope to build a national movement; for now, they're working on calling every house of worship in the greater Denver phone book. So far, they've signed up more than 300 participants and set 20 groups in motion.

There's more to the article, but the Blogger software keeps telling me that the URL is illegal. However, it's a recent story, still being featured on the LA Times Religion page. You can find the organization at http://commontables.org, which Blogger won't put through, either.

Kyrgyzstan's Religious Laws

2008-03-05T15:35:00.000-08:00

The Presidential Administration has rejected for now a harsh new Decree which would have brought in sweeping controls on religious activity. But Kanat Murzakhalilov, Deputy Head of the State Agency for Religious Affairs, told Forum 18 News Service that his agency hopes to present a final draft of a controversial new Religion Law to the government by the end of March. He refused to say if the draft will require 200 adult citizen members before a community can gain legal status, a provision in the latest publicly-available draft which is opposed by the Russian Orthodox, the Catholics, many Protestant Churches, the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Baha'is. But he stated that registration will continue to be compulsory. Boris Shumkov of the Council of Churches Baptists told Forum 18 that such harsh provisions "would lead to repression and persecution of our congregations". They have named 5 March a day of prayer and fasting. "Our country has so many urgent problems – poverty, the lack of medicine, Aids, crime, corruption," one Baha'i told Forum 18. "Why don't officials work on these instead of making life harder for religious believers?"

Well, it's good that the harshest version of this law isn't going to be passed, but I have to agree with the Baha'i quoted there that this government -- any government -- would be better occupied elsewhere. And good on him/her for standing up.

Here's the defense for the law: But Fr Dronov insisted that a new Law is necessary. "The current Law is too liberal and should be amended. Registration should be better regulated. And the problem at present is that faiths new to Kyrgyzstan have the same rights as faiths that have been here for a long time. New groups should have fewer rights as they are not part of the established culture here. Some new sects are harmful and should be restricted."

Among those Fr Dronov singled out as needing tighter control were Pentecostal Christians, which he alleged "harm members' psychological health". However, he admitted that no medically-documented proof of such harm was yet available.

It makes me think that the Pentacostals have had rather more success in Kyrgyzstan than Fr Dronov is comfortable with.

Click on this blog entry's title to get the whole article -- and there are further links at the bottom of the article for anybody who wants to read up on the situation.

And the blog goes on . . .

2008-02-27T18:55:00.000-08:00

As most of my online friends know, I'm recovering from a car accident that happened about a month ago. I'm at a point in my recovery now where I'm well enough to mess around online, but not well enough to do much of anything else. I made a few attempts at housework today -- didn't get very far before I wore out. We still haven't replaced the car that got smashed up, so I'm pretty much stuck at home.

I added a little gadget that tracks who has been on this blog, which has been kind of fun, because I can tell where folks are coming from, and what page they've come to see. I had one where I had to check a web page, but I've forgotten my password and just haven't bothered with it for a long time. I was surprised that I'm still attracting traffic here. After all, I haven't done much to update it -- when I do feel like writing these days, it has been mostly on my private blog Karen's Path, where I just muse about my own spiritual life. "Karen's Thoughts" is my blog for broader issues, which I mostly haven't been in the mood to talk about.

Nevertheless, folks are still dropping in, mostly from search engines, or links on other pages. The biggest draw, of course, is what I've written on Baha'i issues -- but the people are not just my online friends. I'm getting visitors from places like Kiev and Hamadan, where I don't know anybody.

It seems to me that Baha'i cyberspace is making a big shift from discussion groups to blogs -- although sometimes the blog comment sections are virtually discussion groups, to the point they aren't really comments on the blog post at all.

Anyway, I'm hearing that Baha'is are being encouraged to start blogs, which is a huge turnaround from ten years ago, when ABMs where telling Baha'is to stay off the Internet in order to avoid the Remeyites and Talismanians.

Blogs carry a different dynamic than email lists and the like. For one thing, there isn't as much repetition of the same issues. A blogger has to come up with something new, even if it's just news about, or a new angle on, an old issue. Debating forums tend to get stuck -- in the worst places I've seen flame wars last for literal years, with scant content other than name-calling. Even the better forums tend to recycle things, especially as new people come on -- the old issues and questions are new to them, and that sparks the debate all over again. There's less "noise" on a blog. And I think more Baha'i bloggers is going to mean more creative thinking -- at least those that keep being updated. After all, if you have to write on a regular basis, odds are you're going to have to do some actual thinking sometime.

A Quarter of Americans Change Faiths

2008-02-25T14:46:00.000-08:00

Click on this entry's title to get the article from the New York Times. I found this interesting:

“The trend is toward more personal religion, and evangelicals offer that,” said Mr. Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston University, who explained that evangelical churches tailor many of their activities for youth. “Those losing out are offering impersonal religion and those winning are offering a smaller scale: mega-churches succeed not because they are mega but because they have smaller ministries inside.”

What, I wonder, is an "impersonal religion"?

The article also notes the increasing numbers of unaffiliated, which has become our fourth-largest religious group:

The rise of the unaffiliated does not mean that Americans are becoming less religious, however. Contrary to assumptions that most of the unaffiliated are atheists or agnostics, most described their religion “as nothing in particular.” Pew researchers said that later projects would delve more deeply into the beliefs and practices of the unaffiliated and would try to determine if they remain so as they age.

[Update: This article is catching the attention of other Baha'is, too. Notably, on Correlating and on the discussion group talisman9 Knowing Steve Marshall, I expect it to be up on Baha'is Online before the evening's out.]

Heretic, Not Apostate

2007-11-23T17:35:00.000-08:00

Baha'i cyberspace is abuzz with the latest article to come out in *Religion*, writen by Moojan Momen, called "Marginality and Apostasy in the Baha'i Community". It is, apparently, the long-awaited rebuttal to the many academic articles and books published by ex and unenrolled Baha'is. Since I'm one of the "apostates" named, it's probably appropriate that I respond. (Alison Marshall and Umm Yasmin have already commented on Baha'is Online.

The centerpiece of Momen's argument is that the all the ex-Baha'is, and unenrolled Baha'is, who have been active on the Internet, and have succeeded in publishing in academic journals are "apostates" i.e. former members of a religion that have formed an oppositional coalition. That we all, without exception, are motivated by "ressentiment", a driving hatred and need for revenge against our "spiritual past". Well, I'm not an apostate; I still believe in Baha'u'llah. If one wishes to apply a negative term about who I am and what I've done, probably "heretic" would be more accurate. Baha'u'llah is not my "spiritual past"; He is my spiritual present. But my beliefs differ in some respects from the orthodoxy established by the Baha'i administration.

The notion that our only motivation is hatred is just ridiculous. For one thing, some of the books Momen cites are not "attacks" at all, even though they do present a viewpoint of the Baha'i Faith that diverges from orthodoxy. Juan Cole's *Modernity and the Millenium* is not an attack. Bill Garlington's *Baha'i Faith in America* is not an attack. These are books who tell Baha'i history in a fashion displeasing to conservative Baha'is; that's all. To claim that they are attacks verges on the paranoid. And, I note, that there is no attempt at all to actually refute these academic works in any substantial way.

The thesis makes no sense; it verges on simple name-calling. For example, Momen says that Garlington, the gentlest of souls, only "recently" became an apostate. Let's see, Bill sat around quietly for nearly twenty years after his resignation, then suddenly felt a surge of "ressentiment" and was thus motivated to write his book? This is ludicrous. Juan Cole has scarcely said "Boo!" about the Baha'i Faith during the last four years. So, where's his "hatred"? Denis MacEoin spent most of his time as a pseudonymous novelist, and he was conspicuously absent during the Internet Wars. (He wrote one barbed review of an apolegetic book, is all I remember.) Where's his "need for revenge"? I myself have written very little during the past few years; I pretty much talked myself out. (My article came out last year, but it was actually written a few years ago. It just took a while to get published.)Readers of this blog will note that I haven't said anything here about the Baha'i Faith in over a year.

What Momen has done is interpret the events of the last twenty-five years strictly in terms of the old "covenant-breaker" paradigm. Basically, today's "apostates" are just CBs without the formal excommunication: haters of the light, no spiritual sustenance except for attacking the truth, spiritually poisonous, etc. I'll quote him:

"Although these apostate groups and the very similar 'covenant-breaker' groups, as they are known by core Baha'is, are often referred to as sects or splinter groups of the Baha'i Faith, this characterisation is in a sense incorrect. These groups are not developing their own distinctive beliefs and practices. They exist only to attack the main Baha'i community. In Scheler's terms, they are not living in their new faith community, but are engaged only in a series of acts against their former community. Their new community exists only as a 'point of reference' from which to attack the former community."

Well, one reason I haven't developed my own "distinctive beliefs and practices" is that I consider myself a Baha'i. When I get up to say my prayers in the morning, when I recite the Writings, when I meditate on the Most Great Name, I'm not doing it to spite the administration. But then, one's spiritual life is not what's at issue here. No doubt the good doctor would treat my spiritual practices as irrelevant, especially as I haven't invented any new ones to distinguish myself from other Baha'is.

Momen's wrong about the splinter groups anyway -- some of them, the BUPC for one, have evolved some very distinct, one might even say downright weird, beliefs. But he's just bringing out the old canards about covenant-breakers that Baha'is have been repeating for the last hundred years.

I would suggest a different paradigm, one which I refer to often on Unenrolled Baha'i: That disillusionment with one's religious community causes a grief that is similar to any other loss that human beings experience, such as divorce or death of a loved one. One goes through various stages to cope with it. I was initially frightened, then I felt a sense of disorganization, sadness and despair. Then, for a long time, I was angry -- which is where a lot of my writing on the Internet came from; the writing helped me make sense of what had happened. A lot of the anger got redirected from the Baha'i administration to the more vicious fundies active on the 'Net. But gradually, I put myself together again.

Momen treats this admittedly articulate "angry phase" as if it is endless and incurable. Now granted, there are a few people he points to where this seems to be the case, but these folks aren't playing with a full deck and can't even manage to get along with their fellow dissidents -- or much of anyone else, for that matter. But most of us are past it -- Juan is, Denis is, Alison is. I don't think Bill Garlington was ever that angry, or if he was, he got over it long ago. Paul Johnson is another one named that you just don't see around any more. To claim that he harbors an "obsessive hatred" towards the Baha'i Faith is just not credible. But to Momen we all fit in the same bag as the looneys on talk.religion.bahai. A covenant-breaker is a covenant-breaker is a covenant-breaker.

There were a few factual errors: Momen says my "Unenrolled Baha'i" group is on Beliefnet. The UB board there has been dead for ages. My list on Yahoo! predated it, has 230 subscribers, and continues to attract new ones, and buzzes along very nicely, often with scant attention from me. Some of those who were around at the time are disputing his account of the Talisman crackdown and the Majnun post. He also is very misleading when he mentions the *Dialogue* incident -- the administration did a whole lot more than refuse to allow an article to be published. The editors were denounced at Convention, and were grilled by NSA members, and one was sanctioned. The hostility shown on the part of the Baha'i administration, and which did so much to push these people into "marginality and apostasy" is severely downplayed. Baha'i liberals are "marginal" because they are deliberately "marginalized" -- that's an important aspect of this whole story. Baha'i liberals aren't so rare as is implied; they are still showing up on the Internet on a regular basis. I even know some in real life, locally. As one poster mentioned, if there are so many, in what sense are they marginal? We become inactive more often; we leave more often, because we are made so obviously unwelcome.

As for me, I virtually had to resurrect my blog from the dead in order to comment on this. So much for "obsessive hatred". The Internet gives the illusion of continuous commentary, because whatever you say, stays here. My words are still here, but I'm long past having any need to debate or wrangle with these people any more. I don't need to do it; I don't want to do it. When I do show up online, it's mostly to function as support-giver and moderator on Unenrolled Baha'i, or sometimes I'll muse a little on Karen's Path, but that's it. Anyway, I'm a heretic, not an apostate. If you've gotta insult me, at least do it accurately. :-)

[Postscript 11/24: I just had the thought this morning, as I re-read this article, that what Moojan has done is not so different from what we did. That is, he is trying to make sense of events which caused him distress. I disagree with his formulation, of course, but I think I understand the need to write what he has written. All the Baha'is who were aware of, or part of, the events on the Internet had to try to make sense of the post-Talisman environment. So, maybe I shouldn't think too hardly of him for it. But I'm not an apostate!! kb]

Education Code? What Education Code?

2007-04-03T16:30:00.000-07:00

I just ran across
this story from the LA Times about the Santa Ana school district. Apparently, the administration was pressuring teachers to lie about the number of children on their rosters, and created a phantom classroom in order to comply with the state's rules (and get the state money) for limiting K-3 classrooms to 20 kids or less. In other words, teachers were expected to pretend that certain kids were not in their room, and they were formally enrolled in a class that didn't exist -- except very occasionally, taught by a substitute teacher. The weirdest part of it, to my mind, is that they expected that all the teachers would have no scruples about lying on the books -- I mean, there's a whole lot of people who actually take the virtue of honesty seriously. And, most teachers also appreciate smaller class sizes, so the lie wouldn't even be to their own advantage. I sure notice the difference when I'm subbing K-3 and when I'm subbing 4-8.

The article prints a letter to the principal from one of the teachers. Unfortunately, it is not particularly well-written, and spends a long paragraph griping about how the district treats its teachers, tacking on the issue of simple dishonesty almost as an afterthought. It would be wrong to lie about this, even if the district was absolutely wonderful to its teachers.

But the longer I hang around schools, the more I see that this kind of law-breaking happens all the time. I mean *all* the time. Lots of ink is spilled about this or that educational reform, lots of controversy -- and laws are passed. But in your local school, where the rubber meets the road, nothing at all changes, unless the local district wants it to. And they can get away with it, because it's so hard for individuals to fight. You'd have to round up an entire group of parents or teachers, and have a nasty showdown about it, just to get a school district to follow laws and policies already on the books.

Some folks out there might remember all the hubbub about "social promotion" i.e., the practice of simply passing kids from grade to grade, regardless of their academic performance. Well, in California, a law was passed to end that. It sits there in black-and-white in my school district's Promotion and Retention Policy. If a failing student is not retained, the school district must explain why, and provide an alternative solution to getting the child up to passing level. Note that it is the *refusal* to retain that must be justified. My school district doesn't do that at all. This is what our personal fight was about. They did lots of dancing around, citing irrelevant studies -- and they most certainly did not come up with any alternative to simply passing my daughter on and letting her fail the next grade. The only way to force them to do that was to hire a lawyer and fight for months, during which she'd be halfway through the next grade -- so what would be the point? But it was a blatant violation of the law, and callous disrespect for my daughter and our family.
(I'll restrain my ranting on this issue so close to my heart, but I'm still steamed, obviously.)

But there are lots of examples of blantant disregard for the law on the part of school districts, besides my own experience. Every few years it seems like there's some big flap down in the South over school prayer. Now, as most people know, school prayer has been deemed unconstitutional for decades. It's just another example of how, if no one challenges a local policy, it just goes on as if the Supreme Court had never ruled, in total contempt for the law. It would take a pretty brave soul to challenge school prayer in a small, southern Baptist town, even if one privately disapproved. Seems like it's always some new family that moves in, that ends up doing it.

I've seen several instances of IEP kids (i.e. kids with learning disabilities) go without services, or being given inadequate support -- which is illegal as hell. But unless the parents -- and by that I mean a *group* of parents are willing to organize and raise a ruckus, it goes on. And they need someone who knows the ins and outs of the school bureaucracy to guide them through the process. I found out after our personal fight that I might have gotten better results if I had sent copies of everything to the county Department of Education -- something that had never even occured to me. The school system is very practiced at dealing with disgruntled parents, but for the parents, it's always their first time.

Another thing that weighs against fighting a school, is that any school is a temporary place for any individual child. Around here, elementary schools are K-5, middle schools, 6-8. It's tough to commit yourself to a fight that may last a couple of years, when your child may only be there for that much longer -- and you might decide that it's better for your child to take them out of the school rather than spend time and money battling over the issue. (Only a minority of kids spend all their elementary school years in one district anyway; people are mobile in this country.) While a new school solves the problem for an individual family, it leaves the school unpunished, unrepentant, and continuing to ignore the laws that are supposed to govern it.

So, I wish the teachers of Santa Ana the best of luck. It looks like they've already been through the wringer.

Challenge from Women Priests

2006-08-05T21:07:00.000-07:00

I found this article interesting. As I mentioned in my own article on women's exclusion, the Roman Catholic arguments sound very much like those the Baha'is use. When I was researching, I was reading some of the official statements, and if you changed a few technical terms, it could have been the UHJ talking.

The huge difference -- both an advantage and disadvantage -- is that the Baha'i exclusion applies only at the top. That means that it's easier to live with, and easier to ignore. It is also far more difficult to stage the type of protest this article is talking about. The "womenpriests" group can get male bishops to secretly ordain women, who can ordain other women, which gives a certain type of legitimacy. After all, men get to be priests by being ordained by bishops, too. But the Baha'i Faith has an elective structure. If some renegade NSA members, like these unnamed male bishops, decided to put women in a position where they are excluded (i.e. the UHJ), the ballots would be just quietly disqualified, and nobody would hear any more about it.

Article on Women's Exclusion

2006-07-06T19:23:00.000-07:00

My article, "When Principle and Authority Collide: Baha'i Responses to the Exclusion of Women from the Universal House of Justice" is now available online. Copies can also be purchased from Nova Religio.

The article has been a long time coming -- I started the survey in 2002, soon after the publication of my Cultic Studies Journal article. It started out with some questions I had about how prevalent Baha'i liberalism is, as opposed to Baha'i fundamentalism. Women's exclusion seemed a good issue to work with, because it was talked about endlessly during the first decade of Baha'i cyberspace, which gave me a lot of material. I also ran into some other questions along the way -- so it was a really good experience for me overall, even though there were times I thought it was going to just end up as another online article. Thanks to Catherine Wessinger and Rebecca Moore at Nova Religio, and to Juan Cole, for giving me advice when I was ready to pull my hair out over the whole thing.

Silly Quiz Time

2006-06-07T07:01:00.000-07:00

You Are a Retrospective Soul

The most misunderstood of all the soul signs.
Sometimes you even have difficulty seeing yourself as who you are.
You are intense and desire perfection in every facet of your life.
You're best described as extremely idealistic, hardworking, and a survivor.

Great moments of insight and sensitivity come to you easily.
But if you aren't careful, you'll ignore these moments and repeat past mistakes.
For you, it is difficult to seperate the past from the present.
You will suceed once you overcome the disappoinments in life.

Souls you are most compatible with: Traveler Soul and Prophet Soul

What Kind of Soul Are You?

St. Rain on Kalimat

2006-06-03T05:59:00.000-07:00

Justice St. Rain of Special Ideas has published a heartfelt essay in his catalog about the contributions that Kalimat Press has made to the Baha'i community over the years. Folks like myself, who came into the Faith after the 1970s, need to realize just how brave and pioneering an effort Kalimat was, at a time when independent Baha'i publishing was all but unheard-of, and even opposed in some quarters.

Justice carefully avoids criticizing the US NSA for its decision against Kalimat, instead taking aim at the rumors flying around the community about what it did wrong. However, I would suggest that such rumors are inevitable -- given that the NSA was both very public and very vague about its order to stop all of its agencies from carrying Kalimat books. The NSA knew very well what kind of impact this would have on the community's attitude towards Kalimat.

But Justice stays more positive than I, and is helping in a more practical way than I can: Special Ideas will be carrying the full line of books from Kalimat Press. This company carries a broad variety of Baha'i materials, including not only books but prayer beads, Baha'i jewelry, music, proclamation materials, etc. So, it's worth checking out -- and certainly worth supporting a publisher which has made such a bold, yet non-confrontational statement on the situation.

Baha'is Online

2006-05-28T10:21:00.000-07:00

Well, folks, I'm more or less back. During most of this spring, I just haven't had the time, energy, or thought to say much of anything online -- which is bad for a blog, since people stop checking back to see what you've said if you don't update. Well, what can I say? I'm not Juan Cole.

But this weekend I've been messing around a bit on Wikipedia, and posting a little to an email list, so I thought I'd stop by here. One thing that has developed during my vacation is Steve Marshall's website Baha'is Online It contains a fine collection of opinion essays, articles on mysticism, news affecting the Baha'i community, discussions on the arts, humor, and satire. The material comes from a variety of Baha'i perspectives. The site began rather slowly, mostly recycling a lot of old articles, including my own, but Steve has brought together a lot of good stuff -- worth checking out.

Steve commented that there has been a great resurgence of individual Baha'i activity on the Internet -- partly due to technical developments, and partly due to a weariness with the "Baha'i Wars". Well, that's one reason why I started blogging. And, actually, this change seems to be resulting in better quality material being put out there. Maybe it's turning out that people are not at their best when they are crossing swords; debate too easily devolves into personal hostility and name-calling.

Teachers vs. Parents

2006-04-02T19:30:00.000-07:00

Some of my online friends are probably wondering where I've been these days -- for the past week or so, I haven't even been answering all my email. Well, I've been teaching and parenting, and there have been some very important issues going on so that I just haven't been able to concentrate my energies online at all.

First of all, as some of you know, I got a long-term sub job in a special education class, which will probably last until the end of the school year. And, I've been having a great time. I'd subbed several times in this class, and was familiar with both the teachers and students there -- it's a very friendly and supportive environment. Even though special ed students can be difficult, it is a much more "mellow" environment that the regular classroom. The class is small, and there is a lot of adult help. You do have the occasional meltdown by one of these kids (one of the teachers asked "Why do I always get the ones who kick?), but even then, everyone keeps their cool until the storm passes. But the room is chronically short-handed, since the needs of these kids are such that all of them really should have a one-on-one aide. One of the other teachers is a sub, like me, who has been there since the beginning of the year. I think, too, that the main teacher tries to do more with these kids academically than most Special Ed. classrooms do -- which is a good thing, because these kids are quite capable of learning.

The biggest thing going on now is that an autistic boy, who was completely non-verbal when I first met him last year, is now beginning to talk -- and even to read a little! We're all so excited, and we pass on to each other the latest thing he said. Of course, we aren't talking about scintillating conversation here -- it’s along the lines of “I want toy” and “No juice.” Although yesterday, he saw a Willy Wonka poster in the library and said “Chocolate” several times. These are moments of excitement in Special Ed. His parents are ecstatic -- they come from Mexico and they said that down there, this child wouldn’t have even been able to go to school at all.

So, now that I’m working steady, I have less time for everything else -- housework, volunteer work, and, of course, the Internet. But I’ve also got something else going on that’s consuming my non-work hours and a good deal of my emotional and mental energy: I’m fighting my daughter’s school about an unwise decision they are making about her future.

Teachers and parents ought to be, and actually sometimes are, natural allies -- they are, after all, concerned about the welfare of the same children. However, they are frequently antagonistic. Being a teacher myself, who has heard many conversations at many schools about many children and their families, I can’t remember the last time I heard anything complimentary about a parent. The general attitude hovers between patronizing and contemptuous. And, to a certain extent, this is understandable -- you see children who are not being taken care of at even the most basic level, or who are allowed to stay up all hours watching t.v. while the homework is neglected, etc. Oh, a nice smile is trotted out for parent conferences, but at bottom, teachers generally think that parents are really stupid. Since I also sit on the other side of the fence, I know that teachers and school administrators can be infuriating -- making judgements when they really don’t know all your home life circumstances, critical, and with a condescending “We’re the experts and we know best” demeanor.

I have, up until this point, generally gotten along with all the personnel at my children’s schools, with only a few minor differences over the years that blew over fairly quickly. My daughter has had a lot of trouble, and I have always been supportive and sympathetic about the teachers’ difficulties with her. But now, a line has been drawn in the sand:

We have been led to expect one thing, and now they are insisting on another. In short, we have been lied to. We insisted on a meeting to discuss the issue, and we get back a Student Study Team form that set up a meeting to discuss something else -- and it took us two faxes to the principal to make it clear that our issue is to be discussed. When we got this meeting, it was clear that our wishes would get no serious consideration and that, from their perspective, the whole point of the meeting was to convince us that they knew best. It’s no picnic, to sit around a table where you’ve got six people there telling you you’re wrong. The worst part of all was that, the school counsellor, who basically ran this meeting, controlled it very tightly. Any time things went in a direction he didn’t want it to go, he very deftly redirected the conversation -- and therefore, some very important points were swept under the carpet. Like the fact that we were misled about what the school would do about Tory’s difficulties. I politely observed that there had been some lack of clarity about the school’s policy, and recounted what we had been told by the principal last year. The principal opened his mouth to answer, and the counsellor rapidly changed the subject so that issue was never pursued.

They shouldn’t have screwed with me. Because now I’ve carefully read the school board’s written policy, and the education code, and have discovered that there are several required procedures they have ignored -- and they have lied to us about what the policy actually is. Also, since the counsellor ran straight over the top of us at the first meeting, we are bringing a lawyer to our appeal. What is clear to me is that, because our daughter is a difficult child behaviorally, they are willing to completely disregard her academic welfare -- figuring, I suppose, that she’s impossible to teach anyway.

So, my husband and I are prepared to take this up the chain as far as we have to, but being basically non-confrontational people, we’re hoping we don’t have to. It may very well be that simply bringing a lawyer with us to the next meeting will be enough to make them cave. We aren’t planning on a lawsuit, we just need someone there to make sure we are heard. Because right now, nobody wants to listen.

Kalimat Petition

2006-02-27T19:23:00.000-08:00

The Friends of Kalimat have written a petition to ask the Universal House of Justice to suspend the US NSA's boycott of Kalimat Press, and to enter into consultation with the owners to resolve this conflict.

The petition can be read here. For those needed background information on the situation, a brief description of the situation is here. And, of course, I have several recent blog entries about what has happened.

I hope that my readers who appreciate the priceless contribution that Kalimat Press has made to Baha'i scholarship will stand with us in this effort.

Baha'i Scholars as Collateral Damage

2006-01-30T17:07:00.000-08:00

There have been some rumblings online from writers and scholars about the NSA's boycott of Kalimat Press, as might be expected. There's a lot of fear out there, because they know what this means for anyone who has published with Kalimat, yet they also know the consequences of publicly -- even on a small email list -- criticizing a decision of a Baha'i institution.

However, one of them got a letter back today from the US NSA, which I hesitate to show in its entirety, because there's personal stuff in it, and the person involved seems rather torn two ways between talking about this publicly, and simply hoping that going through approved Baha'i channels will resolve the problems. So, I'm not going to shove him into the limelight if he's reticent -- although this letter could very well pop up elsewhere; the email list it was posted on doesn't have a no-forwarding rule.

Anyway, the NSA is quite aware that their actions create enormous difficulties for Baha'i scholars, but the attitude appears to be "Sorry, but it's your problem". Apparently, smearing Kalimat in the eyes of the community is important enough that hurting virtually every prominent Baha'i scholar is worth it to them. And Baha'i scholarship itself ranks so low on the list of priorities that for the sake of a few books they don't like, they are willing to allow all the other work that Kalimat has produced to be tainted.

What caught my attention was this: "As to the distribution of those titles of which the Assembly approves, this has been the approach for a number of years and has only emboldened and enabled Kalimát Press to carry more harmful titles." That is, the policy has been for the Baha'i Distribution Service to simply avoid purchasing the titles it doesn't approve of -- at least in the US; I noted that a couple of the controversial titles are being carried by the UK BDS. And actually, that's a fair way to approach things -- I certainly would never say that the NSA is obligated to buy books it doesn't approve of. Like any other buyer, it can make choices. However, what struck me about this passage was the decision that this approach wasn't working i.e. Kalimat just kept distributing books the NSA didn't like anyway. What this tells me is that the NSA expects this action to destroy Kalimat. After all, if Baha'is continue to buy Kalimat books, as the NSA keeps saying they have the right to do, then things will go on pretty much as before, and Kalimat will be just as "emboldened and enabled" as it has ever been, which is clearly not their goal here.

This is why all this stuff about how it's only the severing of a business relationship, and that Baha'i are free to buy from Kalimat etc. is just so much bovine manure. A business relationship can be severed without a big public announcement -- and if Kalimat survives this, because Baha'is continue to buy these books, then even stronger measures will be taken either against the company or against its owners. Because they don't want these books to have any influence on the thinking of Baha'is.

The really insane thing about all this is that these titles, while controversial, are not harmful. They are ideas that can be openly discussed and debated, just like anything else. The big problem hereis that the institutions think they have to play thought police. They say they don't want to name the "inimical" titles because they don't want to create a list of banned books, yet for the sake of those books they say they aren't banning, they are willing to destroy an entire publisher and risk the reputation of many, maybe most, Baha'i writers.

Friends of Kalimat

2006-01-17T20:03:00.000-08:00

Some of us are organizing to support Kalimat Press during this difficult time. For those unfamiliar with the situation, check out the story here.
The letters ordering all Baha'i agencies in the U.S. to stop buying books from Kalimat can be found here or on the administrative website. (You need a Baha'i i.d. number to get into the latter.)

We feel that this decision is unjust because:

1. Only three or four titles have content that can be documented as being seen as objectionable by the administration, yet all of Kalimat's publications are being stigmatized. All of these titles are books that are only being distributed by Kalimat, but have come from other publishers.

2. The controversial titles include high-quality academic work published by reputable university presses. For the NSA to cease doing business with Kalimat for distributing these books just makes the Faith look ridiculous.

2. This is not just a matter of the NSA deciding not to buy books from a publisher; they publicized this decision in *The American Baha'i* in a clear effort to stigmatize Kalimat Press. If the NSA disapproves of what Kalimat is doing, it could simply refrain from ordering the books it doesn't like, or write to them about it -- to go public means that this is something beyond a judgement about what is appropriate for the NSA and its agencies to sell. Already some Baha'is are publicly saying that they will avoid buying any Kalimat publication because of the NSA's judgement.

4. Enrolled Baha'i authors, whose work went through the Baha'i review process, are being put in danger of being suspected of wrongdoing by the community, since the NSA has not specified which books it considers "inimical". These are people that are perfectly innocent even by the most conservative of Baha'i standards.

5. All materials that Kalimat Press publishes itself (as opposed to just distributing it) has passed Baha'i review. Kalimat wasn't required to put books from other publishers through review; in other words, they followed the rules and are getting nailed anyway.

So we are encouraging a variety of respnses:

*Buy books direct from Kalimat, especially those that Kalimat distributes from other publishers. The titles that are known to be controversial are all in this category anyway.

*Buy Kalimat's books for donation to local and university libraries. Talk to the librarians about what you're doing. Libraries take a dim view of censorship; some even have a "banned book" week that promote the reading of books that have been banned during various times and places.

*Write a letter of protest to the NSA. The administration is always saying that criticism must take place within channels -- well, here's your opportunity. Writing to your National Spiritual Assembly is one of those approved channels. Ask the NSA to specify which titles it thinks are "inimical" to the Faith, and why.

*Bring the matter up, either orally, or in written form to your LSA.

*Write a letter of support to Kalimat Press.

*Write reviews of your favorite Kalimat books at Amazon.com

*If you have a blog or other website, put a link to Kalimat Press on it.

Finally, we'd like you to write to friendsofkalimat@yahoo.com to let us know what you're doing and how you feel about the NSA's decision. We'll keep all names confidential, but we may quote from emails, unless you specifically request us not to. So far, we have pledges to buy Kalimat books for libraries, and several people who just want to buy books for themselves.

It should be noted -- especially since my blog stats tell me that this site has had several visits from the US BNC -- that the owners of Kalimat Press have nothing to do with this effort, and have not been included in the discussions about it. Therefore, any reprisals against them would be completely unjust.

Al Gore's Speech

2006-01-17T10:57:00.000-08:00

I haven't been posting about current events much lately, but this was brought to my attention this morning. Al Gore made a rousing MLK Day speech on how the current administration is putting our Constitutional rights at risk. I've always said, as Gore just did, that the biggest danger to our freedoms is fear -- it's when we feel under threat that we seem willing to start tossing our rights away for the sake of security. Wasn't it Ben Franklin that said "Those who would sacrifice liberty for safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."?

The neocons are not happy with this speech, and the mainstream media has not seen fit to cover it much -- so you know it has to be worth taking a look at:

The full text is here.

Video clips can be found here.

Karen Unmasked!

2006-01-02T11:30:00.000-08:00

On a lighter note: Baha'i Angst, that master of Baha'i satire, takes a shot at recent speculations about by identity, by revealing who Karen Bacquet really is. And since the pronunciations of my name, both current and former, gave Angst such a hard time, I thought I'd respond in audio form.
One point I forgot to add in this little audio is that Baha'i Angst got his info from the genealogy page of my website. But it only goes to show that nobody would *invent* last names that are unspellable and unpronounceable, if only to avoid the lifetime hassle I have endured of continually correcting people.

Anyway, so here's my response.

Breaking News - NSA Orders Boycott of Kalimat Press

2005-12-30T20:24:00.000-08:00

Just today, the US NSA released a letter announcing that all LSAs should stop distributing books from Kalimat Press.

Kalimat Press has played a pivotal role in developing a Baha'i intellectual life and Baha'i scholarship -- particularly through its *Studies in the Babi and Baha'i Religions* series. And it has had to tolerate the interference of the Baha'i administration on many occasions. Even as early as 1982, the UHJ demanded that passages from Salmani's memoires be censored -- as I understand it, Kalimat was required to literally "stop the presses" because of this demand, as the book was just being printed.

However, there are many occasions that have been connected to events in recent years. Kalimat co-owner Tony Lee received a threatening letter in 1999 because of his distribution and advertisement of Juan Cole's groundbreaking *Modernity and the Millenium* -- a letter which warned him of penalties in the afterlife if he continued to do this. Just this last summer he was warned about carrying Abbas Amanat's *Resurrection and Renewal* -- the best book out there about the Babi era. Amanat, like a lot of other Baha'i scholars who experience the administration's wrath, had some pointed criticisms about it in the new introduction to this book -- and the administration cannot abide any criticism.

Kalimat also carries Sen McGlinn's *Church and State*, which has been condemned by the administration and its author disenrolled.

Well, it is no longer news that the Baha'i administration is unalterably opposed to new ideas, creative thinking, or solid academic scholarship. The talk is that, along with the LSAs, most ordinary Baha'is will avoid even the non-controversial publications of Kalimat Press. I hope this isn't true. Kalimat's customers, overall, probably represent the most intellectually curious segment of the Baha'i community. Baha'is who don't like history written in an academic style probably aren't buying from them anyway.

Besides the *Studies* series, Kalimat offers devotional materials, children's books, books on Christian issues and spirituality, and introductory materials. Next on my list to get is the book of translations of Tahirih's poetry -- which is a groundbreaking effort in itself.

So, I would ask my readers not to allow this effort to drive Kalimat into the ground to succeed. The Baha'i community needs this publisher -- buy a book or two from them, as soon as you can, to show your support and put this blatant effort at censorship in the toilet where it belongs.

Creating Communities in Exile

2005-12-27T08:53:00.000-08:00

As many of you know, I have come to a place where I've been seeking ways to create real-life community among liberal and alienated Baha'is, without falling into the schismatic trap of creating an alternative "Baha'i Faith" -- which I pretty much view as an unworkable dead-end. But what I'm seeing out there, as a product of natural evolution, are groups that are both strongly oriented towards the spiritual and mystical teachings of the Faith, that are inclusive in their approach, and local in their reach. All it really takes is for someone who wants such a group is to contact like-minded people, whatever their "official" Baha'i status, within driving distance and set up meetings.

And there are all kinds of people who would be interested in such an approach: Unenrolled Baha'is, inactive Baha'is, ex-Baha'is who are still inspired by the Writings of Baha'u'llah, non-Baha'is who investigated the Faith, but were dissuaded from signing a card by some of the more authoritarian aspects of the Faith. The fundamentalist strain in the community has left a lot of disappointed people in its wake -- it really is just a matter of finding them, which can be a daunting task, I'll admit, but it can be done.

In some ways, conditions within the Faith has made such a development inevitable. I cannot be expected to forever hang around the edges of a religious community that has made it abundantly clear that it doesn't want me, or people like me, within its ranks. It kicks people out that think like I do, declaring us unqualified to be on the rolls of the Baha'i Faith. So, what's a lover of Baha'u'llah to do? One thing that fundamentalists always do is underestimate the commitment and depth of feeling on the part of religious liberals -- that's true no matter what religion you're talking about. We are expected to just drift away, since after all, we are assumed not to really take religion seriously anyway.

And, you know, I don't think that the Baha'i administration will be all that much bothered by this development -- assuming that such groups do not recruit aggressively and don't have an excessive focus on the flaws of the mainstream. At least, such groups have gone pretty much unnoticed or have been ignored, so far. The fears that were around in the late 90s, that Baha'i liberals would be named as covenant-breakers and shunned by their fellows, has not materialized. It seems to regard the problem as solved by liberals either leaving voluntarily, or being deprived of membership. The administration appears to be virtually asking us to create our own kind of community, since it sees us as being unqualified to be among "real" Baha'is.

It just took a while, I think, for that message to really sink into our heads. We are Baha'is, after all, and we really do believe in unity. It has been hard for us to accept that what the administration means by that word, and what we always thought it meant, are as different as night and day.

Adventures in Audio

2005-12-13T06:19:00.000-08:00

I've been messing around with audio a bit, hoping that it will add to "quality of life" out here in Baha'i cyberspace. This clip *is* Baha'i oriented, so any other folks who stop by my blog are likely to find some things I say a bit mysterious -- although, of course, if anybody's just curious about what I sound like, they can check it out.

I've been doing a lot of Baha'i stuff lately. I sort of do whatever I feel on this blog, and I realize that this lack of consistency probably hurts my chances for building up an audience here -- but I do like the freedom of just writing what I feel like writing, which was one of the reasons I started a blog in the first place.

Anyway, my first blogcast.

Sen McGlinn's Disenrollment

2005-12-05T14:59:00.000-08:00

Again, I'm running late with the big story, having been busy with work all last week, then sick all weekend. But Sen McGlinn has been disenrolled for "statements" he has "published", as well as the usual "behavior and attitude" charge that regularly reappears in UHJ disenrollment letters. Sen has responded by submitting another declaration card and attempting to re-enroll.

Baha'i fundamentalists are responding by either saying that it's none of our business, that Sen must have done something more wrong that what's apparent, or to actually enumerate his supposed sins. The letter from the Secretariat about his book, that I posted previously only, as Sen reminds folks, mentions the introduction of his book, where he calls himself a "Baha'i theologian" implying that this is the key issue. However, I find it hard to believe that the actual content of his book isn't at issue as well.

While you're sifting through these events, it might be a good idea to actually read
*Chuch and State: A Postmodern Political Theology*. My own copy's on order. There have been fears expressed that Kalimat Press will be next on the hit list, or that some action has already been taken against them, but I have not yet heard anything solid.

Juan Cole has made a rare venture into his old stomping-ground, Baha'i cyberspace, in order to comment. Alison, besides putting up Juan's post has also commented in her weblog. Baquia at Baha'i Rants has also commented.

The key issue, the one which ties all the disenrollments together, is lack of belief in UHJ infallibility where doctrine is concerned. Sen's book flies in the face of the interpretation of a body that openly says it has no scriptural authority to interpret, yet it insists on things that it calls "fundamentals" -- which now appears to include a belief that separation of church and state are depicted in a negative light in the Baha'i teachings. Juan's analysis, especially, pointed up this shift from a rather freewheeling enthusiastic religious group, as many experienced it in the early 70s, to one concerned with proper doctrine. Of course, the Baha'i Faith has experienced such shifts before, as in the late teens in the American Baha'i community. And, as in the earlier shift, it is accompanied by stagnant growth, disillusionment, and a shake-out of those who joined the Baha'i Faith believing it was an escape from the rigidity of older traditions.

November 14 UHJ Letter

2005-11-23T20:40:00.000-08:00

This letter has sparked considerable discussion on Baha'i forums for the last week or so, and only now have I had the chance to comment:

To all National Spiritual Assemblies

Dear Bahá’í Friends,
Recently, questions have arisen which have prompted the Universal House of Justice to comment further on matters treated in the compilation “Issues Related to the Study of the Bahá’í Faith”.

The Bahá’í principle calling for investigation of reality encourages an unfettered search for knowledge and truth by whoever wishes to engage in it. When applied to the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh, it inevitably gives rise to a wide range of responses. Some, attracted to the Message, embrace the Cause as their own. Some may respond positively to certain precepts or principles and willingly collaborate toward shared aims. Some may find it to be an interesting social phenomenon worthy of study. Still others, content with their own beliefs, may reject its claims. Bahá’ís are taught to be respectful of the views of others, believing that conscience should not be coerced.

The claim that the Baha'i administration does not believe conscience should be coerced is quite simply false; they have repeatedly used the threat of sanctions and loss of membership on those they disapprove of. While, like most Baha'is they are tolerant of the beliefs of non-Baha'is, they are quite ruthless in making sure that Baha'is, especially those who are writers or public in some other way, toe the party line. In other words, freedom of conscience ends when you sign your membership card. The only way to regain that freedom, once you are made a target, is to resign that membership. When they say "freedom of conscience", they mean "freedom to be an enrolled member of the Baha'i Faith or not". They are quite happy for you to leave if you disagree with their interpretation of the Baha'i Writings, even if you are a passionate believer in Baha'u'llah -- and sometimes, they'll make you leave, whether you want to or not.

Upon becoming a Bahá’í, one accepts certain fundamental beliefs; but invariably one’s knowledge of the Teachings is limited and often mixed with personal ideas. Shoghi Effendi explains that “an exact and thorough comprehension of so vast a system, so sublime a revelation, so sacred a trust, is for obvious reasons beyond the reach and ken of our finite minds.” Over time, through study, prayerful reflection, and an effort to live a Bahá’í life, immature ideas yield to a more profound understanding of Bahá’u’lláh’s Revelation. Service to the Cause plays a particular role in the process, for the meaning of the Text is clarified as one translates insights into effective action. As a matter of principle, individual understanding or interpretation should not be suppressed, but valued for whatever contribution it can make to the discourse of the Bahá’í community. Nor should it, through dogmatic insistence of the individual, be allowed to bring about disputes and arguments among the friends; personal opinion must always be distinguished from the explicit Text and its authoritative interpretation by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi and from the elucidations of the Universal House of Justice on “problems which have caused difference, questions that are obscure and matters that are not expressly recorded in the Book”.

This sounds very broad and liberal, but virtually *any* new perspective has the potential to cause "contention" because Baha'i conservatives react in such an extreme manner. The April 1999 letter, puts in this category such things as discussing the possibility of women serving on the House, the idea that the Baha'i Writings support the separation of church and state, and the hope that the mashriqu'l-adhkar will help develop a Baha'i community that is less administration-centered. All of these positions are squarely centered in the Baha'i Writings, yet people have been forced out of the Faith, or threatened for holding such "contentious" views.

As far as separating scripture from personal opinion, that's well-nigh impossible because people form differing views about what scripture actually means. What the administration means is that *their* collective and official view must be seen as the objective truth, and all other views are merely personal -- and if there is direct conflict, the other views can be targetted as unacceptable and "contentious". It should be remembered here that the House is, scripturally, given no interpretive power. That authority belonged to the now-defunct Guardianship, in whose name the UHJ now speaks.

In searching for understanding, Bahá’ís naturally acquaint themselves with published materials from a variety of sources. A book written by a disinterested non-Bahá’í scholar about the Faith, even if it reflects certain assumptions and puts forward conclusions acceptable within a given discipline but which are at variance with Bahá’í belief, poses no particular problem for Bahá’ís, who would regard these perceptions as an honest attempt to explore a religious phenomenon as yet little understood generally. Any non-biased effort to make the Faith comprehensible to a thoughtful readership, however inadequate it might appear, would evoke genuine Bahá’í appreciation for the perspective offered and research skill invested in the project. The matter is wholly different, however, when someone intentionally attacks the Faith.

This is an idea that has been repeated in several letters from the 1990s onward -- that it is perfectly o.k. for non-Baha'i scholars to approach the Baha'i Faith from an academic point of view, but it's not o.k. for a Baha'i to do so. There's a certain patronizing attitude here i.e. "It's so nice that you tried, within your inadequate and limited materialistic framework,to understand the Faith."

An inescapable duty devolves upon the friends so to situate themselves in the knowledge of the Teachings as to be able to respond appropriately to such a challenge as it arises and thus uphold the integrity of the Faith. The words of Bahá’u’lláh Himself shed light on the proper attitude to adopt. He warns
the believers “not to view with too critical an eye the sayings and writings of men”. “Let them”, He instructs, “rather approach such sayings and writings in a spirit of open-mindedness and loving sympathy. Those men, however, who, in this may, have been led to assail, in their inflammatory writings, the tenets of the Cause of God, are to be treated differently. It is incumbent upon all men, each according to his ability, to refute the arguments of those that have attacked the Faith of God.”

A different type of challenge arises when an individual or group, using the privilege of Bahá’í membership, adopts various means to impose personal views or an ideological agenda on the Bahá’í community.

This is back to the claim made in the April 1999 letter, that certain persons who are believed to be part of "a campaign of internal opposition" are attempting to "impose" their views. It has always baffled me how such "views" are to be "imposed". The world of ideas just doesn't work like that; one puts forth a thesis, and evidence to support it. The reader is free to accept or reject it. But the administration doesn't want that freedom; the fear is that ideas that conflict with the popular perception of Baha'i teaching may, through well-presented academic writings, become accepted within a significant portion of the community. It is, in fact, the administration that is trying to "impose" views; the scholars I know are trying to examine Baha'i history and scripture, and are putting forth their personal insights, and they have no power to "impose" anything. It is the administrators that have the power, and the status, within the community to insist that certain things are "fundamental" and may not be questioned or challenged, without undesirable consequences.

In one recent instance, for example, an individual has declared himself a “Bahá’í theologian, writing from and for a religious community,” whose aim is “to criticize, clarify, purify and strengthen the ideas of the Bahá’í community, to enable Bahá’ís to understand their relatively new Faith and to see what it can offer the world”.

This is presented as kind of a nefarious thing, but in context it is clear that the author is making a distinction between talking within a religious tradition, and coming from a purely academic viewpoint. To announce that one has some bias or vested interest in the subject being examined is a part of academic ethics; it is expected. Not only does the author specifically say that his book represents his personal viewpoint but that "I should declare at the outset that my stance is not that of a historian or academic scholar of the science of religion, but of a Bahai theologian, writing from and for a religious community . . ." Since Baha'is writing from an academic point of view "as if they were non-Baha'is" have been condemned, and a Baha'i writing "from and for a religious community" is also considered wrong, I'm not sure exactly how Baha'i writers are supposed to write at all -- except to echo what has already been established as orthodoxy. It's sad really that such a strict orthodoxy has arisen so early in the Baha'i Faith's history; we don't even have most of the Writings translated for most people to be able to read them and know what they say -- how, then, can we be so dogmatic about what is allowable and what is not?

Assertions of this kind go far beyond expressions of personal opinion, which any Bahá’í is free to voice. As illustrated, here is a claim that lies well outside the framework of Bahá’í belief and practice. Bahá’u’lláh has liberated human minds by prohibiting within His Faith any caste with ecclesiastical prerogatives that seeks to foist a self-assumed authority upon the thought and behaviour of the mass of believers.

To say that one is a "Baha'i theologian" does not imply "authority" within the religion. But I don't think that's the issue. If an approved-of author, particularly one having an administrative position, had written a book promoting a conservative point of view, and called himself a "Baha'i theologian", I doubt we'd be getting any objections. The problem is that the book in question challenges popular beliefs about the relationship between church and state in the Baha'i Writings. The author is not putting himself within a "caste with ecceslesiatical prerogatives", but challenging the entrenched dogma of the ecclesiastical authorities that already exist, who have made a pro-theocratic viewpoint into an official and unchallengeable teaching of the Baha'i Faith. The author's book, from what I understand, puts forward the thesis that the Baha'i Writings are, in fact, anti-theocratic. I leave it to the reader to decide which perspective is more likely to support a "caste with ecclesiastical prerogatives".

What is striking about this letter is that there seems to no other purpose to it other than to slander this particular author. Virtually everything else in it has been already said in earlier letters.

Indeed, He has prescribed a system that combines democratic practices with the application of knowledge through consultative processes.

And why should Baha'i authors, scholars, and yes, even theologians, not be allowed to participate in that process without fear that they will be accused of trying to undermine the Faith in some way?

The House of Justice is confident that the principles herein presented will enable the friends to benefit from diverse contributions resulting from exploration of the manifold implications of Bahá’u’lláh’s vast Revelation, while remaining impervious to the efforts of those few who, whether in an explicit or veiled manner, attempt to divert the Bahá’í community from essential understandings of the Faith.

O.K., here's the real issue -- that this author's belief that the Baha'i Faith institutions are not destined to evolve into a theocratic state, and that a "Baha'i State", by definition, would keep religion and government separate is considered a diversion from the "true" Baha'i teaching. But what "true" Baha'i teaching is what is contained in Baha'i scriptures, and those that are anti-theocracy argue from scripture, just like those who are pro-theocracy do. There is no longer any individual or institution that is scripturally qualified to impose a uniform interpretation of scripture on the Baha'i community. As in any other debate about ideas, the side with the strongest arguments and most solid evidence wins. But the UHJ has decided that a pro-theocratic stance is one of the "essentials" upon which Baha'is must agree, if they are to remain Baha'is. The question is "Why?" We are, after all, talking about something very speculative here; we are in the realm of millennial beliefs, ideas about what "God's Plan" for the future entails. It is just another instance where the definition of what it is to be a Baha'i is narrowing. Exactly how they think their dreams of the Baha'i Faith even growing enough even to become a significant influence in the world, much less a world theocracy, is going to happen if believing Baha'is are defined out of existence, and friends are named as enemies.

California Special Election

2005-11-05T19:26:00.000-08:00

Californians are having a special election Tuesday, but they don't exactly feel special about it. In fact, a whole lot of people are downright pissed at the waste -- there is no pressing issue that couldn't be handled in a regular election. It's just Arnold's way of getting his agenda through, but it's going over like a lead balloon.

Some voters are staying home; others are just saying "no" to all the propositions. Teachers and other public employees are furious at the shots being taken at them. I'm really unhappy that our polling place has been taken from us. That is, I live in a town of 400 people, so the county has decided that it's not worth their while to pay for a polling station and everyone who lives here is forced to vote absentee. I have a hunch a lot of people won't bother.

In fact, the election is overshadowing the issues involved, some of which are pretty major, like parental consent for abortion and two separate programs to reduce prescription drug costs. In a normal year, those things would really have tongues wagging, but now all the news is about the election itself.

How Much is a Blog Worth?

2005-10-30T17:33:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I know -- every time I have gone a long while without writing, I come up with the one of these goofy quizzes. This one is based on research that analyzes the worth of a blog based on links:

My blog is worth $2,258.16.
How much is your blog worth?

A famous blog like Juan's is "worth" over a million. I put that in quotation marks, because no matter what anybody says, a thing is worth what somebody is willing to pay for it -- and as far as I know, nobody ever buys blogs. It seems to be based on what companies that advertise in cyberspace pay for links. More info here.

Baha'i Individual Initiative and Varqa Magazine

2005-10-16T13:02:00.000-07:00

Back in the days when I was an enrolled Baha'i, there would nearly always be, circulated at Feast, various pamplets advertising from companies whose market consists largely of Baha'is: Kalimat Press, Oneworld, Special Ideas, etc. that sell Baha'i books, jewelry, prayer beads, promotional materials like t-shirts and bumper stickers. When I was Secretary, I used to get that stuff in the mail all the time. Selling Baha'i items means that a company is trying to reach a niche market, to say the least, and these companies do this with the permission of the institutions. Kalimat, for example, was once described in a UHJ letter as having "privileged access" to the Baha'i community. But without that "privilege", it would be nearly impossible to reach Baha'is at all, except for repeat customers. Membership lists are not given out, except to Secretaries who are asked to keep them confidential.

Well, a few years ago, a Baha'i gentleman, as a labor of love, revived the children's magazine Varqa. It is not so much a "Baha'i magazine" like Brilliant Star, but a magazine based on Baha'i principles. Here's the description:

Varqa International Children's Magazine is a full-colour literary magazine for children ages 7 to 14 and is entirely advertisement-free. Varqa, whose name means “dove,” the symbol of peace and bearer of good news, is dedicated to the spiritual and intellectual development of children. It strives to generate hope and constructive energy for the future of humankind inspired by the principles of the Bahá'í Faith, namely:
unity of mankind
unity of religions
the equality of women and men
the independent investigation of truth
celebration of social justice, diversity, cultures, creativity, and art
universal education
appreciation of nature
protection of the environment

Like many projects taken on for idealistic reasons, it is barely staying afloat. However, this man, who knows some of the UHJ members was told that the House will not allow him to promote his magazine through the LSAs. This was done informally and orally, so there is no paper trail. One House member told him this, claiming that the others were on his side. Without access to local Baha'i communities, the magazine is cut off from promoting to its primary audience.

The administration says that it encourages individual initiative, but I hear stories like this all the time, where individual initiative is simply squashed. My feeling is that you have to be the "right" individual. As I understand it, no reason was given for this prohibition. Somebody up there doesn't like this guy personally? They don't want competition to "official" Baha'i magazines? They don't like a magazine based on "principles" rather than directly teaching the religion? Who knows?

Anyway, those of you out there, Baha'i or not, who have young children should check this magazine out at their website, and consider subscribing or otherwise offering your support.

Running on Fumes

2005-10-02T13:39:00.000-07:00

Siskiyou County, the subject of this article, is quite a ways north of me, but still close enough that this story could be considered "local", even though it appears in The Nation. When I'm driving north I have a clear view of Mount Shasta, even though I'm still in what the article describes as "the flat farmlands of California's Central Valley". I'm familiar enough with the area that I know what this article is talking about -- Siskiyou County is large, mountainous, and the small towns in it are widely separated. It's a tough commute from town to town, on curvy mountain roads even in the summer -- worse in the winter. Years ago, we had to cancel a planned trip to Ashland in April, because the roads were snowed over. It isn't like driving 70 m.p.h. on straight freeway, like we do in the valley.

Anyway, this is a good report on the impact of soaring gas prices in an area that has little public transportation and is already economically depressed. Just click on the title for the article.

Friday Night at the Fight

2005-09-17T08:54:00.000-07:00

People pretend that they are seeking enlightenment and thoughtful analysis of the issues, but what they really like is a good fight. So, I got a copy of the Galloway/Hitchens debate, and now I'm afraid I can't find the link to where I got it. Part of it is available at Democracy.com

Christopher Hitchens has style; can't deny that. I completely disagree with him, and a good deal of the time he sounds exactly like what his opponent accuses him of being: an apologist for the Bush administration. However, he parries Galloway's heated and creative ad hominems, not to mention the heckling of the crowd, in such a cool and almost lazy fashion that one can't help but enjoy it. So, I find a kind of guilty pleasure in listening to him. He's better to listen to than anybody actually *in* the Bush administration.

But Hitchens told a great big fib -- well, it's entirely possible he told more than one fib, but this one I know something about: Galloway brought up Juan's Salon.com article knocking down his points in support of the Iraq War, and Hitchens responded by saying the "egegrious figure of Professor Cole" "had never set foot in the region" and "claims to know Farsi and all these other languages". Now, I would expect that those of us that have known Juan for a long time in Baha'i cyberspace would know rather more about his background than those who got to know him as the author of Informed Comment. However, it would not take extraordinary research skills to discover that he has an M.A. in Arabic from the American University in Cairo -- which, the last time I checked, was in the Middle East. This little bit of resume information is all over cyberspace. However, so is the claim that Juan doesn't know Arabic. Well, I've heard that one before; Baha'i fundamentalists were saying several years ago that Juan didn't know Persian very well, and therefore his translations of Baha'i scripture should be mistrusted. (For those who don't know: Juan is a very gifted translator, and this was the first work of his I ever encountered. Not know Arabic! Sheesh!)

Since Juan responds to Hitchens' charges in detail, outlining both his Middle East and language experience, I suppose I don't need to go into it further. But it's so foolish to try to get away with a slander that is so easily disproven that I can't help but wonder why Hitchens and those that do this think they can get away with it. It basically counts on an audience that is either too lazy or too anxious to believe a discrediting falsehood to check it out for themselves.

Trapped in New Orleans

2005-09-10T07:56:00.000-07:00

This is the story of people who started out in the French Quarter, and ended up being pushed hither and yon all over the place, before finally being rescued. Here are some passages:

What you will not see, but what we witnessed, were the real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief effort: the working class of New Orleans.

The maintenance workers who used a forklift to carry the sick and disabled. The engineers who rigged, nurtured and kept the generators running. The electricians who improvised thick extension cords stretching over blocks to share the little electricity we had in order to free cars stuck on rooftop parking lots. Nurses who took over for mechanical ventilators and spent many hours on end manually forcing air into the lungs of unconscious patients to keep them alive. Doormen who rescued folks stuck in elevators. Refinery workers who broke into boat yards, "stealing" boats to rescue their neighbors clinging to their roofs in flood waters. Mechanics who helped hotwire any car that could be found to ferry people out of the city. And the food service workers who scoured the commercial kitchens, improvising communal meals for hundreds of those stranded. . .

We waited for 48 hours for the buses, spending the last 12 hours standing outside, sharing the limited water, food and clothes we had. We created a priority boarding area for the sick, elderly and newborn babies. We waited late into the night for the "imminent" arrival of the buses. The buses never arrived. We later learned that the minute they arrived at the city limits, they were commandeered by the military. . .

Quite naturally, we asked, "If we can't go to the only two shelters in the city, what was our alternative?" The guards told us that this was our problem--and no, they didn't have extra water to give to us. This would be the start of our numerous encounters with callous and hostile "law enforcement." . .

As we approached the bridge, armed sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions.. .

Just as dusk set in, a sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces and screamed, "Get off the fucking freeway." A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water. . .

We were dropped off near the airport and managed to catch a ride with the National Guard. The two young guardsmen apologized for the limited response of the Louisiana guards. They explained that a large section of their unit was in Iraq and that meant they were shorthanded and were unable to complete all the tasks they were assigned. . . .

This official treatment was in sharp contrast to the warm, heartfelt reception given to us by ordinary Texans. We saw one airline worker give her shoes to someone who was barefoot. Strangers on the street offered us money and toiletries with words of welcome. . . .

Click on the title to see the whole article.

Gore Airlifts Victims from New Orleans

2005-09-10T02:48:00.000-07:00

Man, did we pick the wrong guy, or what?

On September 1, three days after Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, Simon learned that Dr. David Kline, a neurosurgeon who operated on Gore's son, Albert, after a life-threatening auto accident in 1989, was trying to get in touch with Gore. Kline was stranded with patients at Charity Hospital in New Orleans.

"The situation was dire and becoming worse by the minute -- food and water running out, no power, 4 feet of water surrounding the hospital and ... corpses outside," Simon wrote.

Gore responded immediately, telephoning Kline and agreeing to underwrite the $50,000 each for the two flights, although Larry Flax, founder of California Pizza Kitchens, later pledged to pay for one of them.

The Red Cross Blocked

2005-09-07T23:04:00.000-07:00

The Fox News Channel's Major Garrett was just on my show extending the story he had just reported on Brit Hume's show: The Red Cross is confirming to Garrett that it had prepositioned water, food, blankets and hygiene products for delivery to the Superdome and the Convention Center in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, but were blocked from delivering those supplies by orders of the Louisiana state government, which did not want to attract people to the Superdome and/or Convention Center. Garrett has no paper trail yet, but will follow up on his verbal confirmation from sources at the highest levels of the Red Cross.

What it's beginning to look like to me is that one of the things that went wrong in New Orleans is that concerns about crowd control outweighed concerns about the "crowd's" well-being. Same kind of thing with blocking off access to the highway thereby trapping thousands of people at the Convention Center -- they were worried about this crowd of potential "looters" flooding into the next town. And the way they just shoved supplies off the trucks, without stopping -- sometimes damaging the supplies in the process.

They were too scared to help. Now, there were some real reasons for concern; there were gangs with guns in the streets. There were snipers shooting at helicopters. But, to me, the whole point of establishing security was so the aid could get through, not so people could be helplessly trapped -- essentially left to fend for themselves without even the freedom that would allow them to do that. No doubt, if word had gotten out that food and water were being passed out at the Convention Center more people would have gone there. Folks started going there once word came that the Center was being evacuated. So, you're going to deprive people of food because they might show up to get some?

It's hard not to have the feeling that the agencies involved were fearful of the uncivilized hordes of the inner city -- the people that live in the bad part of town that even the cops avoid. It's like after the storm the Superdome and Convention Center became "the bad part of town". The first thought was control and containment, rather than getting help to them.

More On New Orleans

2005-09-06T13:19:00.000-07:00

The link above to Wikipedia has a pretty good round-up of "what went wrong" in its article on the political impact of Hurricane Katrina. Last night I ran into the stunning fact that the National Guard prevented people holed up at the Convention Center from walking across the bridge to escape New Orleans. I imagine they were concerned about a flood of people going into the next town, or whatever. It's bad enough that there were these ridiculous delays in getting help, but to even prevent people from seeking food and water on their own is just unimaginable cruelty. It's like locking someone in a prison cell without food and water.

During the disaster, I've been watching CNN, but I found some dramatic footage from Fox with Geraldo Rivera and Shepard Smith getting very emotional and pleading for these people to be let out of the Convention Center, to walk across that bridge to where food and water was. This was Friday, when the trucks and buses started rolling -- but the people at the Convention Center were still without food and water when this was shot, and there was no information about when it would arrive. Take a look; you won't soon forget it.

You know what's really amazing? That there wasn't a riot. If I'd been without food or water for six days, with old people and babies dying around me, and soldiers told me I couldn't go to where food and water could be found, I'd just say "Shoot me now. Better to die fast than slow." By not letting people through, they were killing them just as sure as putting a bullet in them anyhow. Why didn't the guys who set up this checkpoint have supplies to give these people? It just boggles the mind.

Baha'is of Plano, Texas helping Katrina Victims

2005-09-05T13:27:00.000-07:00

Folks are asking about what the Baha'is are doing for the Katrina victims, and a friedn brought this to my attention. Besides the article above, there is also more information here -- Plano, is, apparently, one of the many places in Texas which has been taking in refugees.

A certain amount of cynicism has set in about Baha'is tending to be inwardly-focused and not doing very much charity. It has always been my contention that there is a tremendous charitable impulse among Baha'is, who really *do* care about humanity -- it's just that the impulse gets stifled by a feeling that Baha'is are working for the long term and shouldn't put a lot of energy for the short term. Another factor is that many Baha'i communities are small, and badly organized -- it's tough to get a charitable effort together when you can't even meet regularly.

However, I would like to commend the Baha'is of Plano for their efforts, and hope that every local Baha'i community that has the capacity to do so follow their example.

Figuring Out What Went Wrong in New Orleans

2005-09-04T18:38:00.000-07:00

I suspect that talk about how the richest and most developed country in the world could be so unprepared for this crisis and handle it so badly is going to be around for quite some time. But I thought this was a pretty good article on it.

You're Kidding Me, Right?

2005-09-04T07:50:00.000-07:00

The National Guard commander, Lieutenant General Steven Blum, said the reservist force was slow to move troops into New Orleans because it did not anticipate the collapse of the city's police force. . . .

"The real issue, particularly in New Orleans, is that no one anticipated the disintegration or the erosion of the civilian police force in New Orleans," Blum told reporters in Washington.

"Once that assessment was made ... then the requirement became obvious," he said. "And that's when we started flowing military police into the theatre."

Now, let me get this straight -- The commander of our forces thought the New Orleans police would be able to handle the situation when:

1. Policemen are just as vulnerable to being killed or injured by storms and floods as anyone else.

2. You have 1700 police to take care of 100,000 people who were stuck in the city.

3. Communications were down, which should have been expected in the aftermath of the storm.

4. Even if they arrested anyone, they had no way of getting them into jail. The only thing they could have done was shoot people in the streets, and since gun stores were among the first places looted, they were quickly outgunned.

5. The police didn't have any more access to food and water than anybody else trying to survive in that city.

6. Police are human beings who have their own families to worry about.

And they thought the New Orleans police force *wouldn't* disintegrate?

What's Looting and What's Not

2005-09-03T23:29:00.000-07:00

There are stories coming out now about how most of the "looting" was survivors simply looking for food and other basic necessities. I wouldn't consider that looting; I'd consider that good common sense in a survival situation. Any fresh food in the grocery stores is going to go bad anyway -- it might as well be feeding someone's children. You can't politely sit around and die of dehydration, something that can happen in as little as three days of water deprivation, while waiting for help to arrive, if water bottles are available at the stores. Especially when it became clear that it was going to take a while before supplies arrived. Some of those people watched trucks roll right past them, without stopping to give them anything -- they can hardly be faulted for deciding they'd better find their own food and water, or they could die waiting for help.

On CNN,I heard a story of a woman who had been trapped at the Ritz-Carlton hotel with about 300 other people, and they were forced to wade through the toxic water in order to get to the rescue buses. Before they left, she said, doctors who had been among the crowd with them "commandeered" some antibiotics, to protect them from infection. That's the polite term -- it's obvious that what they did was break into the nearest pharmacy. And you can bet your fanny that nobody is going to arrest those doctors for looting. Having antibiotics on hand in such an unsanitary environment is nearly as much a necessity for survival as having food and water.

Looters are the guys stealing guns, t.v. sets, jewelry and drugs. (T.V. sets? The power isn't even working. Who are you going to sell them to?) When I said I wanted good guys with guns down there, it was because aid workers were afraid of getting shot while trying to help because of the violent gangs prowling around, so that rescue efforts were disrupted -- and that wasted time was costing lives.

In spite of all the noise Bush is making about zero tolerance for looters, there isn't going to be any more than a few symbolic prosecutions. How are you going to be able to separate out those who were stealing necessities and those who were stealing luxuries, except where it's very blatant?

I have heard that Bush is not making a distinction between the two, but haven't found anything other than this , which looks more like a condemnation of the violent offenders. It would be very bad politically to go dragging off to jail some poor desperate soul for stealing bread and milk, and they just aren't going to do that. And if the troops should, even accidentally, shoot somebody who is taking necessities, howls of protest will ring far and wide.

If you don't want folks stealing food, water, medicine, and sanitary supplies, then you'd better make sure they have some -- and damned quickly too.

Chaos in New Orleans

2005-09-02T07:04:00.000-07:00

What's happening in New Orleans really goes to show just how thin the veneer of civilization really is -- and, of course in some of those poor neighborhoods where these trapped people come from, it's even thinner. Living in small towns all my life, it's tough for me to fathom. When we have floods, guys walk or boat around, checking on the elderly, and exchanging news. It sometimes has the feel of a neighborhood party. But big cities are so dependant upon the infrastructure that even a big power outage, all by itself, is an emergency.

It seems pretty clear to me that top priority has to be restoring enough order that aid can get through. We're seeing scenes like this:

Although obviously he has no exact count, he estimates more than 10,000 people are packed into and around and outside the convention center still waiting for the buses. They had no food, no water, and no medicine for the last three days, until today, when the National Guard drove over the bridge above them, and tossed out supplies over the side crashing down to the ground below. Much of the supplies were destroyed from the drop. Many people tried to catch the supplies to protect them before they hit the ground. Some offered to walk all the way around up the bridge and bring the supplies down, but any attempt to approach the police or national guard resulted in weapons being aimed at them.

They're afraid to stop and pass out supplies in an orderly fashion, so the troops just chuck the boxes over the side of the truck. I found this really sad:

The people are so desperate that they're doing anything they can think of to impress the authorities enough to bring some buses. These things include standing in single file lines with the eldery in front, women and children next; sweeping up the area and cleaning the windows and anything else that would show the people are not barbarians.

The buses never stop.

And, of course, there's been story after story of rescue workers being shot at, or vehicles being hijacked. Bush is making noises about lawlessness not being tolerated, but unless you get good guys with rifles down there, nothing is going to stop it. And as long as lawlessness reigns, people are going to die, first from lack of medical care, then from lack of food and water, and disease. So, what I'm asking is where are the troops? Where are the good guys with rifles?

Hurricane Katrina

2005-08-31T06:55:00.000-07:00

Like everybody else, I've been watching the terrible news on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. However, I'll confess to some impatience with people who refused to leave when a mandatory evacuation was declared. I live in an area that floods so regularly that all the houses are built up high so we can get through it without damage, and even though we usually just sit it out, when the call for "mandatory evacuation" came down because the levee threatened to break, I got myself and my kids out of there. As long as evacuation is voluntary, I'm quite content to sit it out -- the pattern of floods is very predictable, and outside of the inconvenience of being stuck in the house while the river rages around us, we do just fine.

Of course, I realize that, in a large city like that, getting out may not be so easy, and that some people don't own cars, etc. But, for the rest, what tends to happen in areas that are threatened by a recurring danger like this (after all, there are hurricanes every year in the gulf), people get complacent. They've lived through them before, and figure they can do it again. And who wouldn't prefer sit it out at home rather than huddle in a shelter? Nevertheless, sitting it out is a very bad idea when things are dangerous enough that a mandatory evacuation is declared.

Another thing that happens whenever we have a flood is that people go sightseeing, and they drive straight through flood water -- many times getting themselves stuck requiring some brave cop or national guardsman to rescue them. (Safety Rule: Never drive your car through flood water, it could be swifter and deeper than it looks. Especially never drive around flood barriers.) People indulge in the same kind of stupidity during hurricanes -- the news reported people taking their kids out to see the waves, taking pictures, etc., as the storm moved closer.

Speaking of the National Guard, those guys have my deepest respect. Even when we choose to sit out a flood, it gives me a great sense of security seeing those big trucks chugging through the flood water, knowing help is close by if it should become necessary. Right now, they are out there risking their own lives to save others; they are heros and deserve our thoughts, prayers, and support.

In fact, some prayers in general would be appropriate now. Whatever my impatience at folks who didn't heed the warnings, *nobody* deserves to be suffering what tens of thousands are now suffering down there.

Additional thought: As I watch this massive effort to evacuate the entire city of New Orleans, I can't help but wonder why there wasn't a more organized effort to get people out beforehand. They knew that many of the city's poor didn't have the means to leave -- and it certainly is easier to evacuate people ahead of time than it is when there is water all over the place!

PIssing Away the Conservative Moment

2005-08-24T07:16:00.000-07:00

Since most of the folks I know in cyberspace are liberal, I like to stick something up on my blog once in a while as a reminder that the words "intelligent conservative" are not necessarily an oxymoron.

There have been rumblings for some time from the religious right, some of whom are catching on to the fact, that for all their loud and boistrous political activity for the last 25-30 years, they actually have had very little success in achieving their ends. My own guess is that after Bush, who is, after all, one of their own, even more frustration is going to set in and people are going to either drop out of political activity or become even more radicalized -- like the guy who wants Christians to move to South Carolina so it can secede and become a Christian theocracy.

However, old-style conservatives aren't real happy about Bush either. Paleocons are isolationists at heart; economic conservatives want smaller government not the government expansion that goes along with war -- I have an aunt who voted Libertarian because she's outraged about the Patriot Act. Bainbridge, in the article I've linked to above says:

It's time for us conservatives to face facts. George W. Bush has pissed away the conservative moment by pursuing a war of choice via policies that border on the criminally incompetent. We control the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and (more-or-less) the judiciary for one of the few times in my nearly 5 decades, but what have we really accomplished? Is government smaller? Have we hacked away at the nanny state? Are the unborn any more protected? Have we really set the stage for a durable conservative majority?

Then, after voicing a number of complaints about the Iraq War he ends by saying:

What really annoys me, however, are the domestic implications of all this. The conservative agenda has advanced hardly at all since the Iraq War began. Worse yet, the growing unpopularity of the war threatens to undo all the electoral gains we conservatives have achieved in this decade. Stalwarts like me are not going to vote for Birkenstock wearers no matter how bad things get in Iraq, but what about the proverbial soccer moms? Gerrymandering probably will save the House for us at least through the 2010 redistricting, but what about the Senate and the White House?

You bet the soccer moms are going to vote Democrat next time -- this war could end up being a huge set-back for the Republicans, and the longer it lasts, the worse it's going to be. The high oil prices and attendant economic woes aren't going to help, either -- Americans vote their pocketbook when all is said and done. If we can't get out of Iraq while leaving a stable situation behind us, then our economy is going to be in real peril. As Juan was mentioning lately, nobody likes to think we went to war for oil(if we did, we *really* screwed up), but the fact is that gas prices have a real impact on all of our lives -- and the working class and poor that the left is supposed be supporting will feel especially pinched if the Iraq situation spirals out of control.
Politically, if the left is going to get anywhere, it's got to remember its roots are in being the champions of the working class instead of being the Party of People Not Like Us. It may never have a better opportunity than right now to get Bubba on its side.

Easing back in

2005-08-14T09:28:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a long, hot stressful summer but I'm moving into what has become the mellowest time of the year: the early weeks of school. Unlike full-time teachers, who are very busy, substitute teachers generally aren't called until school is well under way; I've never yet been called in August.

On the Baha'i front, there's another liberal Baha'i in trouble. A young man in Canada, who posted some essays mildly critical of the status quo, has been called to a meeting by an ABM for Protection. What's really weird is that he had barely started posting; he's just a raw newbie. This meeting is being framed as informal and friendly, which appears to be standard procedure. It may even appear so when the meeting takes place-- although some ABMs get nasty and yell and that kind of thing -- but it's the report that is made on the meeting that ends up being the worst part. The victim then gets a letter telling him that he'd better shape up or else. That's pretty much what happened to Larry Rowe, and others. Baquia has more detail on this story. He's back from his summer blogging break, too. :-)

The only general news story that has caught my attention recently has been that of Cindy Sheehan. More power to her, I say. As I've made it clear on other posts here, if it were my son that were killed, my rage would be beyond measure. However, I'm finding it interesting that as soon as a grieving parent begins to be perceived as "political", sympathy wanes. Well, of course she's political. So were Terri Shaivo's parents. So was the lady who started Mothers Against Drunk Driving. I'd be willing to bet that the majority of people who get involved in one particular political cause or another do so because of some kind of personal experience with the issue.

And for this war, in particular, where the reasons for going into it turned out to be false and where the
goals have turned out to be impossible to achieve , it is inevitable that more anger and resentment about it are going to build up. Americans are not particularly patient people when it comes to war -- we want to get in, kick butt, and bring the boys home. Most are willing to support the president when he decides to send troops somewhere, but are not willing to support a lost cause to the last gasp. The longer this goes on, the more people are going to turn against it.

Stress, Heat, and Harry Potter

2005-07-17T22:09:00.000-07:00

[Note: For the "Harry Potter" portion of this entry, there will be spoilers below, although I would suggest that anybody who seriously wants to avoid Harry Potter spoilers shouldn't be online anyway!]

I don't know if I've spent a period online in the last five years that I felt more unengaged with what's happening online -- partly because even before I was torn away by real life commitments, I hadn't been doing much. I haven't been paying much attention to the real-world news either. Grandma saw an interview with Juan, where he gave what-for to a real Neanderthal, apparently -- and I'm like, "O.K., I'll catch it online sometime". I'm not doing anything right now, other than behind-the-scenes moderation where I have a commitment to do that.

Part of it has been stress; things with the job haven't gone as well as I'd hoped -- although, I knew from the outset I was dealing with a tough group of kids. It's been damn hard work, and if I'd tried something like this before having a few years subbing experience under my belt, I would have completely fallen apart. However, I've written some minor things that have gone over well; I left a contributor to a newsletter who was extremely sensitive about editing, positively beaming over what I'd done with his article.

The weather has been unbearably hot, with day after day of temps over 100 degrees for the last two weeks, and no end in sight. It was 113 today. This is not especially unusual, although the last few summers have been milder. The record summer high is 122. I'm in a broad valley flanked by mountain ranges; it's like living in a reflector oven. We are far away from ocean breezes. For those of you who live in different climates, when things get this hot, people get short on energy, and short of temper. It's tough to sleep at night. Trevor is living upside down -- awake all night, and sleeping during the heat of the day; Tory spends as much time as she can at the public pool. I really feel sorry for people who have to do physical labor in heat like this. My only comfort is thinking of the soldiers in Iraq, who face even hotter temperatures -- and don't have the luxury of complaining under swamp coolers and fans.

With life being stressful, I've been veering towards mindless entertainment when I do have spare time. There are times when one just needs to veg out. Most of the time, Jim rules the television, with the kids being second-in-command, but I've been watching "The Closer", and "Into the West".

Then, of course, there's *Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince*-- which, just in case you've been living under a rock, was released Saturday admist unprecedented hoopla. The fun part, for me, has been that it's something I've been able to share with my son. He's at an age when kids seem to be beings from another planet, and it's nice to have something to enjoy together. I'm also of the opinion that one must be an adult to truly appreciate children's literature. One of the perks of being a teacher is "read-alouds" of some of the best stories around.

Trevor and I aren't hung up on spoilers. To me, there are very few books or movies that are "spoiled" by knowing what happens. Something like *The Sixth Sense* where one's whole perceptions of the film would be altered would be spoiled by knowing the end, but very few other things would bother me. The part that matters is the experience. So, Trevor and I eagerly watched the chapter synopses appear on wikipedia that night, not knowing whether we'd have a key to a locker (meaning we'd get the book Saturday as ordered), or whether I'd find a card (meaning we'd have to wait until Monday for the post office to be open).

My comments:

-My favorite of the books is still *Prisoner of Azkaban*, and this new book has not altered my opinion.
-It's nice to see Harry behaving a bit more maturely; the adolescent angst was laid on so thick in *Order of the Phoenix* that he was almost unbearably irritating. That it was so realistic, though, is probably a tribute to Rowling's writing rather than a criticism.
-Favorite scenes: When Harry tells the Ministry to take a flying leap, showing the hand scarred by Umbridge's pen; McGonogall telling Neville that his grandmother should be "proud of the grandson she has instead of the one she thinks she ought to have"; the glasses knocking against the Dursley's heads, asking to be drunk; Kreacher and Dobby fighting; Harry supporting the weakened Dumbledore in the cave.
- Unlike some fans, I'm not an ardent "shipper", but I was glad to see Harry hook up with Ginny, and the friendly break-up at the end only makes sense, considering the dangers yet ahead.
-Although it was great to see all the backstory about Voldemort, I was disappointed that so many other questions about other characters have not yet been answered. I guess that Rowling's promise that "there will be all the backstory necessary" will be fulfilled in the last book. In fact, there is a hint of that, as Harry prepares to return to Godric's Hollow.
-Somehow Snape declaring himself "the Half-Blood Prince" just didn't ring right; he doesn't seem the type to make grand declarations about himself. Oh, he's got an ego, but he tends to tear others down while demonstrating his own capabilities, rather than bragging about them.. The fans that are still trying to make Snape out to be a secret good guy are crazy; there was clear foreshadowing in Dumbledore's statement that he makes big mistakes sometimes -- and he made one about Snape, end of story.

A Real Job

2005-06-16T18:43:00.000-07:00

Well, folks, it looks like I'm going to be teaching summer school for the next five weeks. This literally dropped out of the clear, blue sky. This morning I woke up with the whole summer ahead of me, at 1:30 I was at a school district office signing the papers. Apparently, the person they had hired originally was a no-show at the orientation meeting, so the principal went desperately through the sub list, looking for someone with the proper credential (as opposed to just a sub credential). So, I managed to get a job without all the rigamarole -- application, interview, etc. (I'm a good teacher, but not a good job hunter.) It was really just sheer luck.

And, this is a real teaching job -- I have my own classroom; I'm getting paid teacher's wages, not the pittance subs get. I start Monday, so I've just got this weekend to figure out the curriculum. I'm teaching a 7/8 combo for reading and math. Remediation, I've done quite a bit of -- except it's going to be a pain doing two separate levels.

So this may, but not necessarily, mean that my pearls of wisdom here will be scarcer. My experience is, though, that the frequence of my posting really depends more on what I've got to say than the time I've got. If I have a lot to say, then I *make* time. If I don't, I end up telling myself "Maybe tomorrow".

Hitting Close to Home

2005-06-15T21:58:00.000-07:00

I'm begging my reader's indulgence for going through rather a slow phase right now. It's weird that some days I've got all the feverish thoughts that have to be written down, and I'll put four or five stories here on my blog, or post on forums -- then there are other times when I just don't feel like saying much or talking to anybody.

But this story deserves my attention: Basically, an al-Qaeda cell has been found in the relatively small town of Lodi, California. (Yes, that's the Lodi that CCR sang about getting "stuck in, again".)

Now, those of you that know me, know that I'm a small town girl, making no bones about my rural roots and lack of sophistication. And, while I am horrified by violent events and the rise of the terrorist threat, they have always been rather distant. It's like crime; I live in a place where I don't bother to lock my front door, or my car. Oh, it's not paradise; we have our criminals -- but if there really is any safe place in the world, I feel like I live in it. Even Shasta Dam, although I heard that they stepped up security there, were it hit by a place like the trade center was, would escape major damage, leaving those of us downstream quite safe. And what other possible target could there be way up here in the upper reaches of California?

Lodi -- San Joaquin county. I was born in Stockton, and still have family there. Some of my cousins used to live in Lodi, which is just a few miles north. I grew up in little towns around that area -- except for the years I spent up here, where my mom's family comes from, about 2-3 hours northward.

Grandma used to always say that if terrorists really wanted to scare Americans, they'd dispense with hitting big symbolic targets and make the hits random -- big cities, little towns, government buildings, and private -- so that nobody could feel like they were safe.

Well, at least these guys were arrested. While affiliated with al-Qaida, there doesn't seem to be any evidence that any specific attack was being planned. But, it's a little too close for comfort.

Baha'is Arrested in Iran

2005-06-10T07:55:00.000-07:00

I still rather feel like I'm not firing on all cylinders as far as my Internet activity is concerned, but this is important news -- and even though most of my Baha'i readers have probably heard this by now, I felt I should post it here, just on the principle that information is the greatest weapon in opposing human rights abuses. The story does not appear to be getting much press outside the Baha'i community -- I checked out the "Human Rights Watch", "Amesty International" and "Iran Focus" websites and saw no mention of it. Strange, since *Iran Focus* picked up on the storyseveral months ago, apparently from the Iranian press, about Baha'i missionaries being arrested and deported-- a story that was denied by the Baha'i administration. I find it very strange that a false story about two non-Iranian missionaries would get press, and a true story about eleven arrests would not.

I first heard about the recent arrests on one of the lists I'm subscribed to, a couple of weeks ago, but didn't see any official confirmation until yesterday. The scuttlebutt is that most of the Baha'is arrested were organizing Ruhi study circles.

6 June 2005

State Bahá'í Councils
State Bahá'í Administrative Committees
Selected Local Spiritual Assemblies

Dear Bahá'í Friends,

We are informed by the Universal House of Justice that it "has received
alarming news of a number of arrests in Iran in the span of the last two
weeks, thus worsening the already perilous situation of the Bahá'ís in that
country.

On 16 May 2005, in the city of Simnán, eight Bahá'ís were summoned to appear
before the office of the Public Prosecutor. The very next day, another
Bahá'í in that city received a similar summons. They are Ms. Mahnáz
'Askarínasab, Mr. 'Ádil Faná'íyán, Mr. Afshín Íqání, Mr. 'Abbás Núrání, Ms.
Shádí Núrání, Ms. Zhínús Núrání, Mrs. Shu'lih Tá'if, Ms. Súsan Tibíyáníyán,
and Mr. Bihshád Vujdání.

These Bahá'ís were charged with "creating anxiety in the minds of the public
and those of the Iranian officials" and "propaganda against the government
of the Islamic Republic of Iran". The charges were associated with
distributing to various Iranian officials copies of the letter of appeal
dated 15 November 2004 addressed to President Khatami on behalf of the
Iranian Bahá'í community. When they arrived at the Prosecutor's office on 18
May 2005, they were asked to post bail ranging from 30 to 60 million Iranian
rials (approximately US$3,360-US$6,720) each. As they were concerned that
producing this sum could lead to further arrests and bail demands on other
Bahá'ís, they declined to do so. They were detained overnight and
subsequently freed on their own recognizance on 20 May 2005, with the
understanding that they would appear for a hearing at a later date. Mrs.
Shu'lih Tá'if's husband also provided personal guarantees that they would
return to court.

Soon after this incident, on 25 May 2005, the Iranian authorities entered
the homes of six other Bahá'ís in Tehran and six Bahá'ís in Shiraz, where
they conducted searches and confiscated Bahá'í documents, computers, CDs,
cheques, financial records, and other belongings. All six in Shiraz and four
of the six in Tehran were taken to an unknown location. The other two
Bahá'ís from Tehran, Mr. Násir Mansúr and Mr. Jamál Thábit, were not home at
the time. However, Mr. Thábit was later arrested as he was returning from a
trip. Those arrested in Tehran are Mrs. Zhínús Jiddí Farnúsh, who is the
wife of Mr. Háshim Farnúsh who had previously been killed for being a
Bahá'í and the sister of Mr. Shahrám Jiddí who was arrested on 16 March 2005
and is still in custody; Mrs. Faríbá Kamálábádí Tá'ifí; Mr. Táhir Safájú;
Mrs. Mahvash Shahríyárí Thábit; and Mr. Jamál Thábit. Those from Shiraz are
Mr. Vahdat Dáná, Mr. Adíb Haqpazhú, Mr. Fúád Ithádu'l-haq, Mr. Shahrám
Mansúr, Mr. Sa'íd Ridá'í, and
Mr. Farhád Sarafráz. All of the Bahá'ís arrested were playing key roles in
the educational programmes of the community.

On 30 May 2005, the nine Bahá'ís from the village of Katá in the province of
Buyír-Ahmad and Chármahál-Bakhtíyárí, whose arrest was communicated in our
letters dated 28 April 2005 and 8 May 2005, were released from prison after
a business license was used as collateral. They will be required to attend a
hearing at a later date.

These arrests and confiscations of property signal a new phase in the
government's implementation of its strategy to eradicate the Bahá'í
community in Iran, which was, as you know, set out in the Supreme
Revolutionary Cultural Council's confidential memorandum dated 25 February
1991.

Since the beginning of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Bahá'ís have been
subject to a series of egregious acts of persecution, such as having had
their religious institutions banned; been executed for their beliefs;
deprived of rights enjoyed by other Iranians, including their right to
employment and to receive their pensions following long and faithful service
in their jobs; suffered destruction and desecration of properties held as
sacred by Bahá'ís throughout the world in a concerted effort that has been
described as cultural cleansing; been assaulted and had their businesses and
means of livelihood destroyed or confiscated; denied fair trials; and been
prevented from admission to universities despite empty promises to rectify
this gross violation of their right to higher education. There was, however,
a period in which it appeared to many that the situation had been improving,
but which was no more than a chimera. Students who had been barred from
admission to universities had been led to believe that the prohibition had
been removed; they remain unable to enrol in institutions of higher
education. Almost all prisoners had been released; there are now sixteen
Bahá'ís in prison and an additional eighteen out on bail awaiting trial.

The last few months have witnessed the destruction of Bahá'í holy places,
the desecration of Bahá'í cemeteries, beatings of members of the community,
destruction and confiscation of businesses, arrests, and searches and
seizures of private property, which apparently have led the authorities to
identify and now arrest those who have leadership roles in educating the
community. The Iranian Bahá'ís are once again being exposed to
ever-escalating intimidation, harassment, arrests, imprisonment, and
arbitrary detention. The Bahá'ís in prison and those released on bail are
now awaiting trial on preposterous charges."

Whilst the National Spiritual Assembly, through its Office of Diplomatic
Affairs is taking the necessary actions to appraise our Government and
requesting for their assistance on behalf of the Bahá'ís in Iran, we urge
friends in every community to pray for the safety and well-being of all our
beloved spiritual brothers and sisters in the Cradle of the Faith.

With loving Bahá'í greetings,

Dr. A.K. Merchant
Secretary

Putting the Shoe on the Other Foot

2005-06-04T13:47:00.000-07:00

Still trying to catch up with what's going on in the world. Lots of talk about Amnesty International's harsh report on the way the U.S. in treating its prisoners in Guantanamo and elsewhere. I don't suppose I can add all that much intelligent commentary to what's out there, but it did cause a rare domestic disagreement. I normally don't take on Jim about politics, usually because disagreement on my part will ends up with my being on the receiving end of an hour-long lecture on why I'm wrong, naive, etc. (It's a family joke; my kids have noted the same trait in their dad. I don't lecture on such things; I just blog. :-)) However, after watching O'Reilly, the topic naturally came up, and I said that the Third World dictators that Anmesty takes on over their human rights abuses probably aren't real fond of that organization, either, and say it's unfair, absurd, etc. But Americans are just fine with having those guys roasted; we just don't want the same standard applied to us.

Just like one of Amnesty's representatives said:

Amnesty has fired right back, pointing out that the administration often cites its reports when that suits its purposes. "If our reports are so 'absurd,' why did the administration repeatedly cite our findings about Saddam Hussein before the Iraq war?" wrote William F. Schultz, executive director of the group's United States branch, in a letter to the editor being published Saturday in The New York Times. "Why does it welcome our criticisms of Cuba, China and North Korea? And why does it cite our research in its own annual human rights reports?"

Depends on whose ox is being gored. The rest of the article is here.

Jim launched into a big lecture about how Anmesty International is a lot like the ACLU -- an organization that started out doing good things, but came under the influence of far-left radicals and went off the deep end, yada, yada, yada. Instead of my normal tack of ignoring that stuff, I interrupted him and said "You know, that's bullshit. I don't give a damn about their politics. The question is 'Is our military torturing and mistreating people or is it not?' And if they are, it's wrong, and that's all there is to it." Jim still thinks it's all just a matter of a handful of people going too far, and not a systemic thing. I think that's bullshit, too, but was disinclined to cry "Bullshit!" twice in the same conversation.

O'Reilly also took on a mom who is opposed to military recruitment in schools, and definitely doesn't want her son serving. Actually, he wasn't as nasty as I've seen him be to some people, but it still was the old "How can you not support the military when you've got young guys fighting for your freedom out there?" This mom responded, like I would have, that the soldiers in Iraq aren't doing a whole lot for our freedom, then O'Reilly just dodged towards talking about the War on Terror in general. Maybe, if they're short on soldiers, and really interested in getting the thugs who attacked us, maybe they should have more soldiers doing that, rather than messing around in Iraq? Why should we trust a government that lied to us, and isn't making us any safer?

Since I've Been Gone Awhile, I Might As Well Start With a Goofy Quiz

2005-06-01T07:51:00.000-07:00

You Are a Pundit Blogger!

Your blog is smart, insightful, and always a quality read.
Truly appreciated by many, surpassed by only a few.

What kind of blogger are you?

Raising Moral Kids

2005-05-22T13:02:00.000-07:00

The previous entry got me thinking, naturally about my own kids, who are both teenagers now, and how you raise kids with good family values. And, I don't know how I did it, but both of my kids have pretty good values. My son rejects religion, but is as straight-laced morally as the strictest religious conservative could desire. This is a kid who would only go to lunch with Grandma on the condition that she not take him to the restaurant at the casino -- because he disapproves of gambling. His main concern about sex is that he doesn't want to give way to temptation. My daughter is a bit more of a rebel, and certainly more curious about sex, but she's in no big hurry either. Once she was watching one of those godawful daytime shows where families air their dirty laundry for fifteen minutes of fame. I was just about to insist she turn the channel when she says "Mom, that girl is really mean to her mother -- and her mother loves her!" She was in tears about it. (The girl on t.v. was openly and deliberately trying to get pregnant.) Tory also has a very solid sense of self, and isn't likely to be pushed around by some guy. She told me once that she wanted to marry a nerd, so she could push him around!

Now, I know that some folks will think "Ah, but you don't really know what your kids are doing behind your back". Oh, yes I do -- 'cause I'm around and I pay attention. All that's been happening so far are giggling talk about some 7th grade cutie in Tory's case, and unrequited longing in Trevor's case. I'm not even getting phone calls from boyfriends or girlfriends, much less ever met one.

Now, this didn't happen because I've given my kids stern lectures about the value of chastity, and I absolutely disapprove of the scare tactics popular among the Christian right. I answer questions, and tell it like it is as best I can. The closest I came to giving a lecture to my daughter was I used an example of one of her friends, who was in a bad family mess, and I said "Your dad and I have given you a home with two parents who love each other, and who love you. If you have a child before getting married, that baby won't grow up with that."

I think example, and that atmosphere a child is raised in has more to do with their moral viewpoint than any kind of lecture.

Virginity or Death!

2005-05-22T11:48:00.000-07:00

There have been successful trials of a vaccine that will immunize young women against the human pampilloma virus -- a sexually transmitted virus that is responsible for about 70% of all cervical cancer. Good news, right? Not according to the Christian right who seem to think that reducing the risk of getting cancer in middle age is going to figure into the sexual choices of teenagers. This article calls it "honor killing on the installment plan". O.K., a bit dramatic, but it's quite appalling that such a simple thing -- a single shot! -- that could prevent women from dying of cancer is a matter of controversy. These people *want* sex to mean death.

These conservative Christians can't even keep their own kids from having sex before marriage, although I suspect they start sexual activity at later ages, and marry a bit earlier. Nearly 90% of teenagers that sign those "virginity pledges" default. If the intense pressure put on these kids doesn't work, then nothing will, short of locking the girls up in convents and rushing them from there to their wedding, strictly chaperoned.

It's not that I'm against chastity, especially for vulnerable young girls, but if they can't quite live up to the ideal, I don't think they ought to die for it.

One Common Faith, paragraph 36

2005-05-22T11:00:00.000-07:00

Besides, the diversity of practices, the paper goes on to condemn the clergy of earlier religions, for their theological views:

36
More detrimental still to religious understanding has been theological presumption. A persistent feature of religion's sectarian past has been the dominant role played by clergy. In the absence of scriptural texts that established unarguable institutional authority, clerical elites succeeded in arrogating to themselves exclusive control over interpretation of the Divine intent. However diverse the motives, the tragic effects have been to impede the current of inspiration, discourage independent intellectual activity, focus attention on the minutiae of rituals and too often engender hatred and prejudice towards those following a different sectarian path from that of self-appointed spiritual leaders. While nothing could prevent the creative power of Divine intervention from continuing its work of progressively raising consciousness, the scope of what could be achieved, in any age, became increasingly limited by such artificially contrived obstacles

I think this is a little harsh -- after all, for centuries, the vast majority of people were not literate, and could not pursue "independent intellectual activity" even if they wanted to. I was just reading a while back that women in Saudi Arabia have gone from mostly illiterate to mostly literate only within the last generation. You can only begin to dispense with clergy when most adherents are educated -- and even then clerical training has some value, certainly in terms of study in the scriptural languages, and in having a perspective on the history of the tradition. In fact, technically, Judaism and Islam doesn't have "clergy", like Christianity; what they have are "scholars" which these communities depended upon to give rulings on religious law, because they are knowledgeable.

Besides, I don't find that Baha'i administrators are free from the faults it attributes to clergymen -- it has done its own share of "impeding the current of inspiration and discouraging independent intellectual activity". For all the claims that no one has individual authority within the Baha'i Faith, upper-level Baha'i administrators are enormously powerful, and their ideas very influential, even at times becoming doctrine with very little basis in the Writings. The idea that the Baha'i Faith is opposed to individualism is one outstanding example. And just like the religious leaders of old, Baha'i administrators are extremely concerned with holding on to their authority, reacting vehemently to the least challenge. The conflict I mentioned in my previous entry within the Anglican church over the acceptance of homosexuality would be inconcievable in the Baha'i Faith -- a person like Maggie Ross could easily be booted out of the Faith for writing an article like that, and that would happen long before any sort of cohesive movement for reform got off the ground. But, as she pointed out, it isn't about homosexuality (or women's rights, or freedom of expression or whatever issue you want to name); the response of religious leadership is really about power and control. And one feature of modern life that is going to cripple any chance the Baha'i Faith has to be more than just an exotic alternative to mainstream religion is that people can choose not to be ordered around by their religious leaders -- and they will. Even conservative Christian preachers complain that their congregations won't hang around on Sunday if they are lectured about their sins, creating an ethical dilmemma over whether or not folks in the pews should be told what they want to hear, rather than what they need to hear. And the Baha'i administration does more than lecture; Baha'is live under the threat of sanction to a much greater extent than any of the well-established religions, and that's one reason so many leave.

Praying With Our Feet

2005-05-22T01:42:00.000-07:00

I came across this article by Maggie Ross, author of one of my favorite books on mysticism *The Fountain and the Furnace: The Way of Tears and Fire*. She's a Christian solitary, bound by all the vows of a nun, but not living in a bounded community. One might expect that she would have a rather old-fashioned outlook on the rest of the world -- and in fact, the texts she studies and talks about are much older-fashioned than anything that comes from conservative Christians who think they have "that old-time religion". But that expectation would be wrong.

This article is a fiery denunciation of those that are refusing to accept gay priests in the Anglican church. But what she says would be true for any issue, or any religious community. Some quotes:

Faith is not about suspending critique, but about exercising it.

The sayings attributed to Jesus in the gospels apply to discernment in this life. He wishes to teach us a wisdom into which we grow progressively that enables us to shake off the shackles imposed in the name of the closed and unthinking strictures imposed by family, culture and even religion. We might say especially religion, since our Christian religious institutions seem to have recreated the very sort of religious climate that Jesus spent his entire ministry criticizing.

But faith is precisely about challenging complacency. It is about finding security in insecurity, the realization that unless we work hard to maintain a hole in the heavens (Lathrop, 2003) by which the closed universe of human self-consciousness is breached, human engagement will be tragically determined by the fear of "death," which is not mortality but our fantasies about mortality, which are in fact fantasies about power and control, in whose name real death is inflicted on others.

By contrast, so-called values imposed on others by frightened people can only be abusive, and values inflicted under the name of religion by the bigoted, the arrogant and the greedy are no values at all. A culture based on greed and fear wants its members to be team players, sycophants, ciphers. It does not want to produce people who can exercise a critique.

It also means that in our learning and teaching we have reverence for a kind of holy self-doubt. Our thoughts are not God's thoughts, and when we start pretending they are, we create havoc.

There is always risk involved in such a stance. Such people may be regarded as mere crackpots. As non-members of the establishment, particularly the religious establishment, they are considered presumptuous even for raising their voices to be heard, much less insisting on keeping on being heard. And if by some miracle they escape censure, or persecution, or being silenced if only by being ignored or isolated, they will continue to speak out until their last breath.

With so many fake Christians around, it's really nice to meet a real one. And a real Christian has a lot to teach those of us who follow other spiritual paths.

One Common Faith, paragraphs 28-35

2005-05-21T14:41:00.000-07:00

28
In short, through the ongoing process of revelation, the One Who is the Source of the system of knowledge we call religion demonstrates that system's integrity and its freedom from the contradictions imposed by sectarian ambitions.. . .

This is something of a Baha'i myth i.e. that schism and creation of sects is inevitably the result of "ambition". That just doesn't hold up in the light of history. There is such a thing as sincere disagreement over what a religion means. Since the next few paragraphs largely concern the idea of progressive revelation -- a belief common to all Baha'is -- I really have little to say about them.

31
The objection most commonly raised against the foregoing conception of religion is the assertion that the differences among the revealed faiths are so fundamental that to present them as stages or aspects of one unified system of truth does violence to the facts. Given the confusion surrounding the nature of religion, the reaction is understandable.. . .

I have certainly seen Christian objections to the Baha'i Faith of exactly this type. What it comes down to is what one thinks is important about religion. Christianity, historically, has made theology a major issue, so naturally the idea of the unity of religion looks like utter nonsense to them. If you don't equate conceptions of God with God Himself, then theology ceases to matter so much. For Baha'is, God is unknowable, therefore arguments concerning what we think we know are rather pointless. However, the Baha'i community is not, unfortunately, completely free of rigidity concerning the nature of God -- more than one liberal intellectual got into trouble, at least partly, because he held a "low theology" of Baha'u'llah.

The next few paragraphs focus on the difference is religious practices, giving the basic Baha'i view that the former religious laws were revealed as appropriate to past ages.

35
The concept of progressive revelation places the ultimate emphasis on recognition of the revelation of God at its appearance. The failure of the generality of humankind in this respect has, time and again, condemned entire populations to a ritualistic repetition of ordinances and practices long after these latter have fulfilled their purpose and now merely stultify moral advance. Sadly, in the present day, a related consequence of such failure has been to trivialize religion. At precisely the point in its collective development where humanity began to struggle with the challenges of modernity, the spiritual resource on which it had principally depended for moral courage and enlightenment was fast becoming a subject of mockery, first at those levels where decisions were being made about the direction society should take, and eventually in ever-widening circles of the general population. There is little cause for surprise, then, that this most devastating of the many betrayals of trust from which human confidence has suffered should, in the course of time, undermine the foundations of belief itself.

Again, it remains to be seen how the Baha'i Faith will do better on this score. Already there are issues, some of which were mentioned in this paper, where the prevailing interpretations of Baha'i teaching seem to be pushing mankind backwards towards a more authoritarian era. There is no point whatsoever, for example, to excluding women from the UHJ -- even that body itself admits that it doesn't know the reason for it. When I was researching this issue, I found the arguments made in support of this exclusion to be virtually identical to those made by the Catholic Church for its exclusion of women from the priesthood. Very well, religious communities decide to hold on to their traditions and the authority they deem so essential for the preservation of the Founder's teachings. However, they then give up any viable claim to be compatible with modernity, or to be on the cutting edge of human progress.

Worldview Quiz

2005-05-15T19:46:00.000-07:00

O.K. I'll admit it; I like doing goofy little quizzes. Credit for pointing me to this one goes to Umm Yasmin, who once upon a time was known as Maryam Rachel Woodlock in Baha'i circles, but who has apparently chosen an honorific in celebration of her baby girl -- which sounds like a terrific idea to me remembering those precious days when my kids were babies. Actually, there was a phase in my kids' lives where all the children in the neighborhood called me "Trevor's Mom", which isn't so different, I suppose. :-)

Anyway, my quiz results:

You scored as Cultural Creative. Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational.

Cultural Creative

81%

Idealist

69%

Postmodernist

63%

Existentialist

50%

Romanticist

44%

Fundamentalist

38%

Modernist

31%

Materialist

25%

What is Your World View?
created with QuizFarm.com

One Common Faith, paragraphs 24-27

2005-05-15T17:21:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in the previous entry, the next paragraphs continue with a restatement of some pretty basic Baha'i teachings:

24
The teachings of Bahá'u'lláh cut through this tangle of inconsistent views and, in doing so, reformulate many truths which, whether explicitly or implicitly, have lain at the heart of all Divine revelation. . . .

The only problem I have with this is the rather arrogant dismissal of previous traditions; it is, of course, Baha'i teaching that Baha'u'llah has reconfirmed many of the basic and eternal truths these traditions contain.

25
To presume to judge among the Messengers of God, exalting one above the other, would be to give in to the delusion that the Eternal and All-Embracing is subject to the vagaries of human preference . . .To imagine, further, that the nature of these unique Figures can be-or needs to be-encompassed within theories borrowed from physical experience is equally presumptuous.

These kinds of statements always worry me, because this was the basis for harrassing Baha'i scholars i.e. that they used academic methods, regarded by the House as "materialist" to examine the Faith -- and in particular, the treatment of Baha'u'llah as a human being and historical figure.

What is meant by "knowledge of God", Bahá'u'lláh explains, is knowledge of the Manifestations Who reveal His will and attributes, and it is here that the soul comes into intimate association with a Creator Who is otherwise beyond both language and apprehension: . . . 26
Religion, thus conceived, awakens the soul to potentialities that are otherwise unimaginable. To the extent that an individual learns to benefit from the influence of the revelation of God for his age, his nature becomes progressively imbued with the attributes of the Divine world:

However, it might be pointed out that the soul can be awakened to such potentialities by following the teachings of any of the Manifestations.

27
Belief is thus a necessary and inextinguishable urge of the species that has been described by an influential modern thinker as "evolution become conscious of itself".16 If, as the events of the twentieth century provide sad and compelling evidence, the natural expression of faith is artificially blocked, it will invent objects of worship however unworthy-or even debased-that may in some measure appease the yearning for certitude. It is an impulse that will not be denied.

I really don't know what is meant by "artificially blocked" here. Something similar is mentioned in the introduction to this paper: accelerating breakdown in social order calls out desperately for the religious spirit to be freed from the shackles that have so far prevented it from bringing to bear the healing influence of which it is capable.

I do not know what they think is preventing religion from doing its healing work; we have religious freedom -- indeed, religious choice has never in history been more free than it is right now. This is not universal, of course, there are still countries that limit, or even actively persecute religious minorities, but it is precisely in the Western "materialist" countries so condemned by this paper that religion is most free -- and material techological advances that have made information about different religions more free than anyone could ever have dreamed possible. However, it may be that freedom of religious choice is not what they are talking about here.

Rules for the Religious Right

2005-05-15T15:01:00.000-07:00

For those readers who are getting tired of *One Common Faith* -- I thought you might enjoy this. My favorites:

1. If any member of the religious right has been divorced, they must sit out of any conversation directly or indirectly about so-called "family values." Duct tape will be placed on the mouth of a religious rightist if they have divorced a spouse while she (or he) was sick or in the hospital, just to let everyone know that they have nothing meaningful to add to a discussion of family values.

5. If you have had an extra-marital affair, dated your secretary, or been with a prostitute (paid or unpaid), you must leave the field. You cannot tell the rest of us what to do when you don't live by your own rules. This is a very fair deal considering that you don't have to wear any scarlet letters.

10. Anyone who says they know what God meant by anything, especially anything written in a holy book, scroll, or divine fingerpainting is immediately to be dismissed from influencing the public life of the republic. Since you know what God wants, then politics is probably the last thing that you should spend your time on. Really.

One Common Faith, paragraphs 21-23

2005-05-15T07:12:00.000-07:00

21
Few today among those who have some degree of objective familiarity with the subject are likely, therefore, to entertain an illusion that any one of the established religious systems of the past can assume the role of ultimate guide for humankind in the issues of contemporary life, even in the improbable event that its disparate sects should come together for that purpose.

Oh, I don't know. People who are seeking such guidance from their religion on these issues generally find it. The Bible doesn't say "Thou shalt not do research on stem cells obtained from aborted fetuses", yet many Christians find a religious basis to object.

Each one of what the world regards as independent religions is set in the mould created by its authoritative scripture and its history. As it cannot refashion its system of belief in a manner to derive legitimacy from the authoritative words of its Founder, it likewise cannot adequately answer the multitude of questions posed by social and intellectual evolution.

Religion is constantly being re-fashioned and re-interpreted, in every age. There are plenty of people who are quite certain they have all the answers they need. Of course, those answers don't do the rest of us that much good, because for them, the answer is for the rest of the world to adopt their religious viewpoint. In fact, I think this may be the kind of answer this paper is offering us.

Distressing as this may appear to many, it is no more than an inherent feature of the evolutionary process. Attempts to force a reversal of some kind can lead only to still greater disenchantment with religion itself and exacerbate sectarian conflict.

I am guessing that by "reversal" they mean the solutions proposed by fundamentalism -- which does disenchant those who can't swallow it and lead to sectarian conflict.

22
The dilemma is both artificial and self-inflicted.

The dilemma being, I suppose, that religion is needed, but none of the older traditions are adequate. Well, I suppose it is "self-inflicted" to choose a religion other than the Baha'i Faith.

The world order, if it can be so described, within which Bahá'ís today pursue the work of sharing Bahá'u'lláh's message is one whose misconceptions about both human nature and social evolution are so fundamental as to severely inhibit the most intelligent and well-intentioned endeavours at human betterment.

O.K., but this paper is quite vague on what Baha'i answers are going to be superior to those already tried.

Particularly is this true with respect to the confusion that surrounds virtually every aspect of the subject of religion. In order to respond adequately to the spiritual needs of their neighbours, Bahá'ís will have to gain an in-depth understanding of the issues involved. The effort of imagination this challenge requires can be appreciated from the advice that is perhaps the most frequently and urgently reiterated admonition in the writings of their Faith: to "meditate", to "ponder", to "reflect".

Again, there's this vagueness -- Baha'is are exhorted to think about these issues. That's great; I can get behind the notion of thinking about issues. I've been doing that right here, but I'm not sure the UHJ would appreciate the thoughts I've come up with.

23
A commonplace of popular discourse is that by "religion" is intended the multitude of sects currently in existence. Not surprisingly, such a suggestion at once arouses protest in other quarters that by religion is intended rather one or another of the great, independent belief systems of history that have shaped and inspired whole civilizations.

Actually, that depends on the awareness of the person one is talking to. Probably most Americans, when talk about "religions" think of the various denominations of Christianity. In the vernacular, to "get religion" means to become a Christian. Most of the people I know that have a broader awareness of religion are those that have been interested enough in the subject to look outside Christianity.

This point of view, in turn, however, runs up against the inevitable query as to where one will find these historic faiths in the contemporary world. Where, precisely, are "Judaism", "Buddhism", "Christianity", "Islam" and the others, since they obviously cannot be identified with the irreconcilably opposed organizations that purport to speak authoritatively in their names?

Actually, these religions are quite unconcerned about that. When Baha'is go bragging to Christians about how united they are, Christians just look at them blankly -- they don't view the multiplicity of denominations as a fault. Denominational lines have become less important than the liberal/fundamentalist divide, anyway. It reminds me a bit of when Christians criticize the Baha'i Faith for not promising salvation, saying "You don't know you're saved". Well, that's because it isn't an issue to us. If you're going to talk to other religions, a good first step might be to find out what they *do* care about.

Nor does the problem end there. Yet another response to the enquiry will almost certainly be that by religion is intended simply an attitude to life, a sense of relationship with a Reality that transcends material existence. Religion, so conceived, is an attribute of the individual person, an impulse not susceptible of organization, an experience universally available. Again, however, such an orientation will be seen by a majority of religiously minded persons as lacking the very authority of self-discipline and the unifying effect that give religion meaning.

The "spiritual, but not religious" category is one of the fastest-growing approaches to religion in this country. It must be meaningful to somebody. I would agree that it is sometimes approached in a rather haphazard fashion, where you're religious when you feel like it, but don't have to worry about any of those pesky restrictions on behavior. I have even seen supposed devotion to one's spiritual quest used as an excuse for utter selfishness. However, that does not necessarily have to be the case. Nor does formal adherence to an organized religion necessarily mean "self-discipline" and "unity". The person who goes to church on Sunday, and plays dirty the rest of the week is a cliche all of us have heard about. The person who prays and meditates daily, carefully weighing their moral actions, but does not belong to a religious community is certainly more devout than the one who checks in once a week in his best clothes and doesn't give God a thought the rest of the time.

Some objectors would even argue that, on the contrary, religion signifies the lifestyle of persons who, like themselves, have adopted severe regimens of daily ritual and self-denial that set them entirely apart from the rest of society.

Well, that most certainly is one form that religion can take.

What all such differing conceptions have in common is the extent to which a phenomenon that is acknowledged to completely transcend human reach has nevertheless gradually been imprisoned within conceptual limits-whether organizational, theological, experiential or ritualistic-of human invention.

Wait a minute. Didn't this document just say that being outside an organizational framework, and just operating as a spiritual individual was meaningless? I would certainly agree that God cannot be contained within any kind of conceptual limits, or organization, or theology, or ritual -- that's basic Baha'i teaching. In fact, the next several paragraphs go on to recap some basic Baha'i teachings, and so this is a good place to break.

One Common Faith, paragraphs 12-20

2005-05-14T18:39:00.000-07:00

It would end up being repetitive to go through the next several paragraphs piece by piece, so I'm just going over this in general. The reader should refer to the original document to get all the details.

Paragraphs 12-16 speak of the forces of globalization, which I don't think anyone would dispute. The very fact that I can write these words, and they can be read by people all over the world is little short of a miracle -- and this increasingly global exchange of ideas certainly has an impact on the spiritual life of mankind, and how diverse peoples view each other. The response to a disaster like December's tsunami is just an obvious example -- the people affected are foreign, having a very different culture and outlook than our own, yet there was an outpouring of charitable effort like nothing I've never seen. And, of course, that's only one very obvious example among many.

The paper shifts, beginning at paragraph 17, from a denunciation of materialism and secularism, to a discussion of the benfits that religion has brought mankind. In paragraph 18, the UHJ asks Why, then, does this immensely rich heritage not serve as the central stage for today's reawakening of spiritual quest? Then, in the next paragraph, answers its own question:

It is here that the spiritual nature of the contemporary crisis comes into sharpest focus because most of the decisions called for are not merely practical but moral. In large part, therefore, loss of faith in traditional religion has been an inevitable consequence of failure to discover in it the guidance required to live with modernity, successfully and with assurance.

Well, actually, the "rich heritage" of the older religions actually *has* been the focus of spiritual quest for the vast majority of people. One thing I've seen online is a great resurgence of interest in Christian mysticism, and what the early Church fathers had to say about that. There are certainly more examples, but the most spiritual exploration goes on within the framework of these religious traditions, so I don't even know what the UHJ is talking about here.

What remains to be seen, however, is how the Baha'i Faith will be more successful in dealing with the ethical problems that come about through social and technological change. Baha'is, after all, do not live in a bubble; we are subject to the same forces of modernity as everyone else is. And it is strange that the UHJ should bring up such tricky moral questions such as stem cell research and sexual identity, when it has avoided ruling on such topics.

Then, the paper goes on to say:
A second barrier to a re-emergence of inherited systems of belief as the answer to humanity's spiritual yearnings is the effects already mentioned of global integration . . .

Basically, the idea I'm picking up here is that since people of various religions have been thrown together, they find they have much in common, and inevitably can't regard their own religion in quite the same light. What the UHJ doesn't mention is that while such contact can and does create interfaith understanding, it also can and does result in the defensive stance of fundamentalism.

People have been asking about what *A Common Faith* is aimed at -- what's it's general message? That actually hasn't been all that easy to figure out. So far, what I've gotten is that materialism and secularism, while they have brought mankind unimagined material benefits, have neglected its spiritual nature, bring moral chaos and the degeneration of society. So, basically, if lack of religion is the problem, then religion is the answer, but the world's religious systems haven't been able to do much about the world's problems either. At this point, the paper has shifted to examining the reasons for that.

One Common Faith, paragraph 12

2005-05-14T12:57:00.000-07:00

12
Clearly, materialism's error has lain not in the laudable effort to improve the conditions of life, but in the narrowness of mind and unjustified self-confidence that have defined its mission.

Well, as I said earlier, I'm not sure "materialism" has a mission, except if you're talking about Marxism. But since the previous paragraph was complaining about consumerism, I assume they're talking about the West.

The importance both of material prosperity and of the scientific and technological advances necessary to its achievement is a theme that runs through the writings of the Bahá'í Faith. As was inevitable from the outset, however, arbitrary efforts to disengage such physical and material well-being from humanity's spiritual and moral development have ended by forfeiting the allegiance of the very populations whose interests a materialistic culture purports to serve.

I'm trying to make sense of this. Are they complaining that religion has not been injected into scientific endeavors? One reason for that is that religion very often has fought against, and sought to place limits on scientific experimentation that would destroy its very foundation. The relationship between scientists and religionists has not, historically, been very friendly. The last thing any scientist is going to want is interference by any religion, telling them that they can't investigate in certain areas, or that their conclusions must be rejected on the basis of religious dogma. I'd like to know exactly how the UHJ thinks the two should be blended. Would they like scientists to talk about God or scold us about risky behaviors while they try to cure disease? Would they prefer certain avenues of research to be prohibited on a religious basis?

One Common Faith, paragraphs 10-11

2005-05-14T10:44:00.000-07:00

10
The fate of what the world has learned to call social and economic development has left no doubt that not even the most idealistic motives can correct materialism's fundamental flaws. Born in the wake of the chaos of the Second World War, "development" became by far the largest and most ambitious collective undertaking on which the human race has ever embarked. Its humanitarian motivation matched its enormous material and technological investment. Fifty years later, while acknowledging the impressive benefits development has brought, the enterprise must be adjudged, by its own standards, a disheartening failure. Far from narrowing the gap between the well-being of the small segment of the human family who enjoy the benefits of modernity and the condition of the vast populations mired in hopeless want, the collective effort that began with such high hopes has seen the gap widen into an abyss.

Certainly, the UHJ is right to be concerned about the enormous gap between rich and poor in the world -- a gap which has stubbornly resisted solution. However, I don't think that the aid given to these poor countries was ever really intended to narrow that gap substantially. The wealthier countries of the world mostly want the Third World to be a source of resources and cheap labor. So, it's by the UHJ's standards that this effort has been judged a failure, not by its own. And, I am uncertain as to what solution is being offered here that would be better than what is being done. The context would suggest that replacing material values with spiritual ones would somehow solve this problem. But what do they expect to happen if there were, indeed, the kind of spiritual revolution in the world that the UHJ wants?

11
Consumer culture, today's inheritor by default of materialism's gospel of human betterment, is unembarrassed by the ephemeral nature of the goals that inspire it. For the small minority of people who can afford them, the benefits it offers are immediate, and the rationale unapologetic.

Well, they've got us there. Consumer culture is seen as being pretty hollow and bankrupt even by the people caught up in it. It's virtually inescapable. Americans live in what, by the world's standard, extreme wealth, but it takes two good incomes and going into incredible debt in order to sustain a middle-class lifestyle -- and we feel perpetually stressed and like we're falling behind.

Emboldened by the breakdown of traditional morality, the advance of the new creed is essentially no more than the triumph of animal impulse, as instinctive and blind as appetite, released at long last from the restraints of supernatural sanctions.

I'm not sure what "traditional morality" has to do with it. The greatest shift I've seen, since my parents' and grandparents' generation is that we no longer know how to be careful with our money, we have higher expectations for material comforts, and we go into debt at the drop of a hat. I don't think that's less "materialistic", though. Saving money and pinching pennies is just as materialistically motivated as spending it. As for supernatural sanctions", I haven't noticed the religious people of this country being particularly afraid they are going to hell because they have a high standard of living, in spite of what Jesus said about rich men and the eye of a needle.

Its most obvious casualty has been language. Tendencies once universally castigated as moral failings mutate into necessities of social progress. Selfishness becomes a prized commercial resource;

"Selfishness" has always been "a prized commercial resource". People invest in order to make money -- and that also ends up making money, or at least a living, for other people. The big difference I see with earlier generations is that they also took pride in hard work; people still work hard, but they complain about it.

falsehood reinvents itself as public information;

I'm not sure what they are talking about here. We do, now, live in an information society, and with so much out there, it is sometimes no easy task to separate the true from the false -- and sometimes it's just a matter of what spin is put on the facts. Yes, people lie -- but people have always lied. They just have broader platforms on which to do it.

perversions of various kinds unabashedly claim the status of civil rights.

I assume they are talking about the Gay Rights movement here. I don't think "spiritual values" are going to put that genie back in the bottle. Young people are every bit as offended by our bias against gays as we were about our parents' racism. Religious leaders can go ahead and thunder all they want about the sin of homosexuality, but the trend towards tolerance isn't going to be reversed for the foreseeable future. I'm not sure exactly what the UHJ would like to see happen anyway, in terms of social attitudes. I've got a cousin who is a lesbian, and she and her partner show up to family gatherings -- and this is a pretty conservative family, on the whole. Would it be a better thing to make her an outcast? Would that be more "spiritual"?

Under appropriate euphemisms, greed, lust, indolence, pride-even violence-acquire not merely broad acceptance but social and economic value. Ironically, as words have been drained of meaning, so have the very material comforts and acquisitions for which truth has been casually sacrificed.

I don't really know what they are talking about here, except perhaps that playing upon our "greed, lust, indolence, pride" and violent tendencies is used to sell us stuff. But it's a two-way street; if advertisers could sell by appealing to our better nature, they'd do that. And sometimes they do -- advertising appeals to the desire to be good parents, for example, when they sell child-oriented products. "Material comforts" aren't supposed to provide meaning; they provide material comfort -- they just are what they are. I don't sacrifice "truth" in order to buy something new; I sacrifice money which could possibly go to another purpose. The morality involved has to do with choices we make.

Protests in Afghanistan

2005-05-14T02:37:00.000-07:00

Protests over the story that broke a few days ago over U.S. interrogators flushing pages of the Qur'an down the toilet are growing violent, with eight people believed dead. One of the most disgusting aspects of the stories of prisoner abuse in Guantanamo and Abu Graib, are the reports interrogators deliberately attempting to humiliate prisoners because of their religion e.g. forcing them to eat pork or drink alcohol, or smearing red ink on them and telling them it is menstrual blood, leaving prisoners unable to say their prayers until they have washed.

The last paragraph of the article says: Radwan Masmoudi, president of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy in Washington, said a "serious investigation" of the Guantanamo allegations was needed because the incident "strengthens the voice" of extremists who say the United States is "not serious in promoting freedom and democracy in the Muslim world."

Investigation? An investigation that will, in several months, result in a report that few will read isn't going to be adequate. We need the President to come out with an apology, assurance of punishment for those responsible, and a strong statement that the U.S., with its tradition of religious freedom does not approve of disrespect to anyone's religious scriptures.

Now, it may very well be true that these protests are being coordinated by extremist groups, but a Muslim doesn't have to be an extremist to be revolted by this. How would you expect the adherents of any religion to react to the desecration of their scriptures? I thought we were supposed to be winning hearts and minds over there, and promoting democracy.

One Common Faith, paragraphs 8-9

2005-05-10T08:50:00.000-07:00

8
The most obvious cause of these re-evaluations has been the bankruptcy of the materialist enterprise itself. For well over a hundred years, the idea of progress was identified with economic development and with its capacity to motivate and shape social improvement. Those differences of opinion that existed did not challenge this world view, but only conceptions as to how its goals might best be attained. Its most extreme form, the iron dogma of "scientific materialism", sought to reinterpret every aspect of history and human behaviour in its own narrow terms. Whatever humanitarian ideals may have inspired some of its early proponents, the universal consequence was to produce regimes of totalitarian control prepared to use any means of coercion in regulating the lives of hapless populations subjected to them. The goal held up as justification of such abuses was the creation of a new kind of society that would ensure not only freedom from want but fulfilment for the human spirit. At the end, after eight decades of mounting folly and brutality, the movement collapsed as a credible guide to the world's future.

I think there are few people left who would disagree with this.

9
Other systems of social experimentation, while repudiating recourse to inhumane methods, nevertheless derived their moral and intellectual thrust from the same limited conception of reality. The view took root that, since people were essentially self-interested actors in matters pertaining to their economic well-being, the building of just and prosperous societies could be ensured by one or another scheme of what was described as modernization.

People *are*, for the most part, "self-interested actors" when it comes to economics, which is one reason communism didn't work. People just don't spend or invest money out of concern for the common welfare. The only limit on "self-interest" here is that people will sometimes forgo economic opportunities for other types of advantage i.e. for their family's well-being (e.g. career women who follow "the Mommy track") or for reasons of personal self-fulfillment or even personal ethics. I'm not sure that "modernization" could really be called a "scheme", though, except in instances where the government did some deliberate planning, e.g. the rural electrification projects back in the 30s and 40s. A lot of it has to do with technological advances. I'm sitting here at a computer, not because anybody had a "scheme", but because a combination of creative minds and economic forces made it possible. Sure, Bill Gates could be said to have had a "scheme" to write software, but that's like saying I had a "scheme" to be a teacher.

It also strikes me as odd to see a capitalist economic system as "social experiementation"; it's simply what happens when the government refrains from interference with individual economic decisions -- and there's virtually no such thing as a purely laissez-faire system anyway. I would be very curious to see exactly what sort of economic model the UHJ would approve of.

The closing decades of the twentieth century, however, sagged under a mounting burden of evidence to the contrary: the breakdown of family life, soaring crime, dysfunctional educational systems, and a catalogue of other social pathologies that bring to mind the sombre words of Bahá'u'lláh's warning about the impending condition of human society: "Such shall be its plight, that to disclose it now would not be meet and seemly."2

The "social pathologies" discussed here pretty much peaked in the 1970s, but through the 1980s, there was a conservative backlash -- crime is down, drug use is down, teenage pregnancy is down, educational standards were toughened. Various organizations, including our schools, proclaim "zero tolerance" for a host of ills ranging from violence to drugs to sexual harrassment. For all the troubles that plague us, my children are growing up in a less "pathological" society than I did.

And it's easy to forget the social pathologies that prevailed in the Western world at the beginning of the 20th century, but which have greatly dimininshed, especially where the treatment of women, children, and ethnic minorities are concerned. It's easy to complain about "dysfunction" in education, but at the beginning of this century most children left school at what would now be considered unacceptably young ages in order to work. You can gripe about "family breakdown", but a world in which women were forced to remain in abusive marriages through fear of social disapproval and inability to support themselves had very little to brag about. It does seem, sometimes, that for every advance, there's yet another problem, but that doesn't mean that progress hasn't been made.

Threatened Boycott of Baha'i Speaker Ends Up Being No Big Deal

2005-05-09T20:36:00.000-07:00

The St. Charles Mayor's Prayer Breakfast broke with tradition and invited Baha'i Billie Mayo as keynote speaker. Emcee Tom Hughes, and a handful of others didn't show up, but the 210 people that attended hardly noticed, so as a boycott it was pretty much a flop. It's always nice to hear a story that reminds us that the majority of people are not jerks.

Mother's Day is Peace Day

2005-05-08T06:53:00.000-07:00

Mother's Day was originally founded as part of the Peace movement; Julia Ware Howe, founder of the holiday insisted "Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience."

I was recently talking about how I would do anything to prevent my son from being sent off to war, but what I didn't add is that it's not only fear that he would be killed -- I don't want him turned into a killer, either, which would be the obvious necessity for his survival. No matter how you justify it, the obligation to kill other human beings does something to the human soul, something that I don't want done to my son -- or daughter, for that matter. As Baha'u'llah said "It is better that you should be slain than that you should slay."

One Common Faith, paragraphs 5-7

2005-05-08T05:30:00.000-07:00

Since the next three paragraphs pretty much elaborate on the same theme, and the quotes, combined with my own commentary would make this blog entry impossibly long, I'm just going to quote a short bit of it, and refer the reader to the entire document.

As the twentieth century approached its close, therefore, nothing seemed less likely than a sudden resurgence of religion as a subject of consuming global importance. Yet that is precisely what has now occurred in the form of a groundswell of anxiety and discontent, much of it still only dimly conscious of the sense of spiritual emptiness that is producing it. . . . Perhaps the most insistent factor in producing the change is reluctant recognition that there is no credible replacement for religious belief as a force capable of generating self-discipline and restoring commitment to moral behaviour. . . .

The reawakened interest in religion is clearly far from having reached its peak, in either its explicitly religious or its less definable spiritual manifestations. On the contrary. The phenomenon is the product of historical forces that steadily gather momentum. Their common effect is to erode the certainty, bequeathed to the world by the twentieth century, that material existence represents ultimate reality.

As I said before, the idea that religious faith somehow disappeared from view during the 20th century, then suddenly has sprung to life again is simply ahistorical, with the sole exception of the former Communist countries where religious expression was either strictly regulated or banned outright. But Americans have always been religious; in fact, church membership was much higher in the 20th century than in the 18th. From the modernist vs. fundamentalist debates of the early 1900s to the Culture Wars of our own generation, from New Thought to New Age, religion has been alive and well all along -- if what they are talking about is the interest and need of human beings to find some kind of sense and meaning to their lives. Should I name all the religious movements that have emerged since 1900? The very term "New Religious Movement", by definition, means a religious group founded since 1945, and they are numerous enough to be considered a whole specialty among academics that study religion. Of course, if the need for spiritual meaning and experience in our lives is a fundamental part of being human -- and I certainly think it is -- then I would not expect it to disappear during any historical period, but for specific outlooks and beliefs to change.

One of the things that has created the illusion that this search is somehow "new" is that over this century, there have been new tools which enable spiritual seekers to explore a vast array of alternatives that simply weren't accessible before. We've gone from an era of books, to broadcast media, then video and audio tapes, to the Internet, where information about any subject is cheaper than water, and an increasing portion of the population is educated enough to explore their religious options. One is no longer limited to joining a local religious congregation; one can find like-minded thinkers in cyberspace, or one can just live one's spiritual life without any formal affiliattion, as the book *Generations*characterized the Baby Boomers: "They built churches inside their own heads."

Of course, as the House implies, this spiritual seeking has not been all to the good: The twentieth century also saw the rise of fundamentalism -- a phenomenon named, at least for Christianity, at the beginning of the century, not its end, and which was growing throughout it. The big change that has occurred in the last 30 years or so is that fundamentalism has grown more respectable and middle class, while mainstream churches have been in decline. My grandmother has been a bit bemused that a religious outlook that was largely confined to the poor and ignorant when she was young, has suddenly emerged to become a political force to be reckoned with, while her friends complain that their churches have been drained of young people. I would argue that this is not a sign of becoming more religious or spiritual, but the growth of a defensive intolerance. It is not, as I mentioned in an earlier entry , an indication of signifantly improved moral behavior, either.

Faith-based News

2005-05-07T08:45:00.000-07:00

Here's a good article on something that ought to be obvious, but very often isn't: Christian broadcasting is enormously influential on the political life of this country. An issue like the Terry Schaivo case can simmer for years in Christian media, completely ignored by the mainstream, until it bursts out suddenly into view, and everybody else wonders where it all came from.

This used to be true of right-wing media, too. Oklahoma City wasn't a great shock to folks who had been following the right-wing press and/or broadcasting because although Waco had virtually dropped out of sight in the mainstream, it had *never* been forgotten on the right, and there was an entire industry of videos, books, etc. about how it was a frightening example of government oppression. But, with the dominence of Fox News, I don't think it's quite so "underground" anymore.

There's another aspect to the Religious Right that this article notes in passing, too: That more than a few evangelical and fundamentalist Christians are dedicated to living in a safe and hermetically-sealed world of their own. They associate only with other Christians like themselves, send their kids to Christian schools ( or homeschool), then send them off to Christian colleges, where they will meet and marry one of their own. For some of these folks, the only place they encounter non-Christians, or even liberal Christians, (or even conservative Catholics) is at work -- and those that work in these Christian-oriented information and educational industries don't even do that. They can even now plug into a satellite network that carries *only* Christian broadcasting. It's no wonder that they see liberal, or even moderate viewpoints through a lens of stereotypes that present them as self-evidently ridiculous.

One Common Faith, paragraph 4

2005-05-07T06:25:00.000-07:00

4
Throughout that part of the world where the vast majority of the earth's population live, facile announcements that "God is Dead" had passed largely unnoticed.

This is, in itself, a pretty "facile" statement, if one looks at what "God is dead" means. According to Wikipedia, "it is Nietzsche's controversial way of saying that God has ceased to be a reckoning force in the people's lives, even if they don't recognize it." This appears to be similar to what the UHJ is complaining about -- that religion no longer has the kind of influence that it once did. The difference is in whether one thinks this a good thing or a bad thing.

It's also worth noting that Neitzche put his famous statement in the mouth of a "madman" who wasn't simply throwing it in the faces of the faithful, but crying out in despair that humanity had killed God.

The way pre-modern peoples used to view God, as opposed to the way moderns do is a pretty complex subject, but the scientific advances that have been made in the modern world have made it virtually impossible to believe in God in quite the same way as people did before. We are left with a choice between a modernist version of religion, which makes a distinction between scientific facts and religious truth, or a fundamentalism that attempts to claim that religious truth is scientific fact.

The experience of the peoples of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific had long confirmed them in the view not only that human nature is deeply influenced by spiritual forces, but that its very identity is spiritual. Consequently, religion continued, as had always been the case, to function as the ultimate authority in life.

Well, it's pretty easy to retain a pre-modern conception of God when people are uneducated; those living in the Third World who have a Western education are subject to the same dilemma that faces other moderns. However, I find myself a bit puzzled at this romanticizing of a past where people were more "spiritual"; I have always seen the Baha'i Faith as unique in *not* looking backwards towards a golden era of the past, but rather oriented towards the future. In fact, my understanding of Baha'i teaching is that this is the Day of God because the very life of mankind has been "revolutionized"; Baha'u'llah didn't come to return us to the way of life that prevailed on this planet for over 4500 years.

A good deal of this "spiritual" orientation of pre-modern people was what even religious people today would call superstition. It would not take too much effort to think of the disadvantages of such a perspective, particularly from the point of view of human rights -- some of these issues are still being fought over. The spiritual orientation being praised here also leads premodern cultures to do things like cut off parts of girls' genitalia in order to ensure their chastity, or to burn widows, or to view lower castes as "unclean", or to punish sexual misdeeds with stoning or to regard mental illness as demonic possession. One could go on and on in this vein. Yes, the supernatural permeates the world of pre-modern people, but this is not an unmixed blessing. Neither is modernity, of course -- but I'm not sure that we can really just pick out the advantages of both. We can't tell science "O.K., give us your material benefits, but leave our world-view alone." It doesn't work that way.

These convictions, while not directly confronted by the ideological revolution taking place in the West, were effectively marginalized by it, insofar as interaction among peoples and nations was concerned. Having penetrated and captured all significant centres of power and information at the global level, dogmatic materialism ensured that no competing voices would retain the ability to challenge projects of world wide economic exploitation. To the cultural damage already inflicted by two centuries of colonial rule was added an agonizing disjunction between the inner and outer experience of the masses affected, a condition invading virtually all aspects of life. Helpless to exercise any real influence over the shaping of their futures or even to preserve the moral well-being of their children, these populations were plunged into a crisis different from but in many ways even more devastating than the one gathering momentum in Europe and North America. Although retaining its central role in consciousness, faith appeared impotent to influence the course of events.

I can't argue with the rest of this: A lot of people in the Third World have experienced modernity as invasive, oppressive, and disorienting. Indeed, some people in Europe had a similar experience in the early modern period. The only thing I might note here is that although the primary motivation of colonialism was economic, religious motivations, i.e. the wish to convert the heathen, also played its part.

Repent! Of Being a Democrat?

2005-05-07T05:31:00.000-07:00

Well, I guess at least one preacher thinks that being a Democrat is a sin; I'm sure glad that "his actions aren't politically motivated" -- but I'm going to have to go back to my Bible to find where it says "Thou shalt vote Republican".

The article is quite short, so I'll put the whole thing here:

The minister of a Haywood County, North Carolina Baptist church is telling members of his congregation that if they're Democrats, they either need to find another place of worship or support President Bush.

Already, the Reverend Chan Chandler has ex-communicated nine members of East Waynesville Baptist Church. Another 40 members have left in protest. During last Sunday's sermon, he acknowledged that church members were upset because he named people, and he says he'll do it again because he has to according to the word of God.

Chandler could not be reached for comment Friday, but says his actions weren't politically motivated. One former church member says Chandler told some of the members that if they didn't support George Bush, they needed to resign their positions and get out of the church, or go to the altar, repent and agree to vote for Bush.

A former church treasurer says she's at church to worship God and not the preacher.

One Common Faith, paragraph 3

2005-05-05T09:10:00.000-07:00

Some folks have been asking where they can find a complete copy of *One Common Faith* -- it is now available at
http://bahaistudies.net/bwc/onecommonfaith.html.

I'll give the entire paragraph first, so folks can read it more easily, then give my commentary:

3
This posture was reinforced by the assumption that the values, ideals and disciplines cultivated over the centuries were now reliably fixed and enduring features of human nature. They needed merely to be refined by education and reinforced by legislative action. The moral legacy of the past was just that: humanity's indefeasible inheritance, requiring no further religious interventions. Admittedly, undisciplined individuals, groups or even nations would continue to threaten the stability of the social order and call for correction. The universal civilization towards the realization of which all the forces of history had been bearing the human race, however, was irresistibly emerging, inspired by secular conceptions of reality. People's happiness would be the natural result of better health, better food, better education, better living conditions-and the attainment of these unquestionably desirable goals now seemed to be within the reach of a society single-mindedly focused on their pursuit.

This posture

Just to clarify: The "posture" they mean here, from the previous paragraph, humanity could take charge of its own destiny without the need for Divine authority.

was reinforced by the assumption that the values, ideals and disciplines cultivated over the centuries were now reliably fixed and enduring features of human nature. They needed merely to be refined by education and reinforced by legislative action.

There is some merit to this point. People who aren't particularly religious are often unaware of just how much our conceptions of what is "moral" are influenced by our religious heritage -- they just think of it as "natural". However, if you compare the values of societies that have not been influenced by Christianity, you will find an entirely different conception of what "natural morality" is. Of course, religious values aren't the only influence at work, in any society. Some of the practices that horrify us so much about the Islamic world (veiling, female genital mutilation, honor killings) are holdovers from pre-Islamic culture. Americans, no matter how religious, are strongly influenced by the Enlightenment ideas on which our country was founded, and even pre-Enlightenment practices in our Anglo heritage, such as the right of trial by jury.

However, I don't think anyone was arguing that the values learned through Christianity were so fixed that we could now dispense with the religion itself. Thomas Jefferson, for example, wanted to keep what is good about Christianity, while getting rid of "superstition".

The moral legacy of the past was just that: humanity's indefeasible inheritance, requiring no further religious interventions.

I'm not sure what they are talking about here. If they by "divine interventions" they mean the Baha'i concept of progressive revelation, even religious Westerners never expected another prophetic dispensation. If, as the context suggests, they are talking about the influence of religion on government, the American Founding Fathers were as concerned about state interference in religion as they were religious interference with the state. The aim was not to eliminate religion from people's lives; on the contrary, they thought it was morally beneficial. But there is no way for "religious interventions" to occur in governmental affairs without favoring one religious group over another; we still battle with these issues to this day.

Besides, 'Abdu'l-Baha' clearly forbade the interference of religious leaders in governmental affairs, so if this is what the UHJ is referring to in this rather vaguely-worded paragraph, then this isn't something Baha'is should be promoting anyway.

Admittedly, undisciplined individuals, groups or even nations would continue to threaten the stability of the social order and call for correction. The universal civilization towards the realization of which all the forces of history had been bearing the human race, however, was irresistibly emerging, inspired by secular conceptions of reality. People's happiness would be the natural result of better health, better food, better education, better living conditions-and the attainment of these unquestionably desirable goals now seemed to be within the reach of a society single-mindedly focused on their pursuit.

The betterment of material circumstances is not only a secular issue; many of those who fought for reforms, such as compulsory education and governmental care of the poor had religious motivations. A Protestant society where each person had the right to read scripture for himself requires literacy (remember the Old Deluder Law of the Puritans?), and giving food, shelter, and medicine to the poor has been a Christian practice since the very beginning. The biggest change in conception was in seeing these things as a function of government, rather than private charity.

Partisan Takeover at PBS

2005-05-05T07:13:00.000-07:00

CPB chairman Kenneth Tomlinson is trying to correct the "liberal bias" at PBS, which actually means he doesn't want shows with a liberal bent at all, since PBS has always had conservative shows on:

By right-wing arithmetic, Mr. Moyers alone outweighs the copious conservative programming that has graced PBS for nearly four decades, dating back to William F. Buckley's inaugural broadcast of Firing Line in 1966.

Indeed, the list of conservative and corporate-oriented shows aired on PBS over the ensuing years is quite impressive, including The McLaughlin Group, Peggy Noonan on Values, Ben Wattenberg's Think Tank, Adam Smith's Money World, Wall Street Week, National Desk featuring Laura Ingraham, Fred Barnes and Larry Elder, and Tucker Carlson's Unfiltered.

I have a very warm spot in my heart for public television. For seven years, I lived in an area where we couldn't get cable, given the choice of only two (later three) other channels, we watched PBS from Sesame Street (when our kids were little) in the morning to Masterpiece Theatre at night. Only in select instances did the networks lure us away from PBS. Strangely enough, Jim used to complain of "liberal bias" on the station, too -- but it was usually in the context of particular programs. And he watched the shows, bias or no. In recent years, I've even taken phone calls during the pledge drive. (You know, half the calls you get aren't to offer pledges -- they are either to complain about the pledge drive, or changes in programming, or crank calls.)

When right-wingers call for "balance", what they really mean is that they don't want liberals to have a voice at all -- whether it's in the classroom, or on television. In fact, conservatives used to call for the complete dismantling of public television, in part because of its supposed bias, but mostly out of the general principle that it's not the government's business to fund television programs. As I've said before, conservatism has become something very different than it was when I was conservative -- it used to be about freedom, and getting the government out of our lives. (And, if you haven't noticed, I'm still a strong civil libertarian.) Now, it seems to be all about imposing a right-wing form of political correctness on everybody else. Never, at my most conservative, would it have occurred to me to interfere with the other side's freedom of expression. In fact, this whole incident rather strengthens the old style conservative idea that "he who pays the piper calls the tune" i.e, if the government funds something, then they'll get to call the shots.

But while real conservatives don't think that government should call the shots in the realm of ideas, the new breed seems to have no problem at all with it. If anybody wonders why I've drifted towards the left in recent years, there's one reason.

If you'd like to sign a petition protesting this development, and calling for Tomlinson's resignation, you can go here.

Comparing Reconstructions

2005-05-05T06:57:00.000-07:00

Here's an article that I've seen linked to in a couple of places, but is worth linking to here: David Ignatius compares the postwar reconstruction in Iraq to that of the Civil War. Unfortunately, Americans seem stubbornly averse to learning from history.

One thing is for sure: The Iraqis can outlast us; it's their country, and sooner or later (more likely sooner) the American people are going to get tired of the effort, and the dead soldiers coming home, and we will leave whether our goals are accomplished or not.

While I'm on ths subject, there's another article here that discusses the Rand Corporation's sharply critical report about how the Iraq War has been handled, especially the failure to plan for postwar recontruction and the assumption that the task would be easy.

Fighting the Enlightenment

2005-05-04T16:17:00.000-07:00

Here's another article Grandma sent me some time back -- while I'm catching up on blogging, I might as well go for it. Besides, it rather goes along with what I said in the previous entry. Here's the heart of it:

What's under siege here is nothing less than the Enlightenment. Please recall that what we benignly remember as the Renaissance coexisted with centuries of vicious religious persecution -- Christians persecuting heretics like Galileo, expelling and slaughtering Muslims and Jews, then doing bloody battle with each other following the Protestant Reformation.

The philosophers of the Enlightenment were men of science who understood that faith could not be disputed but that reason could be subjected to the test of logic and evidence. The American Revolution was a triple triumph -- for political democracy, religious tolerance, and for the free inquiry demanded by the scientific method.

Today's religious extremists are not only trying to use the state, with all its power, as religious proselytizer. They oppose science when it happens to conflict with their version of revealed truth. They twist history to claim that the Republic's freethinking Founders, like Jefferson, Adams, and Madison, were really theocrats like themselves. They long for the predemocratic world of absolutes circa 1500.

Virtually all fundamentalists I've ever heard hate the Enlightenment, either implicitly or explicitly. The only difference with Baha'i fundamentalists is that they seem to think that going back is going forward i.e. that returning to a pre-Enlightenment state of society where religious authority had the power of the state at its disposal is a step forward for humanity, and this will somehow be conducive to the unity of mankind. Sometimes, to hear them talk, one could get the impression that they think the major part of Baha'u'llah's mission was to undo the Enlightenment -- which is ridiculous if you read what He said.

One Common Faith

2005-05-04T14:04:00.000-07:00

The Universal House of Justice has just released a long essay, called *One Common Faith*, which is commended "to the study of the friends" i.e. it is primarily addressed to Baha'is. I found it interesting, so I'd like to make some comments about it, and these major statements are very important for understanding the direction that the UHJ wants to take the Baha'i Faith -- however, it is such a long document that it would be impractical to put it all on one blog entry, or for me to try to do that in one sitting. So, I'm going to have to do this in installments, and over a long time:

THERE IS EVERY REASON FOR confidence that the period of history now opening will be far more receptive to efforts to spread Bahá'u'lláh's message than was the case in the century just ended. All the signs indicate that a sea change in human consciousness is under way.

Early in the twentieth century, a materialistic interpretation of reality had consolidated itself so completely as to become the dominant world faith insofar as the direction of society was concerned. In the process, the civilizing of human nature had been violently wrenched out of the orbit it had followed for millennia. For many in the West, the Divine authority that had functioned as the focal centre of guidance-however diverse the interpretations of its nature-seemed simply to have dissolved and vanished. In large measure, the individual was left free to maintain whatever relationship he believed connected his life to a world transcending material existence, but society as a whole proceeded with growing confidence to sever dependence on a conception of the universe that was judged to be at best a fiction and at worst an opiate, in either case inhibiting progress. Humanity had taken its destiny into its own hands. It had solved through rational experimentation and discourse-so people were given to believe-all of the fundamental issues related to human governance and development.

It always makes me a bit nervous when I hear the UHJ denouncing "material interpretations of reality" because it was, at least partly, on that basis that Baha'i academics and intellectuals were persecuted. But, leaving that aside for the present, the UHJ here is complaining that "materialism" rather a religious outlook had become dominent "insofar as the direction of society was concerned", leaving religion to the individual. I'm not sure why they think this is a bad thing; after all, it is because of that freedom that the Baha'i Faith has been able to spread all over the world. A religion largely composed of converts has good reason to be grateful for the separation of church and state, which allows for individual choice in religious matters. Iran has got rid of such "materialistic" ideas in its philosophy of government, and it hasn't worked very well -- and most certainly has not been a benefit for the Baha'is there. At the same time, the U.S. which separates church and state completely, is manifestly a better society according to any measure you want to name, and has the strongest Baha'i community in the world. American society is also profoundly religious, as far as individual participation in religious and spiritual activities -- certainly much more so in European countries where there usually are "established" churches. Certainly, the events of history have proven that the best thing a government can do for religion is to leave it the heck alone to develop in its own way, with individuals free to make their spiritual choices. Religious viewpoints certainly influence politial ones -- in fact, so much so that I simply have to disagree with the UHJ here that American society, at least, religion has ever stopped exercising a profound influence. (Just find me an American politician that doesn't claim to be "a man of faith" or who admits to being an atheist!) We *have* a religious society; we don't have a religious government -- which most of us think is a good thing. It just goes to prove 'Abdu'l-Baha' right when he said that freedom in religious matters causes religion to flourish.

Deathbed Dollars

2005-05-04T07:19:00.000-07:00

This morning, Grandma sent me this:

Before Terri Schiavo died on Thursday, March 31, her parents apparently had agreed to sell the names and e-mail addresses of donors to their daughter's case to Response Unlimited, a right wing direct mail house. However, within twenty-hours of David Kirkpatrick's March 29 New York Times piece exposing the arrangement, Response Unlimited withdrew Schindler's list from its catalogue.

However, they've recognized their p.r. mistake and are waiting until the story is no longer so fresh is everyone's memory.

In a few months, when the Terri Schiavo case has drifted into the ether now inhabited by such cultural cataclysms as the Elian Gonzalez case, those who sent money or a supportive message to the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation might discover that they've made Schindler's list.

Their e-mail boxes and snail-mail boxes will be stuffed by a host of appeals from organizations pushing everything from the privatization of Social Security to school vouchers to an anti-gay-marriage amendment to the constitution.

A bit creepy, no?

Advise and Consent

2005-05-04T06:55:00.000-07:00

Daily Kos has a good discussion of the issue over the filibuster and judicial appointments. I was going to write something up about that myself, but as with so many blog ideas, I never quite made it.

My eye was caught the other day by Juan quoting Federalist Papers #10, where Madison warns about the potential for the tyranny of the majority in a democratic system. I have the clearest memory of reading a handout of this back in my college days, in an Economics class, and the professor saying to us "You think we live in a democracy, but we don't". Actually, my memory is that this particular teacher rather disapproved of the sentiment. But I remember Madison talking about the possibility of a "factious majority", and being rather stunned that a majority of the people could be considered a "faction".

It's real simple: If the judiciary is to be independent, and not just an extension of the executive branch where a president can simply pack it with judges congenial to his ideological outlook, then the Senate must be allowed to function as a check on that, not just as a rubber stamp on whatever the President wants.