Posts from — November 2005

Up into the loft on Saturday morning and again today. Why? We’re preparing to move house (once a few intervening difficulties have been negotiated away) and there’s the best part of 20 years of stuff up there. Eighteen years, actually, but who’s counting?

It’s a lot of stuff. Boxes and boxes of books - my favourite kind of stuff - that have had to be sorted into four piles: ‘keep’, ’sell’, ‘charity shop’, ‘chuck’. Old pictures - some of the frames are better than the pictures inside them. Electrical gear, cables, old electronics bits. Old papers. Courses prepared by Erica for the Baha’i Education Committee and the original Training Institute for England. Ancient suitcases. My Aunt Eveleigh’s wonderful collection of bulky family photo albums/scrap books - she left them to me when she died many years ago. Our collection - incomplete - of Baha’i Journals going back to about 1968. Bedding and an old futon.

A Baha’i Journal from February/March 1968 reports the first time the name of Baha’u'llah was mentioned formally and a Baha’i reading was included in Westminster Abbey as part of an ‘Observance in Silence with readings and music’ from the holy books of six different religions (Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Zoroastrian, Baha’i) on the even of Human Rights Day and at the beginning of the International Year for Human Rights. The Observance took place on 9 December 1967. The Dean, the Very Revd Eric Abbott, lead the Observance and introduced each of the readings. The Baha’i passage was read by Dick Backwell, who was an Auxiliary Board member at the time.

Another Baha’i Journal, from November 1974 this time, lists me as a newly appointed member and treasurer of the National Teaching Committee, along with Shahram Mottahed (Chair), Vivian Bartlett (Vice Chair), Wendy Thorne (Secretary), Kenneth Goode, Wendi Momen, Hazel Mossafaie, Iain Palin, Pamela Poulter. I was a hopeless treasurer, it has to be said. Kenneth Goode, Wendy Thorne and Pamela Poulter have all passed away during the intervening years, but the others are still alive and kicking. Shahram’s been in Canada for many years, and I served for the best part of 11 years on the National Spiritual Assembly with Iain and Wendi.

The same Journal shows that I had been on a summer teaching project in Shetland and had got a teaching post and a house there during the project. Oddly (and sadly) it makes no mention of Erica, who was also on the project and who was also responsible for finding the house - and that was the School House, Trondra, where we lived for almost ten years.

Amongst the papers were letters and scripts relating to my very first outings on the BBC World Service in 1991, when I started to write and present Words of Faith (which later became Pause for Thought). One of the letters I received at the time came from Sean Hinton, who was living with a nomadic family in the Altai Mountains in Mongolia at the time. He was 1,500 km from Ulaanbaaatar and 150 km from the nearest town (6 hours by jeep, then 2 hours on horseback). Sean’s letter starts like this:

Today is what I would call a “less good” day - a “low” day - even a “bad” day! It is early August and the snow is pouring down around my yurt tent - we are at 3,500 m and summer is over in the Altais. At 3am this morning I awoke with indigestion and a howling storm was ripping at the ties of my home and I had to go out, torch in hand, in the whipping wind and sleet, to lash down the canvas cover of my felt tent.

Sean goes on to describe how, trying to escape from the questions (always the same questions by Mongolians who meet him for the first time) pressed on him by visitors to the family he is camping with, he goes to his own tent to say prayers for patience. He’s alone for seven minutes before the visitors from next door come crowding into the ger - he clearly must now be feeling lonely. They fiddle with everything and he turns on the radio to distract them and cheer himself up.

Though the storm crackles fill the SW bands - suddenly like a shaft of light English speaking radio fills the air - home, country, one’s own people. “And the rover from Collingwood is bashing away - what a ripper”. Yes, Radio Australia with the Saturday Aussie rules from Melbourne. Is there no place to hide? [Sean had lived much of his life in Australia.]

Then in desperation I am twirling through the fog of crackles and hiss when, nestling in an almost imperceptible gap between Radio Alma-Ata in Kazakhstani and the loud beat of some regional Sinqiang pop station, there peeps out the dulcet tones that can only be the BBC … I hold my hand up fiercely when my nomads protest at missing the Sinqiang Top 10 and silence them, and hear distinctly “the teachings of Baha’u'llah”.

And the broadcast fades in and out - more snippets “love and respect for all members and obedience to the decision of the group” - “‘Abdu’l-Baha”. And then it ends - “BBC crackle hiss. “Words of Faith” fuzz fuzz, “Barney Leith”.

Sean was not the only Baha’i to hear this broadcast. Rocky Grove in the Andes, mountains half a world away from the Altai, heard it. Amatu’l-Baha Ruhiyyiih Khanum at the Baha’i World Centre in Haifa heard it and wrote:

I have enjoyed so much the way you presented the Faith over the BBC World Service recently, which, incidentally, came in very clearly here in Israel. I just thought I would let you know. Loving greetings, Ruhiyyih.

I thought I had lost these precious letters, but there they were in the loft, all part of the archaeology of my life. I had forgotten just how much these World Service short talks excited people. I have done many short talks about the Baha’i Faith on the World Service, Radio 4 and Radio 2 since then, but none have ever called forth the warm welcome that these very first efforts of mine did.

What else? Books, Ah yes, books to reflect so many different interests: railways, religion, philosophy, psychology, politics, art, fiction, layers of my life. Pulling the heavy boxes down the precarious ladder from the loft and sorting the books projected me into an archaeological dig down into those layers. So much I had forgotten of my own life emerged like treasures from what my dig unearthed (if you can ‘unearth’ what you bring down from the loft) from the earth of my past. I have ruthlessly sorted the books into those I must keep (the minority), those I can sell secondhand, those that will go to charity shops, and those that are just too damaged to keep - they will be thrown away.

And photographs. Friends from the early 1970s. Our children in Shetland and elsewhere. Groups of Baha’is at long-forgotten meetings and conferences. Photographs from the time I edited the Baha’i Journal in the early 1990s. Pictures of those who were living and are now, sadly, dead.

I am loath to jettison any of these traces of years that have passed from memory, but jettison I must.

Technorati Tags: autobiography, Baha’i, Bahai, human rights, inter-faith, interfaith

National Cycle Network signpost by the old Radley-Abingdon railway track

Originally uploaded by John Barnabas.

The signposts on the National Cycle Network near Abingdon are distinctive. I am not sure what the symbolism means (perhaps it’s not symbolism at all), particularly in relation to Abingdon. But it makes an interesting feature on the old railway track between Radley and Abingdon.

Technorati Tags: countryside, Oxfordshire

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A Radley Lake through the branches

The Radley lakes are worked-out gravel pits that have made an attractive feature in the Thames flood plain near Abingdon. They’ve also made an excellent habitat for birds and all kinds of wildlife.

But now the electricity generator at Didcot power station has applied to use them as a place to dump fly-ash. There’s been a local campaign to stop this. If it doesn’t succeed we’ll lose an important bit of habitat, not to mention a nice place to walk.

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Looking down Thrupp Lane, Radley

The blog’s in need of a bit of something visual, so here’s an autumn picture from my part of Oxfordshire. I took this while out for a walk with my wife and our dog last week.

Since I took the pic we’ve had some serious frosts and the leaves, which have hung onto a lot of trees right up to now, are at long last beginning to come down.

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I can highly recommend Saleem’s blog from Cairo. It’s an amusingly written set of reflections and stories of a young guy, a friend of mine, who’s gone from the UK to live in Cairo for a time.

Read and enjoy!

Technorati Tags: Egypt, Cairo

It’s a frosty and glorious day in the south east of England. I stood on the station at Radley just before 7.30am and looked out over the Thames Valley countryside, across the flat meadows to the east of the station, towards the low hills on the far bank of the river at Nuneham Courtney. The sun, not yet risen above the hills, made that warm orange/yellow glow that one sees at sunrise and sunset on frosty days. The air was still and the sky clear.

I could see the vapour trails from four or five aircraft high in the sky. (A quick calculation suggests that there were around 750 people overhead as I stood there on that country platform.)

I walked from Paddington to the Baha’i Centre in 21 minutes, my best time, at a brisk pace. The sun backlit the remaining leaves on the trees in Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park - the kind of light that photographers love. The gold on the Albert Memorial was gleaming. The crisp air was great for walking.

Beautiful!

Technorati Tags: Oxfordshire, weather, UK

No doubt the present riots and disorder in France have a complex set of causes, but one of the factors is surely Islamism. It would be inconceivable that the Muslim Brotherhood, which is at work in the former French colonies in North Africa, will not either have precipitated the riots and burnings or be exploiting the discontents of the immigrant communities in the banlieus of Paris and other parts of France. This point was made by a Lebanese commentator (living in France) on this morning’s Today programme on BBC Radio 4. Another commentator, a French philosopher, saw secularism as the solution, but considered secularism to be now a distant goal. Of course, this philosopher missed the point - secularism is no answer to the spiritual ills of humankind - but he warned that this unrest is not just a French problem; he predicted that many other countries in Europe, including Britain, would see riots and burnings of the kind that are happening in France right now.

This brings to mind a paragraph from the Universal House of Justice’s Message to the World’s Religious Leaders, issued in April 2002:

With every day that passes, danger grows that the rising fires of religious prejudice will ignite a worldwide conflagration the consequences of which are unthinkable. Such a danger civil government, unaided, cannot overcome. Nor should we delude ourselves that appeals for mutual tolerance can alone hope to extinguish animosities that claim to possess Divine sanction. The crisis calls on religious leadership for a break with the past as decisive as those that opened the way for society to address equally corrosive prejudices of race, gender and nation. Whatever justification exists for exercising influence in matters of conscience lies in serving the well-being of humankind. At this greatest turning point in the history of civilization, the demands of such service could not be more clear. “The well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable”, Baha’u'llah urges, “unless and until its unity is firmly established.”

We may be seeing an almost literal playing out of Baha’u'llah’s description of religious fanaticism as a ‘world devouring fire’.

In the UK the government is working hard to put in place legislative measures that it believes will control the spread of extremism that claims religious justification, specifically the radically ideological expression of Islam that has been labelled ‘Islamism’. The Terrorism Bill, with its controversial proposal to allow the police to detain those suspected of terrorism or of acts preparatory to terrorism for 90 days without charge, and the proposals to take powers to require places of worship to control those who are suspected of promoting extremism or face closure, are just two examples. I think we can safely predict that, as necessary as these measures may be, they will not be sufficient in themselves to reduce the spread of religious extremism in the UK. The throes in which Islam finds itself will contribute to the continuing disintegration of the old world order - all part, no doubt, of the Greater Plan of God.

Needless to say, this will have an impact on the Baha’i community (and indeed on other faith communities) in the UK and around the world.

In its preface to a recently published document, the Baha’i world governing council, the Universal House of Justice, refers to the accelerating breakdown in social order. This breakdown…

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.

Baha’is are urged by the Universal House of Justice to play their part in this healing by:

• drawing on a deep understanding of the process by which humanity’s spiritual life evolves;

• elevating discussion of religious issues above sectarian and transient considerations;
• ensuring that Baha’u'llah’s healing message is engaged by people everywhere.

It is time for humanity to enter on its collective spiritual inheritance. As Baha’u'llah says:

That which the Lord hath ordained as the sovereign remedy and mightiest instrument for the healing of all the world is the union of all its peoples in a one universal Cause, one common Faith.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, government, interfaith, Islam, Muslim, politics, religion, spirituality, UK

We were pretty lucky with the weather in Scarborough over the weekend. Over a thousand Baha’is and their friends made the trek to the North Yorkshire seaside resort for the annual National Baha’i Festival at Scarborough’s Spa Complex.

The theme? Light upon Light.

And it was well worth it. Talks by Douglas Martin, Shamsi Navidi (about the Guardian), Lesley Taherzadeh-O’Mara. Music by, amongst others Vahid Khadem-Missagh (who is a wonderful violinist), Ollie Heath, Soul in the City (from Manchester). Dances by the youth dance group, Oceans of Light. Talks in the Talks Pavilion, which Erica had organized (as last year). A parallel Baha’i Studies conference on Saturday. Activities for children and junior youth. A youth festival. A bookshop and stalls for people selling crafts, CDs, posters, pictures. The Lighthouse chillout zone. The reflective space in the Vita Dome (a wonderful name, ‘Vita Dome’, redolent of the 1920s and 30s, when the seaside smell of seaweed and mud was believed to be health-giving ‘ozone’). A film made by Alex about Baha’u'llah’s messages to the Kings and Rulers. And on and on.

And I missed a lot of it. With just over 24 hours’ notice I gave a presentation at the Baha’i Studies conference on One Common Faith first thing on Saturday morning. I did another presentation on One Common Faith in the Talks Pavilion on Sunday morning while the main stage. And, with Pete Hulme, gave the National Assembly’s parting message to the Festival. Much of the rest of the time I spent talking to people like Dave Black and Keith Mellard, whom I hadn’t seen for years, and to others who wanted to chat to me about various things. Linda Coulter, for example, wanted to update me about her work as the chaplaincy manager in Ashworth High Secure Hospital. I had a long chat to Jo Pearce about his work in Derby, establishing lines of communication with the Kurdish community and helping that community find good leaders, and the toy library he is running which turns out to be a great way to promote literacy.

In fact, I spent much of the first part of Saturday morning talking to Jo, Keith Mellard and Celia Cox, who is totally dedicated to working with asylum seekers and other marginalized people in Leicester. In fact, she’s just won an award - about which she’s deeply embarrassed - for her work. This is a very interesting group of people. All working class, all present or former (in Keith’s case) community activists. Both of Keith’s grandfathers (from Sheffield) were at the first meeting of the Independent Labour Party in 1893. As a child, Jo Pearce used to go out with his mum selling a communist newspaper on Soho Road in Handsworth, Birmingham. I don’t know Celia’s history, but she is certainly a firebrand - that is to say, she is quite prepared to speak her mind about issues that anger or concern her; and she is a totally dedicated Baha’i.

They all have a very interesting take on the Faith, each different, but each is well worth listening to. I would say that Jo has the strongest appreciation of the change of culture the Baha’i community is undergoing and the clearest understanding of the power of the Ruhi courses as a tool for empowerment. Keith’s discourse tends to look back to how things were in the days of Christine Herbert and the NTC, when Christine would send him to places to teach, to get teaching projects going and so on. He has strong views about what Baha’is must do if they are to convey the Message of Baha’u'llah to working class people in a way that is attractive to them, and he sees the UK community as predominantly middle class. I suppose it is, but I have spent a lot of time over the weekend talking to Baha’is with impeccable working class credentials. And I know many more. The thing is, that people accept Baha’u'llah, get an education of one kind or another and become ‘middle class’ (whatever that means). Of course people retain their memory of where they started and want to celebrate their particular heritage - these things are important in Britain, probably more important that many of us realize.

Jo and Celia both have a passionate interest in excluded and marginalized communities and both work with different excluded groups. Jo’s view is that the Ruhi Institute courses, which, after all, were developed in a poor country, are a powerful means to empower the marginalized. He envisages groups, such as the Kurds and others, embracing the Ruhi books, enrolling as Baha’is, ‘owning’ the Faith and only then meeting the rest of the Baha’i community. There could be enclaves of Baha’is growing up amongst different populations, which would change the face of the whole Baha’i community in a revolutionary way.

It seems to me that Jo, Keith and Celia all have important things to say about the way the Baha’i community grows and develops in the UK.

One of the most impressive aspects of the festival was the active presence of large numbers of junior youth and youth. In the past, some of the youth have caused trouble. But this year they played an important part in the programme (as presenters, link people, dancers, musicians) and atmosphere of the festival. To my mind, it shows the vigour and health of the Baha’i community in the UK that the youth turn up in large numbers, that they are engaged, that they are truly delightful people.

I missed the excellent theatre pieces that we had last year: Sarah Clive’s Martha Root piece, Dana Haqjoo’s single-hander on the life of Charles Dunning, and the crowning glory, Pure, Shirin Youssefian’s play about Tahirih. These sorts of pieces, if well written and performed, are very powerful.

But I’m afraid my age is now showing. I find the music that appeals to the young Baha’is less tolerable than I used to. I could have listened to Vahid Khadem-Missagh, with his wonderful young accompanist, Irena - not a Baha’i, studying at the Guildhall (I think) and only having met Vahid a couple of days before the festival - playing Bartok and Ravel and Rakhmaninov all night. I’m sure many would have found that a form of torture, although his playing was very well received. Ollie Heath’s song and dance spectacular on the festival theme (Light upon Light) was tremendous, but in the end it didn’t speak to me as it did to many in the audience. My tolerance for sitting for hours listening to others speaking or performing, unless they are very good, has almost disappeared. I have become a grumpy old man!

After Erica and I got back, I spoke at length to Alex about his film, The Prisoner and the Kings, which was premiered at the festival. It was a good solid film, written by Steve Vickers, about Baha’u'llah’s letters to Napoleon III, Pope Pius IX, Queen Victoria, Kaiser Willhelm I, Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria Hungary, Czar Alexander II, Sultan Abdulaziz, Nasiri’d-Din Shah and about the fall of all of these powerful monarchs with the notable exception of Queen Victoria, who was the only one who (reputedly) gave anything near a positive response. Alex acknowledged that the film would need quite a bit of work to be suitable for sale. One of the issues is the lack of a narrative arc in the writing. Each monarch was presented separately and there was little feeling of the overall drama that engulfed the world at the end of the 19th century and in the early 20th century leading up to the First World War. We discussed ways in which the story could be told more effectively and we may work together on this. I think there’s a need for a good film about what is a fascinating piece of history.

Technorati Tags: arts, asylum seekers, Baha’i, Bahai, children, youth, religion, spiritual, spirituality, UK, Yorkshire

Yesterday I represented the UK Baha’i community at the wonderful Service of Remembrance in St Paul’s Cathedral for the victims of the 7/7 bombings in London. It was a solemn occasion, a wonderful opportunity for reflection and rededication. The service took place in the presence of Her Majesty The Queen and HRH Prince Philip.

The cathedral was full, with victims of the bombings, their families, the bereaved, members of the emergency services, transport staff, representatives of the major faiths of the UK, all come for this national act of mourning. St Paul’s have a wonderful way with these occasions. The cathedral itself is a wondrous building, light and with a great sense of space and dignity. The service, basically an Anglican one, had been put together in such a way that those of other faiths could not find it difficult to join in. The words and the hymns had been chosen to be inclusive.

The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone) read from Isaiah (51:1-6), rather ironical, given that he is an avowed atheist. But it was appropriate, given his office, that he should have a part in the service.

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s sermon was, as is usually the case with Rowan Williams, powerful and appropriate. He contrasted the way in which terrorism arbitrarily kills anyone and everyone, without any sense of the individuality and preciousness of those who are killed or wounded, with the message of Christianity (and of other faiths) that each one of us is irreplaceable, that in the eyes of God, every life is special:

The terrorist is the enemy not just of a system or a government but of the whole idea that we are each of us unique and responsible and non-replaceable. If it were true that one victim would be as good as any other, which is what the terrorist believes, the human world would be a completely different place, unrecognisable to most of us…

Every life is a special sort of gift. When we behave as if that were true, we do what?s most important for the defeat of terror and indiscriminate violence. We want to live and work as though each person mattered; as if we did indeed believe in a love that forgot nothing and no-one.

There followed a moving act of remembrance and thanksgiving, a minute of silence. Immediately before the minute of silence the choir sang the Kyrie from Durufle’s wonderful Requiem and four candles were carried from the four corners of the cathedral by representatives of the emergency services and transport staff, accompanied by representatives of the families of those who died, and place on the altar. On each candle was printed the name of one of the locations of the bombings.

Then the Bishop of London and representatives of some of the faith communities of London (omitting the Baha’i, Jain and Zoroastrian communities) stood in front of the altar under the dome of St Paul’s and affirmed our hope for the future of London as a multi-faith, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural city bound together by mutual trust, common values, our common humanity. Young representatives of the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist faiths lit the six wicks of a single Candle of Hope, as a sign of our shared commitment to stand united in the face of evil.

After the service, the faith representatives were invited to go over the road for a cup of tea in the Chapter House. There we shook hands with Prime Minister Tony Blair and Cherie, Michael and Mrs Howard, Charles and Mrs Kennedy, Home Secretary Charles Clarke. I had a chat with Gordon Brown, and quite a long chat with Rowan Williams, whom I thanked for acknowledging that:

Time gives perspective and may bring healing; but the trauma of violence, and even more the death of someone we love makes a difference that nothing will ever completely unmake.

It seems to me that the Church of England, for all its troubles, still provides a necessary point of reference in England for national acts of remembrance, mourning, celebration and so on. And my experience of working with senior Anglican church people is generally one of openness and welcome to those of non-Christian faiths. This is not to say that there’s a kind of bland, grey inter-faith soup. Far from it. The Archbishop’s sermon clearly came from his Christian faith, and those of us representing our faiths are rooted in our faiths. In some ways, that rootedness makes inter-faith activity possible without itself becoming a substitute religion.

The next step, though, is to recognize that all the faiths come from one Divine Source, that all are part of one grand metanarrative of human religious development, and that that metanarrative has a clear direction - towards the uniting of all humans in one common faith.

Technorati Tags: Anglican, Baha’i, Blair, church, government, inter-faith, interfaith, Christianity, religion, Royal Family, St Paul’s Cathedral, UK