Posts from — May 2006

Growth is all around - a young mother (my daughter, Hari) with her baby (Jake), walking in the spring woods in the wonderfully named Robbery Bottom in Welwyn, Hertfordshire.

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age…

Dylan Thomas

Technorati Tags: countryside, England, Hertfordshire, Herts, spring, UK

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it’s
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it’s
spring
and
the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

e.e. cummings

Technorati Tags: spring

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Aah, the wonderful signs of Spring.

Come, gentle Spring! ethereal Mildness! come.

James Thomson

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.

Shakespeare, Sonnet 18

Technorati Tags: Spring

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

What is it about blogs? How come I feel I have a responsibility to write? I’ve been too busy since I last wrote to launch my blog application and put a few words in the window - it’s all serious, grown-up, work-related busy-ness, I hasten to add - and yet this darned blog lurks, the neglected child of my thoughts, demanding attention and, dammit, demanding to be fed some of the precious word-stuff that my mind produces when pressed, nay squeezed.

Now, about this busy-ness thing. I attend a fair few meetings as part of my work, and I tend to see the same people at these meetings. One of the standard replies to the question ‘How are you?’ is ‘Busy!’ Now, it’s not just the word ‘busy’, but it’s the tone in which we say it - and I have to admit I do this too. We always say we’re busy in a way that indicates both regret and self-importance. Because I’m important, the sub-text goes, I’m a busy person. The busier I am, the more important. And it’s terribly tiring and wearing and I wish I could spend my life lying on a beach in the Caribbean, but someone has to be important and busy…

So, perhaps we should develop a meetings index. The index would somehow quantify and combine the number of meetings, the importance of the person/people with whom one meets, and the nature of the meeting. So, a meeting with the Prime Minister to discuss defence policy would be a high scoring meeting, whereas a meeting with Home Office officials about what ministers of religion should do in the event of pandemic ‘flu would score somewhat lower.

A high status person, an ‘important’ person, would be one with a high meetings index, and the rest of us would suffer pangs of status envy in the presence of such a mighty one. Our object in life then becomes to raise our meetings index and thus reduce our status envy.

The only fault with the meetings index is that it is invisible. We can see the size and make of other people’s cars: your Mercedes SLR McLaren is clearly gives you the right to more road space and city-centre parking than my Honda Accord; and your seven-bedroom house makes me look at my modest bungalow with disgust. So, how to visualize the meetings index?

Well, we use the ‘busy-ness’ trope in our greetings and drop subtle hints into our conversations: ‘I didn’t see you at No. 10 on Monday’ would be enough to trigger a major status envy attack in the insecure person with a lower meetings index.

But then I have this fantasy that I could bust the system by saying, with insouciance, that I’m not busy at all, that I’ve come reluctantly from my Caribbean beach - perhaps at the request of the Prime Minister - to attend this meeting.

Technorati Tags: blogging, politics

Technorati Tags: meetings, status envy

I always get a bit nervous when I do a live interview on radio, and I certainly got nervous in the run-up to appearing as a guest on London-based Premier Christian Radio’s Unbelievable show earlier today. It’s a discussion and phone-in show and I was in the studio with another (Christian) guest from 12.15 to 1.30 pm.

On the website, the show is billed thus:

Can Christianity really live up to the claims it makes? Justin Brierley invites you to join the debate by calling 08450 212121.

And the front page of Premier Christian Radio’s website showed this:

Weekend Highlights:

Saturday

6-12noon Premier’s Big Breakfast: with Dave Rose and Tony Miles
12-2pm Unbelievable: Bahai follower Barney Leith joins Justin Brierley and his Christian guest Kumar Rajagopalan

I had never listened to the station, let alone to the show, so I didn’t know whether it was a set-up - ‘Let’s rip into this Bah?’? faith’ - or a genuine dialogue. Well, I’m glad to say it was a genuine dialogue. I had given Justin Brierley links to The Bah?’?s web portal and he had done his homework. He had also passed the links on to Kumar, the other guest, who was a very nice Baptist minister, who had become a Christian having been raised in a high caste Brahmin Hindu family.

Justin was very fair in his presentation and gave me every opportunity to speak at some length about the Faith and to quote from the Holy Writings. Kumar and I got into a very natural dialogue and found a good measure of unity between us in speaking about our respective faiths. In fact, we’ve swapped contact details and promised to keep in touch.

I prepared, oh how I prepared for this show! I prayed, I read, I printed out suitable quotations from the Writings - including:

Know thou that when the Son of Man yielded up His breath to God, the whole creation wept with a great weeping. By sacrificing himself, however, a fresh capacity was infused into all created things. Its evidences, as witnessed in all the peoples of the earth, are now manifest before thee. The deepest wisdom which the sages have uttered, the profoundest learning which any mind hath unfolded, the arts which the ablest hands have produced, the influence exerted by the most potent of rulers, are but manifestations of the quickening power released by His transcendent, His all-pervasive, and resplendent Spirit.

This particular quotation defused the concerns of one Christian caller, who was about to ask what I, as a Bah?’?, thought of Christ. Having heard the quotation, he decided to ask something else.

I was able to tell something of the stories of the B?b and Bah?’u'll?h as well as speaking about progressive revelation and about the Bah?’? life. Above all, I was able to speak about my heart’s link to Bah?’u'll?h and to show that the Faith is spiritually as well as intellectually satisfying. One of the show’s themes was, ‘Why is the Bah?’? Faith united when Christianity has so many sects and denominations?’ Of course, this allowed a brief presentation of the Covenant and of the administrative order.

The Faith was treated with great respect on this show, which really aimed to promote the investigation of truth and to give listeners more knowledge and deeper understanding of the Faith. Despite my initial nervousness, I really enjoyed taking part in this show.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Christianity, media

I’ve just returned home from the UK Bah?’? National Convention in Llandudno, North Wales. Llandudno is a Victorian seaside resort, with some charming areas, especially the road that runs along the sea front and the streets that climb up the Great Orme, the headland that overlooks Llandudno and that was a site of some very early human settlements.

There was a good turn-out of delegates to what proved to be a Convention that was highly focused on the requirements of the new Five Year Plan. The consultation flowed wonderfully and benefited from the inspiring guidance and reflections of Counsellor Vivian Craig, representing the Continental Board of Counsellors for Europe.

Counsellor Viv advised us that the Ridv?n message from the Universal House of Justice, although addressed to ‘the Bah?’?s of the World’, is in reality a letter addressed to each of us personally: ‘Dear Viv’ or ‘Dear Barney’, etc.

How much we have learned in the last five years; how far we have to go to achieve the UK goal of 28 Intensive Programmes of Growth by 2011. Actually, in a letter dated 17 April 2006 on its behalf to the UK National Spiritual Assembly, the House of Justice has stated the goal as ‘at least 28′, although the National Assembly had written to the House of Justice following the UK institutional meeting (31 March-2 April) that our goal would be ‘up to 28′ IPGs.

In this same letter, the Counsellor pointed out, the House of Justice states how it is stirred by the experiences of believers who have overcome their fears and become champions of growth. How could we fail to be moved by the words of the Universal House of Justice in this same 17 April 2006 message?

The spirit now animating the Bah?’? community of the United Kingdom is exhilarating. How far your community has travelled since the start of the Five Year Plan in 2001! The stirring experiences of believers who, having struggled with inertia and fears of their own limitations, went on to become champions in the field of teaching - beginning first in Manchester and London and now being repeated in all parts of the country - have served as an example to the European continent and beyond. Surely your blessed community has reclaimed a position among the front ranks of the world-embracing, invincible army of Bah?’u'll?h which it attained decades ago prior to the launch of the African campaign. The coming years will undoubtedly witness unprecendented victories through a notable advance in the process of entry by troops.

The Counsellor emphasized the need to get to grips with the vision of the tutor as set out in the Universal House of Justice’s message of 27 December 2005 to the Counsellor’s conference, and she told us the story of two ladeis in her own cluster who had completed Book 7 last Monday (a week ago) and had themselves initiated a Book 1 study circle the very next day.

The delegates’ consultation that followed the reading of the Ridv?n message, the message of 17 April 2006 and the inspiration of the Counsellor was remarkable and is indicative of a community that has fully embraced the processes of growth as explained to us in the messages of the Universal House of Justice and the guidance of the Learned Arm.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Counsellors, Llandudno, religion, Wales

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite