Back at the blog - free speech and moderate utterance

OK, sorry about that. I was at the Baha’i summer school in Bath last week - and a wonderful summer school it was, too. Unfortunately my server went down late on Friday night just before I went to Bath and didn’t come back up until Monday morning. The summer school took place at Kingswood School, whose campus had a definite touch of the Hogwarts.

Kingswood School dining hall. Photo by Anne Maund

Sadly, though, we couldn’t send any owls from Kingswood, nor yet write our blogs or send emails. No wifi! Nail bitingly irritating for internet addicts like me. Erica and I found a Starbucks one day and used their wifi hotspot, but it was such a hassle that we didn’t repeat the exercise. It was too far to walk from the school to the city centre lugging our computers (and a very steep return walk up Lansdown Hill), and Bath has the most horrendous traffic congestion. So, I wrote only one rather lame blog entry last week. Excuses, excuses!

But I do want to tell you something about the summer school. When I became a Baha’i in 1966 and heard talk of winter schools and summer schools it all sounded rather off-putting. Who wanted to spend their summers studying? But now that I’m almost 60 I rather like the idea of studying in a congenial setting, surrounded by good friends (old and new). There were around 200 of us - from 18 month-old toddlers to seniors in their 70s and 80s, from diverse ethnic backgrounds - at the summer school.

As it happens, I did my studying ahead of time. I spent my week at Bath co-tutoring one of the summer school courses with my good friend and colleague Pete Hulme. One of the wonderful things about preparing a course is that the tutor learns a great deal about the subject matter ahead of time and learns even more from the interaction and discussions during the course itself.

Pete Hulme is fourth from left in this photo.

Our course went under the rather grand title of “A New Etiquette of Expression”. Some years ago the Universal House of Justice, the Baha’i world governing council, wrote to the Baha’is in the United States about individual rights and freedoms in the World Order of Baha’u'llah. One of the freedoms the House of Justice wrote about was freedom of speech and foresaw the birth of “an etiquette of expression worthy of the approaching maturity of the human race”.

Baha’u'llah, founder of the Baha’i Faith, extends the scope of and gives new meaning to self-expression. However, he also warns of the dangers of speech used maliciously or idly. “The tongue is a smouldering fire and excess of speech a deadly poison,” he says, and advises moderation, appropriateness and timeliness in our use of speech.

Not everything that a man knoweth can be disclosed, nor can everything that he can disclose be regarded a timely, nor can every timely utterance be considered as suitable to the capacity of those who hear it. [Writings of Bah

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