The Shrine of the Bab on Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel
We are Bahá'ís.
I've been a Bahá'í since I was 18. Jeff embraced the Faith a couple of years after we married.
What can I say about the Faith? It's been the most essential constant of our adult lives.
I'd been raised a Christian, but I found Christ and true Christianity in the teachings of Bahá'u'lláh.
Jeff was an agnostic. He found God here. Jeff often says that Bahá'u'lláh proved the truth of Christ to him and Christ proved the truth of Bahá'u'lláh.
Don't know anything about the Bahá'í Faith? Know a little, but want to know more? Go to www.usbahai.org.
Basially the Faith is about unity and teaches that:
There is one God, one religion revealed throughout the ages according to our capacity to understand by individuals who are unique to Their age. They have been called by a variety of names: Avatars, Prophets, Manifestations, Buddhas, Anointed Ones or Christs. And They reveal teachings intended to guide us ever toward higher levels of unity. We, however, seem to always find ways to use religion to divide us.
Baha'u'llah, the Prophet-Founder of the Bahá'í Faith, wrote: "The Great Being saith: O ye children of men! The fundamental purpose animating the Faith of God and His Religion is to safeguard the interests and promote the unity of the human race, and to foster the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men. Suffer it not to become a source of dissension and discord, of hate and enmity."
All of Bahá'u'llá's teachings, therefore, are targeted at establishing the unity of mankind. In other words, His mission is to bring about what the Scriptures I grew up with -- the Bible -- refer to as the Kingdom of God.
Would you like to see a united world in which people "care for the stranger as for one of their own?" A world in which the rights of every human being are protected and their potential capable of realization? Would you like to see an end to war, human desitution, the ruin of the environment and other ills that are the fruits of selfishness and apathy? Learn about the Bahá'i Faith, join us and work with us for a better world.
Do you know what's happening to the Bahá'ís in Iran?
These Bahá'ís were arrested by the Iranian government early in the morning of May 14, 2008.
There's a new and disturbing development in the situation involving the Bahá'ís in Iran. In addition to being denied many of their civil rights as part of the ongoing suppression of the Faith in Iran, the Bahá'í community of about 300,000 has now been deprived of its leadership.
The Bahá'ís of Iran have not had a National Spiritual Assembly (the national administrative body) since the 1980s when two of these guiding bodies in succession were "disappeared" by the Iranian government. As a result, our international governing body -- the Universal House of Justice -- disbanded the administrative system in Iran, replacing it with an appointed group of seven Baha'is charged with the protection of the Iranian Bahá'í community.
Now this group, called simply the Friends has been arrested in an early morning raid that took place on May 14. The story and links to statements from Amnesty International, the Leadership Council for Human Rights and other organizations, as well as news stories covering the situation, click here.
This suppression has also affected school children who are being suspended and expelled from school for identifying themselves as Bahá'ís and/or verbally defending the Faith from attack. For more information, please visit the following link: http://iran.bahai.us/iranian-bahai-school-children
For general information about this situation, click here.
Currently, the US House of Representatives is considering House Resolution 1008 calling for a cessation of the suppression of the Bahá'í community in Iran and a return of their full civil rights. Ms. Kit Bigelow, a representative of the National Spiritual Assemby of the Bahá'ís of the United States gave testimony to the House on the status of Baha'is in Iran. Ms. Bigelow's testimony available for reading at the website of the Leadership Council for Human Rights. I've also included a link to the full text of the Resolution.
Please folks -- ask your represenatives to sign on!
Our music is profoundly influenced by our belief in Bahá'u'lláh. The title cut of our second CD, Manhattan Sleeps, was inspired by our attendance at the Bahá'í World Congress in New York City in 1992.
If you'd like to hear cuts from this CD, you can listen to them on CD Baby or iTunes.
for thy Lord is with thee.
In my writing, I sometimes use Bahá'í characters and/or deal with Bahá'í themes. In one of my stories -- a magic realism novelette entitled "The White Dog", I set the theme for the story with a retelling of a vignette from Abdu'l-Baha's journey in America.
"The White Dog" was published in Interzone Magazine in the UK and was nominated to the final ballot for the 1999 British Science Fiction Award. It is now included in a collection of my short fiction from Juxta Media entitled I LOVED THY CREATION.
If you'd like to read a sample passage from the story, click here.