Centering together

Yesterday I called TB and asked him on the spur of the moment if I could see him at 7:30 or 8:00 for about an hour. He agreed!

I talked to him about some of my personal experiences with Baha'u'llah and with His writings, and asked him to do the same. I talked for example about the passages about the true seeker, about the flower that has begun to bloom in the rose garden of changeless splendor, and the fathomless and surging ocean astonishingly near to us.

We both had fond memories of discussions like this with other friends, long ago . . .

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Today at work, I asked someone, "What do you think it would take to have a better world?"

He said "Better people!"

I told him that I think people need to learn to put God at the center of their lives, and follow His guidance more, and he agreed. Then I told him about my idea of getting together with friends to talk about God, and to read things together that help us stay centered on what really matters in life. We had a good time together for a while, talking about God and God-centered living, and some of our memories of good times with other people, centered on God. I told him I'll keep him posted about my meetings with my other friends, and he said he might come in on it. That's the first time in eight years that I've had any discussion with him like that.

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Where it began . . .

As part of walking with someone, I was reading a book by some Baha'is who turned against Shoghi Effendi. The thought came to me again, as it has many times before in relation to people who have turned away from Abdu'l-Baha, Shoghi Effendi, or the House of Justice: It looks to me like they had never really taken Baha'u'llah or Abdu'l-Baha seriously. If they had, then when they thought they saw something going wrong in the Faith, they would have gone to the writings of Baha'u'llah and Abdu'l-Baha to get ideas about what to do in a situation like that.

The book I was reading lamented about the spirit of the Faith being stifled by the administration. I would agree. There are warnings about that in the writings of Shoghi Effendi and the House of Justice. In "One Common Faith," the House of Justice says that the awakening religious spirit needs desperately to be freed from the shackles that have prevented it from bringing to bear the healing influence of which it is capable. In my view those shackles would include some ways of viewing and using institutions which are still popular in the Baha'i Community.

Those two thoughts, about people who have turned away from Shoghi Effendi and the House of Justice not taking Baha'u'llah and Abdu'l-Baha seriously, and about the spirit of the Faith being shackled by popular ideas among Baha'is about administration, brought me back to a recurring feeling that there are still very few people, even among Baha'is, who take Baha'u'llah seriously enough to put Him and His interests at the center of their lives, and turn to His writings for guidance in everything they do. I've had that feeling many times before, and wondered what to do about it. This time, the idea came to me to ask people to get together with me to talk about Baha'u'llah and read His writings together.