Just a few quick housekeeping things: I’m getting to the backlog of emails, so if you wrote to me any time in the past few months and still haven’t heard back, please bear with me, I’ll get there eventually. Also, given the huge amount of comment spam that I’m still getting, comments will effectively be turned off. You can try to leave them, but they’re all just going to be deleted until I can work it out. Of course, you can always drop me an email if there’s something on your mind.
Right then, carry on.

I’m sorry, did I say 2 weeks? I really meant to say 3 months…
But I’m back from my little vacation, rested and relaxed and with a whole stack of things to get caught up on, like wading through emails and trying to figure out how to get rid of 2500 viagra-gambling-cheap-meds spam comments. If you sent me an email in the past 3 months, don’t worry, I’ll get to it. If you tried to post a comment to the blog, um, well, you may need to try that one again.
And updates will be flowing once again on a regular basis, so if you’ve got anything that you think everyone needs to know about, drop me a line. I promise it won’t take me 3 months to get back to you.

A friend just told me about this small Baha’i publisher called Dawntide Inspired Publishing. Based in South Africa, they offer a small collection of beautifully designed books, music, games, e-cards, and more. And free shipping on orders over $25.
(thanks to Leila for the tip)

A while back I put up a post about a myspace group dedicated to those who wanted to be able to list ‘Baha’i’ as their religion (myspace offers 14 religion options, but Baha’i isn’t one of them). Well, it seems that someone has figured out a little hack. Special thanks to myspace hacker pedur for being an html geek.

This long article, “Where is the Special Relativity Train Taking its Scientific and Religious Believers?” examines some challenges to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, taking into particular account the perspective of various religions and how Einstein’s ideas square with the brand of cosmology offered in the scriptures of their faith.

The section on religion is introduced by this paragraph, which echoes a sentiment that I have long held:

When any religious groups or individuals endorse a scientific theory as “proof” of the veracity of their holy books, they are not doing so from a position of strength or authority. Rather, they are inadvertently making the religion subordinate to, and dependent on, the human intellectual constructs instead of on their own claims to prophetic voice speaking from a higher spiritual level.

It’s an important concept in the quest to unify scientific and religious thinking. Our understanding of both science and the theological and cosmological concepts outlined in the Faith are each developing. Ideally their development will be mutually reinforcing, but sometimes you have one holding back the other.

For the section about Bahá’í belief:

Due to the relatively recent context from which Baha’u'llah emerged, the conceptual language he used is more like that of today’s scientists. This founder, understood by his followers to be Maitrya Amitabha Buddha, the fifth after Gautama, takes the stage with a re-conceptualized version of the Buddhist Void. To traditional Buddhists, this void was unborn, unknowable, uncreated and unformed, a profound mystery, and also a Universal Mind.

Expressing a similar idea in more modern words, Baha’u'llah states that universal mind is divine, receiving the light of the mysteries of God. This is specifically “not a power of investigation and of research” as in the typical intellectual work of investigating the “the properties of existences”. Being beyond nature (which is created) the “heavenly intellectual power” embraces and is cognizant of things, and is aware of mysteries and “concealed verities of the Kingdom.”

With that defined as the source of his knowledge, when the great sage of the Baha’i faith states that the universe is of infinite age, and that ether is a spiritual reality similar in nature to the human soul, logically it would seem that his followers are not free to embrace Special Relativity, the Big Bang, the expanding universe, an inert space with no ether, nor any mathematical concept based on Einstein’s version of reality.

However, some Baha’i are attempting to do just that. In an essay titled “How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Big Bang” one Dale E. Lehman finds in another of Baha’u'llah’s voluminous statements from prison one that appears to justify his stance. “That which hath been in existence had existed before, but not in the form thou seest today” For him, this closes the gap between relativity and an eternally-existing universe.

According to Lehman, it’s a matter of viewpoint. If he’s considering God’s eternal sovereignty, the whole of creation has to be eternal. Within a greater creation that has “neither spatial nor temporal limits”, however, a certain part of it must have assumed its present form at a point in time, and therefore its size might also have a limit. He says that Bahá’í cosmology can therefore allow for a singular beginning from which the universe – the one that is visible to us – gradually evolved.

He does admit, though, that others of his faith are prepared to “wait until science catches up with Baha’u'llah.”

Spurred by the popularity of a new Bollywood thriller, 88 Antop Hill, Indian news site Mid Day has just published an article about an unusual cemetery in the Antop Hill area of Mumbai (Bombay).

The mortal remains of many a Chinese, Bahai, Muslim, Hindu, Armenian and British inhabitants of Mumbai have found their final resting abode over here. Incidentally, the Chinese, Bahai and Muslim cemeteries are adjacent to each other.

The article dedicates brief summaries to each of the sections, offering this about the Bahá’í cemetary:

The Bahai Gulistan has existed here since the past century. The Bahais, unlike other religions that have religious heads, are governed by an administrative order.

One more ritual they follow is that of preparing a vault at the graveyard before a person dies.

The Local Spiritual Assembly (LSA) of the Bahai sect sponsors the vault. These vaults made from concrete and bricks, are used to store the mortal remains.

The Gulistan is managed by Abbas Akhtar Khavari (41), a Bahai, and an undertaker by profession. There is another Bahai cemetery a stone’s throw away, also managed by Khavari.

Concluding the article, the reporter uses the coexistence of these different religions’ graves (as well as a quote from a Bahá’í) to make a point about harmony:

Out of these final resting places, arise instances of communal harmony. A Hindu employee taking care of a Kabrastan. A staunch Muslim managing a Chinese cemetery.

And a Bahai, looking over the Armenian dead. Says Mohammad Rafique, “We have never faced any problems with regard to any religion. These graves have existed before we were there, and will exist after us too.”

Well, the month of fasting for Bahá’ís has been over for a couple of weeks now, but Lent still has a couple of weeks left, so it’s timely for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune to publish this article titled “A Question of Fasting” that surveys faiths and their fasts, included are three statements on fasting — one from a Catholic priest, one from an Orthodox Rabbi, and this, from a member of the Minneapolis Bahá’í community:

Fasting is an important part of the Baha’i faith. The fast is fundamentally spiritual in character. The fasting period, which lasts 19 days, involves complete abstention from food and drink from sunrise until sunset. It is essentially a period of meditation, prayer and spiritual regeneration, during which believers strive to make the necessary readjustments in their inner life, and to refresh and reinvigorate the spiritual forces latent in their soul. Fasting is a symbolic reminder of abstinence from selfish and carnal desires. Physical fasting is a symbol of that abstinence. There is much evidence to show that a periodical fast such as is enjoined by the Baha’i teachings is beneficial as a measure of physical hygiene, but just as the reality of the Baha’i fast does not lie in the consumption of physical food, but in the commemoration of God, which is our spiritual food, so the reality of the Baha’i fast does not consist in abstention from physical food, but in the abstention from the desires and lusts of the flesh, and in severance from all save God.

Since there have been so many posts about Iran here lately, I thought it was time to mix things up a bit and feature some other country.

So, I thought I would point out this link to the Afghan Bahá’í web site that a commenter left on another post a couple of days ago.

Though the site is not directly administered by an official Bahá’í institutions, it is apparently done under the oversight of the Universal House of Justice.

The site has information in both English, Farsi, and Pashto, including general information about the Faith. Links to information about the Bahá’í teachings on the equality of women and men are prominently featured, and the site even has a brief timeline outlining the history of the Faith in the country, which most recently includes:

• 1998 - (2nd of May) Under Taliban regime many Afghan Bahá’ís were imprisoned and the rest were forced to leave the country. A majority went to Pakistan. Some other Afghan Bahá’ís who were not in the initial arrest and did not leave the country were imprisoned and released within this period. These imprisonments included man women and children of all ages.
• 1998 - (October) After the enforcement of International Community and Universal House of Justice the last Afghan Baha’i was released from prison.
• 2002 - After the establishment of the new government many Afghan Bahá’ís returned to their homeland from all neighbor countries, mostly from Pakistan, Iran and India.

I don’t know how long the site has been around but I just discovered Bahá’í Video, which has a bunch of embedded movies as well as a few photo sets. A lot of the videos are interviews about the Bahá’í Faith, some giving a general introduction and others more personal, with people talking about their own experiences and ideas.

One point of interest is that the video of Reinee Pasarow talking about her near-death experiences. There was a video of her that has been making the rounds (in Southern California anyway) for many years, though I can’t tell if this is a different recording or not.

There is also a link to http://bahaivideo.org/, which has a different set of videos, but I’m not sure how the two sites are related.

Bahá’í Research is a new web-based tool for accessing holy writings of the Bahá’í Faith and other religions. Those familiar with the Ocean research tool will recognize a lot here, since the texts are ported over and the interface is very similar. This web-based application does have a few features that Ocean doesn’t, notably you can easily search a subset of publications by marking the checkboxes next to the books you want to include in the search.

As a private service project, this web application allows the general public to easily search for key words and phrases in many of the world’s holy scriptures.

Special thanks must be given to Chad Jones for the work he did in compiling much of the texts for his free and fantastic Ocean windows-based application. This site uses many of them but expands into other areas such as Arabic and allows users access to a powerful tool when they can’t install Ocean on their PC.

There is also a short video tutorial that walks you through how to use the program.

The site is platform independent, and mentions that it works faster on Firefox, though personally I was only able to get it running properly in Internet Explorer. Your mileage may vary.

Ok, this is the last study circle related oddity that I’m going to post, I promise. But I really just couldn’t help myself.
For me the best part of the scene is the guy right at the bottom, with all the crossed out squares and triangles in his booklet…

Here are a few more Baha’i blogs for your perusal. These are especially for those of you that haven’t yet realized that english is actually the world auxiliary language (keep your shirts on, everyone knows that “the internet” is actually the world auxiliary language…) First off, there’s the mostly-in-Portuguese-but-sometimes-english Povo de Baha, (which is an exemplary blog in any language and is, in fact, read by many in english with the help of google translation) and then there’s Jeunesse Baha’ie, a great french blog run by the same master-mind behind the recently extolled doberman pizza. a baha’i blog.

[update: Marco Oliveira from Povo de Baha wrote in to point out that the title of this post should have been 'Bem-vindo à Fé Baha'i' not' Boa vinda à fé de Baha'i'. Thanks Marco, I guess google translation isn't perfect after all.]

[further update: Just to clarify, there is not, as yet, an official universal auxiliary language. I was just trying to be funny. Sadly, it appears I may have failed.]

Just in case that last post didn’t tell you all that you needed to know about study circles, perhaps The Study Circle at Pooh Corner will help clear things up. Or… perhaps not:

It was then that Piglet had one of those special Moments. He imagined it was the same sort of moment that a great detective had when he was solving a very difficult case, or a scientist had when he was working out the answer to a very difficult sum. “You’re doing a Ruhi study circle, just like me and Pooh!” he said excitedly

“This is going to be a very productive group, I can tell,” said Eeyore. “They catch on very quickly.”

“Are you doing a Roo-hee too, Eeyore?” asked Pooh. “I thought you didn’t like expotitions very much.”

“It’s not an expotition, Pooh,” explained Kanga. “It’s a form of training. You go along to acquire knowledge, skills and insights. Rabbit is going to be tutoring us.”

[update from barney: "This clever piece was written by Barry Thorne, formerly a member of the Auxiliary Board in Great Britain (but now living in the Netherlands). Barry is a radio journalist and very humorous. If I remember correctly, it was performed at the first UK-wide inter-institutional meeting almost a year ago."]

So I can’t even keep up with mr george wesley over at Baha’i Views, so I thought I should just also let you know that he’s great at keeping up with the murmurings of the blogosphere, posting all manner of blogs that mention the Faith. A great example of his many updates of blogging Baha’is is the post that just went up about Ruhi study circles from Canada, Hawaii and Israel. So if you want Baha’i blogs, he’s got Baha’i blogs (though I can’t help but notice a glaring omission).

Now, for those of you not in the know about these sorts of things, study circles are gatherings where people get together to study materials related to the Baha’i Faith (most often these materials will be books from the Ruhi Institute). And if you’re already down with the Ruhi, you can find some great resources here to help your current or future study circle be all it can be.

I can’t say that I really know what to make of this column by ordained minister George Plagenz in the Martinsville Reporter-Times. Little more than a book report for William Sears’ ‘Thief in the Night’, the column runs back over Sears’ investigations into the Great Disappointment and his subsequent discovery of the Baha’i Faith. The book is certainly a classic in the Baha’i community and has led many people to the Faith (I remember it explaining the Biblical prophesies around the second coming of Christ very simply and clearly, though I haven’t read it in years), but I’m not sure what would move Mr Plagenz to write about it now, 45 years after it was first published. Perhaps he just found a copy of it at the church rummage sale?

Ok, so since I got in so much trouble for keeping Baha’i Views to myself for so long, I guess I’d better share a few more baha’i blogs that I read:

doberman pizza. a baha’i blog. is the first Baha’i blog that I read and still one of my first stops every morning.

The adventrues of a Youth Desk Intern is the blog of a, wait for it, youth desk intern. In this case she’s an intern at the youth desk at the Baha’i national office of the US in Wilmette, Illinois. She’s on pilgrimage right now, so no updates for a few days anyway (hopefully she won’t take as long as I did to get back on the blogging horse…).

So check out these blogs and I’ll be back with some more later on.

Alright, I’d better come clean: Back in January the wondrous magical internet dropped a blog into my rss reader called Baha’i Views - Pithy excerpts on the issues of of the day. So I checked it out. And it was cool, but I was really thinking: fine fine, another new years resolution blog that’s going to last 2 weeks and then get abandoned… (oh come on, don’t look at me like that, you know what I’m talking about.)
Well, leave it to Baha’i Views blogger George Wesley to make me feel like an idiot. In the two months since, he’s become one of the most prolific bloggers I read. Covering Baha’i beliefs on a variety of topics, Baha’i views is fast becoming a great repository of basic information about the faith and a must read for anyone looking to get a quick grasp of a variety of Baha’i beliefs. So point your browsers over there have a read. I just hope he forgives my foolishness…

Just a quick post to respond to San who wrote in asking about prayers for fasting online. Well, you can find the entire US prayer book (which, of course, includes a few prayers for the fast) at the the Baha’i refernece library or you can just dowload the whole book as a PDF or a word document. So if you find yourself in front of a computer as the sun is setting, just pull up one of these prayers and you’re good to go.
Of course, I’m sure this could come in handy after the fast as well…

Ok, so I have no idea what’s going on over here, but since they keep mentioning the Baha’i Faith, I figure it’s my job to point it out to you.
Basically, there’s a site called *sigh* The Blingdom of God (I know, I know…) And they have all these posts up about, ahem, religious bling.
…
Let me just say that last part again: religious bling. This is a blog about religious bling.
But you know, it’s really not as bad as it sounds. And they do actually have some interesting posts up about artistic expression of faith and the appropriate level of blingage for the faithful.
So maybe before you head over here you should read this.

Because you’ve all been so patient while I was away, I thought I’d pass on this cute little vid of five of Hollywood’s biggest voices riding in a car together.
Once you stop trying to figure out those are really their voices or if it’s a movie about voice over actors being voiced over by other voice over actors, pay attention. Voice number 3 in this delightful vignette is Baha’i Nick Tate who has done voice work for hundreds of movie trailers including Jurassic Park, Braveheart, Golden Eye, Independence Day, Mission Impossible, Fargo and more recently Cape of Good Hope.

Earlier this month Britain’s Channel 4 aired The Root of All Evil? a two-part exploration of religious faith hosted and narrated by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist and ‘the world’s most famous out-of-the-closet living atheist’ (Salon, annoying ad viewing required) is not known as a lover of religion, but come on, finding a Christian pastor who is too ignorant to know he’s being insulted when Dawkins suggests his sermon was akin to a Nuremberg rally hardly counts as a thorough investigation of religion. (Need I even mention that the Baha’i Faith doesn’t even appear on thier list of “the main world religions.”Weak.)
Dawkins’ main arguments seem to revolve around his assertion that religion just doesn’t stand up to serious scientific scrutiny. But Abdu’l-Bahá pointed out that:

Every religion which is not in accordance with established science is superstition. Religion must be reasonable. If it does not square with reason, it is superstition and without foundation. It is like a mirage, which deceives man by leading him to think it is a body of water. God has endowed man with reason that he may perceive what is true. If we insist that such and such a subject is not to be reasoned out and tested according to the established logical modes of the intellect, what is the use of the reason which God has given man?

‘Abdu’l-Bahá, The Promulgation of Universal Peace (Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1922. 2nd edition 1982, p. 231.

Anytime you’d like to sit down and chat Mr. Dawkins, we’d be happy to answer your questions.

9 Days, 19 days what’s the difference right?
I apologize for the quiet blog, but I’ve been in a bit of a pilgrimage decompression for the past couple of weeks and am just getting rolling again. Catching up with work and trying to get focused. But anyway.
And I see that some of you have been calling for pilgrimage impressions, so I’ll tell you what I’ve been telling everyone else. It was great, and it was intense and that’s about all I can say about it. I guess you’ll all have to go for yourselves.
And now that I’m back I’ve got a bunch of posts in the backlog that I’ll try to get up over the next few days. So stay tuned for more Baha’i goodness.

(Photo from Bahaipictures.com)

I’m heading off for pilgrimage. So posting will be light non-existent for the next nine days. I’ll let you know how it goes.
If you can’t wait that long, you can go and download the entire pilgrimage video, and get a bit of an idea. That cute little Irish girl talking about the Shrine of Baha’u'llah? that will be me.

(Photo from Bahaipictures.com)

And along the same sign-up-for-all-kinds-of-bahai-internet-groups line of that last post, let me draw your attention to the we-want-Baha’i-in-our-profile myspace group. The goal of the we-want-Baha’i-in-our-profile group is, I’m sure you can imagine, to get-Baha’i-in-their-myspace-profiles (today is hyphen day here at Baha’i blog. As part of the dear-goodness-it’s-3am-and-I-should-be-in-bed theme of this post). If you’re a myspace user and not part of this group (which is fairly unlikely as there are 634 myspace members in the group and we have what, like 5 readers?) swagger your way on down to myspace land and hook it up yo. Cause I’m telling you, first myspace… and then the world. 5 little bahaiblog readers at a time.

This is one of those ‘two birds, one stone’ kind of posts where I get to tell you that, first, all of you flickr users should make sure to sign up for the Baha’i group because, um… that would be rad. And secondly, that said Baha’i group is looking for submissions for a photo collage of images or Baha’i youth offering service all around the world for the upcoming NEBY fest (only 20 days away!) So get yourself signed up (if you haven’t already) and head over here for all of the details… or just read this blurb that I snagged from the site:

Allah’u'Abha!

We’re putting together a photo collage with images from around the world of Baha’i youth offering service, but need more photos! The slide show will be used at this year’s NEBY Fest (www.neby.org).

If you’ve got photos you could contribute, please email them to: nebyfest@gmail.com. Please also forward this request to others who might have photos.

Oh, and I’m sure that those NEBY people would still love to have your photos even if you’re not going to be able to make it to the fest. Maybe we could get them to post the slideshow online so everyone can enjoy. What do you say NEBY?