Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Harry Liedtke, A Wayfarer between Two Worlds: Recollections, bahai-library.com.
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

A WAYFARER
BETWEEN
TWO WORLDS

HARRY LIEDTKE
A WAYFARER BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

RECOLLECTIONS BY HARRY LIEDTKE

THE HOPES AND CHEERS OF BYGONE YEARS

THE VISIONS FOR TOMORROW

This brief chronicle records some of the highlights of the now seventy-five
years that I have been a Baha’i. It tries to tell without bias the cheerful and
the painful and both with equal candor. I know that the perception of these
two attributes is shaped by my inheritance and life experience and may
differ from the perceptions of others. My observations carry therefore no
authority. They are meant to stimulate thought rather than debate. The
purpose is to invite others to accompany me through the pages of my life
and take heart in the achievements of many extraordinary people I met en
route. The fact that there are so very few of us left who retain a clear
memory going back to the early 1930’s renders this task very special but
also daunting. My long journey from one world to another was not just one
of geography, but also one of the spirit and the intellect. It took me in every
sense of the word from an old world to one that was new and totally
different. It opened up new horizons and has raised hopes that the
unlimited potential that dwells within us all can indeed be realized. While
history, such as some of the narrated circumstances and events, cannot be
altered and must not be rewritten, I have every confidence that individual
engagement and collective effort will shorten the time of sorrow the world
is currently passing through, and will altogether change for the better the
outcome of humanity’s odyssey.

August 2013 – Edited 2022

When read on a computer the text and images can be enlarged

This publication can be read on computers, tablets, smart phones and E-readers

Part I Part II
The World of Tomorrow 10 A Wayfarer Between Two Worlds 53

New Beginnings 11 Arrival in Canada 55

Hereditary Guardianship 13 First Impressions 58
Starting from Scratch 14 Living in Half-Light 60
Baha’i Youth 15 Putting down Roots 61

Empty Book Shelves 16 A Vibrant Community 63

Adelbert and Herma Mühlschlegel 18 The Saints of Kiribati 64

The Seven Valleys 21 London World Congress 66

Queen Victoria’s Message 67
The National Youth Committee 20 Hands of the Cause 71

Cultural Differences 22 The Guardian 73

Typing and Blackmarketeering 24 The Passing of Shoghi Effendi 76

Fortress Frankfurt 26 The Trail Blazers 79

Shielded from Danger 30 A Comet in the Sky 100

Mother’s Love 30 Atheists, Believers and Agnostics 101

Tante Marie Schweizer 32 Adhering to Nature’s Laws 103

The Little House at Esslingen 34 Later Years 105
Trygve Lie of the United Nations 35

Part III
Swords into Plowshares 36 Gratitude and Optimism 109

The Berlin Airlift 38 A Universal Impulse 112
Part III
The Traitor 43 Lingering Traditions
Gratitude and Obstinate Optimism 109 116

Germany’s First Hazira 45 The Universal House of Justice 118

The Reluctant Translator 47 An Obstinate Optimism 122

A Foreigner 49 The Road Ahead 125

The Procter Perspective 129

The Empires of the Future 133

Epilogue 165

Unity 171

The Eye of the Universe 172

Part I
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Germany’s
Baha’i community in 2005, it is both an honor and a responsibility to
preserve for posterity the memories of early years. The fact that these
notes were written in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia may
hint at the contribution of German Bahá’ís to help spread the Faith to
all parts of the globe. My wife Gisele and I have been living in Canada
for 70 years and have belonged to a dozen communities in Quebec,
Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. We always look back with
great fondness to the glory days of our youth after the end of World
War II, when we were given the opportunity to participate in the rebuilding work of Germany’s Baha’i community.

I started out on my journey on the 13th day of November 1927. It
was a Sunday shortly after high noon, at 12.45 to be precise. The
Sun shone bright on that day. I was told that my parents were
overjoyed by my arrival. For the next twenty years they showered me
with their love and gave me the security of a harmonious family life.
In my youth they nursed me through a long, often fatal illness and
provided me with a well-rounded education. I belonged indeed to the
privileged few.

A far greater privilege was that I was called into life at the start of a
new era of human evolution, in the 84th year after the Manifestation
of the Bab had opened the gate to a knowledge explosion which
would have been the envy of my ancestors. It was to enrich my life
beyond the highest expectations of my forefathers and it gave
impetus to my future involvement in the spread of global aviation.

Greater still, however, was the honor for me to have recognized this
rare moment in history when religion was renewed. Alas, along with
such bounty came the pain of witnessing the snail pace of progress
and the persistent failure to turn the promise of a peaceful global
society into reality. Much of this pain was caused by my own lack of
response to Mahatma Gandhi’s reminder that “Y o u must be the
change you wish to see in the world.”

My parents had been living in Berlin where they met in 1918 after
father had returned from the Great War. They delayed their
marriage until 1923 and the start of a family for a further four years
as they were waiting out war’s harsh economic aftermath. It was a
fortunate decision, for had I been born even a few years sooner, I
may have been swallowed up in the meat grinder of World War II as
were so many of my contemporaries and this story would never have
been written.

My father was a kind and gentle man and an accountant by trade.
He had a sense of humor and was a champion gymnast in his
youth. His father, my grandfather,was well read and managed a
shop where multi-lingual books for higher learning, some in Greek
and Latin, were typeset and printed.

My mother was loving but strict with an uncompromising sense of
justice. Like father she also was an accountant with a mind that
worked faster than a calculator and she was never too shy to speak
it. Her father had worked for the railway and managed long distance
express trains. He died when my mother was only four years old.

Both my parents accepted Baha’u’llah. While they were no
churchgoers they had an unwavering faith. For the first 50 years of
her life mother was a lover of Jesus and cried for Him on every Good
Friday. For her second 50 years she was a lover of His return and to
the end of her century was able to recite the Tablet of Ahmad by
heart.

In 1931 we moved from Berlin to Stuttgart and two years later from
there to Hamburg where I entered school. In June of 1937 we
returned to Stuttgart and moved to a home at 18 Schumannstrasse
(today Bischoffstrasse) in Vaihingen, a south-westerly suburb.
Three houses down at No 12 lived Werner and Hede Schubert and
their 7-year old son Dieter, who soon became my friend. 85 years
years later he still is. We had never heard about the Baha’i Faith and
had no idea that of all people the Schuberts were Bahá’ís. Moreover,
Hede Schubert had come into the presence of ‘Abdu’l-Baha in the
spring of 1913 when she was 14 years old. All this came to light only
after war’s end in the fall of 1945 when the ban against the Baha’i
community was lifted.
As fate would have it, the Baha’i Faith in Germany was outlawed in
May 1937, just a few weeks before our return to Stuttgart.
Following the dictates of their faith, our friends obeyed the
government edict and for the next eight years never mentioned the
Baha’i Faith to anybody. Sometimes, in the middle of a bad bombing
raid, they would ask how I imagined the post-war world to develop.
My vision of a globally governed peaceful society must have sounded
to them like a fireside lecture.

The World of Tomorrow

A small glimpse of tomorrow’s world came after one particularly
harrowing bombing raid. Ours was the last house left habitable
in the neighborhood. A cluster of four 2000-pounders had come
very close. They burst our ear drums and gave us a bad nose
bleed as we struggled for breath. I have often contemplated what
would have happened to us had the bombardier hesitated even a
single second before releasing his bomb load. Many buildings
collapsed or burned down. 112 people died and 386 were
injured in the fires and explosions. Afterwards I walked to a
nearby pear orchard to regain my sanity. A fresh wind had
cleared the smoke of the conflagration and I could see the stars.
Their orderly display and utter detachment from all earthly
turmoil suddenly made me realize that the order that prevailed
throughout God’s great universe was indivisible. His order would
also come to earth once the dragon of war was slain.

Another brief glimpse came in 1944 when I watched a formation
of no less than 1,200 four-engine bombers return from a daylight
raid on Berlin. Flying high and out of reach of anti-aircraft guns,
they flew home across southern Germany to evade the fighter
squadrons that were waiting to intercept them along the
northern route. Against the deep blue sky they looked like a
silver pattern on a gossamer curtain. Here were over thousand
planes, each with a crew of ten, pushed along at some five
kilometers per minute by the flawless operation of almost 5,000
engines. Some twelve thousand ‘enemies’, a whole division of men,
wwas traversing the sky above me. At this moment I knew that
tomorrow’s world would be vastly different. This technological
marvel would not just go away once the war was over. People by
the thousands would crisscross the skies at great speed and our
world would suddenly become very small.

The Katarinenlinde, the old Linden tree on a hillside near Esslingen

But a first strange episode occurred on Thursday June 13, 1940,
the day before German troops entered Paris. I was 12 years old and
was on a class excursion. On a sun-lit hilltop overlooking the broad
Neckar Valley we came upon an old Linden tree where we stopped
for a picnic. I had never been to this place before, but I immediately
fell in love with it and experienced a strange feeling of bliss, such as
a 12 - year old can claim to experience. It was all very puzzling. I
never returned to my newly discovered favorite spot until almost
seven years later on February 23, 1947, a Sunday, when I attended
my first Baha’i youth meeting at the famous ‘Häusle’, the little Baha’i
property in the countryside at Esslingen-Krummenacker. After the
program we went on a stroll and came upon my favorite tree, the
“Katharinenlinde” (Catherine’s Linden Tree). I was somewhat
stunned when they told me that in the spring of 1913 ‘Abdu’l-Baha
and a group of German Bahá’ís had picnicked in the shade of this old
tree. I have learned since about ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s explanation that “In
the world of God there is no yesterday, today or tomorrow. All are
one.”
New Beginnings and new Friendships

On October 30, 1945 our fellow Baha’i John Eichenauer of Phoenix,
Arizona, obtained a permit from the U.S. Military Government in
Stuttgart that allowed the German Baha’i community to resume
activities. On my next visit to the Schubert’s there was a picture
hanging on the wall of a bearded old man with turban. When I
asked since when they had this grandfather in their family, I was
told it was ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. It meant nothing to me. When they asked
whom I considered the most important person alive and I answered
“Mahatma Gandhi,” they told me that it was a man called Shoghi
Effendi. Again this was absolutely meaningless for this 18-year old.

Johnny Eichenauer with fellow Baha’is Permit issued to John Eichenauer
Bruce Davidson (l) and Henry Jarvis (r) for resumption of Baha’i activities

Then I heard that Mrs. Schubert was to give a public talk on the topic
“The Baha’i Faith and World Peace.” It was in January of 1946. My
favorite uncle who lived in Hamburg and whom I had not seen for nine
long years, happened to visit our family that very evening. He seemed
surprised, but accepted my apology when I told him I absolutely had to
attend the first public lecture on the Baha’i Faith since the war. It took
place at Stuttgart’s “Wilhelma‟ and was attended by several hundred
people. There was, of course, no heat and everybody sat in their
coats. Every word I heard seemed like the answer to my prayers.

When at the end of the talk Fred Kohler as chairman for the evening
invited questions, a tall chap who looked and sounded like a
confirmed National Socialist began to raise his voice. Mr. Kohler
saw himself forced to close the meeting, but the fellow approached
the rostrum and called on people to stay and listen to his opposition
speech. It was the janitor who saved the evening by bluntly telling
the chap in a delightful Schwabian dialect that he had not paid for
the use of the hall and that he was to get out now.

Burdened with many bad memories of years of fanaticism and sick
racist arrogance, I felt so upset that I stood there in the snow and
loudly proclaimed that it was precisely people like him who had
helped to bring the temple down. And now it was him again who
decried this message of universal brotherhood and peace that we
had just listened to. Therefore, I said, this wonderful message must
be the truth. The interloper had achieved exactly the opposite to
what he had hoped, at least as far as I was concerned. Years of
isolation amidst a sea of nationalist frenzy lay safely behind and I
became now acquainted with those wonderful open souls of the
Baha’i community. I felt like a released prisoner who had climbed out
of a dark dungeon into bright sunlight. Only a similar experience
can convince the reader that this was no false emotionalism.

The Challenge of a Hereditary Guardianship

During the war that seemed to have no end, people were pleading,
“Better an end with horror than horror with no end.” The question
was what should come after. My personal blueprint of a peaceful
future world matched almost exactly the teachings of the Baha’i Faith.
When I first heard about the faith it seemed too good to be true. At first
I thought that the whole thing had to be a colossal hoax. As a typical
19-year-old who thought he knew everything, I set about to “prove”
that we were dealing with a fraudulent claim. Peter Mühlschlegel (my
future brother-in-law) told his father Adelbert Mühlschlegel (a future
Hand of the Cause) to come to the next meeting and to get rid of me
once and for all. Somehow I missed that meeting. T h e l a s t hang-up
was a provision in ‘ Abdu’l-Baha’s Will and Testament of a
hereditary Guardianship. It reminded me of an inbred monarchy
and it therefore had no place in my private blueprint of a new
world order. After several months of argument I gained the
remarkable insight that I was perhaps not quite as wise as ‘Abdu’l-
Baha and yielded to His higher wisdom. My own deep appreciation
of a hereditary Guardianship I left to future years. Ironically, it was
this provision which at first had doggedly kept me from becoming a
Baha’i that was lost to humanity only a short decade later. This loss
eventually turned out to be a far greater test than all my youthful
misgivings had been.

Starting from scratch

By standards that are prevailing today in the “developed world‟, the
community, as did the whole country, was facing huge difficulties.
Many had lost their homes and possessions, were ill clad and went
to bed hungry. Savings had evaporated and shelter was almost
impossible to find. Under these circumstances the Stuttgart
community was lucky to find for their gatherings a large, but
completely bare room on the ground floor of a burned out office
building that could hold about 100 people. Walls, floor and ceiling
were bare concrete. In the center stood an old wood stove whose
stove pipe ran below the ceiling straight across the room and
through an opening out into the street. We sat on wooden benches
and the place was lit by naked light bulbs. It was OK on warm days,
but in the winter one kept coats on, unless people brought enough
firewood to the meetings. But despite empty stomachs, chronic
tiredness and a long walk or poor tram connections, there was great
enthusiasm and few were absent. It was in this room that the
closing meeting of Germany’s first post-war convention took place. I
well remember Hermann Grossmann’s words. Many have lost their
ideals, he said, the economy is bankrupt, and nobody really knows
how to carry on. Especially the youth is facing years of uncertainty.
It is our task to encourage and to bring back confidence by offering
the Message of Baha’u’llah. And this became our firm resolve.

Bahá’í Youth

Baha’i youth faced similar conditions. We once met on a meadow near
Heidelberg and had brought blankets to improvise tents for
camping overnight. It was all very romantic until an icy downpour
drenched us during the night. The first youth summer school took
place near the town of Heppenheim, south of Frankfurt. We were
the guests of family August Ehlers who made us feel completely at
home. But despite their excellent hospitality we woke up hungry
and before breakfast went to a field where we filled up on juicy
carrots. Then there was a youth summer school near Heidelberg-
Neckargemünd, home of Hermann and Annel Grossmann, their
daughter Suzanne and son Hartmut. A group of young cyclists
dropped by as one of them had a flat tire. We helped them fix the
bike and invited them to stay, but they wanted to move on. One of
them wore black shorts and a white shirt. In later years he became
known as Germany’s Chancellor Helmut Kohl. I hear that he has
recalled the good feelings our brief encounter had left with him. It is
useful to remember that when one meets a person, one never knows
what influence he or she has, or may have in future.

Baha‟i youth gathering near Esslingen on February 23 1947. John Eichenauer and
Gisela Walker in front center; Manoutschehr Zabih in back row left; Dear Me in illfitting dark suit at top right.

Empty book shelves

Next to the food shortage the greatest handicap was lack of Baha’i
literature. Practically all books had either been confiscated, or were
lost in the bombing. I heard that the only thing a friend had picked
from the rubble was a picture of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. There was an urgent
need for literature and the only book that was available was the
original English version of BAHA’U’LLAH AND THE NEW ERA by John
Esslemont. Since I was fluent in English I decided to translate the
chapter “What is a Bahá’í” because everybody asked us this question.
But in the end I didn’t stop with this one chapter and soon began to
feel a close kinship with John Esslemont who had poured his soul
into these very same sentences 25 years earlier. -

It was a sunny Sunday afternoon when I sat at my father’s writing
table and worked on the translation. Today’s computers result in a
clean copy despite constant corrections and text changes. In those
days one worked with pencil and eraser and added lines and arrows
to reshuffle a sentence. In the end the manuscript looked like a
typical hand written score by Ludwig van Beethoven.

Then the phone rang. “Hermann Grossmann, here,” he introduced
himself to me, an 18-year old, not Dr. Grossmann. I was startled by
his humility. He called from an NSA meeting. “We have great
problems in Frankfurt,” he began. “There’s disunity between the
youth and the older generation and the youth wants to form their
own Assembly. Are you prepared to move to Frankfurt and broker
peace?” Here I was sitting in my Dad’s study, surrounded by all the
comforts of home, and he wants me to leave home for the first time
and move to Frankfurt which was not much better than Hiroshima?
But then I remembered the bomber formations and my hunch
about the future of aviation. Frankfurt had the aviation hub of
Rhein-Main airport. Perhaps I could start a career there. “I’ll go,” I
told him, “but first I have to finish my journalism studies and sit my
exams.” He seemed surprised and relieved. “In that case,” he told me
in an almost formal voice, “I am pleased to t e l l y o u that you are
the first to be appointed to our new National Youth Committee.” –
After I hung up I wondered if this was meant to be a reward, or a
punishment for being stupid enough to volunteer to go to a place
that was nothing but one big heap of rubble.
A Brief Introduction to the Faith

Here I must digress. My exam finals that were coming up included a
government-run test of my proficiency as English-German-English translator.
Since I had been exposed to the English language since childhood, I passed with
flying colors. I was now a ‘government accredited translator’ and authorized to
run my own translation bureau. It also opened doors to industry, media and the
diplomatic service. My written dissertation on the freedom of movement
through the world’s canals and sea narrows, such as the English Channel, Suez
and the Malacca Strait, had won accolades. Next I was facing a group of
professors and government representatives for a demanding demonstration of
simultaneous translation. The examiners pretended that I was translating at a
discussion of some foreign affairs issue. I was blown away when my history
professor suddenly told everybody present that I was Baha’i and that he wanted
me to give them ‘a brief introduction’ to the Baha’i Faith. They chuckled when I
asked the professor in turn how he would manage to give us a ‘brief
introduction’ to Christianity. Just as I was getting to the main points he stopped
my oration with an appreciative ‘thank you’, but I told him that I hadn’t quite
finished and was given extra time to complete my ‘brief introduction.’

Adelbert and Herma Mühlschlegel

It was around this time when I first met Adelbert and Herma
Mühlschlegel. There will be later mention of Hands of the Cause,
but the Mühlschlegels need to be mentioned right at the beginning
as they became a very special influence on my newfound life. After
they lost their belongings in the air war, Adelbert as a family doctor
found a spacious apartment at war’s end. It was on Stuttgart’s
Alexanderstrasse. Their new home soon became known as “Hotel
Mühlschlegel.” Besides their own family of six they had Alice
Schwarz and her son as tenants. Mrs. Schwarz was among
Germany’s first Bahá’ís and she and her husband, Consul Schwarz,
were host to ‘Abdu’l-Baha when He visited in 1913.

Adelbert and Herma Mühlschlegel Hede Schubert in dark dress at left

The Mühlschlegels opened their home to many young students from
Iran who had come to study in Germany and who stayed at the
Mühlschlegels until they found permanent accomodation. It could be
said that their home came close to being a Baha’i Center where.
many meetings were held. I especially remember the group who
translated the Hidden Words. They were the German author
Günter Heyd from Hamburg, Johanna von Werthern nee Hauff
who as a young girl had the honor of saying prayers at ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s
bedside after His passing, and Manoutschehr Zabih from Teheran,
the first Persian to visit Germany after the war. The fourth translator
was Adelbert Mühlschlegel who not only wrote a superb German,
but knew fifteen other languages, among them Arabic and Farsi.

Adelbert Mühlschlegel always stressed the importance of language.
His careful, lucid style and inspiring poetry were unsurpassed. I am
afraid he would be saddened to witness today’s decline of language.
Everybody always looked forward to his talks that he delivered on
special occasions and which he often ended with a new poem. On his
birthdays he always took time to emerge from his study. Waving a
piece of paper with statistics, he would lament how very few hours
he had been able to devote during the past year to the study of a
certain language, and how much time he had wasted attending
seemingly fruitless meetings. Among his translations are the Kitab-I-
Iqán, God Passes By, and The Dispensation of Baha’u’llah, plus most
of the Guardian’s letters. Contrary to what one would expect from a
physician, Adelbert had a beautiful handwriting. Using pencils for his
translations, he gave each one of them a name and never discarded
them after they were down to a small stump, because they had been
his faithful servants.

I have no idea how the man found time for all this work. After all, he
was also a practicing physician who had to look after patients and
feed a large family. During one of my visits he was called to a sick
patient. Since he didn’t own a car and taxis were expensive, I gave
him a ride on my Italian motor scooter. We were in a hurry and I
was afraid I might slip on the wet cobblestones while he held on
tight on the rear saddle. Thankfully, I had no idea that I played
chauffeur to a future Hand of the Cause, or I surely would have
wiped out.

It must be mentioned that our loving, philosophical Adelbert would
not have managed without his dear Herma who was a blend of a
loving heart, total devotion and an iron will. After the Faith was
banned in Germany in May 1937, she arranged to take voice lessons
in Switzerland. From there she corresponded with the Guardian
and committed his replies to memory so she could repeat them to
the friends upon her return. Her brave effort helped to maintain a
link with Haifa until the outbreak of war. Another great deed for
which she will be remembered was when she placed her own life at
risk to save the foot of a young female medical student from Iran
who had been run over by a streetcar. Herma submitted to a painful
procedure where the mangled foot was firmly embedded into a skin
pouch cut into her stomach. Running a dangerous fever she had to
endure for two agonizing weeks almost like a Siamese twin, until the
skin graft took and saved the girl’s foot. The girl’s grateful parents
wished to send Herma on pilgrimage, because she had always
wanted to return to Haifa after her only visit there in the early
1930’s. But Herma chose to donate the money to the European
Temple Fund instead.

But there was also plenty of humor in their family. When Herma once
mentioned to her husband that everybody, especially the cleaning lady,
seemed to stand in such awe to him, he laughed and sang out loud,
“They shall all fear me!”

Adelbert Mühlschlegel had a profound understanding of the
realities of life. He always focused on the core of things and
eschewed trivialities. “Ach…Krampf!” Ah, Nonsense, he would shout
in exasperation, or he would say, “Oh, but all these things are sooo
very unimportant!”

Our last visit with him was in his apartment in Athens where the
tiny elevator rarely ran or got stuck between floors. He talked about
his mother, Doris Mühlschlegel. She had written to him when he
studied medicine at the University of Greifswald that she believed
she has found what they had both been searching for. She meant
the coming of Baha’u’llah. A caring mother is God’s deputy, he
philosophized. “When the eyes of a loving mother watch over a baby
it is as if the good Lord Himself was watching over it.” He was both
a healer of the body and of the soul, and his deep insights are
perhaps best revealed in his great poem about the Seven Valleys.
This English translation was done by our gifted writer friend
Brigitte Knaack of Kelowna, Canada.

The Seven Valleys

A man awakes from slumber deep
at early break of day.
His life misspent, what will he reap?
He vows to change his way.
He searches, searches for the light.
In spite of ridicule and slight
he searches staunchly day and night
and finds a narrow-winding trail
through life's First Vale.

He feels akin to man and beast,
all children of God like he.
He loves the noble, loves the least,
love floods him like a sea.
He does not know how to control
his heart's compassion warm and whole,
his overflowing loving soul.
Kinship of God, oh, sweet travail,
all through the Second Vale.

He knows the others' deep dismay,
divines life's mystery,
beholds the world as God's array,
sees in a drop the sea.
He grasps the symbols' inmost cue;
he knows man's nature through and through;
he knows both worlds' wherefrom and whereto.
He climbs the steps now without fail
through life's Third Vale.

His eye itself turns into light,
sees light in all design.
And truth, so simple, clear and bright,
grows one with him, its shrine.
And all and none, begun and done,
and big and small, and stone and sun,
are now his own and all is One.

He pierces through the portal's veil
to enter life's Fourth Vale.

With radiant splendor does appear
Eternity Sublime:
no eye can drink, no ear can hear,
no word reveal God's Time.
He stands adorned in sunlit land,
and all he touches with his hand
turns light and brilliant on demand.
Thus burdened by his Holy Grail
he walks through life's Fifth Vale.

Extinguished his old self's mistakes.
Weighed down by grace and worn,
the last of mortal crutches breaks
and spirit man is born.
In great astonishment he is shaking.
What seemed so firmly built is quaking,
and time-worn, hallowed walls are breaking.
So lonely leads his barren trail
through life's Sixth Vale.

Old Adam's last dim light is blown,
resolved his cryptogram.
The Word bears fruit, the Word alone,
bears witness, speaks, "I am."
Shines forth from all created things
and sounds through all life's utterings.
Throughout the worlds Its echo rings.
Oh, radiant Light Triumphant, hail !
The Seventh Vale.

Gisele’s last visit with her father at his Athens home in 1980

The National Youth Committee

Once the translation of “The Esslemont” was done, it needed to be
typed. The newly appointed National Youth Committee met on a
Saturday afternoon in the waiting room of Dr. Adelheid Jäger, sister
of Hede Schubert, who was a pediatrician in Stuttgart. Our
“Mentor‟ was Manoutschehr Zabih from Teheran, who had arrived in
Germany to finish his studies at Tübingen university and at the
same time help in Baha’i work. There were five of us on the committee
and he wanted to know who could type. None of us could. Did we
know anybody who could do the job for us. No we did not. He went
around the table and asked each one of us, but this didn’t change
things. Manoutschehr was a tall, well-built fellow in his thirties. He
got up and opened our second-floor window. To our horror he
waved his arms and yelled to the people in the street, “We are
Bahá’ís up here and need urgent help. Can anybody type…”

Somebody grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away from the
window. “Stop it, Manoutschehr, we know people who can do the
typing,” we shouted, almost in unison. “You see,” he grinned,
“I knew you did.”

We had another committee meeting with him in the home of
Hermann and Annel Grossmann in Heidelberg-Neckargemünd. This
time we were discussing in great detail the structure and functions
of various committees. “Members on national committees are
declared Bahá’ís,” he lectured, “but sub-committees could have
members who are not declared Bahá’ís.” “So what’s the difference,” I
asked. “Well, YOU are a declared Bahá’í,” he explained. “What
makes ME a declared Bahá’í,” I wanted to know. He almost got
angry with me. “Because YOU have signed a declaration card!”
“I never have,” I corrected him. Suzie Grossmann who was also on
the committee then explained that there was no paper in Germany
to produce such cards. “In that case you can’t be here,” he said
with finality and he as much as showed me the door. His tone and his
whole demeanor told me that he actually meant it and that this
wasn’t some kind of a joke. Commitment and sacrifice weren’t enough.
Here, too, one needed a piece of paper. I got up and said I’d gladly go
home, but then Suzie started to cry and we went upstairs where we
found a small typewriter and a few sheets of flimsy paper. I used half
a sheet to type my “Voluntary Declaration” that I believed in the Báb,
in Baha’u’llah, and that I accepted the authority of ‘Abdu’l-Baha and of
the Guardian Shoghi Effendi. I even put in all my four given names,
my date and place of birth and my new address in Frankfurt. It had to
be one of the most detailed and comprehensive declarations that had
ever been signed by a believer. Suzie and I went back to the meeting
and I handed Manoutschehr the small piece of paper. “Will this do?” I
asked. He studied it in silence. “Oh, mein liiieber Freund,” my dear
friend, he shouted and gave me a huge oriental hug, buzzing my cheeks.
I was not at all impressed by this sudden show of affection, coming as
it did right after a curt dismissal that had ignored Suzie’s explanation
and even overruled the National Assembly’s appointment. And it had
all happened in the Grossmann’s home, of all places. I guess this was
the first, but sadly not the last time when so-called cultural
differences would test my tolerance.

Another memorable committee took place in Esslingen. There was
tiresome consultation about an item that was so very important
that I fail to remember it today. Finally, we had agreement, but then
one member urged us to reconsider. We did and eventually agreed
for a second time and moved on to the next point, but then the
same member interrupted again and wanted to revisit the item once
more. We reluctantly agreed and after the longest debate agreed a
third time, then briskly moved on with our long agenda. Several
minutes went by, when our friend interrupted again, “No, I am still
not happy with our earlier decision, I think we should…” That’s when
our genial mentor, an older Baha’i with whom us young folks enjoyed
the most cordial relations, taught us an object lesson how to
achieve unanimity. With a smile he turned to our unhappy friend,
“Feller, if you don’t finally shut up now I’ll box your ears!”

Cultural Differences

Differences in cultural behavior are of course only noticed when
people of different cultural backgrounds meet. Such differences
changed from being mere novelties to becoming a real annoyance
when formerly isolated sections of humanity were suddenly brought
together to interact and when they often tried in vain to cooperate
without causing a collision of their cultural habits. Today many people
on earth face this situation and must try to come to grips with it. Postwar Germany still had a homogenous population with few cultural
differences. Perhaps more than any other religious group and
organization the small German Baha’i community had an early
opportunity to learn how to cooperate with friends from different
cultures, because German Baha’is were anxious to practice the
tenet of the oneness of humanity by eagerly welcoming visitors from
North America, Iran, and other parts of Europe. But despite their best
intentions cultural difference left scars.

It was a habit of Iranian friends to use exaggerated and flowery
language that was laden with superlatives, while Germans spoke
directly and plainly and took language at face value. A German
Baha’i lady, we shall call her Mary, was helping an Iranian friend as
his secretary. She had a severe physical handicap and had never
married. The two always appeared together, smiling and cheerful,
and our Iranian friend began to refer to her as “my beloved Mary.”
In German culture it was a given that when a man publicly called a
lady “my beloved” he had proposed to her and they were going to get
married. This is what everybody understood to be the case and the
hearty response by the community to their friendship raised Mary’s
hopes even further. But everybody had misunderstood. There were
no wedding bells and Mary was left high and dry, and with a
tarnished reputation to boot, when her “beloved” left without
explaining himself to her or to anybody else.

Since the time of Mary’s crushing experience the word “beloved‟ has
retained its universal meaning, but in Baha’i usage it has become a
code for genuine friendship, deep appreciation or reverence. Within
the Baha’i community a deliberate non-use of the word “beloved‟
can put a speaker’s or writer’s loyalty and devotion into question. But
for an outsider the constant use of the word “beloved‟ runs counter
to accepted norm and can cast doubt on the face value of everything
else a person communicates. Before the word “beloved‟ was
imported, German Baha’is always referred to either Shoghi Effendi
or to the Guardian. Ruhiyyih Khanum herself said that one should
speak of the Guardian and not of the beloved Guardian. But who
dared to be seen in a lesser light. There is a video record of House
member Peter Khan speaking in Vancouver about the construction
of the Arc on Mount Carmel when somebody raised a question. The
questioner began by saying “The Guardian…” then stopped himself
short and started over, “The beloved Guardian…” Beloved, much
loved, deeply loved, all such protestations water down
language and can make the Baha’i community look less genuine and
less honest to an observer.
I do not know if language concerns were ever brought to the
attention of the Guardian, but a message to German Baha’i youth
seems to indicate that one should respect indigenous culture when
teaching the Faith.

“He hopes that the German youth, in spite of the fact that they now
have Persian co-workers in their midst, will consider that the work in
Germany is their responsibility, primarily, and not the responsibility
of foreign students, whether they be Persians, Americans, or from
any other nation. Each country must create its own active corps of
servants … and not permit other people to do it for them.”
- Lights of Divine Guidance Volume II, p. 98

I remember that at the time the Guardian did not allow some of my
Persian friends to move to America, even for the purpose of study.
Our “Persian co-workers” were mainly students like Manoutschehr
Zabih who wrote his PhD at Tübingen University. As most of them
were presumed to leave again after their graduation, the Guardian’s
advice was thought to apply to visitors and temporary residents.
The cultural influence “of other people” which in later years
permanent settlers brought into the community’s life was of a
similar nature. It therefore should have demanded the same
prudence in order for the faith not to be misjudged as some alien
ideology. This important consideration was in some instances
strangely forgotten. As the Guardian is quoted on page 71:
“Our Faith has no ritual.”

Typing, Printing and Blackmarketeering

The typing job for the Esslemont translation was done by Hilde and
Gisela Walker who later moved to Phoenix and Flagstaff in Arizona
where they married and raised their families. Hilde died in 2003

but her daughter Marianne and Gisela who later married Bill
McCormick are busy with a Baha’i school. Hilde had suggested that
we should abide by the “sacred number nine” and therefore make
nine carbon copies. She was to regret it. Even using thin typing
paper which we had obtained from an American source, one had to
hammer down on each key to produce nine copies. Besides, the
project turned out to be some 120 pages single-spaced. After a
short while their fingers started to hurt and they had to take turns
after each page. I was left dictating from the manuscript which
nobody else could decipher. After a day or two I had trouble with
my voice. In the meantime, a generous supply of Coca Cola kept us
going. The finished job was sent to ten communities who finally had
something in print.

In 1947 the National Youth
Committee had the manuscript
printed in book form by authority
of the U.S. Control Commission
for the State of Hesse, where
Frankfurt is located. I had moved
there and was working at Rhein-
Main Air Base where I discovered
an abandoned crate with printing
paper. I was allowed to take it as
it was “garbage” because it
supposedly had caught moisture,
but to me it looked in perfect
condition. It was taken to
Druckerei Köhler in Frankfurt
with the understanding that they
would use half the paper for
printing 500 of our books and in
payment retain the other half for
their own use. They were delighted, because paper was scarce and
without paper they had no work. A month later we went to pick up
the books, but were told they were still waiting for the paper. It was
time to call in our friend Hans Berge, a businessman and
negotiator. He calmly made the printers understand that there
would be no further delay, that we would come back every week and
check and that we would expect to receive the finished product in a
month’s time. “Otherwise I will be forced to bring in the experts,” he
added darkly. I am not sure if the printers thought the experts were
the police, the lawyers, or the Mafia, but we finally got our 500 copies
of WAS IST EIN BAHÁ’Í.

The books were sent to various communities, except the books for
Stuttgart which I wanted to take along on my next visit. My train
arrived late as usual, the streetcars had stopped running and I
went to the Walkers to overnight. As I left the station with two large
suitcases, a friendly policeman wanted to know what I was carrying.
In those days the black market flourished and anyone arriving late
at night was automatically suspect. “Dirty laundry and books,” I
told him. Sure, sure, let’s just have look. One suitcase was indeed
full of clothes for my mother to wash, because I couldn’t do it in
flattened Frankfurt, and the larger case was filled with our new
Baha’i books. I gave him one “in recognition of his good work,” and
told him that he was the first person in Stuttgart to get one. Later I
learned that he had attended a meeting.

Zuzugsgenehmigung to Fortress Frankfurt

But I have jumped ahead in my report. I arrived in Frankfurt in the
fall of 1947 with a raincoat and two suitcases. One case was for
clothes and extra underwear, the other one for potatoes and
mother’s preserves, because Frankfurt would be no man’s land. The
war damage was much worse than it was in Stuttgart.

Accommodation was almost impossible to find and the few
restaurants asked for ration stamps. But ration cards were only issued
to residents and to be a “resident‟ you needed to have a registered
“residence‟. However, in order to obtain a residence you required a
“Zuzugsgenehmigung‟, a permit for moving into the city. But a
Zuzugsgenehmigung was only issued to people who had employment.
How could one go to work without having access to food? It was a
vicious circle and I soon understood that the objective plain and
simple was to prevent people from moving into this pile of rubble. I
called it Fortress Frankfurt. The only thing missing was a moat and a
drawbridge.
An American Baha’i found accommodation for me at the private
home of the Hartmann family. Their house stood only minutes from
Frankfurt’s central railway station and not very far from our future
Hazira. It was like a miracle that it was still intact. The Hartmann’s
had other people living under their roof and the only place left for
me was a cot in the downstairs corridor. Mr. and Mrs. Hartmann,
who had a grown daughter and son, were extremely helpful and
offered their living room for weekly firesides. They took food out of
my suitcase to prepare my meals. Amid all the devastation I felt as
if had won the lottery.

Our weekly fireside was hosted by an elderly American lady who
brought her fine bone china, coffee, cream, sugar, cookies
and.…cigarettes. There were many young people in attendance and
they kept bringing new friends. As soon as they arrived they went
after the cigarettes. Cigarettes had become “illegal tender‟. They
were no less than five Marks each on the black market. If they were
not smoked at the meeting, they all disappeared with the guests.
During prayers the burning cigarettes were kept discreetly held
hidden under the tables. When I remarked that some of the young
folks were only attracted by the free cigarettes, I was corrected that
they were all very sincere seekers. Well, for how long had they been
seeking, I asked. They had attended firesides for the past half year, I
was told. That’s 25 firesides, I observed, plenty of time to have found
what one was seeking. We agreed to stop the cigarettes and
straightaway you could hear whispers, “What happened to the
cigarettes…have you seen any cigarettes…she must have forgotten
the cigarettes.” And the following week she forgot them again and
pretty soon attendance figures dropped until we were down to
perhaps half a dozen people. But luckily for me there was always a
bottomless cup of coffee.

At the crack of dawn I hitched my ride to Rhein-Main where I was
employed by the U.S. Air Force as interpreter and publisher of a
small bilingual weekly for several thousand German workers and
air force personnel. I often rode in an open army jeep. To impress
passengers one drove a jeep at breakneck speed, especially on a
rain slick Autobahn. “This is where German champion driver
Rosemeyer became airborne and killed himself,” I told one reckless
driver. “No kidden’ ” was his bored reaction. “Better slow down,” I
begged. “Aw, don’ worry Red, Ah’m quite shore the Good Lawd
wants you to live for a long time.” How was he to know. Truer
words were never spoken. Now that I had a job I went after my
Zuzugsgenehmigung. “For this kind of work we have hundreds of
our OWN people,” I was told. “You better go back to Stuttgart.”
After a second futile attempt I talked to Rhein-Main’s commander,
a Colonel Walter Lee. As it turned out he had more trouble with the
German tongue twister Zuzugsgenehmigung than with German red
tape. He wrote a terse one-liner to the authority, “I insist that a
Zuzugsgenehmigung is issued to Mr. H. Liedtke forthwith.” Then he
sent me back in a jeep with a uniformed driver who stood
menacingly at the door while they issued the coveted document.

Shielded from Danger

Today one travels by rail between Stuttgart and Frankfurt
in under two hours, has reserved seats and checks his
baggage. But in those years the journey often took five
hours, you had to fight the crowd to make it into the
carriage, and you mainly sat on your luggage. Many
sections of track and especially bridge crossings had
suffered war damage. I particularly remember a high
viaduct just north of Stuttgart that had been mended by
U.S. Army engineers and looked like one of those high
rides in an amusement park. Our train came almost to a
stop as it cautiously crept across the vibrating trestle.

Then there was the episode of the missed ride aboard a B-
17 Flying Fortress at Rhein Main. The plane was used for
air-sea rescue missions and carried a large wooden life
boat under its belly to be dropped to rescue people at sea. I
had suggested that unless it was a sea rescue one should
leave the boat behind as it added unnecessary weight, but
the idea was rejected because in an emergency it would
take an extra half hour to fit the boat to the bomber.
Besides, in wartime the B-17 had carried a heavy bomb
load, ten machine guns and thousands of rounds of
munitions. When a twin engine DC-3 passenger aircraft
went missing over the French Alps, the B-17 was ordered
out for a search. Lieutenant Mike Casner strolled into
our office and offered me a ride. “How about it, Red, we
could use an extra pair of sharp eyes.” But it was a Friday
and I had plans to go home for the weekend to have my
laundry washed by my mother, my food supply restocked
and to attend a Baha’i meeting. I felt guilty to decline. As
he was leaving he dropped a pack of cigarettes on my desk,
“Have some smokes, Red.” For me as a non-smoker it was
equal to leaving a 100-Mark bill, enough for a return ticket
to Stuttgart.

When I got back on Monday morning I learned that his
B-17 had crashed in the Alps. After finding the debris of
the missing plane they had to clear a mountain ridge
when turbulence pushed one wing up and the other wing
down. The aircraft snagged the top of the ridge and the
plane cart wheeled down the far side and exploded. One
lucky survivor, a Sgt. Angelo LaSalle of Des Moines, Iowa,
reported later that the pilot had shouted for more altitude.
Badly injured, LaSalle was ejected and slid down a
snowfield. He was rescued by Horst Kupski, a German pilot
who was still held in French captivity. Kupski was
released and flown to the U.S. to be best man at LaSalle’s
wedding.

For the longest time I struggled with questions. Had the
boat’s weight meant the difference between life and death
as I had always feared. Why had nobody pulled the bomb
release to jettison the lifeboat. Why had I been kept
waiting to receive a ration card for Frankfurt and needed
to go home that weekend. Why was the search not
started immediately, but delayed for three days until that
Friday. The DC-3 had gone missing three days earlier on
Tuesday the 27th of January. Except on that Friday I
would have cheerfully joined the search on any other day.
70 years later as I was editing this chapter, I discovered a strange
coincidence. The B-17 left Rhein-Main on Friday, January 30, 1948
at about 9.30 a.m. Cruising at 300 km/h it covered the ca. 900
kilometers to the search area in roughly three hours and was above
the French Alps by 12.30 p.m. Around that time Mahatma Gandhi
was assassinated. The shots rang out in New Delhi at 5.17 p.m.
when it was 12.47 p.m. in Central Europe.

Mother’s Love

Tuesday, March 2 1948, was the start of the annual Baha‟i Fast
between sunrise and sunset which I had decided to observe now
that I was in my 21st year. It was also the day I had to return to
Frankfurt. I had become wire editor with the Associated Press and
my shift started that evening. I had no alarm clock and since
mother was an early riser I had asked her to wake me well before
six o’clock. I woke up hearing her sing out “Good Morning.” She
opened the shutters and I was greeted by bright sunlight. She said
she had fixed me an extra special breakfast for my “stressful

journey,” but I had to tell her that breakfast time was over. For the
next hour until I left for my train I had to listen to mother’s loud
pleading and threats that I would surely ruin my system by not
eating before my trip. I remained unmoved and instead rubbed salt
into her wound by telling her that since my nightshift ended on the
following morning after sunrise and since I would only get tea and
biscuits during the night and then nothing until sundown on
Wednesday, it would be 48 hours since I had my last solid meal.

Here I must
mention that both
my parents became
Bahá’ís. Father in
1950 and mother
in 1952. From early
childhood on
mother was a
devout believer in
Christ. While she
rarely went to
church, she always shed tears on Good Friday. “I shall never leave
Christ,” she had often promised, and I had told her that if she really
loved Christ He would surely reveal Himself to her on His Return.
Mother left this world shortly after her 100th birthday. She recited
the Tablet of Ahmad by heart almost to the end. The first half of her
century she lived in the spirit of Jesus the Christ and the second
half in the spirit of His Return. It is for this reason that I feel sad
when people say that one should not “waste time” on older folks,
but concentrate on teaching the young. Instead, one should
remember that youthful ardor often will fade through life’s struggles.
On the other hand, an older person who has seen it all will take such
step far more deliberately and can become a wonderful teacher and
living example, such as my dear parents have been.

Tante Marie Schweizer

This story would not be complete without mentioning Marie
Schweizer, or Tante Marie as we called her. Always full of wit and
laughter, here she is seen trying on different miens for the benefit of
posterity.

Marie was a very early German Baha’i who lived in the small town
of Zuffenhausen, just North of Stuttgart. She was married to Karl
Schweizer, tall and athletic, whom she always referred to as “Mein
Schweizer.” I was told that after ‘ Abdu’l-Baha, coming from
London, had arrived in Paris on January 22, 1913, Marie Schweizer
was part of a small German delegation that travelled to Paris to
invite the Master to visit Stuttgart.

‘Abdu’l-Baha left Paris on March 30. The train to Stuttgart took Him
through countryside which only a little over a year later would be
engulfed in the Great War. On arrival in Stuttgart He moved to
Hotel Marquardt. Here it is noteworthy that Hotel Marquardt,
located not far from the railway station, was just about the only
large structure left standing in the center of town when Stuttgart
was almost completely destroyed in the Second World War.

While Karl Schweizer was not a Baha’i then and considered his wife’s
Baha’i involvement some innocent little hobby, he was caring enough
to escort his wife when she went to pay her respects to the Master
at His hotel. Tante Marie told me that as the door opened, there was
‘Abdu’l-Baha standing in the middle of the room. To her utter
consternation, “mein Schweizer” dashed towards ‘Abdu’l-Baha and
fell to his knees. Marie, shocked and embarrassed, quickly left the
room and closed the door. When after a few anxious minutes Karl
emerged he couldn’t find the words to share with his wife all the
wonderful things ‘Abdu’l-Baha had told him. “How could you talk to
each other,” she asked him, “when you don’t understand Persian
and ‘Abdu’l-Baha doesn’t speak German?” She said that at that
moment Karl almost suffered a second spell.

Twenty-four years later, in May of 1937, Marie Schweizer found a
notice in her mail box ordering her to appear in Court. She had not
the faintest idea what it was all about. Then she learned that other
believers had received similar notices. Once they were all assembled
a friendly and benevolent judge read them the government edict
which banned all Baha’i activity in the Third Reich. There was little
elaboration, except that the decree was final and would be enforced.

It was Marie Schweizer who stood up and asked the judge if she
was allowed to make a brief statement. She was. What she said was
roughly this: We understand the order, your Honor. Please tell the
government they need not worry about Baha’is. Baha’is are law
abiding citizens and obey their governments. But if you were to
order us to deny our faith we would rather die before that happens.
“Please, Mrs. Schweizer, please,” the judge waved her off, “nobody is
ordering you to give up your faith, “all the government wants you to
do is to dissolve your organization and stop your teaching.”

Eight interminable years and six months later Tante Marie was
back teaching the Baha’i faith, this time to young people like me.

The Baha’i Home at Esslingen
The Baha’i Home at Esslingen Krummenacker, fondly known as “The Häusle,”
or the little house, was located a ten minute walk from ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s famous
old Linden Tree. Venue of Germany’s Summer Schools in the 1930’s, the
Guardian had encouraged that it become a center of learning for Europe. When
the faith was outlawed in 1937, a government takeover of the property was only
avoided when the caretakers Hugo and Clara Bender claimed the place as their
own residence. Continuing with
their dedicated services after the
war, “Uncle” Hugo and “Tante”
Clärle hosted hundreds of visitors
from all over the world, among them
Rúhíyyih Khánum, Tarázu‟lláh
Samandarí, Canada‟s Marion Jack,
Martha Root, Emeric and Rosemary
Sala, Freddy Schopflocher, and
many others, far too numerous to
mention here.

Trygve Lie of the United Nations

Shortly before I left Rhein-Main to become wire editor with the
Associated Press I met the Norwegian statesman Trygve Lie. He was
the first Secretary General of the newly founded United Nations
organization and I presented him
with Baha’i literature. It was in
early 1948 when he came from a
visit in Prague with Czech
President Edvard Benes and
made a brief stopover at Rhein
Main en route to London. I found
him in the VIP lounge munching
on a banana and introduced
myself. I told him that I belonged
to the Baha’i World Faith and
that all Bahá’ís wished him and
the United Nations much success
as we were convinced of the
ultimate establishment of a
united and peaceful world society. I then gave him the new booklet
FAITH FOR FREEDOM which showed on its cover the new House of
Worship in Wilmette. Trygve Lie was a huge man in his fifties. He
listened to me very attentively and promised to read the booklet on
his flight to London. But then he remarked, “It will probably take a
long time to get there, and we are still facing many hurdles before
all this will come to pass.” My youthful enthusiasm found his
opinion rather pessimistic, but it was not very long before the
validity of Trygve Lie’s assessment of the world situation became
evident even to peace lovers like myself. On June 2, 1948 President
Benes was forced to resign and to hand the reins over to the
Communists. On June 24 began the Soviet blockade of Berlin that
triggered the historic Allied airlift to the city, and exactly two years
later, on June 25, 1950, the Korean war broke out. It has not
officially ended to this day. They told me that as the AP’s wire editor
I was the first person in all of Europe to learn the bad news when
“Ten Bells” on the printer signaled the rare arrival of a Newsflash.
’’’’’’’’’’ FLASH NORTH KOREAN TROOPS HAVE INVADED SOUTH KOREA.

Beating Swords into Plowshares

Just days before the sudden Berlin crisis made us face stark reality
and turned Rhein Main into an important base for the Berlin Airlift,
everybody was basking in a warm sunshine of peaceful intentions.
Bruce Davidson, a Bahá’í from Florida, and I had progressed plans
to give Rhein Main a Peace Monument of Civil Aviation. In front of
the terminal, facing the arriving and departing passengers, stood a
tall granite column from which the eagle of the fallen regime had
been removed. Word was out that the column would shortly be
dynamited. This is when Bruce and I announced that as Bahá’ís we
wanted the symbol of power be replaced by a symbol of world peace.
With the cooperation of Colonel Lee a design competition was
launched among all members of the U.S. armed forces in Europe.
The winning design was a globe circled by futuristic looking jet
aircraft and topped by a large dove of peace holding an olive branch
in its beak. Frankfurt’s Lord Mayor Walter Kolb contributed 20,000
marks from city coffers, but warned me, “You must hurry, because
after the impending currency reform this amount will no longer be
available.”

We did hurry up and on June 12, 1948 our monument was
unveiled at a large public ceremony. To make the affair
especially memorable we had covered the globe with a surplus
parachute which was to be lifted up by weather balloons. Tests
showed that two balloons were needed. We inflated four, just
in case. It was a hot day and the balloons were turning brown
in the broiling sun. The crowd first laughed, but then gasped
when first one, then a second balloon burst. Lord Mayor Kolb
hurried up his speech and pulled the ripcord while there were
still two balloons left and everybody cheered. We were pleased
that all involved were aware of the Baha’i connection: the
young sculptress Gretel Fendel from Frankfurt-Hoechst who
created the dove and the aircraft, Hans Tröller who fashioned
the huge globe with its brown continents and blue oceans, and
the foundry workers who we had supplied with a truckload of
spent ammunition cartridges. Everybody was reminded that
swords had indeed been beaten into plowshares. But had they
really ?

The Berlin Airlift

If this account of the Berlin Airlift takes up more space in
my journal than may be felt is necessary, it is because the event
demonstrated to me very early on that we can defend our values
without having to go to war. Besides, without the Berlin Airlift world
history as a whole may have taken an entirely different turn. While
everybody at Rhein-Main celebrated the new peace symbol and had
high hopes for a happier future, dark thunderclouds had formed
once again on the political horizon. The German currency reform,
promised by the United States, Britain and France, was barely a
week away. It would create a sound Deutschmark which could be
traded in the West to put the country's economy back on track. But
the Soviet Union used printing plates of the old worthless wartime
currency to stoke inflation and economic chaos. It insisted on
maintaining the status quo, knowing full well that Communism
wouldn‟t stand a chance in an affluent society.

When the Western powers decided to go it alone, Stalin began to
retaliate by slowly strangling West Berlin. The city, located inside
the Russian zone of occupation, was accessible from the West via
Autobahn, by rail, shipping canals and through international air
corridors. There had been growing delays on the Autobahn since
April on account of increased “security checks” and closures "for
technical reasons". Next, they closed down the rail lines, then the
shipping canals. By the end of June they dropped the last vestige of
a pretext: Berlin was cut off in an effort to starve it into submission.

The United States and her Allies considered counter moves. There
was talk they would send a tank column down the Autobahn and
shoot their way in. Many feared that a trigger happy Russian tank
commander or fighter pilot would shoot first and that we would be
back at war. After Germany’s defeat and the fall of Japan, America's
armed might had long been dismantled, their weapons either
stockpiled or mothballed in desert locations, their millions of
fighting men back home again and in civilian jobs. America could
only try to stop the Soviets by using atom bombs and poisoning
Europe in the process. This was no crazy fantasy, it was reality.

Then we heard that Berlin would be supplied by air. On a rainy
morning perhaps two dozen twin-engine C-47 transport aircraft
were loaded with bottled milk and
blood plasma. The first priority were
the very young and the very sick. As
we witnessed these developments we
couldn't help but remember Goering's
boast to Hitler just five years earlier
that he would supply the 100,000
troops surrounded at Stalingrad by
air. He failed miserably. How could
aircraft alone supply Berlin’s
population of almost two million.

Later, Bruce told me that we were to
be present at a meeting with "a very,
very important General". He almost begged me to be at my best
behavior. He was General Curtis LeMay. His reputation as an utterly
tough and ruthless warrior had preceded him. LeMay flew in command
of the epic daylight bombing raid on the heavily defended Fischer ball
bearing plant at Schweinfurt. Of the 376 Flying Fortresses 60 were
shot down and 47 others had to be scrapped. Later he was transferred
to the Pacific where he took command of the giant B-29's and executed
the rain of destruction on the cities of Japan. Much later he would be
put in charge of America's feared Strategic Air Command. A man of his
determination was badly needed to manage the looming crisis. The
General was a short, squat man with watching eyes. I can't
remember him saying much. With his traditional big cigar clamped in
his teeth he just listened to what everybody else had to say, then made
his decision to call for the heavy artillery.

Everybody knew that the C-47's alone couldn't do the job. Word
leaked out that the four-engine C-54's were coming from Westover
Field in Massachusetts. I saw them arrive, 52 of them. They landed
in one-minute intervals. The following day huge trailer transports
loaded with surplus army duffel bags filled with coal from the Ruhr
drove onto the ramp. Each C-54 was loaded with nine tons of coal
and took off. I had invited reporters from local radio stations -There
was no television at that time - and two newsreel cameramen to
record the event. We were allowed to stand near the edge of the
runway and for the next two hours watched the giant planes roar
past us in two-minute intervals. It was perhaps the most dramatic
event I had ever witnessed. The resulting photo told Stalin that the
West was going to stand up to him.

Each plane was scheduled for two missions a day. It meant four
trips for each crew with a couple of hours rest while their aircraft
was unloaded at Berlin's Tempelhof airport, reloaded at Rhein/Main
and unloaded once more in Berlin. Each flight took one hour and
forty minutes and the turn-around initially one hour and twenty
minutes. Along with briefing and debriefing it was a twelve-hour
day.

In the big Nissen hut which served as our mess hall a huge
blackboard showed the daily statistics. We were told that the airlift
averaged 2,500 tons per day. During the summer months the city
might just get by on 3,500 tons, but in the winter 4,500 tons were
needed to avoid extreme hardship. By the end of August the
combined British-American lift from both Rhein/Main and
Hannover averaged 3,300 tons with a maximum daily tonnage of
4,575 tons. A small surplus was beginning to accumulate in Berlin
and everybody was jubilant. But the unspoken worry was what
would happen when foggy weather set in just at the time of
maximum need for coal supplies. Who would crack first, the men,
the machines, or the Soviets.

The operation became steadily more efficient. Crews stayed on
board and took their meals in the cockpit, getting briefed by the
meteorologist while mechanics checked engines. Turn-around times
were thus cut to a mere twenty minutes. Every three minutes,
around the clock, transports were leaving and landing at
Rhein/Main and at Tempelhof. They were like a string of pearls in
the sky. In bad weather the "threading in and out of traffic" was
nerve-racking for both pilots and ground controllers. I saw them get
off their shift with their shirts drenched with sweat.

At the onset of winter empty return flights were used to evacuate
from Berlin 55,000 sick or elderly. It saved those poor people a lot
of hardship and it automatically reduced the supply requirements.
Everything the city needed was flown in. Volkswagen beetles for the
police, two million tree seedlings for reforestation of trees that had
been cut down for firewood. Most potatoes and vegetables were
shipped in dehydrated form, saving 80% of weight. When Berlin's
airports at Tempelhof and Gatow became hopelessly overcrowded, a
new airport was built at Tegel and all necessary earth moving,
construction equipment and supplies were flown in.

To cut turn-around time even further, especially during bad
weather when aircraft lost time by having to make more than one
approach to the runway and had trouble maintaining the tight
schedule, word went out for volunteers to ride in the cabin and
unfasten the load immediately after touchdown. It saved at least
another ten precious minutes. I went on nine missions mainly for
the thrill of it. The duffel bags with coal were lashed to the floor
with webbing. The cabin interior had thin, olive green fiber glass
matting without sound insulation. The noise was deafening and
flying at low altitude of 5,000 to 10,000 feet there was always a lot
of turbulence. Right on my first empty return we were badly tossed
around in a thunder storm. It was pitch dark outside and there
were constant flashes of lightning. Our aircraft cabin was full of
coal dust and one was worried sick about the consequences of a
possible lightning strike.

Against all odds and certainly against all Soviet scheming, the
276,926 flights of the Berlin Airlift managed to keep the big city
alive for 327 days through the bitter winter of 1948 to 1949. Stalin
knew that his gambit had failed. After much face saving diplomatic
doublespeak the blockade was finally lifted on May 12, 1949. Of all
the many events I witnessed during the short eighteen months at
Rhein/Main the Berlin Airlift had to be the centerpiece. I am glad
that fate and timing had made it possible for me to participate.

“The moment a little boy is concerned with
which is a jay and which is a sparrow,
he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing.”
Eric Berne

Among the many interesting people I met at Rhein Main was a young
U.S. Air Force Private who worked at the motor pool. He had missed
the war’s fighting as he had just recently arrived from the U.S.
Bruce told me that he was quite homesick and that it might help to
befriend him. I invited him to accompany me to a youth gathering at
Darmstadt, an hour’s drive south of Rhein Main. We hitched a ride to
Darmstadt and from there we took a tram to the rural home of
Marie Schenk where the meeting was to take place.

All went well until we boarded the tram. To get a better view of the
countryside we had picked a place on the rear platform of the last
tram car. Our fellow passengers were Germans of middle age and
mostly dumpy women. They gave us the evil eye as soon as we got
on. They probably didn’t like what they saw and felt insulted by our
presence. I have failed to mention that our young friend came from
south of the Mason-Dixon Line and was of phenomenally dark
complexion. They began to make angry gestures and we were
forced to listen to the malevolent hiss of their poisonous insults.
Much of their scorn and contempt was directed at me, because in
their eyes I had become a traitor to the Arian race.

I just tried to ignore the uproar and kept explaining to my friend the
history of the area we were passing through. I told him of the great
dirigibles that once flew from Rhein Main to New York and Rio de
Janeiro before the war; I explained that the Frankfurt-Darmstadt
sector was the first stretch of Germany’s autobahn network to be
completed and that racing car champion Berndt Rosemeyer had
died there in 1938 while attempting to set a new world speed
record; and I tried to cheer him up by telling him how much my
fellow Baha’is were looking forward to meet him.

But he didn’t seem to listen. He looked scared. His large brown eyes
were those of a hunted deer. “I am so sorry to put you through all
this,” he finally spoke up, “and I want to apologize to you.” - “There
is absolutely no reason for you to apologize, and certainly not to
me,” I insisted. “It is I who must apologize to you for the dreadful
behavior of my fellow countrymen.” What upset me most was that
right at his first encounter with the local populace - and on top of it
while on his way to a gathering of Baha’i youth - all the horrible
stories he must have heard about those bad Germans were getting
confirmed. In the meantime, we had to endure to the very end the
ugly venting of anger by those who had been vanquished. Later,
when the time came for me to leave the country of my birth, the
vivid memories of this shameful incident helped to ease the pain of
having to say good-bye.

Germany’s First Hazira

The rise of Germany’s first Hazira from a ruin of war was another
highpoint of my stay in Frankfurt. A look at old photos tells the tale.

Thanks to the negotiating skills of our friend Hans Berge a ruined
residence was purchased at 24 Westendstrasse, only a short walk
from Frankfurt’s central rail station. The purchase agreement
provided that the former owner, a dentist, would have lifetime rights
to an apartment on the ground floor. Initial task was to remove all
debris from the property and to scrape mortar off bricks that could
be recycled since building materials were almost impossible to
obtain. Volume XI of Baha’i World, covering the period from 1946 to
1950 reports on page 390, “A demonstration of the Baha’i spirit in
action was the reconstruction of a building in Frankfurt which had
recently been purchased by the German National Assembly. In
August 1948 a group of 20 young people from various parts of
western Germany hitch-hiked or cycled to Frankfurt. After brief
devotions they started the tremendous job of carrying away over

4,000 cubic feet (150 cubic yards) of rubble which covered most of
the “garden” in a layer ten feet high. The youth had given their
vacation time for this work which took three weeks to complete…”
Some other exploits are reported on pages 365, 378 and 388
in the same volume.

Dear Me in undershirt (at left) hard at work. At extreme right is Hans Berge

One evening we sat down for supper in front of a newly built
interior wall that was put together with a single layer of bricks.
When somebody discovered that the brick work had been done
rather carelessly without any interlock, we prudently moved away
from the spot. Sure enough, on the following day the whole wall
tipped over as one big slab, and slammed down where we had been
sitting. The Hazira opened in time for the 6th post-war National
Convention. I was thrilled to catch the moment on camera when
architect Bruno Bauer, a Baha’i from Stuttgart, handed the key for the
building to NSA chair Eugen Schmidt.

Bruno Bauer (l) hands key to NSA chair Eugen Schmidt. In front is Dr. Adelheid Jaeger

The reluctant Translator

The joy of the occasion was spoiled when disunity reared its ugly head
and the outgoing NSA decided to inform the Guardian that the election
for the new National Assembly would have to be “vertagt”, or
postponed. The problem was that nobody could think of the English
equivalent for the word vertagt, except I, and I refused to tell. It
caused a bit of a stir.

I remember the debate I had with the Grossmanns. In fact there is a
snapshot of this unhappy moment. I was about to remind them that
there was really no need for me to translate as Ruhiyyih Khanum
spoke a flawless German, but trying to change their mind I first let
them stew over that single little word which was key to the issue.
I thought it would be terrible to upset the Guardian, but in the end
I became the reluctant translator. Next morning there arrived this
rocket from Haifa: “INSIST NO POSTPONEMENT ELECTION
SHOGHI”

The reluctant translator with Hermann and Annel Grossmann

The Foreigner
Even as construction was in progress we held meetings in an
unfinished room that had a bare concrete floor and rough brick
walls. We sat on narrow wooden benches while a couple of tired
bulbs tried to shed some light on the dismal surroundings. Still,
people came flocking to these meetings and there was quite a stir
when one evening a stranger burst into our Nineteen Day Feast to
announce that he, too, was a Baha’i. He was a man perhaps in his
late sixties, or early seventies. But most importantly, he was “a
foreigner” and Baha’is were always most anxious to welcome all
foreigners with open arms to prove to everybody that Baha’is had
absolutely no racial or national prejudice. The man introduced
himself with an unpronounceable mid-Eastern name as he went
around eagerly shaking hands with everybody in the room.
In those post-war years Baha’is in Germany had no identification.
There was hardly any need for one, because everybody knew mostly
everybody else in our small community. Besides, there was no
paper available for such luxury item. Visiting Baha’is from abroad
on the other hand always presented “their credentials”. Having been
isolated from the rest of the Baha’i world for almost a decade, the
requirement for credentials did not yet extend to German believers.
I therefore thought it would not be a challenge, let alone an insult, if
I asked this man for his credentials. There was a gasp of disbelief
from the mainly female members in our group. But the visitor didn’t
seem to mind. He looked at me with a forgiving smile and said that
he understood that there was no requirement for this in Germany.
Of course, everybody was immediately nodding their agreement.
Then, just before the meeting was to open with a prayer, somebody
asked him how he would normally greet his fellow Baha’is, to which
he only shrugged his shoulders as if this was a totally irrelevant
question. Well, did he say Allah-O-Abha as we did, somebody was
asking. “Yes, yes, allahuabba allahuabba, we also say allahuabba,”
he laughed in a rather shrill tone as if this was a huge joke. I had
enough of this character. “You know what,” I told him firmly, “I
don’t believe that you are Baha’i at all. Baha’is never poke fun at the
Greatest Name. You better leave NOW.” With that I got up and

walked over to him to help him get up from his bench. He left in a big
huff.
But this wasn’t the end. First I got a bad earful from our friend
Johanna von Werthern. Before her marriage she was Johanna
Hauff. As a young woman she once had the honor to pray at the
Master’s bedside immediately after His ascension. She called my
behaviour “ganz ungezogen”, which Google translates as “very
naughty.” For a moment I even felt contrite for the way that I as a
22-year old had behaved against the older generation. For the rest
of the evening I felt abandoned in my doghouse. However, it wasn’t
too long afterwards that we were warned against some emissary
from the followers of Subh-i-Azal, the notorious enemy of the Baha’i
Faith, who was trying to wheedle his way into the German Baha’i
community. While many of my friends never wanted to admit it, it
was obviously not a very good idea to welcome any “foreigner” with
open arms, just because he happened to be a foreigner.

Ian Semple’s first visit to Germany at a meeting in Esslingen 1951
Front l. to r. Ian Semple, Bozorg Hemmati, Heschmat Moyyat, X, Harry Liedtke,
Hermine Meyer-Berdjis, X; Back l. to r. X, Bertha Kohler, Marie Schweizer, Eugen
Hörttrich, Mrs. Hörttrich Snr., Miss Hörttrich, Carla Macco, Kurt Henseler, X

Participants of the 4th European Baha’i Teaching Conference in September
1951 are assembled at the main entrance of the Peace Palace in The Hague,
Holland. The Palace was opened on 28 August 1913 to provide a home for
the ‘Permanent Court of Arbitration’ which had been created by the Hague
Convention of 1899. One year after the building’s inauguration began the
First World War. It was the start of a painful series of conflicts which by the
end of the 20th Century had killed over one hundred million people.
Standing in the front row to the right of center in dark jacket and white
shirt is Edna True of the European Teaching Committee (ETC), daughter of
Hand of the Cause Corinne True of Chicago. (Some of her friends joked that
ETC stood for Edna True, Chicago). At the far right is U.S. Army Captain,
later Colonel, Joel Marangella who in later years supported an illegitimate
Guardianship. In the next row at far right is Dear Me and sitting at front
and center in a light jacket is Masoud Berdjis with whom I had travelled
from Germany.

A last gathering with friends in Heidelberg before I left for Canada in September 1951.
Yours truly is in the fourth row slightlty to the right of center; behind me in striped
sweater is Volker Muehlschlegel; to his right in dark dress his sister Ursula and next
to her in light colored dress my future wife Gisele Muehlschlegel. In the second row
center, leaning forward, is Peter Muehlschlegel with Dieter Schubert to his right.
Sitting at the very front at the right end is Martin Aiff who later pioneered to Namibia.
In the second row at the right edge of the photo can be seen the author Udo Schaefer.
In the third row, third from right in dark dress is Ursula Kohler-Muehlschlegel who
later pioneered with her husband Adelbert to Greece. In the back row third from right
wearing a grey tunic is Hartmut Grossmann. Use the zoom feature for better viewing of
this and other pictures in the report. If you recognize a face you can enter names here.

Part II

A WAYFARER BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

My second trip as “pioneer” took me across the ocean. At the
beginning of the 1950’s there were appeals for pioneers from Canada’s
NSA. At that time there were only some 200 Bahá’ís in all of Canada. In
September 1947 I had left my parental home in Stuttgart to go to
Frankfurt. I had been quite unaware that this made me the first postwar “home front pioneer.” Now, almost exactly four years later, I was
en route to Montreal to help spread the Message in the promised land
of Canada. I had decided on this move against many pleas and urgings
by several of my closest friends. Without any prospects of
employment I had terminated my promising career with the
Associated Press as wire editor and foreign correspondent and was
prepared to face uncertainty.

I sailed from Bremerhaven for Montreal on Wednesday, September 19, 1951
in mid-afternoon. Along with 800 mainly sea sick fellow emigrants
from all parts of Europe it took me eleven days to cross the storm
tossed North Atlantic aboard the ancient 7,700-ton SS Canberra of
Greek Line. Mountainous waves caused the ship’s screws to emerge
and thrash around in empty space. The relentless punishment
caused the bearing of one propeller shaft to pack in. Caught in mid
ocean with almost 1,000 souls on board Canberra gamely continued
to battle the elements with only one engine. The outage of one of the
ship’s two dynamos dimmed all lights on board, and the asymmetric
propulsion resulted in an alarming list to starboard. It slowed
progress considerably and prolonged the misery aboard this overcrowded floating refugee camp. The journey’s agony became for
many of my shipmates a fitting prelude to years of hardship that
now lay ahead, as they struggled to establish themselves on a new
continent. It also prolonged my own guessing game where I would
be asked to settle in Canada’s vast Dominion.

Saying good-bye to my little sister Christina.
A monument to emigrants stands at Bremerhaven
where I started out on my odyssey. SS Canberra.
Mountainous waves. On Canberra’s afterdeck en
route to Canada at gale force eleven.

Canberra eventually docked in Montreal on the morning of Tuesday, October 2. As
soon as I had disembarked I walked a mile to 420 Lagauchetiere Street West to
meet with Canada’s National Teaching Committee in an office on the sixth floor. I
had arrived with a single suitcase and a sailor’s bag stuffed with clothing. I also
had managed to buy currency and had the princely sum of $ 315 waiting for me at
a branch of the Canadian Bank of Commerce. When I met the committee I told
them that I was ready to go anywhere. I was secretly hoping they would send me
straight to the railway station to continue my journey, perhaps to the prairies, or to
the Golden West. Instead, they suggested I go and do some sightseeing while they
consulted. I found it a bit strange that I was not asked to participate in their
consultation.

I knew absolutely nothing about Montreal and very little about its role in Baha’i
history, and I was not particularly interested in the city. Having been cooped up
aboard ship I felt drawn to the wooded hillside of Mount Royal and hiked to its
lookout. On the way back I discovered a street with charming old English-style
sandstone homes and made a little detour along Pine Avenue. Back at the meeting
they were astonished that of all places in town my brief sightseeing should have
taken me to the Mt. Royal lookout and past the home of the Maxwell’s, both places
where ‘Abdu’l-Baha had visited in 1912.

I would be less than candid not to admit that the committee’s decision to send me
to Verdun, a half-hour bus ride from downtown Montreal, was a disappointment.
Was this why I had moved to another continent and had cut off a career. Hoping
not to offend anybody with this epistle, I must confess that Verdun seemed a most
unlikely choice to this enthused pioneer. Back in 1951 the place struck me as a dull
bedroom community, firmly entrenched in its daily routine. Its people were mainly
French Canadians or of Anglo Saxon descent, self-sufficiently proud of their
heritage and firmly set in their tradition. Emeric Sala would have said that “Their
cup is full.” What was I here for, I wondered. Reluctantly I scanned the papers and
found what was advertised as a “sunny room in bright cottage” at 1109 2nd
Avenue, the home of Roland and Yolande Trudeau and their three small children.
I paid my weekly rent of ten dollars, breakfast and laundry included, and moved in.
That same evening I met for the first time my three fellow Baha’i pioneers. They
were Anne Powers with her young daughters Gail and Norma, and Angela and
Paul Rheaume with a teen age daughter and their two small sons Tip and Sandy.

These are some of the friends I met on arrival in Montreal. They are, back row left to right:
The author, Lou Boudler, Unidentified, Rosemary Sala, Gail Bond, Jameson Bond, Vera
Raginsky, Helen Bond, Emeric Sala. Front row l. to r.: Unidentified, Nancy Campbell, Siegfried
Schopflocher, Mrs, Bond Snr., Hedda Rakovsky, Unidentified, Louise Boudler. This photograph
was taken in the living room of the Maxwell Home, where “the lights went out” during my talk.
The picture was taken at Gail and Jameson Bond’s wedding. The following morning they left
aboard a Canadian ice breaker to pioneer on Baffin Land as Knights of Baha’u’llah.

We invited Mrs. Ruth Moffat, a well-known Baha’i teacher from the U.S., to help
run public evening classes. They were held in an empty store on one of Verdun’s
shopping streets. Mrs. Moffat in her plain dress and bifocals came across as an old
school mistress. She would bring the place to order by loudly clapping her hands
together and shouting “Class!!” We also regularly invited friends and an interesting
cross section of college contacts to attend weekend seminars at the Beaulac Baha’i
School located in the Laurentian Hills some 50 miles north of Montreal. Our small
band eventually was able to welcome into our ranks Alex and Gerry Takacz, a
young couple who had escaped from Communist Hungary. After they signed their
declaration cards, a friend enthused, “Alex, you will discover that from now on all
your problems will disappear…” What Alex discovered on the following morning
was that his car that always gave him trouble had disappeared. It had been stolen.

Ridvan 1953 marked the beginning of the Guardian’s Ten Year Crusade. It was our
fervent wish to form the first Assembly in Verdun to coincide with this momentous
event in history. Our hopes were boosted when my new wife, Norma Sala who had
just turned 21, moved in, and when Rod and Doreen Willis pioneered to Verdun
from Burlington, Ontario. Doreen was a school teacher on maternity leave and Rod
was a talented commercial artist. Then, just three weeks before Ridvan, Norma
tragically died after giving birth to our son Keith.

When it became obvious that none of our close contacts felt motivated to take
Norma’s place on the new Assembly by signing their declaration card, a general
SOS went out. Help arrived from a most unexpected quarter. Mary Zabolotny, then
in her early twenties, had left her native Winnipeg and was on the train to
Kingston, Ont. where she was needed as the ninth member of Kingston’s first
Spiritual Assembly. When she arrived there in the afternoon of April 20 after a
tiring journey of three days and two nights, her heart leaped as she leaned out the
train window and saw the smiling faces of her fellow-Bahá’ís gathered on the
station platform. “Are you Mary?” they asked. They said they had some good news
and some bad news for her. The bad news for Mary was that Kingston had just had
a declaration and that Mary was no longer needed there. The good news was that in
the City of Verdun, just another three hours down the rail line, a sudden vacancy
urgently required Mary’s presence. Mary after a quick and cheerful hello said her
cheerful good-bye, “I have come 2,500 kilometers, and another 200 really makes
no difference.” Hers was the true pioneering spirit. In later years she married Ken
McCullough and they pioneered to Canada’s Arctic. Not until the phone rang and
Kingston was on the line could we be sure of Mary’s help. Rod Willis, our artist
friend, hurriedly prepared a huge banner, “Welcome to Verdun, Mary.” It greeted
her at Montreal’s historic Windsor Station, the same station, we told her, where
‘Abdu’l-Baha had arrived in Canada 41 years earlier. Then we rushed off to
Verdun where with feelings of gratitude we formed the City’s first Assembly.

First Impressions

I disliked the new city environment, but always tried to remind
myself that this was part of Canada. Any effort made here would
benefit a country for which ‘Abdu’l-Baha held such high promise.
Before attending the first Nineteen-Day Feast shortly after my
arrival, Emeric and Rosemary Sala had me at their home in St.
Lambert on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River. They asked
me to say ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s prayer for Canada. Afterwards Rosemary
said, “Now you are a Canadian,” and gave me the prayer book to
keep. How wonderful, I thought, no passport, no stamp, no judge,
just this prayer by ‘Abdu’l-Baha. If this sounded almost too good to
be true, it was.

The Nineteen-Day Feast was held at the home of Mrs. Lanning in
St. Lambert. We were about 20 people in the room when a young
lady in her late twenties arrived. Naturally they were anxious to
introduce the newly arrived Baha’i pioneer. To everybody’s
consternation she gave me an icy stare and said, “First you tell me
if you were in the German army.” “No, I wasn’t,” was my truthful
reply. “In that case, I can shake hands with you,” she said. She then
explained that her fiancée had been killed fighting the Germans
and she would therefore never shake hands with a former member
of the German army. I explained to everybody that it was only a
very serious and prolonged illness that had kept me out of the army
and now made it possible for me to shake hands with a fellow
Baha’i. I am certain that she never caught on to this irony.

The incident was a foretaste of what to expect. In 1951, just six
years after war’s end, I was initially eyed with suspicion and had to
prove my sincerity and character every step of the way. Most
Baha’is offered me genuine fellowship. One said that accepting a
former enemy stranger gave them an opportunity to prove to
themselves and to others that their faith was no mere lip service.
Apart from such somewhat questionable contribution to the
teaching effort, I noticed that my presence was not always welcome
and my people contact was not nearly as effective as I had always
been accustomed to. For a good many years I remained a foreigner.

However, this was difficult for me to judge. Canadians, especially those
of Anglo Saxon background, seemed to be more reserved than
Europeans. The Germans, the Dutch, the Danes, the French, were more
forthcoming and responded more readily to your approach, be it pro or
con. Anglo Canadians appeared more formal and reserved. They
seemed almost anxious not to intrude with their own opinion. Add to
this their discomfort dealing with a foreigner and one can see why any
dialogue, especially one that concerned religion, would be
constrained.

Another thing that became apparent to me almost as soon as I arrived
was that Canadians took their religion very seriously. In this
connection it is interesting that half a century later a survey, I believe
by the United Nations, asked people if they believed in a God. In North
America over 90 percent responded that they did believe in God, while
in Western Europe the percentage of believers was less than 50 per
cent, and in former communist territories less than 20 per cent. Apart
from such lesser impact that religion had on people in Europe, as
compared to Canada, I was brought up in a Protestant environment
which in some respects is less straight laced and more tolerant of
free thought and expression.

Ancestry and upbringing leave marks on attitudes and behavior,
even among individual Baha’is, and through them on entire Baha’i
communities. While it is a wonderful vision that all Baha’is should
feel and act alike, they cannot and do not at this early dawn of a
new human cycle. As this was the first time that I had ventured
outside my ancestral culture, I had never had reason to ponder this
phenomenon. I was therefore surprised when fellow Baha’is, raised
on a strict Presbyterian or Anglican diet, acted in a tradition of
religious exactitude, almost austerity, and looked askance at a free
spirited newcomer. Cultural influence showed itself later among
Iranian Baha’is who often displayed the ancestral behavior of taqlid.

Despite such disappointing initial stresses, the abiding feeling that I
remember from those early days, now almost 70 years ago, was one
of gratitude and high anticipation to live and work in this blessed
land. I felt then as I feel today that Canada is destined to be a

marvelous laboratory for the eventual emergence of a global future
society, a working example of a New World Order for all to see.

Living in a Half-light

When they accorded me the great honor to speak at a Sunday
fireside in the Maxwell Home, it was only natural that I chose as my
subject ONE WORLD, the title of a book by America’s statesman
Wendell Willkie. He wrote it during World War II after he had
traveled around the globe and had recognized the absolute interdependence of nations and the need for some form of future world
government. There may have been some 40 people in attendance.
Lou Boudler chaired the meeting and Sutherland Maxwell and his
devoted nurse Madame Helen Bovais were sitting in the front row.
On account of my reddish hair Mr. Maxwell always called me
Mulligan. On this evening speaker Mulligan sat in that famous green
armchair that ‘Abdu’l-Baha once occupied 40 years earlier.

I had barely started my talk when all the lights went out. I counted
to ten and when nothing happened I decided to continue in the
dark, pointing out how important the presence of light was to the
human world. They were still scurrying about to find candles, when
the lights came back on. But do not rejoice, less than a minute later
the lights went out again. This pattern of talking half with the lights
on and half in darkness continued for quite a while. Everybody got
used to it and felt that it was uniquely appropriate for the talk’s
subject about a world that was half illumined and still lay half in
darkness. I thought that all in all things had gone rather well and
was looking forward to a good question and answer period. That’s
when a tall man known as “Ronnie” stood up in the back row and
rocked the meeting. “All our problems are caused by the price of
land,” he stated with conviction. “Can the speaker tell us if there is
anything that he can think of that can bring us peace, other than
having communism.”

Such distracting voices didn’t want to go away. Perhaps 20 years
and scores of firesides later, Gisele and I were invited to talk about
the Faith at the United Church of Stouffville, northeast of Toronto.
We had joined the United Church Couples Club and suggested an
inter-denominational dialogue at a Sunday service. The church was
packed. There must have been 300 people. Other speakers
represented Catholicism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam. After
everybody had spoken, the audience could ask questions. To the
discomfort of the other panel members all questions were directed
only at the Baha’i representative. People seemed anxious to learn
more about the faith. This forum, so it seemed, gave them an
opportunity to come out of their protective shell and ask questions
without appearing to be disloyal to their own church. Personal
follow up became a different matter. This was typical for a small
town where nobody wanted to be seen to step outside the fold.
When we finally ran out of time at the church meeting, there was
one elderly gentleman in the crowd who urgently motioned that he
wished to talk further. I was delighted to meet him. With some
ceremony he presented me with a pocket book and urged me to
study it. It was in praise of Mao’s doctrine.

“Putting down Roots”

At the start of the Ten Year Crusade in the spring of 1953, great
emphasis was also placed on consolidating the “home front.” An
appeal from the National Spiritual Assembly called for pioneers “to
put down their roots” in various places across the country,
including Ontario where the community of North York was singled
out as an important goal. My decision to move from Verdun to
North York followed a fate laden period of just eighteen months:
Verdun had formed its first Assembly. I had suffered the crushing
loss of my wife Norma Sala after she gave birth to our son Keith.
Our all too brief marriage was a testament to the healing Message of
Baha’u’llah. Norma’s parents were Jewish before becoming Baha’is
and had welcomed me into their family with open arms, despite the
fact that they had lost all their European family members in the
Holocaust. Strangely, some of my closest friends were Baha’is of
Jewish background, like Siegfried Schopflocher, Vera Raginsky and
Bert and Hedda Rakovsky. But now, in rapid succession, I had lost
two other members of the Sala family and two good friends. Eddie
Elliott, who I believe was the first Canadian Baha’i of the black race,
died when he was electrocuted at work, and Siegfried Schopflocher

died suddenly of a heart attack. At this traumatic time of terrible
turmoil God looked after me and sent me a saving angel in the
person of Gisele Mühlschlegel who initially fell in love with my
infant son and later became my companion for life. She agreed to
follow me to Ontario. We were married at the home of Alan and
Evelyn Raynor. Ours was the first Baha’i wedding in North York.

Unlike Montreal, Toronto was known as a city of homes. There were
very few apartment buildings. And unlike Montreal where weekends
were party time, “Toronto the Good” closed down to observe the
Lord’s Day. To my recollection there were less than a dozen good
restaurants open on Sundays; The Royal York and King Edward
Hotel dining rooms, Dintymoore’s, Savarin Tavern, Winston’s, a few
coffee shops, and in Chinatown Lichee Gardens and Nanking
Tavern. Some friends tried to discourage me from moving. “You can’t
live in Toronto, because you haven’t got the money to buy a home.”

Unbeknownst even to many Torontonians a new development had
started up. It was tucked away in the Don Valley where people used
to hike, ride horseback, or fly kites. The place was called Don Mills.
There were half a dozen brand new apartment buildings nearing
completion. Most important, Don Mills was in the borough of North
York. I signed a lease and called the movers.

Along with the North York community our family also grew. We now
had three children five, two, and one year old. That’s when the earlier
promise of “putting down roots” was all forgotten. “I want you to move
to Pickering,” said the caller, a ‘prominent’ Baha’i. This was not a
suggestion by an Assembly or by some committee, it was his idea. “I
want you to move”. He said that Pickering was one member short for
maintaining its Assembly status and I was needed there now. “I don’t
think I can find a place for my family,” I told him. “No, you go and your
family can follow when you can find a place.” It sounded like an order.
The memory stands out as we have encountered this kind of behavior,
call it self importance or arrogance, on several other occasions. The
conversation soon turned into one of those nasty little tests of will
that nobody seeks, but everybody needs once in a while to strengthen
their spiritual muscle. “Tell you what,” I finally said, “I have just made a
deal with God. If He really wants us to live in Pickering, He will find a
place not just for me, but also for my family.” Only a few days later
our dear friends Sam and Lynde Tranter who lived in Pickering found a
small house in their immediate neighborhood for us to rent. We
moved in but it nearly cost us our lives.

“The house” was a one-and-a-half storey jerry-built wooden
structure that was covered with Insulbrick siding and had been
built on a “rustic‟ lot by its not very talented owner. Insulbrick
consists of a fiberboard sheathing coated with tar and an embedded
granular material. The surface is usually embossed and colored to
look like brick or stone. It was typically nailed on plywood walls.
After searching in my computer for a non-existent name in order not
to offend anybody, I shall call the owner Mr. Snox. It comes close
enough to reality. “Snox Palace‟ as we called it had mice, sagging
floors, a septic system that bubbled out of the ground every time
somebody flushed the toilet, iron spikes in the yard that our

kids stepped on, and a well that constantly ran dry and required a
costly tanker load of water for us to take a bath. It was so bad that
to this day my wife reminds me “Don’t be a Snox” whenever my
work around the house sinks below par. But the worst was the oil
furnace. Leaning against the outside wall of the house was a 200-
gallon tank of fuel oil. After passing through a filter, a thin copper
pipe took it to the furnace. During an extreme cold spell just before
Christmas the furnace quit in the middle of the night. We couldn’t
get it started and discovered that the oil had congealed in the filter
outside, thereby interrupting the flow and starving the furnace. Mr.
Snox had the brilliant idea of wrapping cotton batten around the
filter and for good measure to place an electric light bulb next to it
to keep it from freezing. The next morning we got up much earlier
than usual and sat half-dressed at the breakfast table. That’s when
our neighbor hammered on our door and yelled “Your house is on
fire.” The electric bulb had ignited the cotton and the fire was eating
its way up the Insulbrick right next to the full oil tank. Gisele took
the barefoot children out into the snow and I somehow managed to
climb on top of the tank and rip the burning tar paper off the wall.
By the time the voluntary fire brigade arrived there remained little
to be done, except to put out the flaming debris in the snow and to
take me to our doctor to get my badly burned hands bandaged. For
many days we suffered from aftershock at the thought what might
have happened had we decided to rise at our usual time an hour
later, or had Snox’s bandage caught fire in the middle of the night.

A vibrant community

In the late fifties the entire Canadian Baha’i Community numbered
about 380 people. They lived mainly in Ontario with a small
number in Quebec and a handful of communities in the prairies
and in the West. The National Office was then located in a
converted small two story home on Lola Road off Yonge Street south
of Eglinton Avenue right next to the subway line. Peggy Ross had
taken over as secretary from Laura Davis. Both ladies were
supported by a number of dedicated volunteers who worked without
the help of telephone answering, photocopier or fax machine, not

even to mention computers. Still, the job got done. This was no
mere make belief, but a dedicated and truly vibrant community.
Our children participated in many activities and much of Gisele’s
work revolved around teaching children. Along with Pearl Hannah
of Pickering and a large group of helpers she organized weekly
classes that were regularly attended by 20-30 children. These
classes, like those in many other Ontario communities, had
developed innovative curriculums that caught the children’s
imagination and nurtured their hidden talents.

Wherever you looked there was evidence of enormous dedication.
Speakers would often drive for hours to get to their fireside or to
some public event. Even winter weather would not deter them. I
recall a public meeting at a hall in the countryside outside
Pickering, Ontario. We were showing a black and white movie of the
British historian Arnold Toynbee who had stated that the Baha’i
Faith was not some Islamic sect, but a new and independent world
religion. It had snowed heavily and in the darkness we were
counting headlights and guiding the arriving cars to the parking lot.
But there were also more prominent venues like hotel ballrooms in
Toronto and Hamilton where several hundred people were in
attendance. Shortly after my arrival in Toronto I had the privilege of
giving a fireside at Toronto University’s Hart House. In the sixties
and seventies, hundreds, if not thousands of people were
introduced to the teachings of Baha’u’llah.

The Saints of Kiribati

The Republic of Kiribati is situated on the Equator in
the Western Pacific Ocean, roughly halfway between
Hawaii and New Guinea. It used to be known as the
Gilbert Islands and it is remembered for the epic battle
that took place at Tarawa atoll in World War II. More
recently, Kiribati made the television news when it
became the first nation to welcome the dawn of the year
2000. For Bahá’ís Tarawa remains forever tied to the
memory of Samuel and Lynde Tranter, their devotion to
Baha’u’llah, and their compassion for humanity.

Sam and Lynde became especially dear to us and to our children when we lived in
Pickering. It was they who had found us a place to live in and it was they who
helped our family through difficult times. Their story deserves to be repeated often.

It was the future Hand of the Cause John Robarts, who was so impressed by Sam’s
unfailing courtesy and trustworthiness at his service station in downtown Toronto,
that he persuaded Sam to switch careers and to join his group of insurance
consultants. Next, he urged Sam to study the teachings of Baha’u’llah, and then he
invited him to join the Baha’i Community. Sam and his wife Lynde soon became
pillars of the Ontario home front, frequently to the point of exhaustion. When Sam
“retired”, he and Lynde decided to pioneer to the Pacific and live among islanders
who seemed abandoned by the rest of the world. Plagued by a lack of education
and surrounded by poverty and decay, these people were clinging to a meager and
often precarious existence on barren atolls that surrounded shallow lagoons.

Lynde settled in as a schoolteacher and Sam went to work offering practical help,
while both prayed for the region’s progress. We have all seen places where
wrecked cars are simply dumped by the wayside and left to rust. But here it was
not unusual to discover human corpses who had been abandoned without a burial.
Sam was regarded with high esteem, almost with awe, when he made it his
business to collect the dead and gently lay them to rest in the hard coral. Amid
such conditions disease could be of epidemic proportions. Sam once caught a killer
virus while on a visit to a neighboring island. His life was miraculously saved
when a Catholic priest who traveled on the same boat happened to carry with him a
rare medication for just such emergencies.

After struggling and praying for five long years, Sam and Lynde began at last to
notice promising changes. They had firmly made up their minds to live out their
lives in Kiribati and help her people until their remaining energies were spent. Just
one more year, they figured, and they would be given permanent residency status.
But it seemed that God had willed otherwise. Their permit to stay that crucial extra
year was denied and they eventually returned to Ontario’s Haliburton highlands.
There, in quiet moments, they would converse in Gilbertese as their prayers took
them back to their beloved islands.

Samuel Tranter passed to the Abhá Kingdom on November 15, 1999 in Lindsay,
Ontario, almost to the day and not far from where he was born 82 years earlier. His
cheerful, stalwart, ever-loving companion Lynde joined him three years later. They
shall be remembered for having belonged to that small band of truly great
Canadians who set out to civilize the world through the love of Baha’u’llah.

The London World Congress

In April of 1963 I had the great privilege to act as simultaneous
translator during the Baha’i World Congress at London’s great
Albert Hall. It turned out to be a demanding assignment. Etty
Graeffe of the European Teaching Committee in Geneva had booked
facilities in a translation agency where we spent a great deal of time
preparing. It was important that all of us used the same German
equivalent for words and expressions that were known to be
recurring in English Baha’i literature. Without such preparation
there was the risk of making certain translations sound absolutely
ridiculous. The translators sat in a sound proof booth high up
below the ceiling of Albert Hall. From here they had a clear view of
the stage.

They listened on head phones to the speakers and trailed the
English remarks in German as they talked into a microphone. While
half your brain listened to one language, the other half spoke in
another. The German speaking audience carried a small wireless
receiver to listen to the translator. It was a joy to translate the many
moving reports from pioneers around the world and to translate
for Rúhíyyiih Khanum, who at first had to fight off the fervor of
some Iranian friends who climbed the stage trying to kiss her feet.
And finally there came the introduction of the nine members of the
first Universal House of Justice of this Dispensation. After 45
minutes, sometimes less, the translator was mentally exhausted and
had to be relieved. But I heard that on some occasions the audience
fared not much better when a translator was unable to keep up with
the speaker and produced some horrible gobbledygook.

The event was indescribably memorable and left everybody in a
state of high euphoria to a degree that few paid attention to the
London “Bobby‟ who tried to shepherd people safely across
Kensington Ave. One had to cross this busy traffic artery to get from
Albert Hall to Hyde Park where people liked to relax during breaks.
In order to gain attention he had the bright idea to raise his arms
and shout Allah’u’Abhá. It had instant results. People shouted with
glee and dashed over to hug and kiss the surprised man in uniform.

Queen Victoria's Message

Few of us who attended the Centennial Celebrations were aware of a message
which Queen Victoria had left for future generations at Albert Hall, her great
temple for the arts and sciences for which she laid the foundation in 1867,
exactly four years after the beginning of the of the Dispensation of Baha’u’llah.

Much has been written about Victoria and her long and fruitful reign, but who
knew of her humanity and faith which ruled her life. While on one of my trips
to London I visited Albert Hall and made the discovery. It lies hidden in a
message of philanthropy and trust in God, which is emblazoned on a high
frieze that encircles the building below its shallow dome of steel and glass.

Victoria was a petite 18-year-old when King William IV died in 1837 and she
ascended the Throne. The following year her handsome cousin, Prince Albert
of Saxe-Cobourg-Gotha, visited. They fell in love and were married two years
later in 1840. They were then both 21 years old. Their marriage blossomed
and bore nine children. The couple promoted a great moral revival. Albert
became Victoria's greatest support. "Nothing small or great was done but by
his advice," noted Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. Albert would prompt the
Queen in German to ask her advisors pertinent questions.
Albert was a man of many talents. Early photography was one of his many
interests. He also was a gifted musician and wrote music which the family
played. In 1842 composer Felix Mendelssohn, then 32 years old, visited the
Royal Couple at Buckingham Palace. They loved his music and sang along as
he played the piano. He paid them several return visits and wrote to his
mother, "The Palace is the only house in England where one feels completely
at home."

Outside his family, Albert's deepest interests lay in commerce, engineering,
manufacture and architecture. In the face of fierce opposition he orchestrated
the Great Exhibition of 1851 and realized a large profit which by his foresight
went into the funding of South Kensington. It was nicknamed "Albertopolis", a
collection of museums and learned societies. One of his dreams was a great
Hall for the Arts and Sciences, but he was not to see it built. In 1861, busy
preparing for yet another International Exhibition, he was struck down by
typhoid fever. "He had lived," it is written, "on the treadmill of never ending
business and did not cling to life." He died in his prime, only 42 years old.
Disraeli spoke for the stunned public. "This German prince has governed
England for twenty-one years with a wisdom and energy such as none of our
Kings have ever shown."

In their 21 years of marriage Victoria had been an adoring wife. Now she was
devastated. It took her two years to regain some of her composure. The Queen
told a close friend, "My nature is too passionate, my emotions are too fervent.
He guided and protected me. He comforted and encouraged me." She decided
to make the Great Hall on Kensington Avenue a monument to her beloved
Albert.

The Hall of Arts and Sciences was designed not by an architect, but by two
engineers, a Captain Fowke and a Major General Scott who took Roman
amphitheaters as their models. To raise initial funds, 1,300 of the hall's seats
were leased "for 999 years" at today's bargain basement price of 100 Pound
Stirling each.

When in 1867 Queen Victoria laid the corner stone, she quite unexpectedly
announced that 'Royal Albert' would be added to the hall's name. She opened
Royal Albert Hall four years later. At the inaugural concert Anton Bruckner in
person played Willis's 9,000-pipe steam engine driven organ. Millions of
visitors have since listened here to countless world-class artists, but few may
have noticed the message that runs along the oval dome. On account of the
building's great height you can only catch the beginning of the message when
you cross Kensington Avenue and stand at the Albert Memorial.

"This Hall was erected for the Advancement of the Arts and Sciences
and Works of Industry of All Nations,"

it reads, and you have to cross Kensington Avenue back to Albert Hall in order
to be able to read on,

In Fulfillment of the Intentions of Albert, Prince Consort,"

the message continues, as you keep walking around the Great Hall, hugging
the surrounding buildings in order to still read the dedication.

"The site was purchased with the proceeds of the Great Exhibition of
the year 1851. The First Stone of the Hall was laid by Her Majesty
Queen Victoria on the 20th day of May 1867 and was opened by her
Majesty the 29th day of March in the year 1871."

And, finally, this solemn affirmation.

"Thine, Oh Lord, is the Greatness and Power and the Glory and the
Victory and the Majesty. For All that is in the Heavens and in the Earth
is Thine. The Wise and their Works are in the Hands of God. Glory be to
God on High and on Earth Peace."

This Message, concealed to many, certainly does recommend itself to those
who are the rulers of today.

Later, in 1974, as part of the proclamation effort, I accompanied
Counselor Lloyd Gardner to present a copy of the PROCLAMATION
OF BAHA’U’LLAH to Pauline Mills McGibbon, Lieutenant Governor
of the Province of Ontario. Earlier that year she had become the
first woman to represent The Queen in Canada and in the entire
Commonwealth. She received us in her office at the Parliament
Building on Toronto’s University Avenue. In a brief and cordial
audience in which the conversation remained, however, largely onesided, we were able to acquaint the Lieutenant Governor with the
principles of the Faith and its activities in the province.

Hands of the Cause of God

Among the 17 Hands of the Cause I met, I had the privilege to have
close contact with Adelbert Mühlschlegel, Hermann Grossmann,
Siegfried Schopflocher, John Robarts, Rúhíyyiih Khanum, Amelia
Collins, Sutherland Maxwell, and Bill Sears. All carried their high
office with modesty, great dignity, joyful and open, without the least
trace of false piety. Our relationship was one of friendship. There
was never a need to hide one’s feelings. These friends were proof of
an old rule that the greater the knowledge and spirituality, the more
candid the discourse, and the weaker the spirit and the smaller the
intellect, the more constrained and beclouded the dialogue.

On March 2, 1951 a telegram from the Guardian announced:
“Greatly welcome assistance of the newly-formed International
Council, particularly its President, Mason Remey, and its Vice-
President, Amelia Collins, through contact with authorities designed
to spread the fame, consolidate the foundations and widen the scope
of influence emanating from the twin spiritual, administrative World
Centers permanently fixed in the Holy Land constituting the midmost
heart of the entire planet. Shoghi.”
In the summer of 1951 Mrs. Collins visited Germany. It became my
assignment to be her assistant. This is not the place to go into
details, but I wish to share with posterity the following small
anecdote that hints at her character and attitude. Under certain
circumstances I have remembered it many times.

It was an extremely hot day and Mrs. Collins wished to return to
her Hotel at Bad Homburg near Frankfurt to rest up. “Can I offer
you a beer?” she asked. “Certainly, Mrs. Collins,” was my reply. “I
don’t normally touch the stuff, but if you like to have a German
beer I’ll keep you company.” She was a small person and wore
sparkling glasses which added to her smile and made her look like
Miss Marple in the Agatha Christie thrillers. “I just wanted to test
the German Baha’i youth,” she confessed. Then a tuxedoed young
waiter appeared and she ordered in her best German, “Ich möchte
HEISSEN Kaffee und HEISSE Milch, BITTE.” I would like to have HOT
coffee and HOT milk, please. I ordered the same. The waiter
returned with a large silver tray that bore a silver coffee carafe,
creamer and sugar bowl. She immediately stretched out to test the
coffee carafe. “Ich sagte HEISSEN Kaffee und HEISSE Milch,
BITTE.” The waiter apologized and took everything back to the
kitchen. He had a big smile when he returned. This time the coffee
seemed to her liking, but then she touched the creamer. “Ich sagte
HEISSEN KAFFE u n d HEISSE MILCH, B I T T E !,” she
complained in a loud voice. The young waiter was shattered and
took everything away for a third try. “Am I embarrassing you?” she
asked me sweetly. “Well, perhaps just a little,” was my honest
response. “Don’t be embarrassed,” she corrected me with emphasis.
“I am just giving this young man an opportunity to do his job right.”

Sutherland Maxwell was dignified and tall. He had unfortunately
suffered a stroke when I first met him. “Ah, Mulligan,” he greeted
me on account of my reddish hair. And every time I came back to
the Maxwell Home it was the same greeting, “Mulligan is back !
Mulligan is here again !” When Emeric Sala went to read him the
telegram from Shoghi Effendi conferring on Mr. Maxwell the rank of
“Foremost Hand of the Cause,” he just stood there and spoke with a
very quiet voice, “I did not do all this alone.”

Siegfried Schopflocher, the inventor and entrepreneur from
Montreal, who on Saturdays would stroll through Atwater Market
masquerading as the poor old man until merchants took pity and
offered him bargains, was so generous with his personal fortune
that the Guardian called him the Temple Builder. Together with
Emeric Sala he had purchased a farm at Beaulac in the Laurentian

Hills, 50 miles north of Montreal. We would spend weekends
sprucing up the place and transforming the old barn into a meeting
hall. But Freddie soon became disenchanted. He had heard that the
bedroom doors were left open to keep the rooms warm during
freezing nights “I shall write Shoghi Effendi and tell him that
Beaulac is a Schweinestall,” a pigsty, he threatened. He was upset
that doors were left open, because there were no heat vents and one
didn’t want to go to bed wearing ski suits. No matter how much I
pleaded with him not to bother the Guardian, he insisted that he
would tell Shoghi Effendi that Beaulac was a Schweinestall. During
our work weekends we allowed ourselves some recreation by going
skiing. I fell on an icy hillside, twisted my knees and ankles and cut
my face. When we returned to the city on Sunday night, we always
went to the meeting at the Maxwell Home. I tried to hide behind a
curtain, but Freddie soon discovered the lacerations on my swollen
face. “What happened to you, poor fellow,” he enquired concerned.
“I took a tumble skiing,” I informed him truthfully. “Where did you
go skiing,” he wanted to know, even though he knew full well where
we spent our weekends. “In Beaulac,” I confessed. “Serves you
right,” he said without pity and walked away.

At Beaulac (Located east of Rawdon on Route 125 ca 50 miles north of Montreal) l to r
Bill Suter from Switzerland who became Baha’i in Toronto in the 1930’s, built his
rustic cottage at Beaulac and supervised the Baha’i property; Norma Sala from New
York, Rosemary Sala, Henry Jarvis (see p.10), u.i., Doris Richardson, Jean Smith.
Above l to r Ron Nablo and Noel Ryan. Two unidentified visitors from New York.

Siegfried Schopflocher was more concerned about helping the
Guardian than about anything else. When his wife Laurol visited
Haifa he sent her a telegram. If she would forgo a new Cadillac that
year he would send Shoghi Effendi $ 50,000.“How about $100,000,”
she cabled back. His reply: “You win. Love to Shoghi Effendi.” Laurol
missed the disaster of the dirigible “Hindenburg‟ on May 6 1937 when
at the last moment she changed her travel plans.

Here one should also mention an important experience Freddie had
in Haifa. He had joined the Guardian and a number of male pilgrims
from the East to say prayers in the Shrine of the Báb. As they were
all gathered, the Guardian suddenly asked for a chair to be brought
in and offered it to Freddie. After their prayers Shoghi Effendi
remarked along these lines, “You may have wondered why I asked
for a chair for Mr. Schopflocher. Mr. Schopflocher is from the West
and he is accustomed to say his prayers sitting down. I just wanted
everybody here to know that our Faith has no ritual.”

John Robarts from Toronto was a man of great dedication. At the
start of the Ten Year Crusade he gave up a prominent business
position and his beautiful home in Toronto Forest Hill and moved
with his family to Mafeking in Bechuanaland. He could be forceful
and persuasive. Conference participants once pledged to support a
project by donating a certain amount. When the pledge fell short
John called out, “Lock the doors, nobody leaves until we have the
money.” He also was very frank with his opinion. A school mistress
who had been invited to a Baha’i event involved John in a long and
serious conversation. “Tell me Mr. Robarts,” she finally asked him,
“what is the Baha’i attitude towards sex.” He smiled and took a
deep breath. “Why, they just LOVE it.”

Much has been reported elsewhere about Rúhíyyiih Khanum’s
dynamic and open personality, but the following anecdotes have
probably escaped attention. Following the dedication of the House
of Worship in Wilmette in 1953 she dedicated the graveside of her
father, William Sutherland Maxwell and visited her family home in
Montreal. Addressing a group of local friends she began,

“I understand that in this community everybody loves everybody else.”
“Everybody‟ present felt complimented and nodded agreement. “That’s
funny,” she continued with mock surprise and to the discomfort of
her audience, “I don’t LOVE every Bahá’í. In fact, some of them I CAN’T
STAND.” Later that evening I volunteered to run a complicated
projector to show a new movie she had brought along of the Gardens
and the Shrine on Mount Carmel. There was suppressed laughter from
our audience when people in the movie were seen running around like
Olympic speed walkers and trees were waving like in a storm.
“Slower,” she ordered, “Slower !” But I thought I knew what was wrong
and I had the machine already running at its slowest setting. “This is as
slow as it gets, Rúhíyyiih Khanum,” I said. “Mr. Liedtke, you just don’t
know how to run this projector,” was her rejoinder.

I was still in the middle of explaining that it was not I, but the
photographer who didn’t know his camera equipment, because in
order to save film he had probably been filming at 8 frames per
second instead of the normal 16, when it hit me that it must have
been her who had taken the movie.

Ruhiyyih Khanum and Amelia Collins with friends from Quebec and Ontario visiting
the graveside of Sutherland Maxwell at Montreal‟s Mt. Royal Cemetery in May 1953.

In later years she visited British Columbia. The one and only Baha’i
who was holding his lonely post in a northern community went to

the airfield to meet her small twin-engine private plane. He was
worried how to address this honored lady. When Rúhíyyiih Khanum
climbed out of the aircraft he stepped forward, offered her his hand
in greeting and with a loud voice called out Ya Bahá. That’s when his
dentures fell to the ground. Without losing a millisecond Rúhíyyiih
Khanum bent down, scooped them up and handed them back to him
with the immortal words, “These must be yours.”

In the picture below Ruhiyyih Khanum is seen enjoying a ride on a swing
while visiting a First Nations Community in Alberta, Canada.

Shoghi Effendi The Guardian of the Faith

Alhough I never met Shoghi Effendi, he had signed his letter “Your
true brother Shoghi.‟ This is how I have always felt towards him. He
had cautioned me not to take sides in my journalistic career, but to
confine my efforts to reporting facts. And he had given the blessing
of his prayer that the “Almighty may enable you to promote the best
interests of His Faith.” What I am sharing here are therefore second

hand reports from those who had the privilege of being in his
presence.

All these friends described him as being small in physique and not
particularly robust. A deeply caring person who carried the full
burden of his high office as decreed in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Will and
Testament. Somebody who was incessantly slandered and attacked,
even by members of his own family. When Shoghi Effendi died
suddenly and quite unexpected in November 1957, I thought that
he had died of a broken heart. All who met him could not believe
how he, overwhelmed with work and problems, was still able to
transform the former wilderness of Mount Carmel into a Garden of
Eden and in the face of huge difficulties of the post-war world to
erect the classic Archives Building and the beautiful superstructure
for the Shrine of the Báb. Future generations will surely pause and
marvel. The Hands of the Cause Ugo Giachery and Dhikru’llah
Khadem could not speak about the Guardian without tears coming
to their eyes. This was embarrassing to some, especially at large
meetings. They often had to struggle to find words that were
adequate to express their deep feelings. It felt as if they were urging
us on to lighten the Guardian’s burden through our deeds.
Amelia Collins felt an extreme affection for Shoghi Effendi. When
she discovered the threadbare socks he was wearing, she gave him
a large sum of money strictly for his own personal use. Instead he
used it to build the Collins Gate in the Garden at Bahji. When I met
her for the last time in 1953 in Montreal, she mentioned how very
sad the Guardian always was and said, “I would gladly step into a
cauldron of boiling oil to win a smile from the Guardian.”

Also in Montreal, Rúhíyyiih Khanum talked about the great burden
that Shoghi Effendi had to carry. He had to be everywhere at the
same time to strengthen the world wide community, to preserve its
unity, and to issue directions for the rapid dissemination of the
teachings. Next to many translations from the Arabic and Persian
into a classic English, he wrote thousands of explanations,
suggestions, appeals and letters, all with a fountain pen. Only in
later years did he own a small portable typewriter. Surrounded by
all his work he was under constant pressure by enemies of the Faith
who were even trying to steal Baha’i properties.

Rúhíyyiih Khanum was quite beside herself about the situation and
allowed herself the remark, “I could slit their throats.”

The Guardian acquired this manual portable typewriter only after World War II.
Prior to that time he had written all his books, translations, messages and letters
in longhand with pencil or fountain pen.

Bert Rakovsky, a prominent insurance executive in Montreal, spent
hours looking for “The largest bath towels money can buy.” He
wanted to take them to Haifa as a gift for the Guardian, “because he
would never allow himself this luxury.” I understand that Bert also
took along a trunk full of choice delicatessen.

Emeric Sala from Montreal mentioned the Guardian’s concern that
everybody automatically assumed that he knew everything and had

all the answers. “Dear Shoghi Effendi,” somebody had written him, “do
you think it is wise for me to marry Mary Smith?” How would he know,
he said, when he had never met either of them. It seems that all of us
long for somebody who will guide us safely through life and who will
relieve us of our responsibility to make decisions. Then the Guardian
heard from Emeric that his wife Rosemary Sala was on a teaching trip
through Canada’s Atlantic provinces despite winter weather and her
suffering from bronchitis. She had told Emeric that since the Guardian
had supported her idea for such a trip, it had to be his wish, so she
better go, even if she didn’t feel well. “How was I to know that she is
ill,” he almost shouted. “In her condition she should never have gone
to the Maritimes, but to Florida instead.”

The Passing of Shoghi Effendi

The Guardian died in his hotel room in London, England, early in
the morning of November 4, 1957. He was 60 years old and had
suffered a coronary thrombosis in his sleep. Ruhiyyih Khanum had
thoughtfully tried to lessen the blow by first sending a cable that
the Guardian was “desperately ill” with influenza. The final blow
reached us only on Tuesday evening November 5. - Half a century
later, during a last visit with our artist friend Rod Willis, he
reminded me of something I had never been aware of, but which he
had remembered all these years. He said when I phoned him with
the news of the Guardian’s passing I had first enquired about his
health and asked him to sit down. Only then had I passed the bad
news. I was grateful that Rod told me this, because it reminded me
that all our little deeds and omissions are inscribed on life’s pages.-

The message from the Hands of the Cause that Shoghi Effendi had
passed away without a successor confirmed what most of us had
feared right from the start. Without a son and without any other
loyal male descendant, there was no way that he could have
appointed a successor without violating the explicit instructions in
‘Abdu’l-Baha’s Will and Testament. There would therefore no longer
be a living Guardian. It came as a devastating tsunami that tore
away our confident expectations for successive future guidance and
raised the sickening specter of a community and institutions left to

their own devices. The remaining hope was an early establishment
of the Universal House of Justice which Baha’u’llah had promised
would be divinely protected and freed from error.

Nevertheless, there were some who believed that this sudden event
might portend an early return of a Divine Manifestation. If ‘Abdu’l-
Baha’s firm promise of successive living Guardians could be
annulled by an Unseen Will, so could Baha’u’llah’s promise that the
next Manifestation will not appear before the lapse of at least one
thousand solar years counted from Baha’u’llah’s first intimation of
His mission in Tehran’s Siyah Chal dungeon in the summer and fall
of 1862. Such beliefs were re-enforced by numerous Baha’i writings
that stressed the inseparable union of Guardianship and Universal
House of Justice as a “Twin Institution.”

“Divorced from the institution of the Guardianship the World Order of
Bahá'u'lláh would be mutilated and permanently deprived of that
hereditary principle which, as 'Abdu'l-Bahá has written, has been
invariably upheld by the Law of God."In all the Divine Dispensations,"
He states, in a Tablet addressed to a follower of the Faith in Persia,
"the eldest son hath been given extraordinary distinctions. Even the
station of prophethood hath been his birthright." Without such an
institution the integrity of the Faith would be imperiled, and the
stability of the entire fabric would be gravely endangered. Its prestige
would suffer, the means required to enable it to take a long, an
uninterrupted view over a series of generations would be completely
lacking, and the necessary guidance to define the sphere of the
legislative action of its elected representatives would be totally
withdrawn.” -The Dispensation of Bahá'u'lláh,
The World Order of Bahá'u'lláh, p. 148. 348
“The Guardian… is bound to insist upon a reconsideration by them
(the Universal House of Justice) of any enactment he conscientiously
believes to conflict with the meaning and to depart from the spirit of
Baha’u’llah‟s revealed utterances.” -Shoghi Effendi, The World Order
of Baha’u’llah, p. 150

What Shoghi Effendi was writing here is rather alarming and may
not be readily understood by many. He clearly implies that the
members of the House of Justice could not only make a mistake,

but they could in fact go against the very essence of Baha’u'llah’s
teachings. When he describes such a dire situation he is of course
speaking in the context of the Guardian’s responsibilities in
balancing the authority and power of the House of Justice.

In those dark and desperate years that now lie over half a century
in the past, the alternative would have been to forgo the formation
of a Universal House of Justice, because it would be unable to
function exactly according to the instructions in ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s Will
and Testament. However, the formation of the Universal House of
Justice had been decreed by Baha’u’llah Himself in the Kitab-I-
Aqdas prior to the directives and guidance given in later years by
‘Abdu’l-Baha and by Shoghi Effendi. Abandoned and impoverished as
the Baha’is of the world may have found themselves after the
Guardian’s sudden passing, they could not shirk their duty to obey an
original command that was given our age in Baha’u’llah’s Book of
Laws. Baha’is the world over closed ranks to achieve this historic
milestone. The arrival of the Universal House of Justice was greeted
with gratitude and relief. After its nine members were introduced
during the Baha’i Centennial Celebrations at London’s historic Albert
Hall, over six thousand believers from all parts of the globe rose and
filled the great room with the joyful chant of the Greatest Name.

Do not go where the path may lead.
Go instead where there is no path
and leave a trail. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Some of those I met on my trail have been mentioned in these
pages, but all too many were left out. Here, therefore, is a small
attempt to make up for it. Since it would not only be unfair, but
simply impossible to list them all in some order of merit or
importance, I let the rule of the alphabet come to my help.

Martin Aiff was a colleague on Germany’s first National Youth
Committee. A few years my senior, he was the one who always was
ready to jump in and tackle the inconvenient. His capacity for work
and engagement had no limits. When word arrived that Canada
needed pioneers, he immediately said he would settle on Prince
Edward Island. In the end I beat him to it, at least as far as going to
Canada was concerned. Years later I learned that in 1959 he, his
wife Gerda, and their six small children, had settled at Windhoek in
Namibia. Here, in the face of a harsh Apartheid policy, they did
heroic work teaching the Baha’i faith to the Herero people.

A full half century later I learned from my friend David Bowie what
had triggered their move. The Aiff’s were on pilgrimage when over
dinner the Guardian asked Martin in most disarming fashion, “Mr.
Aiff, what were YOU doing during the war?” It was the last thing
Martin wanted to be reminded of, let alone talk about. “I was in
the army,” was his minimal reply. It just wasn’t good enough for
Shoghi Effendi. “What were you doing in the army, Mr. Aiff” he
wanted to know. – “I drove a tank.” Still not good enough. “Where
did you drive a tank, Mr. Aiff ?” How could he tell the Guardian
that he was blitzing through the desert towards Cairo, hoping to
conquer Egypt and the Holy Land and reaching the Arabian oil
fields. Instead, he simply answered, “I drove a tank under Rommel.”
“Ah, you were with Field Marshall Erwin Rommel in the Africa
Corps ? You were trying to conquer Africa ?! Well, NOW is your
chance!” - After this exchange where else could poor Martin go.

David and Carol Bowie lived in Ontario where Carol worked on the
Auxiliary Board, while David spread the message North to Hudson
Bay. They later moved to South Africa where fate intervened and
took their wonderful daughter from them. They eventually returned
to pioneer on British Columbia’s sunshine coast. For many years
David criss-crossed North America’s West in his RV to share his
near encyclopaedic knowledge of the Baha’i faith with countless
friends who were living in isolation. He also became known as one
of the most lucid presenters at summer and winter schools who was
never shy to speak with authority on many topics that everybody
was keenly interested in, but few were prepared to openly discuss.

Much has been written about Laura Romney Davis who became
known as the Mother of Canada’s Baha’i community. A diminutive
lady with an ever present warm and friendly smile, she hosted
regular “Firesides” in her Toronto home at 44 Chestnut Park. Next

to the Maxwell home in Montreal, it became Canada’s best known
Baha’i address. The number of people, especially among the
younger generation, who were introduced to the teachings of
Baha’u’llah, are legion. On account of her work as national secretary,
Laura’s reputation as a kind hearted, yet efficient worker soon spread
to all parts of Canada and far beyond her borders. The community was
indeed fortunate for her to reach the age of 95.

Here I must leave my alphabetical order to mention Rolly Totten,
because wherever Laura went there went Rolly with his warm and
loving smile. Laura recognized him as one of the most generous
souls in our midst. There was nothing that hard working Rolly
wouldn’t do in order to help or cheer up a person in need.
Everybody knew Rolly as a genuine friend and one absolutely did
not care when somebody thought it was necessary to describe him
as homosexual. Rolly lived the life of a true servant of humanity.

Cliff and Catherine Huxtable took the light of Baha’u’llah to the
island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is said to be one
of the most isolated places on earth. This tiny, wind-blown piece of
real estate, located 2000 kilometers from the nearest African coast,
measures just 122 square kilometers or 47 square miles. When in
1815 after 10 weeks at sea Napoleon Bonaparte arrived there as an
exile of the British aboard HMS Northumberland, he grieved as he
first caught sight of the island, “It is not a pleasant place.” Pleasant
or not, St. Helena was destined to make Baha’i history as a place of
extraordinary devotion and heroism.

Cliff, who came from the Uxbridge area some 50 kilometers
northeast of Toronto, married Catherine Heward from Toronto. They
were in their early twenties, but Catherine was already bound to a
wheel chair on account of her advanced muscular dystrophy.
Catherine was beautiful and had the smile of an angel. It made it
doubly painful to notice how she had to use her stronger left arm to
help lift up her right hand when she greeted friends. Both Cathy
and Cliff had finished their studies and when the call came for
pioneers to settle in Saskatchewan, Cliff found employment there
and they left. I can still remember their misty-eyed send off. Next,
we heard that they had moved on, this time to British Columbia’s
Saltspring Island, located between Vancouver and Victoria.

Then came the incredible news that Catherine had given birth to a
healthy baby boy and that they had decided to pioneer even farther
afield to St. Helena. This remote island was a most unlikely place to be
for Catherine in her severely weakened condition. I believe they settled
somewhere near Jamestown where Napoleon once sent his cook to
shop for spaghetti which was his favorite dish. Those of us who were
left behind in the wake of their headlong quest for ever greater service
to the Cause, prayed that they may continue to be blessed and
protected and that their son may bring much joy to his parents.
Whenever one remembers that frail, but so luminous young
mother, one wonders if in a bygone era or in a different culture our
indomitable friend would have been venerated as Saint Catherine.

Hundred years after the Covered Wagons once took pioneers to the
Golden West, Ben and Mary Koltermann and their four young
children age 2 to 14 repeated the feat in an under-powered
Volkswagen camper as pioneers in the service of Baha’u’llah. They
lived at Niagara Falls, Ontario, when they offered their services to
the teaching committees of Prince Edward Island, Saskatchewan
and British Columbia. Only British Columbia replied. They were
told that the community of Coldstream, outside Vernon, needed urgent
help to maintain their Assembly.

They started out on August 15 1971 and arrived on September 1.
Skirting Georgian Bay and Lake Superior on their 4000 kilometer
long journey, Mary drove the camper and Ben followed in a small
truck with their furniture. They camped and put up a tent en route
just as the pioneers had done a century earlier. But then they went
in search of land and gold, while Mary and Ben were searching for
receptive souls. As it was still early in the day when they arrived in
the Okanagan valley, they motored on to Kelowna to do some sightseeing there. Holding his 2-year old daughter Tamara, Ben climbed
up on a grandstand in Kelowna’s park to get a better photograph of
Okanagan Lake. That’s when he slipped and popped his arm out of
his shoulder socket. After a very painful treatment at the hospital
they tried to find a number for “Baha’i‟ in the phone book and
discovered that Elsie Gatzke was just having one of her famous allnight firesides only a short walk from where they were phoning
from. Elsie welcomed the newcomers with open arms, because
Kelowna urgently needed replacements for two Assembly members
who had just moved out.

Ben and Mary decided to stay. Ben’s condition had made it in any
event impossible for him to drive back to Coldstream. Thanks to his
well-timed mishap on that grandstand, Mary and Ben Koltermann
have been the most well-known and respected Baha’i teachers in
the area for the past forty-one years, at the time this is written.

Patrick and Brenda Pemberton-Piggott and their four small children
Terry, Claire, Crispin and Andrew left their lovely country home in
Pickering Township to go pioneering to Nigeria during the Ten Year
Crusade. They went to Ibadan, a little over 100 kilometers north of
the Capital city of Lagos. While teaching the faith, Patrick earned
his living installing electricity and lighting in Ibadan’s new stadium
complex. Patrick and Brenda had come to Canada from Britain
where Patrick had obtained his engineering degree. He was a
stunningly gifted inventor and innovator, ready to tackle just about
any engineering problem that came his way, while Brenda was an
incredibly helpful people person who ran firesides wherever she
went. It was to our loss, but it came as no surprise that the
Piggott’s had decided to give a portion of their lives to the people of
Nigeria to help in the modernization of their country.

It was at the home of Alan and Evelyn Raynor in North York that
Gisele and I said our vows back in 1954. The Raynor’s and their three
boys Douglas, John and Bruce were pillars of North York’s fledgling
Baha’i Community and it was largely on their account that the local
Assembly had become incorporated which was quite unusual at that
time. The other novelty was that our wedding was the first Baha’i
wedding in North York and accordingly received special mention in
the local paper. Evelyn was like a second mother to us, while St.
George Spendlove, whom we shall be meeting shortly, gave the
bride away. But before that could happen, the bride and groom
were asked to present their parents written consent, which is a
requirement for Baha’is. Everything came to a sudden stop and the
groom was kept standing alone for several anxious minutes, as the
bride ran upstairs to her room to rummage for her consent letter.
She did eventually find it, or we would not have been married for
62 wonderful years as this is being written.

Our wedding. Evelyn and Alan Raynor are to our left, George Spendlove at right
At far left are “Sonny” Roberts sitting, Wes Huxtable standing, Craig and
Maude Weaver. Standing behind Alan in white dress is Emily Roberts, behind
her to the right is Ron Nablo, next to him Charles Roberts.

Suzanne Pawlowska and Hubert Schuurmann, who first saw the
light of day in Poland and in Holland, became Baha’is in Winnipeg, met
in Happy Valley, Labrador, and were married at St. John’s in
Newfoundland’s first Baha’i wedding. A missionary of the Moravian
Church became instrumental for them to meet in Canada’s vast
North when he told Suzanne “there is another Baha’i who works at
Goose Bay air base”. Their life together would be a constant moving
from place to place while instilling in their four children a sense of the
universal kinship of all people. Suzanne was a teacher, while Hubert
initially was film editor for the Canadian Broadcasting

Corporation and later a producer of documentaries for the National
Film Board of Canada. Over the next half century they taught the
Eskimos of Labrador, lived in Greenland and then among the Lapps
North of the Arctic Circle. Here Hubert produced his documentary
“The Sami Herders.” Another notable production was his “Healing
Spirit” in which Deepak Chopra participated. The documentary
explores the human journey through life and death, illness and
healing. It poses the idea that healing goes deeper than simply
curing symptoms. The Schuurman’s year in Lappland was followed
by moves to Eastern and Western Canada and to Newfoundland.

While on their distant outpost in Labrador, the Schuurmans
suffered the heartbreak of the death of their 17-year old disabled
son Tristan. During his all too short life Tristan had made many
friends in many lands by his genuinely loving nature. As an
accomplished writer, Suzanne was able to capture the essence of
her son’s life in her book “Tristan‟. Another of her books that she
was able to complete in between her travels, was “ Legacy of
Courage‟, the extraordinary story of the life of her mother, Ola
Pawlowska who became a Knight of Baha’u’llah. In later years Suzanne
helped her mother in her move from Zaire in Central Africa to her
native Poland where her mother lived for a short while before
returning to Canada.

Every Tuesday night, week in, week out, for twenty years, St.
George Spendlove hosted his famous Baha’i fireside at his Toronto
home. That’s roughly one thousand firesides to bring every facet of
Baha’u’llah’s teachings to many hundreds of his fellow citizens. George,
as he was known to his friends, gave true meaning to both his names
by spreading the love of Baha’u’llah and by slaying the dragon of
ignorance. Yet, his feat which probably had no parallel in the history of
the Baha’i Faith, was only the tip of the iceberg of his many
tireless activities. Professionally he was curator at Toronto’s Royal
Ontario Museum, a world authority on Chinese, East Asian, Indian and
European art, curator of the museum’s Canadiana Collection, a sought
after university lecturer, world traveler and author. In between he had
helped in 1935 to establish the National Spiritual Assembly of the
British Isles in London and he lent years of vital support to the Baha’i
school at Green Acre, Maine.

Quoting from Volume XIII of The Baha’i World, George Spendlove
combined in his life and work the deeply spiritual and the brilliantly
intellectual. In all he did one discerned the qualities of his character
– his restless curiosity, his integrity, his dislike of all pretense.
Born and raised in Montreal, George suffered a severe concussion
in World War I and lost most of his hearing. War’s inner wounds were
healed when he found the Baha’i faith through Sutherland and May
Maxwell. When George first began studying the Baha’i Faith he got
himself a large notebook in which to jot down, like a good scientific
researcher, any question he felt could not be answered
satisfactorily by the Faith. Thirty years later, he revisited this book
and noted that there was not a single unanswered question left.

It was England’s loss and Canada’s gain when in 1936 George
moved to Toronto to take up his museum appointment. He
received this encouragement from the Guardian, “I wish to assure
you in person of my deep appreciation of the work you are so
devotedly accomplishing in Toronto.”

I felt a very special affinity to George, because he was almost
exactly my father’s age and both had suffered almost identical war
wounds before they were 20 years old. Facing a severe problem I
once asked for George’s advice. “Does your father love you,” he
puzzled me. “Of course he does,” I replied. “Would he do everything
to help you if it lay in his power?” – “Of course he would.” – “Well,
remember you do have a Father Who loves you dearly and Who is
all powerful.” – On the other hand, George would counsel people,
“Be careful what you pray for. You might get it.”

With his tank running on low, but with so much still waiting for him
to do, it became a huge sacrifice for George to sit through the socalled administrative part of our Nineteen-Day Feasts and to endure
the endless and often heated “consultations.” As mentioned earlier,
George was very hard of hearing and carried a hearing aid. This
offered an elegant escape. Whenever he had enough, he would
suddenly get up and announce in a tired monotone, “I am sorry,
friends, but my hearing is worse than usual tonight and I see no
purpose in staying.”

George owned a small homestead outside Uxbridge with an old
farm house, a sugar bush and a red painted Army surplus Jeep to
bomb around in. He invited us to stay there when an ice storm left
our home without power for over a week. We went to bed wearing
coats, hats and gloves before George came to our rescue. Gisele and
I used this period of seclusion on George’s farm to tackle a rather
difficult German translation of George Townshend’s book “Christ and
Baha’u’llah‟. The Guardian had called the book “his crowning
achievement.” When the finished product arrived back from
Germany, we noticed the lavish praise that was given to one who
was proficient in neither English nor German, but who had
contributed financially. There was no mention of those who had
communed long hours with George Townshend in order to bring his
great vision to the German speaking world. It was another sad
reminder that very little had changed. It was still money that talked
and bought recognition. It was at this little island of tranquility in
Uxbridge County where George planned to relax for a while after his
impending retirement. Afterwards he planned to return with his
wife to Korea, the Land of the Morning Sun, he had fallen in love
with. He was so much looking forward to spend the rest of his life
in his beloved Orient. He said he would probably first travel to
Seoul. All was in readiness. The house had been sold, the furniture
packed. Then came a sudden change of plans. George was released
overnight from all earthly bonds, just weeks before he was
scheduled to start on his long journey.
Ian Semple was a trail blazer of an entirely different kind. Rather
than a pioneer to distant lands, he pioneered new attitudes and
new vision, all of which could be much harder. Despite his hope to
remain in the background he became at age 35 the youngest House
member and served on this body for 42 years. Let‟s read what he
said in London on January 28, 2006 about the impartiality that was
strictly observed at the first election of the House of Justice in
1963, and about the real dangers of fundamentalism and the need
for followers of Baha’u’llah to make use of their wonderful brains.

“The Hands [of the Cause] were very worried, because they were deeply
concerned that nothing should go wrong in that election. There were some Bahá’ís
at that time who had obviously set out to tour the Bahá’í world, donating things
here and there and making themselves very popular and very well-known, and the
Hands were worried that in some cases it was not genuine. Some people were
very generous people, but in other cases there was a little electioneering going on.
But the Hands thought ‘What can we do? If we interfere it would be the same
thing [electioneering in reverse], we must just trust Bahá’u’lláh’. None of those
who were fiddle-faddling got elected… As part of that process of trying not to
influence the ballots the Hands decided that no males at the World Centre
would contact
the [voting] delegates. Only female Baha’is had contact with delegates. At one
point I faced difficulty: Being Assistant Secretary of the International Baha’i
Council I had to get in touch with [a delegate] who was also a member of the
Council. We were going to have a Council meeting and I had to get word to [him]
to join the meeting. He was staying in a hotel on top of Mt. Carmel. I went up
there in the evening, and the only way I could think of getting a letter to him was
to sneak through the bushes and the shrubbery up to the office of the hotel and
pop it through the window to the staff and tell them ‘Please give this to Mr._ _.”
Then I disappeared through the bushes back down again.”

“Some people are very eager and sound enthusiastic, too enthusiastic.
A fundamentalist is temperamentally someone who wants to stop you thinking.
And of course that’s where a sense of humour comes in, because you say this is

ridiculous. The way to stop getting into fundamentalism is to insist on thinking
about things. Examine them. Remember what the Guardian wrote. I’ve heard
some people say that independent investigation of truth is [valid] until you find
Bahá’u’lláh; after that it doesn’t apply. But the Guardian has written that
Bahá’u’lláh has enjoined the independent investigation of truth upon His followers
[and ‘followers’ are people who have accepted a religion]….You have the humility
to recognise that you are a fallible human being and unless you keep thinking hard
and investigating hard, you are not going to understand what Bahá’u’lláh said.
You are going to misunderstand it, and that’s fundamentalism: misunderstanding
and misapplying a Revelation and insisting that you are right.”

Some Participants of the Canadian National Convention in 1956
1st row Donald MacLaren, Roger White, Charles Jardine, Sherwood and Nora Moore, Douglas Martin
2nd row X , Alan Raynor, Catherine Heward-Huxtable, May Pallister, Jameson and Gail Bond
3rd row Erland Barr, X , Bert Rakovsky, Nancy Campbell, Jean Smith, X , James Norquay
4th row Lloyd Gardner, Brenda Pemberton-Piggott, X , Margaret East, Hedda Rakovsky , Peggy Ross, X ,
Joyce McLean

Catherine Huxtable is seen on this picture before she and her husband Cliff left to go to St. Helena Island

Donald MacLaren was a Canadian flying ace in World War I with 54 victories. He became first employee
of Trans Canada Airlines, later Air Canada, and was first to suggest to the government where Vancouver
International Airport should be located. While many had misgivings, he cheered my trip on the first jet.

Roger White (1929-1993) was ‘Baha’i Poet Laureate’ and writer who helped the faith out of its obscurity

Douglas Martin became a member of the Universal House of Justice 1993-2005

The Happy Gang of Stalwarts at Canada’s 13th Baha’i Convention in 1960
1st row Norma Wiley, Violet Dutoff, X, Joyce McLean, X, X, X, X, Laura Davies, Nancy Campbell, Husayn
Banani, Jan Vandervliet, Elizabeth Rochester, Tom Volguardsen, X, X, Tahirih Vatanparast, Sonny
Roberts, Emely Roberts.
2nd row X, X, Gertrude Barr, Keith Liedtke, Helen Gidden, Ian Liedtke, Gisele Liedtke, Suzanne Liedtke,
Audrey Westheuser, Hedda Rakosvsky, Ruhiyyih Khanum, John Robarts, Peggy Ross, X, Muriel Barr,
below her to the right wearing glasses is Winnifred Harvey, X, Amy Putnam, X, Beatrice Ashton, X, Pearl
Hannah.
3rd row X, Fred Graham, Jean Graham, Jeannie Seddon, X, X, Dorothy Smith, May Pallister, Inez Hayes,
Evelyn Raynor, X, X, X, X, X, Phoebe Wynen, Betsy Wynen, X, Dorothy Walsh, Priscilla Waugh.
4th row Gerald Robarts, James Norquay, X, Harry Liedtke, Douglas Martin, Vera Raginsky, Hartwell
Bowsfield, Craig Weaver, Harold Moscrop, X, X, Doug Wilson, Tony Marsolais, W.J. Christie, X, X, Alan
Raynor.
5th row Tom Garroway, Rollie Totten, Tom Gossen, Bert Rakovsky, Bill Waugh, Charles Jardine, Erland
Barr, Rowland Estall.
The names of those friends who are marked with an X are after 53 years unfortunately lost to memory

Me and my Zeppelin in 1931
My first flight in a very early Messerschmitt in 1935
Watching the first Boeing Jumbo Jet built in 1969
Sleepy Rhein-Main airport in 1947
Celebrating the first airline computer in 1978

Rushing out news for the Associated Press in 1950

With Kiri Ratima of New Zealand, Carlos Pareiras-Horta of Bahia, Brasil and with Auckland’s dare devil pilot Fred
Ladd visiting Motuihe Island where German sea raider Count Felix Luckner was kept interned in World War I

Chicago 1958 With John Eichenauer Family Picnic in Northern Ontario At Frankfurt House of Worship with son Ian

Lighting a Candle for “The Century of Light” Walking on Water…Almost Remembering the Holocaust

Wert thou to speed through the immensity of space
And traverse the expanse of heaven,
Yet, thou wouldst find no rest
Save in submission to My Command
And humbleness before My face. – Baha’u’llah

Some sixteen years after my wartime premonition that bomber
squadrons would be replaced by fleets of civilian airliners to shrink
our world into a small neighborhood, I became a direct witness of
this miraculous transformation. On March 1, 1960 a B.O.A.C.
“Comet‟ jetliner took off from Toronto's Malton Airport to inaugurate
the airline's new Toronto-London service. It was the first time that a
commercial jetliner had started from Toronto and I had the unique
experience of being on board.

I first heard about the possibility of jet travel in 1936 when I was
nine years old and saw a book that showed an artist’s drawing of a
“Jet Wing‟. It was a giant aircraft wing without fuselage that was
propelled at speeds of 1,000 kilometers an hour by six huge
propellerless engines that protruded from the rear of the wing. The
wing’s leading edge had large windows for lounges and staterooms
of a size and opulence of those on the dirigible Hindenburg. Such
dimensions had become a bench mark for any futuristic designs.

It made sense that my old friends the zeppelins would eventually be
replaced by aircraft to take us in equal comfort across the Atlantic
in three hours instead of three days by zeppelin. But my hope that
these beautiful flying machines were just around the corner was
dashed by an engineer who said one would first have to develop new
alloys, because all known substances would melt under the heat
and pressure of such “turbines‟. He had no idea when this utopia
might become a reality. But reality had already begun to happen with
early experiments in England and Germany. The competition of World
War II accelerated progress and by 1944 both countries had their
first fighter jets. Today, when jet travel is so commonplace that people
look up twice when they see a large, propeller-driven aircraft droning
through the sky, it is difficult to imagine the excitement and awe that
gripped the large crowd at Malton airport to witness Comet’s takeoff.
During the 1950's the North
Atlantic was flown by Lockheed
“Constellations‟ and by the
Boeing “Stratocruiser‟. The New
York - London speed record
stood at eleven hours and
thirty minutes. The route from
Toronto to London went via
Montreal, Gander on Newfoundland and Shannon,
Ireland. The trip with its three
stop-overs took on average of
16 hours. The Comet would
dramatically cut all these times
in half.

But it wasn't the breakthrough in speed alone that made the Comet
a thrill, there was also the notion of risk. Metal fatigue had caused
three Comets of an earlier design to disintegrate. Hand of the Cause
Dorothy Baker lost her life when a Comet taking her from India to
London blew up near the island of Elba. A re-designed stronger and
larger Comet had taken its place. While the four engines were also
built into the wing, that‟s where any resemblance ended. But in the
mind of many people a Comet was still a Comet and a jet remained
a jet and sooner or later it would blow up again. Before I left, some
people wished me well as if they were uncertain of my safe return.

Comet's takeoff was a spectacular sight for anyone who had not
seen a jet take off before. At the end of the runway the engines were

run up full throttle, the brakes were released and the aircraft shot
forward. Half way down the runway it rotated and climbed into the
night sky at an incredibly steep angle. Watching the takeoff from
astern it appeared as though the plane was standing on its tail,
borne on the red-hot exhausts of its four jet engines. Compared to
the lumbering takeoff of a propeller plane this was an awesome and
scary sight. There was no "noise abatement" in those days and the
thunderous shockwaves made the eardrums tingle.

The flight plan called for a brief stopover at Montreal to pick up
passengers and to fill up the tanks for the long Atlantic haul. The
non-stop Montreal-London sector required a cruising altitude of
42,000 feet for maximum fuel efficiency.

As a non-smoker and a non-drinker were there any goodies left for Harry ?

Service on board Comet set a new standard of luxury. On this
inaugural flight we were served by BOAC's senior stewards and
stewardesses who had flown with Her Majesty the Queen and Sir
Winston Churchill. Instead of meal trays, our tables were set with

Irish linen, Spode China and silver cutlery. There was a sumptuous
selection of hot and cold hors-d'oeuvres including caviar and chilled
lobster, hot consommé served from a tureen was followed by a
selection of three entrees.
As dawn broke over the Atlantic we were invited to the flight deck.
Comet's "front office"
was small and cramped
for the four-man crew
and there was a
staggering array of dials
and switches on dash,
walls and ceiling. The
lasting impression was
the eerie quiet. There
was a hissing ventilation
noise and one could
barely hear the muffled
sound of the engines
which were located in the wing way behind the cockpit. The
difference from a propeller plane with its penetrating, throbbing
engine noise could not have been more dramatic. Also, there were
none of the usual vibrations. Cruising high above the Atlantic at
42,000 feet it felt as though we were suspended motionless in a
void. Above us the shadows of night were dissolving and far below,
through the mists of dawn, we caught glimpses of the ocean.

After crossing the Emerald Isle and the Irish Sea we were looking
down on England's ever so green countryside. "Ladies and
gentlemen, we are just passing by Windsor Castle on your left," the
captain announced as we were approaching London's Heathrow
Airport from the West. The Royal residence swept past us like a
pretty jewel in a green setting. And then we touched down on
Heathrow's main runway, light as a feather. My flight certificate
states that our total elapsed flying time from Toronto to London was
eight hours and twenty-eight minutes. Just nine years earlier I had
travelled by ship from Southampton to Montreal and it had taken
eleven days of misery on stormy seas.
After our inaugural party had
disembarked, I went to pay my
respects to John Alcock and
Arthur Whitten Brown, pioneers
in the daring quest to connect
the continents of the world by
air. In June of 1919 they were the
first to cross the hostile North
Atlantic in an airplane. Their
historic flight from Newfoundland
to Ireland in a World War I
Vickers Vimy bomber had taken
sixteen hours and twenty-eight
minutes. Eight hours more, to the
exact minute, than it had taken
us. But instead of flying from
Newfoundland to Ireland, we had
travelled all the way from Toronto
across eastern Canada, the Atlantic Ocean, Ireland and the Irish
Sea to London, a distance of 5,710 kilometers as compared to their
route of 3,550 kilometers.

The trail they blazed only forty years earlier we had followed in a
fraction of the time and we had travelled in pampered luxury. This
first flight on a commercial jetliner, more than any other event
before or since, made me realize how much our world has shrunk,
- quite literally overnight - and for better or for worse had become a
very small place.

Atheists, Believers and Agnostics

In my experience most people keep their religious feelings to themselves.
They avoid discussing them, because they are afraid of being judged either a
fool or a bigot. Human nature craves security above all else. We seek it in food,
shelter, influence, and very much in our acceptance by those around us. No
wonder that we all find a measure of safety by keeping our innermost
thoughts to ourselves. It came therefore as quite a surprise when somebody
opened his conversation with me by firmly stating, “I am an Atheist.” I
immediately suspected that he was trying to make it clear to me right from the
outset that he was not “into religion” and that he didn’t wish to talk about it.

“Are you really,” I feigned surprise. “It is very rare that one meets a person
who actually knows that there is no God.” “Well,” he said “I wouldn’t want to
go that far. I don’t know for sure, but I just believe that there is no God.” “Oh,”
I said, this time feigning disappointment, “then you’re really not an atheist at
all, but only a believer like the rest of us, except that instead of believing in
God’s existence you believe that he doesn’t exist. That would make both of us
agnostics.”

I have always felt a special kinship with those who call themselves
agnostics. The dictionary describes them as persons who hold that the
existence of the ultimate power and intelligence in the universe, such as God,
and the essential nature of all things, are unknown and unknowable. In my
school years I often ruminated about the Latin phrase “Scio me nescire,“ which
means “I know that I do not know.” Known as the Socratic paradox, this often
quoted saying is derived from Plato's account of the Greek philosopher
Socrates. It prepared me for Baha’u’llah’s words in the Seven Valleys,
“God is, in His Essence, holy above ascent and descent,
entrance and exit; He hath through all eternity been free of
the attributes of human creatures, and ever will remain so.
No man hath ever known Him; no soul hath ever found the
pathway to His Being. Every mystic knower hath wandered
far astray in the valley of the knowledge of Him; every saint
hath lost his way in seeking to comprehend His Essence.

Sanctified is He above the understanding of the wise;
exalted is He above the knowledge of the knowing! The
way is barred and to seek it is impiety; His proof is His
signs; His being is His evidence. –

My personal understanding of the last two sentences is that our own
bodies and mental powers and the innumerable indicators of
intelligence surrounding us are proof of the presence of some great
unknown intelligence which some people call God or by some other
name. Of many Baha’i texts on this subject, this one is my favourite:

Say: Nature in its essence is the embodiment of My
Name, the Maker, the Creator. Its manifestations are
diversified by varying causes, and in this diversity there
are signs for men of discernment.
Nature is God's Will and is its expression in and
through the contingent world. It is a dispensation of
Providence, ordained by the Ordainer, the All-Wise.
Were anyone to affirm that it is the Will of God as
manifested in the world of being, no one should question
this assertion. It is endowed with a power whose reality
men of learning fail to grasp. Indeed, a man of insight can
perceive naught therein save the effulgent splendor of our
Name, the Creator.
Say: This is an existence which knowest no decay, and
Nature itself is lost in bewilderment before its revelations,
its compelling evidences and its effulgent glory which
have encompassed the universe.
Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh p. 142

In view of this very clear explanation, I find it frustrating and hard to
understand why modern up to date dictionaries list the following ‘synonyms’
for those who profess to be agnostics: disbelievers, nonbelievers, unbelievers,
doubters, skeptics, secularists, empiricists, heathens, heretics, infidels, pagans.

No wonder that people will try their best to avoid being placed into one of
these somewhat disreputable categories by either just pretending to be
staunch believers, or by defiantly professing to be atheists, when in reality
they have been agnostics all along.

Most often, the reason that some people will not believe in a God is the
world’s unchecked injustice and cruelty. If there really was an all-powerful
and all-loving creator, so they reason, he would step in and protect the truly
innocent from all manner of pain and persecution. But he does nothing, letting
even innocent little children suffer agonies and allowing their lives to be cut
short. How can that be.

The answer to this conundrum is simple but it is also not very palatable. The
world’s travails, the injustices, the cruelties that abound wherever we look,
have absolutely nothing to do with God the Creator. They have everything to
do with humanity’s behavior. Mischief, greed and cruelty do not represent
God’s Will, let alone His love. They are a mirror of our own self-made flaws.

We are told, and we are rather proud of it, that we are set apart from the
amoebae and the beasts of field and forest and that we occupy a very unique
place in the cosmos. Unlike any mineral - from the workings of the atom to
the evolution of galaxies - and unlike any plant or animal, mankind has been
endowed with the capacity of free decision making. While everything in
nature must obey nature’s laws absolutely, the sovereign power of man’s
intellect allows him to rise above nature’s order to a point where we can even
interfere with nature’s original design. As is written in the Book of Genesis,

“And God said, Let us make man in our image…and let them
have dominion… over all the earth… “
But nowhere does it say that if we abuse our powers or turn away from God’s
guidance that He shall be held responsible.
Hence, it is a cheap copout to blame God for our doings, especially when we
don’t seem inclined to give God credit for our inventions and success stories.
Perhaps it’s like this: We’ve been called into being to master life’s
challenges during a time, at a place and in circumstances that were decreed

for us; to make full use of our given talents; to help our neighbors and to seek
guidance through prayer, work and study.
Whether we like it or not, humanity has been given freedom of thought and
action, for better or for worse. The only thing that stands today between our
sovereign decision making power and the threat of self-destruction, are the
protective religious laws that have been progressively revealed to mankind.
They do not come with a guilt edged guarantee that promises for mankind’s
future happiness shall be fulfilled irrespective of human behavior, but they do
promise that obedience to these laws are our best chance for peace and
happiness. Here I am reminded of this word by Baha’u’llah:

O Son of Being !
Love Me, that I may love thee.
If thou lovest Me not,
My love can in no wise reach thee.
Know this, O servant.

A faithful adherence to the Laws of Nature

In all our scientific endeavors we take great pride in respecting certain laws.
They are universally recognized as “Laws of Nature.” Never ever are they to be
ignored or fooled around with if we hope to succeed. The American
philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) whose thoughts were
remarkably prescient of the coming new world order, wrote in his Essay VII,
“Nature is not democratic, nor limited-monarchical, but despotic, and will not be
fooled or abated of any jot of her authority by the pertest of her sons.” -
We treat nature’s laws with a very special kind of respect, because we know
that they are not man-made and must therefore be free of error or deceitful
design. Another good reason for our unreserved obedience is that strict
compliance alone will assure success and avoid disaster. We wouldn't dream
of rebelling against this sort of ‘restraint’, because we value scientific success.
It enhances our physical comforts and security, it protects our health, gratifies
our senses, and helps to fulfill our fondest dreams in a shorter time with less
and less effort.

Appeals for spiritual progress, on the other hand, are not nearly as welcome,
because they call for change in attitudes and behavior through conscious
effort and personal commitment. Moreover, any beneficial results of such
spiritual exertions are not immediately evident. The pursuit of physical
sciences, by contrast, may appear to bring more immediate and tangible
results, but their true fruits will only be seen when they deliver prosperity or
ruin, depending on the inventor’s or user’s spiritual focus. In the meantime, it
is, of course, less painful and far more convenient to treat both secular and
religious laws as a smorgasbord of options from which to pick and choose
according to personal preference.
But once again, the realities we see in the physical world are a dramatic
reflection of those of the world of the spirit: The same rules of discipline that
assure the success of science and technology also govern the spiritual wellbeing of humanity. Both rules reject preconceived ideas. They call for
thorough, open-minded investigation and ultimately require humility and
obedience to an existing higher law. There is really no reason to assume that
humanity should on one hand be gifted to uncover the physical realities, but
on the other hand be doomed to remain forever deaf and blind to the salutary
influence of spiritual laws. The human being is perfectly equipped to access
both sources of truth in order to benefit from those combined powers of
wisdom that are present in a universe where so-called spirit and so-called
matter are tightly interwoven. Every scientific discovery and every advance
should therefore buoy our confidence that the triumphs of the human mind
can indeed find a noble counterpart and necessary balance in the attainment
of a deeper awareness of spiritual laws and, through their observance, in the
refinement of human nature.

“ ...Until material achievements, physical accomplishments and human
virtues are reinforced by spiritual perfections, luminous qualities and
characteristics of mercy, no fruit or result shall issue therefrom, nor will
the happiness of the world of humanity, which is the ultimate aim, be
attained. For although, on the one hand, material achievements and the
development of the physical world produce prosperity, which exquisitely
manifests its intended aims, on the other hand dangers, severe calamities
and violent afflictions are imminent.

“ ...When thou lookest at the orderly pattern of kingdoms, cities and
villages, with the attractiveness of their adornments, the freshness of their
natural resources, the refinement of their appliances, the ease of their
means of travel, the extent of knowledge available about the world of
nature, the great inventions, the colossal enterprises, the noble discoveries
and scientific researches, thou wouldst conclude that civilization conduceth
to the happiness and the progress of the human world.
“Yet shouldst thou turn thine eye to the discovery of destructive and infernal
machines, to the development of forces of demolition and the invention of
fiery implements, which uproot the tree of life, it would become evident and
manifest unto thee that civilization is conjoined with barbarism. Progress
and barbarism go hand in hand, unless material civilization be confirmed by
Divine Guidance...”

‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Selected Writings, p. 283

Later Years

In later years, one of our most promising projects was the annual
presentation of a Race Amity Award. It was awarded to fellow
citizens who had made outstanding contributions to racial
harmony, education and social justice. These meetings were usually
attended by some 250 guests from all walks of life and received
wide media coverage. The gala format was a Sunday luncheon with
artistic entertainment and speeches by the mayor and by members
of parliament. The following excerpt from this author‟s keynote may
reflect some of the spirit of these events. They have helped to firmly
establish in people’s minds the aim and purpose of the Baha’i faith.

“History proves that racial and religious hatred are the greatest foe to
peace and progress. But this opens up for us the opportunity of a
lifetime, namely to join hands and work towards a universal
awakening of the human spirit. Think of it this way, a mere hundred
years ago this opportunity did not exist, because the need for change
was still not absolute. And a hundred years hence, we shall
hopefully have crossed the magic threshold into a new era of human
behavior. A century from now, the great lesson should have been
learned and much of what ails us today remedied. If not, I fear that
our beautiful home planet may have been turned into a wasteland.
The shift from blissful isolation to the present state of global
interdependence was rather sudden. It has been a bruising
experience for many people on earth. Today’s condition of humanity
was unthinkable when our grandparents were young. But few people
on earth are better equipped to spearhead this change, then those
who live in North America. The reason for this is that most countries
still have a homogeneous society, while North Americans are people
of every race, religion, culture and language background. They may
not have learned to live in perfect harmony, but they recognize that
racial and religious amity is definitely in everybody’s best interest.
North America’s condition is unique and not at all commonplace
among nations. But it foreshadows the future condition of the entire
human race. America, Canada very much included, can be likened to
a sociological laboratory for a future planetary society. Our quest for
racial togetherness, therefore, does not just safeguard Canada’s own
internal peace and prosperity, but it sets an example for the rest of
the world.”

I wish I could relate here tales of instant and visible success. But
there is nothing instant about trying to promote change of such
immense magnitude, and very little of our efforts are easily visible.
It seems that most of what we struggle for in life is not for now, but
for a distant future. I dare say that by the time our actions bear
fruit, should they be so blessed, we will have long left this plane.
Any study of history proves that much of the efforts of pioneers and
inventors were mainly for the benefit of future generations. Because
he found precisely the right words for explaining this particular
mystery, I may be permitted to quote Dr. Peter Khan at Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, on June 29, 2001.

“We… are the descendants of countless generations who over
thousands of years have held alive the hope and expectation that the
day would come when the Kingdom of God would be established on
the Earth…Our sense of community will not only extend in space, will
not only include those of times past, but we will also be in
communion with those yet to come. We will become deeply conscious
of the millions who are in the future, who are proceeding in the
stream of time towards their existence on this earth, who are
marching towards us from the future, who will take up the reins, who
will come to assist us in this work, and we shall see our endeavours
as laying the foundation for the unity and harmony they will
experience in decades and centuries ahead. And through this vision,
and through this sense of community, we will understand how
deeply responsible we are for the welfare of generations yet
unborn…”

Circa 460 B.C. the small Greek island of Kos became the
birthplace of Hippocrates who is perhaps history's most
famous physician. By rejecting superstition in favour of
scientific observation, by classifying diseases, and by
creating a set of moral and professional standards for
physicians, he earned the title of 'Father of Medicine.' He
also gave the world a code of ethics for physicians as
embodied in the Hippocratic Oath. To this day, this oath is
still sworn by graduates of many modern medical schools.
Hippocrates was an inspired human being who two and a
half millennia ago was ages ahead of his time. Can there be
any doubt that he was imbued with what one would have
to call a religious sense of mission towards his fellow men.
It should be evident that he was not just working for the
“here and now.” Beyond the primitive and often barbaric
conditions of his time, he saw a world far in the future that
was vastly different from the world that he was destined to
live in. His aim and purpose was a better life for all
humanity. He “understood how deeply responsible he was
for the welfare of generations yet unborn…”
This is what I have always regarded as aim and purpose of
this wayfarer’s travels from place to place and of his journey
from all the yesterdays towards the world of tomorrow.

GRATITUDE FOR THE PAST
AN OBSTINATE OPTIMISM FOR THE FUTURE

God’s Messenger returns to Earth
As day will follow night
But morning’s mist, night’s dogged trace
Still hides the rising Light
Shrouds nature in a golden haze
Till warming rays will work their might
And all can recognize His Face

One likes to call it fate, but I believe that it was God’s grace
that once led me to the followers of Baha’u’llah in those early years
of my life. Not only were they able to open my heart to the teachings
of the New Manifestation, but their personal lives convinced me of
the truth of His claim. Some of these friends had met ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in
their childhood or their youth. They often spoke of their transforming experience. When I was just 19 years old I hardly appreciated
the bounty of their companionship. Only in much later years did I
fully realize how fortuitous the gift of their friendship has been.

Nothing else could have helped my observant, probing nature to
accept the stunning claim of this new Revelation. Neither clever
advertising and learned language, nor impressive hierarchies and
well organized teaching campaigns would have persuaded me to
take Baha’u’llah’s stupendous claim seriously. All such efforts would
have offered nothing new. These things were already all around me
for the taking, paraded by hundreds of competing denominations
and political organizations. Why would today young people two
generations later react different, especially when they have become
more skeptical under a daily barrage of hype and deception. I cannot
help but think of these words by Shoghi Effendi:
“As long as people do not see in the Bahá’í community something
they do not already have, they will not join in large numbers.”

These observations continue in the candid vein of my diary. They carry
no authority, but may just help to give a gentle nudge to the rudder.

Analytical thought was the very quality that had allowed me to
unmask the prevailing order as false and had prepared me to
recognize the claim of Bahá’u’lláh. Just as I was being introduced to
the Baha’i community, I came across these words of Ralph Waldo
Emerson in his essay about Self-Reliance:

“Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for
the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, — and our first thought
is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. A man
should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes
across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of
bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought,
because it is h i s . In every work of genius we recognize our own
rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated
majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than
this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with goodhumored inflexibility; then most when the whole cry of voices is on the
other side. Else, tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good
sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we
shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.”

Emerson’s words were a confirming message in those post-war years
when we were often called upon to defend with “good- humored
inflexibility” the principles proclaimed by Baha’u’llah, even while
“the whole cry of voices was on the other side.”

Sixty-five years ago our boundless optimism and high expectations
were based on the fact that very few people had ever heard about
Bahá’u’lláh, let alone knew of His teachings. Not a single City Hall,
school, university, or library, not a single major organization or
science faculty had knowledge of the Baha’i Faith. Consequently, we
anticipated great progress to lie ahead. Since there was neither an
internet nor funds for advertising, we concentrated on firesides and
public meetings which frequently attracted several hundred people.
These early successes promised bigger and better things to come. It
was impossible to imagine that this message of salvation would not
be embraced by increasing numbers of our fellow citizens with the
same enthusiasm that we had felt. After all, had we not all shared
the same sorrows and did we not all share the same high hopes for
a better tomorrow?

Sixty-five years later, the faith is known in practically every nook
and cranny on earth and has earned the respect of the United
Nations and many other agencies. Through the World Wide Web the
Baha’i library can now be read by millions of people from all walks of
life, not just by a handful of scholars. With very few, but sad
exceptions, today everybody on earth has access.

It would have been quite impossible for early Baha’is to even
imagine this stunningly fortuitous state of affairs, yet its existence
today has so far not resulted in numerical growth of the Baha’i
community, especially not in regions that have benefited most from
the advances in education and communication. The increasing
access to information during the past few decades has encouraged
self-study. It should help the teaching work, because the Baha’i
Faith has always stressed the need for an independent investigation
of truth. Driven by the unstoppable spirit of the age, literally
millions of people have fully embraced this new approach to
learning. It may explain a frequent reluctance to join tutored study
groups by people of capacity who would be in a position to apply
Baha’i principles to their particular fields of expertise.

A Universal Impulse

Developments in the human world hint at a cosmic impulse that
was released by the Manifestations of the Bab and Baha’u’llah. It has
brought sudden breakthroughs in science and technology.
After centuries of relative intellectual quiescence, the knowledge
explosion that began in the 19th century and has kept accelerating
right to the present moment, can rightly be described as an
intellectual mutation of our race. It has suddenly transformed every
aspect of existence on our planet. It has removed the veil from the
hitherto unknowns of microcosm and macrocosm and has literally
handed humanity the keys to the forces of the universe. Aided by
lightning fast computers with unlimited memories it has exploded
knowledge and invention. It allows in any given year over a billion
travelers to traverse in safety and comfort the world’s oceans, deserts
and mountain ranges at ten miles a minute, thus joining us together
in a small “Global Village‟. It has given the world electricity that can
turn night into day. It has mapped the 20,000 to 25,000 genes of the
human genome to prove that we have indeed all been created
“from the same original parents.” No wonder ‘Abdu’l-Baha
praised science as “The first emanation from God toward man,”
“The means by which man finds a pathway to God.”

However, the new cycle’s central purpose - of which science and
technology are but the necessary precursors, namely the fusing
together of a strife-torn humanity through a world-wide religious
and moral renewal, has so far remained unfulfilled.

The bird of humanity needs two wings to lift it into higher realms:
The wing of science and the wing of religion. If one of these two wings
remains stunted or is lame, the eagle of humanity will either crash or
keep fluttering in the dust of superstition. With science well on its
march, mankind remains strangely unfit to recognize and accept
the remedy that is at hand for its transformation into a peaceful
planetary society. The call was clear and straightforward:
“Baha’u’llah is the divine physician who diagnoses the world's
malady; for the whole planet is ill and needs the power of a
great specialist. Baha’u’llah’s teachings are the health of the
world. They represent the spirit of this age, the light of this
age, the well-being of this age, the soul of this cycle. The
world will be at rest when they are put into practice.” -
Abdu'l-Baha, Divine Philosophy, p. 85

But the manner this truth was sometimes presented, it has often
fallen on deaf ears. Humanity’s inner compass, its subconscious
orientation towards greater maturity, had changed through the
unseen impulse of this divine evolutionary decree:

“O SON OF SPIRIT!

The best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice; turn not
away therefrom if thou desirest Me, and neglect it not that I
may confide in thee. By its aid thou shalt see with thine own
eyes and not through the eyes of others, and shalt know of
thine own knowledge and not through the knowledge of thy
neighbour. Ponder this in thy heart; how it behooveth thee to
be. Verily justice is My gift to thee and the sign of My lovingkindness. Set it then before thine eyes.”

With this simple Command the human species has evolved beyond
its earlier need for priestly authority and religious paternalism.
From now on both would be shunned, like a healthy organism
rejects a virus. A North American study of 2012 A.D. has revealed
that despite an underlying faith in God over a third of all young
adults avoid religious affiliation. They believe that religious
organizations are too much concerned with money, power and
rules. Today, with the accumulated knowledge of the ages at
everybody’s fingertips, humanity has wakened to its capacity of free
thought and independent investigation. This capacity needs to be
understood and respected when proclaiming Baha’u’llah’s Message
to an intellectually emancipated humanity, in order for His message
to find acceptance. Like two perfect halves are forming a perfect
whole, the new message needs to be in perfect resonance with
man’s new intellectual receptivity.

“… A celestial fire hath been kindled in the very heart of
mankind, and burns brightly in the Sacred Tree. Ere long its
glowing flame shall set ablaze the souls of men and its light
illumine the regions of the world.” - Tablets of Abdu’l-Baha

"This movement eludes organization -- it is the realization of
a new spirit. The foundation of that spirit is the love of God; and its
method, the love and service of mankind. Many who have never
heard of this revelation teach its laws and spiritual truths. These
people are performing what Baha'u'llah hath commanded
though they never heard of him. The power of Baha'u'llah's words
is compelling -- therefore, you must know and love them. For
instance, in the spring season trees burst forth into verdure,
though they are not conscious of the sunshine, of the falling rain
or the gentle breeze -- nevertheless, the power of nature urges
them on to yield forth their fruits." - Abdul-Baha, Divine
Philosophy, p. 14

As far as the numerical growth of the Bahá’í community is
concerned, Shoghi Effendi wrote this:

“Not by the force of numbers, not by the mere exposition of a
set of new and noble principles, not by an organized campaign of
teaching -- no matter how worldwide and elaborate in its
character -- not even by the staunchness of our faith or the
exaltation of our enthusiasm, can we ultimately hope to vindicate
in the eyes of a critical and sceptical age the supreme claim of
the Abha Revelation. One thing and only one thing will
unfailingly and alone secure the undoubted triumph of this
sacred Cause, namely, the extent to which our own inner life and
private character mirror forth in their manifold aspects the
splendour of those eternal principles proclaimed by Bahá'u'lláh.”

"... God's ways and methods do not coincide necessarily
with human devices and man-made policies. We should
certainly exert our utmost in order that God's Faith may be
widely proclaimed and firmly established. But we should under
no circumstances be led to think that such a triumph depends
solely or even mainly on our own efforts, however effective,
united and fruitful they may be. We are but instruments in the
hands of the Almighty and it would be certainly a sign of short
sightedness on our part to believe that we are the controlling
agents of the divine machinery of the Cause."
- Lights of Guidance, No 1349 p. 405

“…Many who have never heard of this revelation teach its
laws and spiritual truths. These people are performing what
Baha'u'llah hath commanded though they never heard of him…”
This thought was often cited by my friends when they first told me
about the coming of Baha’u’llah. There was a conviction among
Baha’is that the spiritual power of the new Manifestation will
achieve its purpose to re-built our world even in the face of apathy
and resistance by the broad masses of humanity. God would use as
His instruments those who were spiritually receptive to His wishes.

It sounded plausible, because in bygone ages there always were
some enlightened souls who acted of their own volition in the spirit
of Christ before His teachings were broadcast in their regions. There
also exists a parallel in the world of science when simultaneous
breakthroughs occur at opposite ends of the world without
researchers having had contact with each other. One calls it
‘Zeitgeist‟, or the spirit of the time. This presence of a pervasive, allencompassing cosmic influence unmasks the reliance in a “force of
numbers” as a delusive crutch for having faith in God.

Lingering Traditions

The frequently cited link to Islam has many negative consequences.
U.S. TV Personality and World Traveler Rick Steves, who has a
following of millions of viewers, explained in one of his TV specials
that the reason that the Baha’i faith is not accepted in Iran is
because it arrived centuries after Muhammad whom Moslems
worship as God’s final messenger, “the Seal of the Prophets.” Steves
went on to suggest that in order to have a future, “if you are a
Baha’i in Iran get out of the country.” Instead of deploring the
persecutions he made it sound logical why Baha’is are not welcome
in their own country. Instead of using the opportunity to inform his
audience of Iran’s long and painful history and of the intolerable
conditions that Baha’is are currently facing in a country whose rich
culture he had just so glowingly described, he offers no plea for love
and reason in the tradition of the great spirits of Iran’s illustrious
past. Instead he reminds his audience that this is Shia territory
where there just is no room for Baha’is.

Such openly expressed views by a respected and well informed
journalist are very damaging, because they repeat the false claim that
the Baha’i Faith is a splinter group of Islam and not the Creator’s gift
to all humanity. This false impression is occasionally fed by our own
well-intentioned explanations about our faith’s beginnings. When in
2012 a supreme court in Germany ruled that the Baha’i community
is a legal entity that falls into the public rather than the private
domain, media reports that were based on our own handouts
explained that the Baha’i Faith had originated as a splinter group of
Shia Islam. It would be equivalent to describe Christianity as originally
having been a splinter group of Judaism. One can imagine that such
explanation would make few people in Germany want to be Christians,
or to join the Baha’i community, especially when Islamic society is in
disrepute. This aversion may be borne out by the fact that in the
year 2012 there were supposedly 5,600 Baha’is among Germany’s
81,726,000 inhabitants, or a ratio of 1:14,593.
Another blindfold is the Iranian Diaspora which started in 1979. It
resulted in a global dispersal of hundreds of thousands of Iranian
Baha’i refugees. Remaining true to ancestral language and traditions
just like many other ethnic groups, they have quite naturally
introduced a different flavor into communities. Their allegiance to
language and tradition was demonstrated by holding special continentwide conventions for “Persian Baha’is.” It sometimes created an
impression that “Baha’i” is a Iranian religious community in exile. The
idea that the Baha’i Faith is some Iranian sect that finds itself in
conflict with Muslim law, makes it difficult for people to have feelings
of solidarity and to come to its defense. The situation is sometimes
seen as just another nasty internal and “typically Mid-Eastern”
religious conflict which has little to do with the rest of the world. A
recent vote at the United Nations condemning Iran’s human rights
record passed with a mere 69 nations in favor, 54 against and 57
abstentions. Out of 180 member states 111 either voted in support of
the Mullahs of Iran or just stood aside and abstained. This dismal
performance will not improve as long as the true nature of the Baha’i
faith as an independent world religion in the service of all humanity is
not understood.

Without digressing, this may be the place to mention another
damaging misinformation, namely the often heard assertion that
“Baha’u’llah was Persian.” It automatically identifies Him with the
land of Persia, its traditions, its beliefs, and, yes, with its deplorable
condition as vividly described in the foreword to “Nabil’s
Narrative‟, a book also known as the “Dawn Breakers‟. Baha’u’llah,
the Glory of God is a station that has no earthly origin. To identify it
with any human culture or condition will inevitably reduce its
magnitude and tarnish its image in the eyes of a seeker. It was the
man named Mirza Husayn-'Ali who was born in Persia, but even
according to His own testimony He was born “a man like any other.”
Baha’u’llah, The Glory of God, was the Title He adopted after He
received His divine mandate. A manifestation should therefore never
be identified with any particular country, region, culture or race. A
Manifestation is the Great Mediator between the world of humanity
and the Fashioner of the Universe, the Unknowable Essence. Its light
has shone at different places through different personages: Through
Gautama Buddha in India, through Zoroaster in Persia, through
Moses in Sinai, through Jesus in Judaea and through Muhammad
in Arabia. They were all the bearers of the same recurring divine
impulse, “…the changeless faith of God, eternal in the past, eternal
in the future.”

Bearing in mind that during the early centuries of its existence
Christianity was at first considered a splinter group of Judaism, it is
important that we do our utmost by word and through our behavior
to have the faith of Bahá’u’lláh recognized as a wholly independent
world religion that is in no wise tied to any culture or tradition of
the past. Many thousands of early martyrs who under the most
horrific circumstances gave their lives precisely for this truth expect
from us no less. Especially at this moment in history our word and
behavior must never be allowed to confirm the slanderous
allegations that have been brought against this sacred Cause since
its earliest days, or give credence to the accusations that have been
made against its most heroic servants.

The Universal House of Justice

Few of the Baha’is who at Albert Hall once greeted the newly elected
members of the first Universal House of Justice are still alive today.
Among those who are, some had envisioned the future House of
Justice as a global gathering, akin to a global legislature whose
members were of every race and culture and met united in prayer to
set the future course for humanity. They remembered Abdu'l-Baha’s
words on page 171 in ‘Some Answered Questions’, where He
promised the Universal House of Justice “Protection and unerring
guidance of God” with the condition that it is elected with members
“from all the people.”

“To epitomize: Essential infallibility belongs especially to the
supreme Manifestations and acquired infallibility is granted to
every holy soul. For instance, the Universal House of Justice, if it
be established under the necessary conditions -- with members
elected from all the people -- that House of Justice will be under
the protection and the unerring guidance of God.”

The condition that members should be elected “f r o m all the
people,” - in contrast to b y all the people, a requirement that was
actually met, found little attention. Not only was the pillar of
Guardianship missing when the Universal House of Justice was first
established, but ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s requirement that membership
should be universal in character seemed forgotten. Since the
absence of a Guardian was an unalterable fact, a universal
membership of the Universal House of Justice may have helped to
unleash the full potential of the Baha’i world community. Today it is
surprising that some Baha’is believe that the status quo of nine
members, along with the current rules for their election and their
tenure, were fixed by Baha’u’llah and ‘Abdu’l-Baha and can therefore
not be changed. This claim is incorrect.

In a letter to the NSA of New Zealand dated 31 May 1988 the
Universal House of Justice gave the following explanation:

“… in response to a number of questions about eligibility for
membership and procedures for election of the Universal House of
Justice, the Guardian's secretary writing on his behalf
distinguished between those questions which could be answered
by reference to the "explicitly revealed" Text and those which could
not. Membership of the Universal House of Justice [namely that
membership is confined to men] fits into the former category. This
letter [from the Guardian’s secretary] made the following
statement:

‘The membership of the Universal House of Justice is
confined to men. Fixing the number of the members, the
procedures for election and the term of membership will be
known later, as these are not explicitly revealed in the Holy
Text. (27 May 1940)’. ”

This clarifies that fixing the number of members for the Universal
House of Justice, the procedures for their election and the terms of
their membership, were not established in May 1940. They awaited a
decision by a future Universal House of Justice, precisely because
such details “are not explicitly revealed in the Holy Text.”

However, to make the formation of the first Universal House of
Justice possible in 1963, preemptive and temporary decisions had to
be made by the Hands of the Cause during the Interregnum period.
These decisions were subsequently upheld by the Universal House of
Justice. The membership of 9 had been adopted by the Hands of the
Cause to parallel that of Local and National Spiritual Assemblies,
but nowhere in the Holy Writings is the membership of the Universal
House of Justice limited to 9. Once established, the Universal House
of Justice had sole authority to finalize these decisions. It has
continued since to have full authority to enact changes.

As Isaac Newton once discovered, pure white light contains all the
colors of the rainbow, whereas missing color spectrums will produce
a tinted and less bright light. Even after half a century the
membership of the House of Justice remained limited to 9, and with
a single exception had for decades predominantly members of
Iranian and American background or descent.

A small membership also limits the influx of ideas and may be less
conducive to change. Combined with long tenures which cement
collegiality, collective views may become set over time and resistant
to reconsideration. A small body draws judgments from only a small
segment of a hugely diverse human family. At the same time a small
membership is also more likely to be influenced by a vigorously
advanced individual argument. A larger plenum on the other hand
would raise the consultation to a level where a single persona would
have less dominance. Even more important and of greater future
promise, it would open the council chamber to the rich
spiritual heritage of the people of Africa, Asia, the Pacific,
the Arctic, the native populations of the Americas, of
Australasia, and those of many other unrepresented
regions of the world. One cannot help but believe that a universal
composition of the Universal House of Justice would attract
increased blessings in the form of fresh inspiration which may more
fully mirror humanity’s collective response to the insistent summons
of Baha’u’llah.

The need for a reappraisal of the number of members, their tenure
and method of election, may become clearer by these observations:

- When the Universal House of Justice was first formed in
1963 it was elected by members of just 56 National
Assemblies. Only 45 years later, in 2008, the number of
National Assemblies had grown to 184.

- By the year 2018, the 9-member House had in the 55
years since its establishment – amounting to 495 years of
individual service - 29 different members. This translates
into an average tenure of 17 years. Three members served
for over 20 years, one for 30 years and two for 40 and 42
years.

- The nine House members are elected with 1,656 ballots
cast by the 9 members each of 184 National Assemblies. It
is safe to assume that few electors are acquainted with
those they were voting for and that they know them only by
reputation. As a result, most House members were either
re-elected or were known as members of the International
Teaching Centre which itself is appointed by the House of
Justice. Douglas Martin was in 1993 the last person elected
to the House who was not an ITC member.

The Universal House of Justice will introduce change whenever
changed circumstances will make this necessary. Current
developments may suggest that every National Assembly elects one
male believer in their country to serve a maximum of two 5-year
terms on the Universal House of Justice. A second male believer is
elected to serve as Deputy who would automatically take over in
case of accident or illness of his colleague. Those who are elected
would be intimately known to the members of the National Spiritual
Assembly. They would bring to the consultations at the World Center
a first-hand knowledge of the conditions of their country and Baha’i
community. With the help of modern communications they would
maintain daily contact with their own National Office and serve as a
two-way link between the Universal House of Justice and their home
community.

Universal membership would promote an immediate and unbroken
interchange of ideas between all national Baha’i communities. By
participating in all deliberations and in ongoing mutual exchanges
of ideas with the Supreme Body as well as between all national
communities, every Baha’i community on earth, instead of
sometimes remaining a distant, uninvolved bystander, would make
the Universal House of Justice their own.

An Obstinate Optimism

Before I attempt to explain my obstinate optimism for the future, I
must go back to the historic day at London’s Albert Hall when the
newly elected Universal House of Justice began its mission for
humanity with these words by Baha’u’llah: “…On whomsoever Thou
desirest Thou conferrest the honor of recognizing Thy Most Ancient
Name.”
A profound acceptance of this verity and of the scriptural guidance
that was repeatedly quoted earlier, are tied directly to that badge of
honor. Obedience to these will give success a chance, while
inattention may lead to failure, no matter how elaborate the
plans or determined the effort. One cannot expect to heal a sick
society without banishing its contagion. Since ‘Abdu’l-Baha has
repeatedly stressed that the Bible is of divine origin, we would do
well to heed this warning in the Book of Matthew 9:17: “Neither do
men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the
wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine
into new bottles, and both are preserved.”

Perhaps the wisdom of this verse is too profound in order to be
understood after only a cursory reading of the Bible. The New Wine
are the spiritual teachings of a New Manifestation. The Bottles are
their worldly application to reflect this new spirit in the world. One
could describe the Baha’i Administration as just such a vessel. It was
specifically designed by the Founders of our faith to contain the
spirit of the current Dispensation and to give form to human
governance. Should that vessel be made of re-cycled material that
belonged to a former order, it would be unable to hold and preserve
the spirit of the New Dispensation. The New Wine would simply spill
out and the Bottle would lose its purpose entirely. What follows are
elucidations by the Guardian on those new vessels that we were
given to hold the spirit of this New Age of man.

“And now, it behoves us to reflect on the animating purpose and the primary
functions of these divinely-established institutions, the sacred character and the
universal efficacy of which can be demonstrated only by the spirit they diffuse
and the work they actually achieve. I need not dwell upon what I have already
reiterated and emphasized that the administration of the Cause is to be conceived
as an instrument and not a substitute for the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh, that it should be
regarded as a channel through which His promised blessings may flow, that it
should guard against such rigidity as would clog and fetter the liberating forces
released by His Revelation.

“I need not enlarge at the present moment upon what I have stated in the past,
that contributions to the local and national Funds are of a purely voluntary
character; that no coercion or solicitation of funds is to be tolerated in the Cause;
that general appeals addressed to the communities as a body should be the only
form in which the financial requirements of the Faith are to be met; that the
financial support accorded to a very few workers in the teaching and
administrative fields is of a temporary nature; that the present restrictions
imposed on the publication of Bahá’í literature will be definitely abolished; that
the World Unity activity is being carried out as an experiment to test the efficacy
of the indirect method of teaching; that the whole machinery of assemblies, of
committees and conventions is to be regarded as a means, and not an end in
itself; that they will rise or fall according to their capacity to further the interests,
to coordinate the activities, to apply the principles, to embody the ideals and
execute the purpose of the Bahá’í Faith. - Shoghi Effendi on Bahá’í Administration

“Neither the local nor national representatives of the community, no matter how
elaborate their plans, or persistent their appeals, or sagacious their counsels, nor
even the Guardian himself, however much he may yearn for this consummation,
can decide where the duty of the individual lies, or supplant him in the discharge
of that task. The individual alone must assess its character, consult his conscience,
prayerfully consider all its aspects, manfully struggle against the natural inertia
that weighs him down in his effort to arise, shed, heroically and irrevocably, the
trivial and superfluous attachments which hold him back, empty himself of every
thought that may tend to obstruct his path, mix, in obedience to the counsels of
the Author of His Faith [Baha’u’llah], and in imitation of the One Who is its true
Exemplar [‘Abdu’l-Baha], with men and women, in all walks of life, seek to touch
their hearts, through the distinction which characterizes his thoughts, his words
and his acts, and win them over tactfully, lovingly, prayerfully and persistently, to
the Faith he himself has espoused. - Shoghi Effendi, Citadel of Faith, p. 148

“O wayfarer in the path of God! Take thou thy portion of the ocean of His grace,
and deprive not thyself of the things that lie hidden in its depths. Be thou of them
that have partaken of its treasures. A dewdrop out of this ocean would, if shed
upon all that are in the heavens and on the earth, suffice to enrich them with the
bounty of God, the Almighty, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise. With the hands of
renunciation draw forth from its life-giving waters, and sprinkle therewith all
created things, that they may be cleansed from all man-made limitations and may
approach the mighty seat of God, this hallowed and resplendent Spot.

“Be not grieved if thou performest it thyself alone. Let God be all-sufficient for
thee. Commune intimately with His Spirit, and be thou of the thankful. Proclaim
the Cause of thy Lord unto all who are in the heavens and on the earth. Should
any man respond to thy call, lay bare before him the pearls of the wisdom of the
Lord, thy God, which His Spirit hath sent down unto thee, and be thou of them
that truly believe. And should any one reject thine offer, turn thou away from
him, and put thy trust and confidence in the Lord, thy God, the Lord of all worlds.
- Baha'u'llah, Gleanings p. 279

Such is the divinely ordained standard. My confidence in a sun-lit
future for the world stems entirely from a conviction that all who
have recognized Baha’u’llah, cannot help but order their inner lives
and actions along these clear words of guidance.

The Road Ahead

Disappointments are mainly of our own making and nurture, when
our firm expectations do not find fulfillment by a fixed date on our
calendar. After World War II the date for world peace was believed
to be the year 1963, but as crisis situations continued, this
deadline was pushed back to the turn of the century. The turn of
the century came, but the world continued in an uproar. Setting
deadlines does not fall within our competence. We should liberate
our minds from firm expectations, especially from deadlines, and
leave the time required for human maturation to God’s wisdom. If
not, a self-inflicted burden will be our punishment. It will threaten
to undermine our confidence, attack our health and vitiate our
precious energies.

We often do not recognize a situation, even when it is staring us in
the face. Just like one who is searching for trees in a deep forest. It
seems that the world order of Baha’u’llah is far too great for us to
recognize its magnitude at this time of its beginning. We are like
wanderers at the foot of a giant mountain who are standing too close
to estimate its true height. Shoghi Effendi wrote that the world order of
Baha’u’llah will advance humanity towards its ultimate perfection over
a period of 5,000 centuries, which is half a million years. We have just
finished the first 1.5 of those 5,000 centuries and are already
impatiently expecting to see a world that shows the perfections that
have been promised for this universal cycle.

When in 1912 ‘Abdu’l-Baha had placed the corner stone for the House
of Worship in Wilmette, he announced that “The temple is already
built.” But then came World War I, the inflation, the great
depression and World War II. For many years one was ridiculing the
Temple’s tar-covered foundation hall as an unsightly “oil tank‟, and
later the steel skeleton as “God’s Lemon Press‟. It took 41 years for
the House of Worship to open its doors. Today, with the benefit of
hindsight, we believe that we have a better understanding of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s words. He saw at the time that there were enough
souls able or waiting among the unborn to bring the temple project
to its successful conclusion. For ‘Abdu’l-Baha time was irrelevant. Did
He not write, “In the world of God there is no yesterday, today or
tomorrow. All are one.” This vision will banish any doubts,
especially today when our hopeful expectations of seventy-five
years ago still await fulfillment.

The seven Baha’i Houses of Worship that were completed in the second
half of the 20th century on all continents and in the Pacific, have stood
as “Silent Teachers” to two generations and to many millions of people.
Everybody who saw them in real life or in pictures knew of their
origin, admired their architecture, and many thousands visited, yet
hardly a soul felt motivated to openly identify with their message. It
remains an unexplained mystery of the times.

Two other important lessons should help us expand our view. They
are from the Báb and from Shoghi Effendi, which we shall get to
shortly. “All are His servants and all abide by His bidding,” taught
the Báb. Everything that has been invented and developed by our
fellow humans during the past 1.5 centuries of the New Era, and
everything they continue to advance and to develop today, is an allimportant contribution towards the foundation of a new world
order. Without it we would never be able to establish planetary
unity. Should someone therefore ask where that new world order is
hiding, it already reveals itself in humanity’s intellectual and
material achievements. Science is the precursor of the world of
tomorrow. That’s why ‘Abdu’l-Baha’ referred to science as “The first
emanation from God to man.” Today all of humanity is inhaling this
new ozone. It influences not science alone, but all human endeavors.
All are His servants, whether they realize it or not.

Just prior to his passing in November of 1957 in London, England,
Shoghi Effendi was visited by William Allison who had the
distinction of being the last Baha’i to visit the Guardian in Haifa.
Shoghi Effendi, who did not make official visits abroad, urged his
guests to share his comments with others. This was always deemed
a great honor and responsibility. When Mr. Allison became aware
that he had been the last visitor, he took particular care that his
notes are accurate. They are found in the Baha’i Academics
Research Library, Era of Shoghi Effendi, No 40. However, so-called
Pilgrims Notes do not rise to the level of authoritative scripture and
must be treated accordingly. William Allison wrote,

“One evening the beloved Guardian envisioned the future World
Order of Bahá'u'lláh in terms that are difficult to forget. He began by
saying that the Báb had announced the "Plan", Bahá'u'lláh
established the Laws of the "Plan", and Abdu'l-Bahá laid out the
"Blueprint." Now the Bahá’ís are in the formative phase of
establishing the administrative order of the "Plan". … Near the end of
the formative period the nations will unite of their own volition and,
with the non-concomitant expansion of the Bahá’í community, become
merged into the fabric of the World Order of Bahá'u'lláh. There will be
another Manifestation before this will happen.”

There are mainly two reasons for including this in my recollections:
Not unlike the development of an individual, the evolution of our
species cannot be hurried. When we are told that we live in the
embryonic stage of the World Order of Baha’u’llah, we should
remember that the 9-month growth of a human embryo is roughly
one per cent of man’s average life span. One should therefore be
neither surprised nor disheartened at the thought that the embryo
of the New World Order which has a life span of half a million years,
could take 5,000 years until it has developed to a point when its full
glory covers our planet. This is not meant to imply that humanity will
continue to be steeped in conflict over the next five thousand years.
Our race would probably succumb long before that should happen.
What it could suggest, however, is that progress may be protracted
when measured against a customary earthly yardstick of high
expectations and quick results.

Secondly, there has been talk that Bahá’ís aim to replace elected
government with a Baha’i state run by a theocracy. In fact, their
ordained purpose is to share Baha’u’llah’s message and to fashion a
community that shall help all people from all walks of life in their
collective quest for a peaceful and ordered global society. They fully
recognize the difficulties, because today’s generation, if not
completely disenchanted with the record of “organized religion,‟
often has real problems with the idea that even our highly
technological age is in need of guidance by an Intermediary Who
stands between humanity and its Source.
Here one should also consider the difference between the Baha’i
Administrative Order and the World Order of Bahá'u'lláh. The
former pertains to the cohesive functioning of a world-wide Baha’i
Community. It intends to establish a working model for a future global
society, without being a government in waiting. The current
administrative order, tailored to present-day needs and human
capacities, may well be recast after the arrival of the next
Manifestation. The administrative order should therefore not be
confused with the much larger World Order of Baha’u’llah of which
it is an integral part, but whose spiritual impetus lies behind all
human growth and development, and which is destined to preside
over a vast time span of five hundred millenniums.

The Procter Perspective
In May of 2006 I was invited to give a presentation about The World
Order of Baha’u’llah at the Procter Baha’i Spring School. Procter is a
small hamlet on Kootenay Lake in British Columbia, a few miles
north of the town of Nelson. The school had the use of an old
meeting hall. Like the rest of this erstwhile pioneer hamlet, its
heydays had also long passed. We sat on stackable chairs typical
for informal community events. The hall had a small stage and
adjacent to the seating area was a kitchen over whose clatter a
speaker tried to make himself heard.

How could one live up to the challenge of having everyone grasp the
magnitude of the World Order of Baha’u’llah in a somewhat
uninspiring environment that reflected a past glory, a present day
mediocrity, but certainly not the immeasurable promise of the
future. This is when “The Procter Perspective” was proposed to the
audience. It tried to relate time spans which were nearly impossible
to comprehend to distances that were easily recognizable and were
expressed in metric values. For those not accustomed to metric
measurements the equivalents in feet and inches are in brackets.

It so happened that our meeting hall was almost exactly 15 meters
long and 10 meters wide (50 X 32 feet). This amounted to a
circumference of 50 meters (164 feet). Since one meter has 100
centimeters with 10 millimeters each, 50 meters contained 50,000
millimeters. When the halls circumference was measured in 164
feet, a similar breakdown resulted in 50,000 sections of 3/64 of an
inch in width.

Since it is written that The World Order of Baha’u’llah shall unfold
over a period of 500,000 solar years, each one of the 50,000
millimeters around the hall’s wall represented 10 years of human
evolution. A whole century with an average of four generations of
humanity shrank to a single centimeter (25/64 or less than half an
inch) on our wall. The era that began 170 years ago in 1844 A.D.,

took up a mere 1.7 centimeters or 0.669291 inch to be exact.

As we were sizing up the 50-meter length of the four walls that
surrounded our gathering, the puny section of 1.7 centimeters that
represented the first 170 years of the New World Order came as a
real shock: All the achievements and agonies of the six generations
that have come and gone since the appearance of The Bab, all the
astounding technical breakthroughs and inventions, but also all the
wars and great social upheavals that have marked the birth pangs
of change that is now influencing every aspect of human existence,
all of it had happened within the width of a single finger that we
placed against the wall.

As we contemplated that humanity had not even lived through the
first two of the five thousand centuries of promised evolution
towards an ever greater perfection, we appeared to ourselves like a
colony of microbes that had just set out on its long trek around the
auditorium wall. We had barely traversed the 2,500 th part of it. Our
first thought was how insignificant had been our progress so far
when measured against humanity’s future itinerary, and how
plausible it seemed that at the start of this long journey mankind
still remained infected with many of the shortcomings that had
retarded its progress throughout history. Our other thought was
how could the staggering scientific and sociological progress of the
last two centuries continue for hundreds of thousands of years into
the future. How much more progress could be possible? Then we
remembered the words of Baha’u’llah that “All men have been
created to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization.” This meant
not just the humanity living at this particular moment in time, but
humanity for all time. It included our distant descendants who will
live ten thousand years, hundred thousand years, even four
hundred thousand years in the future. All of them shall be called
into being to elevate their souls by perfecting humanity’s earthly
existence, by advancing civilization to a level that will make our own
behavior look downright barbarian, a future human condition that
our minds cannot even imagine.
Such contemplations helped us understand the true measure of our
present day limitations, instead of wrongly harboring wholly
unrealistic expectations for instant perfections that would allow for
no patience or forgiveness for errors. Just as an infant is born in a
state that may be perfectly suited to the demands of childhood and
growth, it has by no means reached a state of perfection that is
equal to its destiny. Humanity as a species moves along a similar
path. Its progress can also not be hurried. It would be short sighted
to assume that we are perfect just because we were given a glimpse
of a perfect future, to believe that everything that came before us
was woefully unenlightened and that everything that will come after
us shall merely follow in our footsteps. Such mistaken beliefs would
diminish the rightful expectations for humanity’s future potential.
We must not be blinded by our own sudden progress, our
conquests of time and space, or by our very recently acquired ability
to discover what had always been in the realm of the unknown, and
pretend that we have already built a world that twenty thousand
future generations will inhabit. Far from it. We are meant to play a
very specific role as the curtain rises on a new age: To recognize the
oneness of humanity, the oneness of religion and its periodic
renewal, the harmony between religion and science, and to reflect
these new insights in our contributions toward human progress, be
they large or small.

Beyond that, our far distant descendants will be facing their own
challenges. Continuing on the path of evolution, progress will
probably never be linear or even predictable. It may alternate with
periods of stagnation, possibly even regression. The ideals held by a
generation can be rejected by the one that follows. It may bear fruit
only much later. As Baha’u’llah has revealed in His Tablet of
Hikmat, centers of wisdom and learning will flourish to fade again
and be replaced. Magnificent structures and cities will rise, but
after a time they shall decay or disappear again altogether. Our still
young planet will remain geologically active over the next half
million years just as it has been active throughout recorded history.
There will probably be ice ages, pole reversals and tectonic events.
Nothing will ever remain static. As long as Earth is a living planet
there shall be change and renewal.

And what may happen at the end of this magnificent God-willed era
of human maturity and perfection? According to Hindu scripture,
physical humanity will eventually disappear and after a time of
quiescence be re-created. ‘Abdu’l-Baha teaches that the growth of a
human embryo is like a time lapse copy of the evolution of man.
Similarly, but in reverse, the stations in our individual lives may be
a mirror of the physical and spiritual development of the human
species:

O COMPANION OF MY THRONE!

Hear no evil, and see no evil, abase not thyself, neither sigh and
weep. Speak no evil, that thou mayest not hear it spoken unto thee,
and magnify not the faults of others that thine own faults may not
appear great; and wish not the abasement of anyone, that thine own
abasement be not exposed. Live then the days of thy life, that are
less than a fleeting moment, with thy mind stainless, thy heart
unsullied, thy thoughts pure, and thy nature sanctified, so that, free
and content, thou mayest put away this mortal frame, and repair
unto the mystic paradise and abide in the eternal kingdom for
evermore.

And as I was attempting to explain this Procter Perspective to the
audience, I suddenly saw my own total insignificance in the scheme
of things when I noticed that by our newly discovered mental
yardstick the thickness of the pen I was holding in my hand
represented the eight decades of my brief presence here on earth.

The Empires of the Future are Empires of the Mind

- Sir Winston Churchill

The coming together of the human race whose early and painful
steps we now witness, shall bear fruit in an emergence of a world
wide science that shall be entirely oriented towards human
progress. One of the most life changing consequences of this new
world culture will be the abolition of armed conflict and a
corresponding reduction of armaments and armed forces. According
to latest statistics they currently number close to 100 million able
bodied people in active duty, paramilitary service, or in armed
forces reserves. Moral issues aside, this is a wanton waste of men
and material that has bankrupted nations in the past and will
probably do so again. According to the Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute in the year 2015 alone the world has spent
the equivalent of $ 1,676,000,000,000 on “defense,” meaning on
military manpower, infrastructure, armaments and munitions. With
a world population of currently 7.4 billion, this translates roughly
into $ 226 for every single human being on earth. These statistics
were updated for 2016. It is especially tragic that most of this
treasure is being squandered by the “developed world‟ on which
much of humanity’s welfare and future development must depend.

It requires little intelligence to imagine the blessings that will result
from an end to this obscene hemorrhaging of the planet’s lifeblood:
Universal education, better nutrition, housing and healthcare, a
cleaner environment and further improvements in communication,
commerce and most other aspects of life. It will all come about as a
direct result of the current evolutionary surge towards a planetary
fusion of the minds of men which will for the first time in recorded
history create a single consciousness that is shared by all people. It
will generate an un-fragmented spiritual and intellectual power that
has never existed before and which will have the most far reaching
consequences not just for our species, but for all life on this planet.

Baha’u’llah has announced that the human world is now entering its
evolutionary stage of maturity. One should imagine this stage in the
development of our species to be as different from past human
existence as adulthood is different from infancy. He writes in Verse
189 of the Kitab-i-Aqdas, the Book of Laws:

We have appointed two signs for the coming of age of the human
race: the first, which is the most firm foundation, We have set down
in other of Our Tablets, while the second hath been revealed in this
wondrous Book.

The Second Sign is explained in the Kitáb-I-Aqdas, footnote No 193:
“Bahá'u'lláh enjoins the adoption of a universal language and
script. His Writings envisage two stages in this process. The first
stage is to consist of the selection of an existing language or an
invented one which would then be taught in all the schools of the
world as an auxiliary to the mother tongues. The governments of
the world through their parliaments are called upon to effect this
momentous enactment. The second stage, in the distant future,
would be the eventual adoption of one single language and common
script for all on earth.” When one combines such future scenario
with the already existing technical means of instant global
communications, one appreciates the enormous benefits this will
bring to human activity Without international agreements in place,
English is currently a first, second, or third language of over one
third of the human race. In countries like China and India, English
is no longer taught merely as “a foreign language,” but as “a basic
universal skill."

The “First Sign‟ is explained in footnote No 194 of the Book of Laws:
“The first sign of the coming of age of humanity referred to in the
Writings of Bahá'u'lláh is the emergence of a science which is
described as that “divine philosophy‟ which will include the
discovery of a radical approach to the transmutation of elements.
This is an indication of the splendors of the future stupendous
expansion of knowledge. The coming of age of the human race has
been associated by Shoghi Effendi with the unification of the whole
of mankind, the establishment of a world commonwealth, and an
unprecedented stimulus to the intellectual, the moral and spiritual
life of the entire human race."

One of the texts dealing with the transmutation of elements is in
chapter XCVII of the Book of Gleanings of the Writings of
Baha’u’llah:

…Is it ever possible, they ask…for copper to be transmuted into Gold?
Say, Yes, by my Lord, it is possible. Its secret, however, lieth hidden
in Our Knowledge. We will reveal it unto whom We will….Every
mineral can be made to acquire the density, form, and substance of
each and every other mineral. The knowledge thereof is with Us in
the Hidden Book.

It is significant that Baha’u’llah calls this future discovery the First
Sign of the coming of age of humanity. At the same time He calls it
“The most firm foundation,” because it has, after all, the most far
reaching consequences for man’s long term survival prospects on
this planet. While the “Second Sign‟, the adoption of a world
language, is very clearly spelled out in the Kitáb-I-Aqdas, the
transmutation of minerals is not. It cannot be a Law that needs to
be followed, because its eventual discovery is entirely subject to
God’s grace. “We will reveal it unto whom We will.”

Here seems confirmation of what modern cosmology has discovered
towards the end of the 20th century: All atoms are essentially made
of the same “stuff‟, namely the protons and neutrons that form their
nucleus, and the circling electrons. The one important difference in
their makeup is the number of these particles present. It will
determine the atom’s property, whether it is oxygen, carbon,

copper, or gold. At some point in the future our race may be found
mature enough to be given the knowledge to “produce” or to “alter”
atoms at will and to use the discovery for constructive rather than
for destructive purposes. This breakthrough would turn our planet
into a limitless resource to fill every human need for all time to
come. No longer would dwindling “non-renewable resources‟ cast a
shadow on our long-term prospects, nor would we be forced to go
burrowing deep underground in search of certain minerals. While
hard to imagine, no substance would then be coveted any longer
because it was scarce and therefore deemed precious. No longer
would mineral deposits determine the so-called “Have and Have Not
Nations‟. Anything and everything necessary for our existence
would be fashioned at will from the rich mother lode contained in
the atoms of our planet. Man may eventually be given the keys to
this divine alchemy once he has conquered his craving for material
wealth. In the meantime, such material cravings may be cured by
looming shortages that are brought on by unbridled consumerism.

Anybody who is inclined to decry such forecast as being wildly farfetched and medieval quackery, ought to consider that already
today many of our manufactured articles are mass produced by
using artificial compounds that did not exist less than a lifetime
ago. By manipulating and designing new molecular structures we
are actually “creating‟ a whole new variety of so-called “man made
substances‟ such as paints, bonding agents, miracle fibers and
plastics that are frequently more durable and heat resistant than
anything that can be found “in nature.‟ We produce synthetic fuels
that store many times the energy of wood or coal, ceramic cutting
tools sharper than steel, and space age compounds that relegate
steel and aluminum back to the Bronze Age. Having thus attained
the knowledge of creating new molecular structures, the next logical
advance is the ability to alter the structure of the atom.

All such startling forecasts may seem utopian to those who happen
to live at the early dawn of this process, but it does in fact follow
certain familiar rules of evolution that we can see in nature and
which we accept without much argument. The birth of a global
sphere of human consciousness may be compared to the birth of
earth’s biosphere long ago when it transformed a dead globe into a
living planet. This transformation took place after a long and barren
period when the earth was a lifeless, radioactive furnace. No
observer would have held out the slightest hope for our planet to
change some day into a Garden of Eden and to harbor life in all its
rich beauty and diversity.

Nevertheless, over the course of several billion years plant and
animal life cooperated to create the necessary preconditions that
allowed the appearance of man “...in our image, after our likeness:
and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the
fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth...” For the
next several million years an infant humanity dispersed to every
corner of the globe and lost all contact with the original tribe.
Conditioned by environment, available food sources and to a degree
also by in-breeding, man’s physical appearance gradually changed.
Living in pockets of deep isolation he developed languages that no
outsider would later be able to understand. The woes began just as
soon as man’s innate spirit of exploration brought fragments of the
original family back together again to meet face to face. With the
rarest of exceptions such encounters never resulted in happy
reunions. On the contrary, people everywhere felt threatened by the
“foreigner‟ and were racially intolerant and xenophobic towards each
other. They saw in their strange counterpart the devil himself who
either had to be exterminated or kept enslaved. And as if this
difference of race and language was not enough to feed aversion
and hatred, man made his faith in God, a faith he was convinced to
be the one and only true religion, a justification for violence against
the perceived infidel.

The new global paradigm of human solidarity will for the first time
bring order to this ancient chaos and fuse the hitherto scattered
and antagonistic pockets of human thought and worship into a
single force that will be entirely focused on tending the planet,
refining human nature, and raising the life of humanity to levels we
cannot even imagine. Considering how the forces of a mutually
supportive plant and animal life once created earth’s biosphere, and
how man’s conflicting efforts and misguided ambitions are now
threatening its health, the promised emergence of a global
consciousness will not only put a stop to this degradation, but its
unified intellectual powers will completely reshape the world’s
environment.

How very far we have travelled on this road towards a fusion of
humanity’s intellectual powers is demonstrated by today’s hand- held
devices that allow instant access to just about anything that has
ever been invented, thought or written by millions of experts,
scientists, philosophers and dreamers in whatever country and in
whatever language. Nothing needs to be invented twice any more.
Time wasted on fruitless experimentation is constantly shrinking.
Also, for the first time in human evolution everybody has access to the
religious teachings of everybody else to foster mutual awareness and
understanding. Self-perfecting applications allow translations into all
major languages. “This earth is one country and mankind its citizens”
is instantly translated into Mandarin, Swahili, Malay or Czech, often
with a clear audio one can listen to. Try it out yourself.

Despite wars and upheaval, the 20th century has given us a tiny taste of
our future potential. In the social sphere, humanity has been
struggling to deal with the challenge of a suddenly shrunken planet
where we are crowded together in a small interconnected and
interdependent neighborhood in which outdated paradigms of
isolation and prejudice can no longer find a place to hide. Despite
many setbacks and terror tactics, much progress has been achieved

to foster global dialogue and to put into place many organizations
and innovative practices for knitting together integrated systems of
global education, health care, research, manufacture and transport.
Some of these efforts reach well beyond the horizon of immediate
necessity. For example, it would have been quite inconceivable a
mere generation ago for 119 heads of government to jet across the
globe in order to sit down together as they did at Copenhagen in
2009 and consult on potential future dangers that are looming for
earth’s environment.

Apart from the many inventions that were mentioned here earlier,
ambitious waterways, canals, long submarine tunnels, bridges and
ocean causeways, have shortened the routes for trade and travel. It
lies within the realm of the possible for high speed magnetic trains to
traverse tunnel systems linking major cities, even continents. There is
the concept of a future tunnel underneath the Bering Strait linking
Eurasia with the Americas. Rivers have been dammed to control
endemic flooding, irrigate vast stretches of countryside and generate
energy. Genetic science has developed new plant varieties that thrive
in colder climates, have shorter growing seasons and are more blight
resistant. Huge strides are also in progress in medicine to improve the
quality of life and to increase longevity. A revolutionary new
biotechnology promises the growing of human tissues and
replacement organs. Organ transplants may eventually become a thing
of the past. This would eliminate waiting lists for transplants and by
using a patient's own stem cells the risk of organ rejection will be
reduced. When American “seer‟ Edgar Cayce first described such
possibilities in the 1930’s he was roundly ridiculed. Global efforts are
underway to cut down on pollution. A seemingly unstoppable science
and technology will lend further impetus to many such mega projects.
Difficult as it is to visualize at a time when much of our national
treasure still finances huge armaments and maintains opposing
armies, the world’s deserts will eventually disappear and so will the
extremes of climate.

Inexhaustible sources of energy will desalinate ocean water and
pump it where there are no natural fresh water supplies. The
resulting greening of the planet will bring a gradual return to
normal cycles of precipitation.

We shall probably populate this happy land in much smaller
numbers and exchange an unworthy existence in overcrowded
mega cities for a much healthier and more tranquil environment. Man
will no longer seek relief from the pressures of work in idle diversion,
sex, drugs and alcohol, but he will instead reorient his life where
work is elevated to a form of worship and where much of his leisure
time will be spent on expanding his knowledge and talents, on
healthful recreation, on the arts and human refinement. Wanton
procreation will yield to recognizing the blessings and responsibilities
of parenthood. It will make the nurture and education of the young a
focal point of our existence. In short, man will eventually become
aware that not only is he today’s torchbearer for those who toiled and
struggled ahead of him while preparing the way, but also a guarantor
for humanity’s future.

The earth itself, once made habitable for man by the emergence of a
biosphere, shall eventually be transformed into a state of the
greatest physical perfection through the intervention of man’s divinely
gifted intellect.

The question which at the beginning of the third millennium
presses on everybody’s conscience, but which ought not to interfere
with our cheerful commitment to positive change, is whether man’s
ordained ascent towards his sublime destiny shall proceed steadily,
if slowly, but nevertheless uninterrupted, or if a fateful alliance of
unbelief, rebellion and apathy will force a painful detour to his
grand itinerary.

EPILOGUE
As was mentioned in the introduction, this narrative was initially
undertaken for the occasion marking the centenary of Germany’s
Baha’i Community. Gisele and I returned to Germany in the fall of
2005 to participate in the centennial celebrations. On Sunday
morning, September 11, we gathered for an hour of prayer at the
former home of Consul Schwarz and his wife Alice. Here ‘Abdu’l-Baha
had visited on several occasions in April of 1913 to meet with early
Baha’is and their friends during the eight days He spent in the area
of Stuttgart. The building with its impressive façade stands at No 3
Alexander Strasse. It can be seen on Google Maps Street view. It is
now owned by a law firm. They graciously opened the doors to the
Baha’i community for this day of commemoration.

A pretzel breakfast in the former home of Consul Schwartz in Stuttgart
marking the community’s first century and sixty years of friendship. From left to right
Ian Semple, Harry Liedtke, John Eichenauer and Dieter Schubert

Here I suddenly realized that back in 1931, when I was just three
and a half years old, I lived with my parents in a home that stood
only two doors away from No 3. Right across the street there was a
fine lookout from where exactly 18 years earlier ‘Abdu’l-Baha had
viewed the city’s panorama. I often went there to ride on my scooter.
Today I find it quite incredible that this remarkable coincidence
should have completely escaped my awareness for six decades.

After I first met Stuttgart’s Baha’i community in 1946, I regularly
visited the home of the Mühlschlegels at 112 Alexanderstrasse,
only a short distance down the street from the house at No 3.
I often saw Alice Schwarz and her son there. On account of the postwar housing shortage they were rooming at the Mühlschlegels. It
never occurred to me at the time to find out more about their
former residence where they had hosted the Master in 1913.

As I kept thinking about the circumstances that had brought me to
this neighborhood as a small child, the incredible coincidence that
bridged time and geography became ever stranger and more unreal.

My father was an accountant at the head office of Siemens in Berlin.
He was happy and successful and had no intention of moving. Back
in those years very few people ever moved far from where they were
born and raised. A transfer from Berlin in Northern Germany all the
way to distant Stuttgart in Wuerttemberg was not only a geographic
challenge, but also called for many unwelcome adjustments on account
of differences in local habits and dialects. Also, Germany was in a deep
depression and had a critical housing shortage. I have a long memory
and clearly recall how mother and I spent many days looking all over
town for a place to live. We could not stay at our hotel much longer.
Some business connection eventually led to the splendid home of a
certain Mrs. Bauhaus at No 1 Eugensplatz at the corner of Alexander
and Wagenburg Strasse. We were lucky that she agreed to rent us two
furnished rooms with kitchen and bath. We stayed there for almost
a year.

Across the street from our new home was the “Eugenstaffel”, a
series of impressive wide granite stairs as a pedestrian shortcut to
avoid the long switchbacks of the streets that curved up the hillside
from the city center below. At the same time it offered a beautiful
lookout across Stuttgart’s broad valley. It was from here that ‘Abdu’l
Baha had looked down on the city’s grand panorama.

Young Harry in 1931 at the lookout and the fire at Stuttgart’s Old Castle

My own memories of the scene are perhaps less pleasant, but certainly
more exciting. On 21 December 1931 a great fire broke out at
Stuttgart’s venerable Old Castle, destroying much of its interior. We
watched red flames devour the roof structure and I remember seeing
brave firemen standing at the end of long spindly ladders aiming
water into the inferno. Later we were horrified to learn that three
firemen had died in the battle to save the historic building.

The Old Castle was damaged again in 1944 when Stuttgart was
largely destroyed in a series of 1,000-bomber raids. Stuttgart’s
downtown was completely rebuilt. Today you can see it in “Google
Maps.‟ Search for Eugensplatz Stuttgart and click on street view.

You will notice that the stone balustrade at the lookout remains
unchanged. Except the trees have grown and the old mansion that
once stood at No 1 has given way to a modern office building that
currently houses the “Panama Werbeagentur”, an advertising and
marketing agency. I cannot help but feel that ‘Abdu’l-Baha would be
simply delighted to see how the invention of the internet enables
everybody on earth to see the places where He had once visited.

Today’s re-built Stuttgart with its Old Castle

My father considered Stuttgart only a temporary posting and had
his eyes firmly set on head office. We left Stuttgart after two years,
but to father’s disappointment our next move was to Hamburg.

Meanwhile, my parents remained focused on a future in Berlin and
they even acquired a building lot in a northern suburb of the city.
When four years later in June of 1937 father was moved back to
Stuttgart, he couldn’t understand why. Moves were costly and rare
and Siemens had never posted a man to the same place twice. Only
a very handsome promotion sweetened his disappointment. How
was he to know that a benign Will had masterminded our return.

Still, my first school day in Stuttgart was a day from hell. Before
the reader accuses me of wild exaggeration, would he please read
on. In Hamburg, then a city of well over a million inhabitants, I had
jumped a year and after only three years of elementary school
joined 29 other selected students in a special Gymnasium class. It
was a heady experience for a nine year old to be recognized as
sufficiently talented to get taught by a fine group of gifted teachers.

Three months later I landed in Stuttgart. Here my fellow students
were at least one year, but some repeaters two or even three years
older than I. At this early age a year or two means a big difference
in physical and emotional development. Physique and advancing
puberty took precedence over academic prowess. In Hamburg some
of my fellow students were from Argentina, Italy, England and
America. Here they were all local yokels. In Hamburg, where we had
called it earth science, I had submitted a 70-page paper about the
present conditions and future promise of Brazil. In Stuttgart, where
it was chic to call this a “geography‟ lesson (which at first I didn’t
know what it meant), we had to recite the city’s street car stops, a
test which I promptly flunked on day one. When I first met my class
teacher at the principal’s office he stared at me as if I had come
from Mars and when I said I was from Hamburg he let out an
inarticulate “Ah-wah?” He introduced himself as “Preceptor Sieber”,
but I had no idea what a preceptor was. When he started explaining
things to this newcomer, I hadn’t the faintest idea what he was
saying on account of his broad Schwabian dialect. The same went
for my class mates. They crowded around me and kept bombarding

me with questions which I could hardly understand. I felt utterly
helpless, completely out of place and reduced to a level of stark
ignorance. When I got home that day I pleaded with my parents to
take me back to Hamburg as “this place is worse than the colonies.”

Much of the joy had gone out of life. I constantly had catching up to
do on account of the different school curriculum and also because
of the difficulties I had with the local dialect. Mother even made me
give up the piano, lest I should lose the school year I had gained in
Hamburg. Even after several years I was still considered “an
outsider” and had difficulty making new friends. But one of them was
my friend Dieter Schubert, who just happened to live only three doors
from us and whose mother just happened to have come into the
presence of ‘Abdu’l-Baha when she was 14 years old. However, this
good news didn’t reach me for another eight long years. As fate would
have it, just a few weeks before our return to Stuttgart, on May 21 to be
precise, the Baha’i Faith had been outlawed by the government in
power and could no longer be mentioned in Germany.

But the mystic cycle of destiny had come full circle: We had
returned to the place where the Seed had been sown years earlier
and where it would have to lay dormant for the duration of the now
impending apocalypse of war. In the meantime, we had been moved
away from Hamburg where the air war gutted and pulverized our
former neighborhood. We had also been prevented from getting to
Berlin despite all my father’s great hopes and ambitions. In Berlin
we would have faced untold misery during the war and for decades
afterwards. Somehow we had been shielded from much greater
dangers and were ushered to a place that was removed from war’s
vortex where, moreover, the Message that would change our lives
was waiting.

In retrospect, all my youthful anxieties and frustrations had indeed
been a very small price to pay for such bounty.

Unity is not Sameness
Sameness precludes Unity

This wisdom should be as obvious as is the light of day.
Ever since Isaac Newton we have known that light does not
consist of sameness, but that is has an infinite array of
different colors. But these color components are so
thoroughly harmonized that their “differences‟ disappear to
the naked eye. If this were not so, we would all go crazy !
It is only when we shoot light through a prism that its
differing components reveal themselves in all their glory.
This process of dispersal is reversed when the rainbow
colors are again shot through a prism and re-united into a
single beam of what we call pure light. It is this latter
spiritual prism that humanity urgently needs to discover.

The Eye of the Universe

Seen through the eye of the universe
our earthly existence is insignificant,
our body infinitely minuscule,
a mere handful of atomic dust,
feeble and ephemeral. –

Compared to creation’s own eternity
our time on earth is but a flashing ember,
yet it awakens and illumines the mind and
thereby bestows a conscious existence which
is able to burst material bounds despite
frailty and transience of body. –

This lets us fathom, perceive, and sometimes
even penetrate the Great and Holy Enigma as
we stand in awe of a creation which gave us the
powers of comprehension and free will.
In return for these unique gifts, we are challenged
to renounce prejudice, apathy and sloth, and so
be able to accept a larger measure of truth, to
expand the realm of the known, and thereby
improve humanity’s condition as our personal
offering to an unfolding universe. –

Deliberately placed at the center of the realm, where
the worlds of micro- and macrocosm meet, our so
singularly favored and rare position allows us a
glimpse into God’s cosmic mirror, the sublime
spectrum from galaxies of the distant past to the
atom’s innermost secrets. –
This majestic fabric is interwoven and synonymous
with time's endless and all-encompassing spiral,
from ancient beginnings which knew no begin,
to an end without end, a rebirth akin ...

Harry Liedtke

متن دومی را برای خواندن به‌صورت موازی انتخاب کنید — یک ترجمه، یا هر متن دیگری.