# A Wayfarer between Two Worlds: Recollections

*Exported from [Holy-Writings.com](https://www.holy-writings.com/) on 2026-06-20 — 1 clipping.*

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> 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
>
> — *A Wayfarer between Two Worlds: Recollections (Used by permission of the curator)*