If religion divides - why join one? If truth is universal, why "label" oneself? Why call oneself "Baha'i", and not just believe, and remain open?

Following good feedback, this is a podcast (my second!)of another talk I gave at Cambridge University, addressing the perennial question that Baha'is encounter: "I like the Baha'i teachings very much, I even love Baha'u'llah, but I don't want to label myself, I want to be free to be myself, and not divide myself from others by joining anything." I think people who state this view, have a point. You can find it in zipped format here.

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Is unity always good? Really? Is diversity always positive? Really? Is there a measurable social impact to Baha'i community life?

Is unity always a good thing? Is diversity always an enrichment? Do Baha'i claims and approaches to unity in diversity stand in light of scientific research on group functioning? Is there a science to being united? Baha’is speak a lot about the value of unity in diversity. Since this ideal was formulated by Baha’u’llah in the unlikely setting of 19th century, QajarPersia, an entire literature has emerged putting to the test, empirically, many of the assumptions and ideas contained in the Baha’i writings. What are the tensions, nuances, and insights, that the encounter between scientific and religious perspectives on unity in diversity may bring? I’d like to stimulate interest in the further exploration of this question, the nature of unity and diversity, beginning by recalling en passant what the current sociological, psychological, anthropological and related literature has to say about the subject. This will soon crystallise in paper form, so any references, corrections or additions you may have to share, would be most gratefully received.

Two dimensions of unity: ideational, and structural.

Let us begin with unity. It is seldom defined with the label “unity” in the social science literature. Other labels are used, which amount to cognates of the same unity concept. Among these are the concepts of social solidarity, group cohesion or cohesiveness, social integration, social capital, cultural consensus, social network closure and structural cohesiveness, etc.

These various perspectives seem to focus on defining or measuring unity in two primary ways, one being unity as an ideational concept, that is, how people think or feel, how united or attracted individuals feel to one another, or how united they feel their group is. And the second approach to measuring and exploring unity is a structural approach, how robust are the ties of the group above and beyond the perceptions of its members. For example, a group could feel very united, very cohesive. The individuals could feel that they belong, that they participate, that they like being part of the group, and that the group is very cohesive, and everyone could in fact agree about this, meaning there is a high degree of perceived or ideational unity in a group. However, if those bonds are dependent on the presence of one or two key members who are the key tie for everyone else, then the unity, however intense and profound, is quite fragile, because if one or both of those individuals leave the group, fall ill, or fall out with the rest, then the entire group could fracture. This is what frequently happens, for example in religious movements that are built around a charismatic figure, where everyone feels deeply united as long as that charismatic figure is alive and present as a nexus and cement between them, and the group of his followers love one another, are willing to die for one another, but the moment that leader dies and in the absence of a successful succession or routinisation of the leader’s charisma, then that group can split into sects and schism, and we discover that that group’s unity, however intense and authentic, was not very robust.

By contrast, you may have groups where the degree of mutual identification is quite weak, people feel they are mostly acquaintances, it is weak ties that bind them to one another, and yet, nonetheless, their connectedness is such that it does not depend upon one or another individual, i which case that unity is likely to be more robust because even if 2 or 5 or 10 of those members disappear, the group remains cohesive. This illustrates those two dimensions of unity, the ideational and the structural, which of course may also coincide: you may have a group which is simultaneously structurally very united and robust, and affectively and ideationally very united.

Spheres of Unity

In addition to these two types of unity, structural or ideational, the literature also introduces the notion of differing levels or spheres of unity. At first sight, unity may be thought of as uniformly good, but the literature suggests that unity in one sphere may be in conflict with unity in a different sphere, and may therefore not necessarily work well for the aggregate. For example, a neighbourhood that is very cohesive and united will reap the benefits of that, nevertheless, that very strong identity, that very unity that binds them could be a factor dividing them from other neighbourhoods, or the city wide or nation wide identity. Likewise, an ethnic group or community might be very cohesive within itself, yet that very cohesiveness lead to very little contact, interaction or embrace with other ethnic groups. We thus find that there are various places in the world where communities naturally cohere around their own religious or ethnic identity, yet they are quite divided from other identity communities. This is one example where unity at one level could be a source of disunity at another level. Certain gangs, criminal organizations, hate-groups, and, arguably, certain commercial enterprises, moreover, may be very united around values and activities that are designed to fracture the very bonds and values that hold society together. Thus, it is important to identify how unity at a given sphere impacts on unity at a different sphere.

Strong ties, Group Norms and Group Effects.

In addition to the distinction between ideational unity and structural unity, the literature distinguishes between strong ties, strong relationships of closely knit people, and weak ties, arms’length relationships with what can best be described as acquaintances. Each of these is associated with specific types of group effects.

One of the areas of unity which is affected by the relative strength of the ties binding a given group, is the evolution of norms of interaction guiding and harmonising its members. The the stronger the ties that bind group members to one another, the more united a group is, and the smoother the process of evolving and enforcing group norms. If you have a group where the boundaries are very lax, very thin, the networks are very loose, then chances are that the process of achieving common norms around cooperation or interaction will be more elusive. An example of this would be, when you have a youth group that you are running or participating in, if all the members know each other very well, they go to school together, they are already lifelong friends, then the chances are that the process of developing common values, common norms of behaviour is going to be quite smooth, so that effective communication and group dynamics, and the degree of group commitment is likely to be high, with everyone united. On the other hand, when you just start a youth group through what is sometimes described as detached work, and you go perhaps to the street to recruit lost of youth from different backgrounds who don’t know each other at all, and put them together in one room, the group behaviour is likely to be to quite variable. Some might be quite shy, others quite raucous and rowdy, and it will take some time, and getting to know each other and bond together, in fact cohering the group, for there to emerge some accepted and shared norms of behaviour.

The impact of group cohesion on the evolution of group norms is such, that one of the observable group effects of closely knit groups, is that the group values impact on and can even override the values of individual members. Thus if you have a very united group around a certain core of values, then those values are more likely to be present in the group, and practiced by its members, even when not all individuals fully share them. A group that for example places a great emphasis on formality, for instance certain types of work environment, where everyone wears a suit, everybody relates to one another in a formal way, hierarchies are significant. If this is consistent and the organization is tightly knit, chances are that even if you are an informal kind of guy, when you enter that group or organization you will tend to behave more formally than comes naturally to you.

Another aspect of unity affected by the strength of group ties, is the level of group commitment. So for example if you go to a gym regularly, you belong to that gym, you are a paid up member, you associate regularly with some of your fellow members, and it can be said that it is “your” gym. However, should you come across a gym that was nearer to your place, was cheaper and better equipped, then unless you have built quite a strong bond with people in that gym you are quite likely to desert the previous gym immediately for the new, better and more convenient gym. This might happen likewise in work settings, and various other environments.

The Strength of Weak Ties

On the other hand, one of the disadvantages of having a closely knit group is that such levels of closeness around a very specific group of people can make the structure less flexible, in times of change or adaptation where you might need new talents, new perspectives or new relationships, when instead of tapping into the capacities of new people, you might feel a sense of loyalty to the people around you, or a sense of safety in sticking to your group, that may hamper your capacity to adapt.

“Thus, the more a manager was strongly tied to a cohesive group of peers, the less able he or she was to adapt his or her communication network to the changes brought about by the global organizational change... viewed over time, a cohesive network may eventually hurt a manager's ability to enter and to promote new cooperative relationships involving people outside that network” (Gargioulo, M., and Benassi, M., 2000)

An example of this is when someone moves to a new neighbourhood, and develops very close friendships with two or three people that take up all her social time, which can be wonderful, and may mean she doesn’t have to spend much time with other people, that she may not have very wide networks, but she can really count on those three friends come hell or high water. If suddenly there is a power cut, however, and those three friends aren’t around, or are ill equipped, then the very strength of those ties, leading to the narrowness of her network, could influence the access that she has to other people who might be able to help. While if on the contrary she happened to have more acquaintances, more arms’ length relationships with people, more weak ties, she might not be able to unburden her heart to them, or leave them caring for her house, but she might have many people to ask for a candle in the supposed power cut.

White and Houseman (2002) explain:

“Granovetter showed that if a person’s strong ties are those in which there is strong investment of time and affect (e.g., close friends and kin), then it is paradoxically the weaker ties that connect a person to others and to resources that are located or available through other clusters in the network. In his Boston study of male professional, technical, or managerial workers who made job changes, he found that most workers found their jobs through personal contacts, but ones that were surprisingly weak: not close friends or relatives but often work-related persons and generally those with more impersonal ties with low contact frequency. Reflecting on Rapoport’s information diffusion model, and Travers and Milgram’s Small Worlds studies, he formulated his strength of weak tie hypothesis: strong ties tend to be clustered and more transitive, as are ties among those within the same clique, who are likely to have the same information about jobs and less likely to have new information passed along from distant parts of the network. Conversely, bridges between clusters in the network tend to be weak ties, and weak ties tend to have less transitivity. Hence acquaintances are more likely to pass job information than close friends, and the acquaintances of strategic importance are those whose ties serve as bridges in the network. “

They also mention, as a nuance, the Dodds, Muhammad and Watts experiment on 67,000 users. People avoided asking help from others with whom they had weak ties, such as casual acquaintanceships. They mostly used ties of intermediate strength, such as friendships formed through work or schooling affiliations.

Curvilinear relationships? Arriving at “unity in diversity”

So, different levels of intensity in relationships, each appear to have certain advantages, and also disadvantages. A mix of strong and weak ties seems to be the ideal, and of course each conditions and limits to some extent the other. Too many weak ties, and it will be hard to find the time to invest in a few relationships necessary to achieve truly close ties. Too much concentration on a few strong ties could impair the ability to interact with a wide enough array of people to build many weak ties.

A further concept that emerges from the empirical findings on group cohesiveness, then, is that there may be a curvilinear relationship to the benefits of unity, that is, an optimum level of unity above and below which the positive effects of group cohesion begin to diminish. Implicit in this notion, is that achieving this optimum point of unity depends on the presence of a degree of diversity, inasmuch as where cohesion is very homogenous, the adaptability and wider integration of a group may sometimes suffer, and viceversa.

This brings us to the issue of diversity. All would be easier, if much more boring, and perhaps not even easier either with regard to adaptability, and resourcefulness and variety of resources, as was mentioned earlier, but at least interaction might potentially be easier if in general we all were very homogenous in our values, ideas, backgrounds, thoughts, etc., and in fact we have a tendency to look for the similar and gravitate towards it. The Baha’i Writings state that “like seeketh like and deliughteth in the company of its kind”. This notion forms the underpinning of social categorization theory and social identity theory in psychology, that is, we seek similarity and flow toward it, instinctively avoiding what we perceive as different and other, potentially making diversity cognitively and socially difficult to assimilate. On the other hand, diversity also potentially enriches our resources, our creativity, our thought process, and this has given rise to two perspectives on the influence of diversity.

On the one hand is the idea that diversity can be very helpful to groups and collectivities because it will help in their creativity, it may avoid cliques, it will stimulate collaboration, maximise adaptability, etc. On the other hand, there is a current that suggests that diversity is in fact something quite negative for groups, something that hampers their activity, their interactions, precisely because we do tend toward that which is similar, and struggle with what is new or alien to us. There is abundant empirical evidence for both effects of diversity. It seems that where diversity is coupled with group cohesiveness, that is, when a group is at once diverse and united, then all kinds of advantages accrue to it compared to a group that is also united, but not diverse. Group cohesion is a key mediating factor in the impact of diversity on group performance and effectiveness, for instance. On the other hand, there is evidence to suggest that the more diverse a group is, the more challenging it is to arrive at unity, so that the potential benefits of diversity can be offset by the potential hard work of making that group gel, and a homogenous group can consequently perform better than a diverse one.

One of the factors that has been demonstrated to facilitate, although not by itself determine, the process of liberating the positive effects of diversity, is having a positive outlook on diversity, an attitude that embraces diversity. Likewise, actual positive experiences of diversity in the individuals within a group can also help liberate the potential benefits of diversity in the functioning of the group as a whole.

As with unity, thus, so with diversity there seems to be a curvilinear relationship, that is, an optimum level of diversity. Too much diversity and cohesion becomes unwieldy, whilst too little diversity, and homogeneity impoverishes the group. So achieving that balance is important.
As with unity, there are of course different types of diversity. There is of course demographic diversity, but there is also cognitive diversity, differences in views, thoughts, learning styles, values, attitudes. There can be levels of consensus around values that create a coherent perspective, where everybody roughly shares a perspective of what are the values to pursue, and what is the organization, community or group. And there is weak consensus, where people are in broad agreement, and then there is difference, where you may have different subcultures with different cultural visions, and there may be stronger disagreements, where there is actual conflict. Other types of diversity like disparity, where someone has access to all the resources, others have very few, which is not necessarily conducive to group cohesion.

Preliminary Baha’i correlations

This is a necessarily superficial and general view in what remains a preliminary conceptual paper seeking to identify the potential of this whole area of research to Baha’i studies, and viceversa perhaps. How does this link up with Baha’i ideas?

Unity in Diversity

On the one hand clearly there are many resonances, first of all the concept of unity is the single most important teaching of Baha’u’llah, the teaching, Shoghi Effendi tells us, which is “the pivot” around which all other teachings revolve, the principle of the oneness of humanity. This is of course of relevance to us also because it is our key task and methodology, it is the way that Baha’is approach social change. ‘Abdu’l-Baha says that Baha’is first unite one another, and then seek to unity everyone else. So learning how to become cohesive, how to unite, has been the key labour, the key learning process that the Baha’i community has been advancing since the mid 19th century, and is the message that was sounded from the very inception of the Baha’i Faith and of the Baha’i community.

The Baha’i writings also speak of diversity as a key value. They say that unity without diversity would be very simplistic, and impoverishing, like a garden where all the flowers are the same – maasai anecdote. The concept of unity in diversity is described as the Baha’i Faith’s “watchword”, an interesting term to use, which would seem to imply that unity is, as the literature validates, not an unambiguously good benefit, unless it be sought and explored in the context of an embrace of diversity. Likewise diversity is not in itself a good unless it be subordinates, regulated or inspired and synergised by a greater unity. This seems to echo the empirical findings from social scientists that both of these need to balance one another to achieve their optimal benefits in human collectivities.

Two dimensions of unity: ideational, and structural.

Another key resonance is the significance of both ideational unity, interpersonal feelings and intimacy, and also structural unity.

“Let there be no mistake. The principle of the Oneness of Mankind -- the pivot round which all the teachings of Bahá'u'lláh revolve -- is no mere outburst of ignorant emotionalism or an expression of vague and pious hope. Its appeal is not to be merely identified with a reawakening of the spirit of brotherhood and good-will among men, nor does it aim solely at the fostering of harmonious cooperation among individual peoples and nations. Its implications are deeper, its claims greater than any which the Prophets of old were allowed to advance. Its message is applicable not only to the individual, but concerns itself primarily with the nature of those essential relationships that must bind all the states and nations as members of one human family. It does not constitute merely the enunciation of an ideal, but stands inseparably associated with an institution adequate to embody its truth, demonstrate its validity, and perpetuate its influence. It implies an organic change in the structure of present-day society, a change such as the world has not yet experienced.”

(Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha'u'llah, p. 42)

Which is to say that this spirit of brotherhood, this feeling of belonging and kinship, is not enough, rather, “it is associated with an order” with a structure, a system, to incarnate that spirit of unity and ensure its cohesiveness. Without such a structure, Shoghi Effendi says, this sopirit would become dissipated and be lost. And this structure is provided by the Covenant, which is what ensures the maintenance of unity after the passing of that pivot of unity that was Baha’u’llah, and subsequently ‘Abdu’l-Baha, and Shoghi Effendi, culminating in the establishment of the Universal House of Justice. In each of these transitioins unity was maintained through the provisions of the Covenant, through a certain structure, and of course through Administrative Order associated with that same Covenant, the structure of a Baha’i community that appears to privilege bottom-up structures that allow the entire system to be very robust, so that were you to take away an individual, no matter how prominent and significant her or his responsibilities, or even an entire institution, the overall unity of the Baha’i community would remain intact, as was indeed put to the test and discovered when Shoghi Effendi died intestate. The central node of unity of the Baha’i community disappeared, and yet so solid was the structure of the Baha’i community, so robust its network, that the system survived the shock of those stressors and maintained its unity unimpaired. This is a remarkable achievement, and is an evidence of the formidable level of both types of unit of course, not only the structural, but also the ideational or subjective unity, which was exemplified in the loyalty that kept the Baha’i community together and the extraordinary servant-leadership of the Hands of the Cause of God as Chief Stewards during the period of the Custodianship, steering the ship of the Cause to the safe port of the election of the Universal House of Justice.

Curvilinear relationships? Arriving at “unity in diversity”

“In the human kingdom itself there are points of contact, properties 68 common to all mankind; likewise, there are points of distinction which separate race from race, individual from individual. If the points of contact, which are the common properties of humanity, overcome the peculiar points of distinction, unity is assured. On the other hand, if the points of differentiation overcome the points of agreement, disunion and weakness result.” (Abdu'l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 67)

"they strictly avoid uniformity and rigidity in all such practices. No rule whatsoever that would tend to be rigid and uniform should be allowed in such secondary matters"
(Shoghi Effendi, Arohanui - Letters to New Zealand, p. 47)

"It is not uniformity which we should seek in the formation of any national or local assembly. For the bedrock of the Bahá'í administrative order is the principle of unity in diversity, which has been so strongly and so repeatedly emphasized in the writings of the Cause. Differences which are not fundamental and contrary to the basic teachings of the Cause should be maintained, while the underlying unity of the administrative order should be at any cost preserved and insured."

(Shoghi Effendi, Dawn of a New Day, p. 47)

Another principle, the Baha’i principle of the protection and indeed promotion of minorities, has interesting linkages to the findings of social network theory, for instance.

Spheres of Unity

There are here also a number of themes that are validated by the Baha’i writings. We have already mentioned the scriptural support for the basic assumption of self-categorization theory, that we tend to identify with those who we perceive as similar, and gravitate toward them. The Baha’i writings likewise recognise that this very tendency can be a source of disunity, so that ‘Abdu’l-Baha states that “souls are inclined to estrangement”, and that means should first be adopted to remove the estrangement. We seem to gravitate toward those who are similar to us, but likewise we seem to have a tendency to avoid those who we perceive as different from us. To bypass this, both the literature and the Baha’i writings suggest, requires a degree of training, the cultivation of certain values, attitudes and behaviours that mediate our encounter with the different. Thus ‘Abdu’l-Baha speaks about those levels of unity, and how one level of unity is imperfect without the rest, so that one can be very attached to one’s family, but it requires a greater degree of moral development to extend that sense of attachment to larger and larger aggregates, eventually arriving at universal love for all humanity. The hallmark of this age, we are told, is the awareness of world citizenship, the sense of belonging first and foremost to the human race.

“Yea, in the first centuries, selfish souls, for the promotion of their own interests, have assigned boundaries and outlets and have, day by day, attached more importance to these, until this led to intense enmity, bloodshed and rapacity in subsequent centuries. In the same way this will continue indefinitely, and if this conception of patriotism remains limited within a certain circle, it will be the primary cause of the world's destruction. No wise and just person will acknowledge these imaginary distinctions. Every limited area which we call our native country we regard as our motherland, whereas the terrestrial globe is the motherland of all, and not any restricted area."

(Abdu'l-Baha, Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Baha, p. 300)

Another aspect of this research validates by the Baha’i Writings is the notion that not all types of diversity are positive, such as excessive disparity, where you have a situation of inequality and injustice.

“In the vegetable kingdom also we observe distinction between the various sorts and species of organisms. Each has its own form, color and fragrance. In the animal kingdom the same law rules as many distinctions in form, color and function are noticeable. It is the same in the human kingdom. From the standpoint of color there are white, black, yellow and red people. From the standpoint of physiognomy there is a wide difference and distinction among races. The Asian, African and American have different physiognomies; the men of the North and men of the South are very different in type and features. From an economic standpoint in the law of living there is a great deal of difference. Some are poor, others wealthy; some are wise, others ignorant; some are patient and serene, some impatient and excitable; some are prone to justice, others practice injustice and oppression; some are meek, others arrogant. In brief, there are many points of distinction among humankind.”
(Abdu'l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 189)

The Baha’i writings speak that only through justice can unity be established, and they seek to eliminate the extremes of poverty and wealth.

Strong ties, Group Norms and Group Effects.

At the moment most Baha’i activity revolves around group work. Group work seems to be the spirit of our time. Practically the totality of Baha’i activity seems to revolve around small groups. Groups of believers and their friends in study circles and devotional gatherings, groups of young people in junior youth groups, groups of children in children’s classes, groups of believers in teaching teams in intensive growth programmes, groups of believers in Baha’i institutions and committees. Clearly, some of the findings on the nature of groups are quite relevant. Since the focus of this paper is on unity in diversity I will not expand here on the relevance of the vast scientific literature on small group dynamics (those interested might wish to browse through the academic journal “Small group research”, for a flavour of what’s out there). Correlations of this literature with the Baha’i experience could benefit both the Baha’i community in refining its understanding and effectiveness, and the academic community, in bringing to light a distinctive and fascinating pool of collective experience in group functioning.

Here, I would like to explore some of the key aspects around cohesion and diversity that emerge from the literature. One of this themes is what are designated “group effects”, the power of small groups to impact on the behaviour and values of its individual members. Thus an individual may have a given set of values and ideas, but as they participate on a cohesive group, the group takes on a life of its own, and the values of the group become pervasive and permeate its members, even those whose point of departure is different. This puts into perspective the extraordinary service that the Baha’i community is rendering worldwide, in tens, hundreds of thousands of groups around the world, all based around the Baha’is values of unity, and embrace of diversity, etc. We are preparing a entire generation to meet the challenges of diversity. And what are the challenges of diversity? We have seen that diversity without cohesion can be a source of disruption, and that two of the key aspects or moderating influences that facilitate the emergence of cohesion are 1) a welcoming attitude/embrace of diversity, and 2) contact with diversity, experience of positive contact with diversity. These are great enablers of future adaptation.

Why is this relevant? Clearly, our societies have become more diverse, however perhaps not many of us have taken on board the degree to which this is likely to accelerate in the impending future. It is not merely that diverse communities within many, perhaps most, countries, are naturally growing in proportion to the majority population. In addition to this, we have very strong migratory pressures that are accelerating all the time, and one feels that in spite of various governments to restrict or control the flow of immigration into their countries (or emigration out of their countries), this is but a symptom of systemic inequalities that are only set to increase, and which no amount of punitive or draconian immigration policies can hope to master. As if this was not enough, climate change is adding a new, and dramatically accelerating migratory pressure, so that The UN University's Institute for Environment and Human Security predicts that by 2010, there will be 50 million 'environmentally displaced people', most of whom will be women and children. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has suggested 150 million environmental refugees would exist by 2050. So apart from the current drivers of migration, quality of life, economic opportunity/poverty, persecution/discrimination, we are seeing an exponential migratory force in the impacts of environmental degradation worldwide. We are confronted with several island countries, for instance the Maldives looking to purchase a new territory from another country, to translocate their entire nation before it is submerged by rising waters (The Guardian newspaper, 10 November 2008), so that there will still be a country named Maldives on the map, only it might suddenly be, not in the South Pacific, but in Latin America, or Europe. This is without touching on the impacts of soil exhaustion in agricultural countries, or peak energy resources.

All this amounts to an ongoing and impending exponential and dramatic demographic transformation of all countries, with an increase in diversity such as has never in history been seen. Unfortunately, it would appear that the rise in cohesiveness is not yet keeping pace with this development, and more often than not, far from seeing a systematic and harmonious harnessing of diversity, we are seeing the rise of “identity politics” and conflicts, which present us with some worrying prospects, locally, nationally and internationally. Against this backdrop, the significance, and urgency, of the Baha’i enterprise, cannot possibly be exaggerated.
For of course, the increase of diversity is not inherently and inevitably a negative thing, but, the empirical literature suggests, is invested with unique and massive potentialities. Each culture, each person brings an extraordinary range of experiences, resources, networks, skills, attitudes and values that can potentially dynamise and enrich the various social settings. And indeed, as we have seen, it is precisely in times of significant change or crisis that diversity can be most useful, in opening possibilities for innovations and creative solutions that homogeneity would be hard put to match. But this depends on collectivities developing the attitudes, values and skills that will release the constructive potential of diversity and obviate its negative stresses. This is not a matter of choice, but of necessity, and in the not too distant future, perhaps even of survival.

Against this backdrop, the vision of hundreds of thousnands of small groups being generated and nurtured by the Baha’is, not only within their own community boundaries, but primarily in collaboration with others who do not fully embrace their own identity, but sympathise with some of their principles, we are seeing perhaps millions of peole engaged in an educational process that exposes them to diversity and that exposes them to values that help release the positive impacts of diversity, given what we now know about “group effects”, the way in which groups impact on the values of individuals, this is truly an extraordinary achievement, and one that could usefully be empirically documented and explored.

Weak Ties, and group effects.

Another aspect of the research is the power of weak ties, people who we see regularly, every so often, but with whom we don’t not share much closeness. Research shows that these ties can be instrumental to all kinds of positive variables, including a community’s sense of security, peace and collaboration. From this perspective, the Baha’i notion of a community of interest, the efforts to meet our neighbours and our co-workers, to create weak ties on a vast scale, and likewise the weak ties that our small networks impinge on, so that as we create a children’s class we develop weak ties with the parents of those kids, you can project certain kinds of insights. These impacts, when you aggregate the, are really quite staggering.

“200,000 worldwide have completed Book 1 of the Ruhi Institute, and many thousands have reached the level where they can effectively act as tutors of the study circles that, with increasing frequency, are held in every part of the globe, over 10,000 at the last count. The number of seekers engaged in the core activities has continued to climb, crossing the 100,000”
(The Universal House of Justice, Ridvan 162, 2005)

By 2009, there were 1500 intensive programmes, 1000 programmes.

If weak ties are indispensable to afunctioning community. And Baha’is are systematically multiplying the weak ties in their neighbourhoods, often becoming hubs in an otherwise fragmented and fissiparous community, above and beyond the contribution this may make to Baha’i community building, it is reasonably to conclude that Baha’is are contributing large scale effects in community after community across over 2100 ethnic groups and populations, all with the aim to facilitate the assimilation of diversity, promote values indispensable to sustainable societies, and revitalise the social fabric of reciprocity and collaboration.

A Research Agenda

All these are interesting interfaces and overlaps between the Baha’i teachings and the discoveries of scientist today in relation to unity. Let us go further and ask what is the contribution that these empirical approaches can make to the Baha’i community?

One of the first contributions that comes to mind is that this literature helps us understand a lot of the Baha’i principles in terms of their effectiveness and day to day dynamics, but also other elements. These insights from the literature on unity in diversity can help us gain a sense of the significance of the efforts we are engaged in. We might think this is simply helping our own group, maybe even our neighbourhood, or that we are simply having a good and meaningful time with a group of friends, but really, we are in fact playing a leading role in engendering a collective capacity for leveraging the power of diversity on a global scale.

Clealrly the idea of aggregating the impacts, of measuring the social impacts which the Baha’i community’s activities may be contributing to the unity of the world, the cohesion of society is an area which begs for research and which could have all kinds of impacts on the ways we understand ourselves.

By conceptually, and empirically connecting our core activities to the social challenges of humanity, we might achieve a greater coherence in our discourse, in our attitude, and language. Such a perspective might also make it easier to engender commitment and participation in many Baha’is, as it becomes clear that our activities do not belong in a congregational culture, but that our efforts are really quite distinct, and distinctive within traditional religious community building.

Conclusion

The overall perspective that this literature brings out is that the Baha’i community is engaged in a labour if immense significance to the world, that its social activism, let us say, is dramatic, really. And even though its method is not one of pressure politics, intrigues and plotting, of power games, it is nevertheless of extraordinary range and impact. This brings us to the last element of this, which might be an interesting research agenda that this suggests.

Our aim is not to create another religious community that is bigger and better. Our aim is to reconcile the contending peoples and kindreds of the earth, and the Baha’i community is our instrument and our tool. If we want to grow, it is not so that we can have a bigger club, but so that we might have a more powerful instrument for the unification of society If we look at the history of Baha’i community building, we can see that it began in connecting and linking individuals. It then shifted to building up institutions which would become the instruments of our outreach to the world. In that phase our outlook was almost completely inward-looking. We only looked outward in terms of teaching the Faith in order to bring people “inward”, to activities that were for Baha’is only, which were the core of our activities until the advent of the 5th epoch, largely based around the Local Spiritual Assembly and the 19 Day Feast and giving ti to the Funds, which were all for baha’is only, and recruiting more people to support the existence and functioning of those essential instruments. The reason being that until we had that basic infrastructure, that cohesive structure, as opposed to purely cohesive individuals, not just the ideational, but also the structurally robust unity of our community, we couldn’t attain the task of uniting the whole world. It seems to methat this is a taks we are now beginning to explore, in accord with the Guardian’s quote regarding 2nd century. It seems to me we are now expanding our vision to the outside world. We have now built that instrument on a solid foundation. We can afford to los an Assembly, local or National, and the whole system will not suddenly collapse. We are now a unit that is self-sustaining. Accordingly, we are now focusing our core activities on outreach of a very specific nature, an outreach that involves an intersection of unity and diversity around certain key values, and as I was suggesting, one of the further research agendas that could be useful to explore here is the degree to which our purely Baha’i labours are fo much wider significance and contribution, in addition to our activities more directly associated with influencing social policy or effecting social and economic development. Far from being parallel activities, they are integral facets of one coherent effort to achieve unity in diversity in pursuit of the world civilization that is potentially within our reach.

This means that our activities redound not only to the strengthening of the Baha’i community, but to the strengthening of the whole of humankind.

The role that spirituality plays in this process, is one I have not had the chance to explore here, but would nevertheless like to plant, as a seed, by way of conclusion, by referring to ‘Abdu’l-

Baha’s Some Answered Questions:

“It is clear that the reality of mankind is diverse, that opinions are various and sentiments different; and this difference of opinions, of thoughts, of intelligence, of sentiments among the human species arises from essential necessity; for the differences in the degrees of existence of creatures is one of the necessities of existence, which unfolds itself in infinite forms. Therefore, we have need of a general power which may dominate the sentiments, the opinions and the thoughts of all, thanks to which these divisions may no longer have effect, and all individuals may be brought under the influence of the unity of the world of humanity. It is clear and evident that this greatest power in the human world is the love of God. It brings the different peoples under the shadow of the tent of affection; it gives to the antagonistic and hostile nations and families the greatest love and union.”
(Abdu'l-Baha, Some Answered Questions, p. 300)

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Uber-"teaching" in the congregation, or changing the world? My community is bigger than yours, or birthing the new community?

In the wake of 41 Baha'i Regional Conferences, gathering tens of thousands of Baha'is from every corner of the world to reflect on the present moment and stimulate the multiplication of "intensive growth programmes", the wider question, (whatever for?), rings on my mind. Are we yet another congregation, buzzing ourselves up to proselytise more keenly, or is there something distinctive about the enterprise of growing the Baha'i community? Is this an inward-looking, bums on seats (we have no pews), my congregation is bigger than yours mindset we are cultivating? Or has this vision of growth anything deeper to offer to a world fast slipping from our fingers? We want, like most religious groups, to grow our community. Does our concept of community change the nature of the enterprise?

The New Paradigm for Bahá'í Community Building

In sociological terms, the Bahá'í community falls into what Scherer described as a synthetic community: “an attempt to build and develop a community consciously and deliberately.” Unlike communities into which we are born, or communities with an established history into which we merely enter, synthetic communities involve a conscious effort at community building. The Baha’is are engaged in just such a venture, on an epic scale, for the very raison d’etre of the Bahá'í community is precisely to engender, in Jaqueline Scherer’s definition, "a ‘core of commonness’ or commonality that includes a collective perspective, agreed upon definitions, and some agreement about values... [A] context for personal integration” of truly global scope.

We are, however, yet to identify what Baha’is specifically mean by community, what it is that should be the end product of the sacrifices of 160 years of community building effort. First, what it is not.

"To mistakenly identify Baha'i community life with the mode of religious activity that characterizes the general society--in which the believer is a member of a congregation, leadership comes from an individual or individuals presumed to be qualified for the purpose, and personal participation is fitted into a schedule dominated by concerns of a very different nature--can only have the effect of marginalizing the Faith and robbing the community of the spiritual vitality available to it." Universal House of Justice, 22 August 2002.

What, then, in light of the Baha’i experience so far, and under the impact of a Revelation that aims to altogether transform the current conceptions of humanity, is the Bahá'í meaning of community?

The answer is perhaps most clearly and most directly articulated by the Universal House of Justice in their message to the Bahá'í world for the festival of Ridvan, April 21, 1996:

“A community is …a comprehensive unit of civilization composed of individuals, families and institutions that are originators and encouragers of systems, agencies and organizations working together with a common purpose for the welfare of people both within and beyond its own borders; it is a composition of diverse, interacting participants that are achieving unity in an unremitting quest for spiritual and social progress.”

This definition is both descriptive, and prescriptive. It describes a “comprehensive unit of civilisation”, emerging from the interaction of three key constituents (individuals, families and institutions) originating and encouraging “systems, agencies and organisations”. The majority of local Bahá'í communities, and many national Bahá'í communities are really, from this description, at most embryonic entities, with very crude systems, agencies and organisations in place, a limited number of individuals and families, and few institutions to speak of beyond a Local Spiritual Assembly and the Nineteen Day Feast.

Nevertheless, the fourth and particularly the fifth epochs of the Cause (1986-present) are witnessing a sea-change in this area, as local communities generate a broad infrastructure of “systems, agencies and organisations” arising singly and collaboratively from the individuals, families and institutions in the area. I refer of course to the development of study-circles, mostly focused around individuals; children and junior youth classes, mostly revolving around families (Bahá'í and others); devotional meetings which, with socio-economic development activities, are the seeds of future local Mashriq’u’l-Adhkars; the ever evolving training institute in each country; and where these elements are in place, socio-economic development projects (increasingly a spontaneous, organic feature of Baha'i community clusters in process of intensive growth), as outlined in the letter written by the Universal House of Justice to the Counsellors of January 9, 2001.

If the second and third epochs of the Cause were about building institutions, then the fourth and fifth epochs have been and are about building communities.

But in saying that the call of the day requires building a global network of local “Bahá'í” communities, the word Bahá'í makes the usage of community distinctive. For the definition gifted to us by the Universal House of Justice is not merely descriptive, but also prescriptive. It consists, yes, of a unit made up of individuals, families and institutions originating and encouraging systems, agencies and organisations (nothing uniquely Bahá'í about that). But for this community to be worthy of the Most Great Name, it must, further, be “working together with a common purpose for the welfare of people both within and beyond its own borders”.

So the communities Baha’is are now building are not simply communities, but altruistic communities.

Moreover, they are not inward looking, concentrating on the welfare of people within their borders, but also "beyond" their borders. This illuminates the focus of the current Plans on home-front pioneering, area clusters, and intensive growth programmes. Clearly, again, the aim is not merely to generate an increased flow of individual enrolments or fill-up vacant LSA spaces, but also and above all, to instil into the emerging communities of the fifth epoch a sense of interdependence, whereby a given community will work organically and inherently for the welfare its own locality, and of localities “beyond its own borders”. To the well known Bahá'í notion of the “locality” we now therefore add the compass of a “cluster” of localities to which one also belongs and with whom one systematically interacts and builds community.

The borders the new Bahá'í communities are expected to cross are, furthermore, not merely geographical, but also, and most challengingly, of identity. It is crucial, again, to notice this outward-looking emphasis in the systems, agencies, and organisations Baha’is are called to build in this new Epoch.

“It is evident, then, that a systematic approach to training has created a way for Bahá'ís to reach out to the surrounding society, share Bahá'u'lláh's message with friends, family, neighbours and co-workers, and expose them to the richness of His teachings. This outward-looking orientation is one of the finest fruits of the grassroots learning taking place." (The Universal House of Justice, January 17, 2003, Progress of Five Year Plan -- Learning in Action, p. 1)

"The culture now emerging is one in which groups of Baha'u'llah's followers explore together the truths in His Teachings, freely open their study circles, devotional gatherings and children's classes to their friends and neighbours, and invest their efforts confidently in plans of action designed at the level of the cluster, that makes growth a manageable goal. " The Universal House of Justice, August 22, 2002

The key building labour of the Baha’i community in the 20th century (perhaps counter-intuitively known to Baha'is as the Century of Light), the 19 Day Feasts, Local Spiritual Assemblies, and Bahá'í funds through which the Ark of God has been erected on Mount Carmel, were designed exclusively for Baha’is. The new key agencies, institutions and organisations Baha’is are building are, explicitly, not for Baha’is only.

Thus we are told that the purpose of Baha’i children’s classes is not the education of Bahá'í children, but the Bahá'í education of children. Animators of Junior Youth groups are even warned explicitly not to view their youth groups, or the outreach carried out to establish them, as direct instruments of expansion, but as a Baha'i oriented service to the community, whose primary intention, providing guidance and friendship to young people in a given neighbourhood, at the critical age where they establish their moral framework, should never be lost sight of in the desire for numerical growth. Study circles are meant to include both Baha’is and their friends in their number. Devotional meetings are not to be designed for or focused exclusively on Baha’is, anymore than the services at the great Bahá'í Houses of Worship are. Like them, they are meant to be gifts of the Baha’is to the world at large, and an integral part of a vision of community that inherently incorporates the Other:

“O ye lovers of this wronged one!” exclaims ‘Abdu’l-Baha, “Cleanse ye your eyes, so that ye behold no man as different from yourselves. See ye no strangers; rather see all men as friends, for love and unity come hard when ye fix your gaze on otherness.”

“In every dispensation," he writes elsewhere, "there hath been the commandment of fellowship and love, but it was a commandment limited to the community of those in mutual agreement, not to the dissident foe. In this wondrous age, however, praised be God, the commandments of God are not delimited, not restricted to any one group of people, rather have all the friends been commanded to show forth fellowship and love, consideration and generosity and loving-kindness to every community on earth.”

As a personal orientation, this is an outlook that Baha’is have been cultivating since Bahá'u'lláh first attracted a company of god-intoxicated lovers (ashiqan) to the Abode of Peace, near the banks of the Tigris. We find this perspective in a letter written in 1867 by the Bahá'í community of Baghdad to the United States Congress petitioning support against the oppression of the Persian and Ottoman empires, at a time when religious segregation remained a fact upheld, institutionalised and sustained by religious belief. The letter was delivered to the Secretary of State William H Seward, immersed in dreams of grandeur that drove him to finally purchase Alaska in the course of that same year, even as the Union struggled to rebuild the country after the carnage of the Secession. It is not known whether that former cabinet colleague of Lincoln and master of political intrigue read the exotic letter, telling of

“…a perfect, wise and virtuous Man” Who “appeared in Persia, he had knowledge of all religions, laws and knew the history of wise men, kings and the rules of nations; he saw that the people oppose, hate and kill, abstain and [are] afraid to mix with each other. Nay, they consider each other unclean, though they are all human beings, having different and numerous religions, and that the people are like unto sheep without a shepherd - That learned and wise man wrote many works containing the rules of union, harmony and love between human beings, and the way of abandoning the differences, untruthfulness, and vexations between them, that people may unite and agree on one way and to walk straightforwardly in the straight and expedient way, and that no one should avert or religiously abstain from intercourse with another, of Jews, Christians, Mohammadans and others. That wise man revealed himself till he appeared like the high sun in midday”

The embrace of the other is thus a long-standing Baha’í virtue in a general sense. The systematic and deep engagement of local Bahá'í communities with the world outside their borders of place and of identity, is, however, relatively new to a Bahá'í world that has spent the greater part of the last century concentrating on the accumulation of “individuals, families and institutions” within the banner of the Cause, andºerecting and maintaining at great personal cost a basic infrastructure of thinly resourced administrative bodies: not having the luxury of looking very much outside.

This sacrificial labour, however, was the essential prerequisite for building the “systems, agencies and organisations” which will enable what we have always called “local Bahá'í communities” to truly become, and for the first time, “comprehensive units of civilization”. This profound shift, described by the Universal House of Justice as “a new paradigm of opportunity” has required from us, and continues to call for, what the Universal House of Justice” has referred to as “a new mindset” and “a change of culture.”

As this outward looking, inclusive focus deepens, the boundaries of Baha'i identity soften, and what Baha'is call the "community of interest", become allies in this building of a new civilization amidst the current, evidently tottering one (see Chris Martenson's prescient analysis for a good sense of things to come. I hope to blog on this later!). It is thus not only Baha'is who are empowered by the new culture of Baha'i community life to fashion the "systems, agencies and organizations" of a new civilization:

"The nature of the core activities of the current Plan—children’s classes, devotional meetings and study circles—permits growing numbers of persons who do not yet regard themselves as Bahá’ís to feel free to participate in the process. The result has been to bring into existence what has been aptly termed a “community of interest”. As others benefit from participation and come to identify with the goals the Cause is pursuing, experience shows that they, too, are inclined to commit themselves fully to Bahá’u’lláh as active agents of His purpose. Apart from its associated objectives, therefore, wholehearted prosecution of the Plan has the potentiality of amplifying enormously the Bahá’í community’s contribution to public discourse on what has become the most demanding issue facing humankind.

"If Bahá’ís are to fulfil Bahá’u’lláh’s mandate, however, it is obviously vital that they come to appreciate that the parallel efforts of promoting the betterment of society and of teaching the Bahá’í Faith are not activities competing for attention. Rather, are they reciprocal features of one coherent global programme. Differences of approach are determined chiefly by the differing needs and differing stages of inquiry that the friends encounter. Because free will is an inherent endowment of the soul, each person who is drawn to explore Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings will need to find his own place in the never-ending continuum of spiritual search. He will need to determine, in the privacy of his own conscience and without pressure, the spiritual responsibility this discovery entails. In order to exercise this autonomy intelligently, however, he must gain both a perspective on the processes of change in which he, like the rest of the earth’s population, is caught up and a clear understanding of the implications for his own life. The obligation of the Bahá’í community is to do everything in its power to assist all stages of humanity’s universal movement towards reunion with God."

This, it seems to me, is the key context in which to view the spirit behind the goal of growth of the Baha'i community, and the overarching logic in the evolution of each Baha'i "cluster" toward the capacity to launch and sustain "intensive programmes of growth": "to assist all stages of humanity’s universal movement towards reunion with God", not in sole collaboration with fellow believers who accept without reservation every claim of Baha'u'llah, but also in full interelationship with those not prepared to take that leap, who yet grasp the power of the global vision animating our efforts, the authenticity of its spirit, and the beneficence of our intentions.

Nor is enrolment the goal, but rather a stage that may coincide with enrolment in the Baha'i community, but is more likely to take the rest of our lives and possibly our existence: "reunion with God". Between interest, attraction, commitment, servitude, consecration, sanctification, and complete evanescence before the Will of God, dying to ourselves and living in Him, is a journey that cannot be reckoned in words, or group identities. We are not a community of the elect, but of the determined improvers, so to speak, where, wherever we were yesterday, we seek again each day to "find" our "own place" in the "never-ending continuum of spiritual search". Together.

And as we come to this spiritual core of our visionary, divinely aided, if broken winged efforts, we recall that this is not some recent fad, or corporate rebranding, but of the essence of our genesis, a genesis to which we must return to grasp the heights that yet await us, in the claim which the example of those gone before us insistently makes upon us, legatees of a heroic history.

Indeed, in remarking on the distinctive aspects of this stage in the evolution of the Baha'i community, it is also important to recognise that, as a fundamental process, the labour of community building is not a new endeavour for us. On the contrary, it is a quintessential part of being a Bahá'í since the earliest origins of the Bahá'í community in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Dawnbreakers, first believers and heroes of the Baha’i Revelation, after all, embodied the spiritual process indicated by the Universal House of Justice in their above-cited description of Bahá'í community as “a composition of diverse, interacting participants that are achieving unity in an unremitting quest for spiritual and social progress.”

“"Most of those who surrounded Baha'u'llah," wrote Nabil "…exercised such care in sanctifying and purifying their souls, that they would suffer no word to cross their lips that might not conform to the will of God, nor would they take a single step that might be contrary to His good-pleasure." "

…The joyous feasts", comments Shoghi Effendi", "which these companions, despite their extremely modest earnings, continually offered in honor of their Beloved; the gatherings, lasting far into the night, in which they loudly celebrated, with prayers, poetry and song, the praises of the Bab, of Quddus and of Baha'u'llah; the fasts they observed; the vigils they kept; the dreams and visions which fired their souls, and which they recounted to each other with feelings of unbounded enthusiasm; the eagerness with which those who served Baha'u'llah performed His errands, waited upon His needs, and carried heavy skins of water for His ablutions and other domestic purposes …these, and many others, will forever remain associated with the history of that immortal period”

Such stories are not merely inspiring, they are crucial to what it means to build a Bahá'í community today, and provide an indispensable lens through which to understand the efforts of the last century. For Shoghi Effendi linked the “efficacy” of the “instruments” Baha’is fashion, the institutions, systems, agencies and organisations of the Baha’i community, to the spirit of those breakers of the dawn, writing:

“For upon our present-day efforts, and above all upon the extent to which we strive to remodel our lives after the pattern of sublime heroism associated with those gone before us, must depend the efficacy of the instruments we now fashion -- instruments that must erect the structure of that blissful Commonwealth which must signalize the Golden Age of our Faith.” (Shoghi Effendi, Dispensation of Baha'u'llah)

The Bahá'í vision of community thus harmoniously integrates the structural approach of sociologists of community; the personal and interpersonal approach of psychiatrists; and the visionary approach of artists, idealists and revolutionaries, embedding all three perspectives on community in the transformative context of the Day of God and the oneness of humanity.

The potential significance of the labours of the present-day Baha’i community is therefore breathtaking. Baha’is are not merely building local Bahá'í communities in clusters and localities, but they are building the basic units of a civilisation which Shoghi Effendi declares will constitute the “fairest fruit” of the revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, and signalise the advent of the promised “golden age”.

One’s degree of awareness about the nature and significance of such task, allows one to work towards this vision not merely consciously but, crucially, in a systematic manner. The pattern of such evolution is not dictated by accidents of geography or language, but by an understanding of organic growth, a focus on process, and vast stores of inspiration and guidance.

The achievement of a world-wide Bahá'í community made up of diverse individuals and families and a global infrastructure of local administrative institutions, has enabled the Baha’i community, in this second half of the second Bahá'í century, to turn its attention at long last from the building up the Administrative Order, to the birthing Bahá'u'lláh’s New World Order. Of this opportunity previous generations have been deprived, as Shoghi Effendi himself testifies:

“The second century is destined to witness a tremendous deployment and a notable consolidation of the forces working towards the world-wide development of that Order, as well as the first stirrings of that World Order, of which the present Administrative System is at once the precursor, the nucleus and pattern---an Order which, as it slowly crystallizes and radiates its benign influence over the entire planet, will proclaim at once the coming of age of the whole human race, as well as the maturity of the Faith itself, the progenitor of that Order.” (Shoghi Effendi, Messages to America 1932-46, pp. 96-7; letter 15-JUN-46, "God Given mandate")

It is now, in this second half of the second Bahá'í century, that the work of the Baha’is entails, as unveiled by Shoghi Effendi, the ushering in, on a global scale, of the first stirrings of Bahá'u'lláh’s new World Order. The last one hundred years saw the raising up of a wide-ranging network of basic administrative and spiritual instruments of community building. The task that faces Baha’is today is the building a wide-ranging network of comprehensive units of civilisation that, patterned on sublime heroism and working to a common purpose, promote the welfare of those within and outside their borders, achieving unity in a collective pursuit of spiritualisation and social progress. This, it seems to my obfuscated eyes, is the essence of growth, and the distinctive nature of our task.

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Problems with the Ruhi Model

This post is the result of honest exchanges on the challenges, the tensions, the heartaches that many of us have found in the process of integrating the Ruhi study circles into our communities and our lives.

Among the questions addressed in this post are: pro-Ruhi vs. anti-Ruhi; how do we judge if is it a good or a bad methodology? Painful Ruhi experiences, successful Ruhi experiences, rigid attitudes and disenfranchisement of fellow Bahá'ís, discarding firesides and deepenings for Ruhi, dealing with narrow community responses, participation and abstention, fostering change. And throughout reflections on the Ruhi model, on tutoring, and on Books 2 and 6 of the Ruhi sequence.

The following, then, is one attempt at understanding the place and implementation of the Ruhi model in the processes of community growth and cultural change, and addressing some of the very real and painful tensions that arise along the way.





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Perhaps the greatest challenge faced by the world Bahá'í community today is the imperative to a change of culture whose magnitude we are still, it seems, very far from begining to conceive. The timescale contemplated for this change stretches from 1996 to the year 2021, the end of the first century of the Formative Age of the Faith.

I don't think the vast majority of us, myself included, have grasped the degree of change that such a timescale implies. Rather, we seem to approach, with great frustration, the changes being introduced into our community processes as a rather full-scale make-over, which nevertheless remains purely cosmetic. We are yet far from recognising 1996 (the moment when this process of conscious culture-change was propelled by the Universal House of Justice), as "a turning point of epochal magnitude." (Universal House of Justice, Ridvan 153, 1996)

As this process has gathered momentum, it has become increasingly, virtually universally, linked to the Ruhi Institute, bringing in its wake, the world over, both great successes and formidable cultural tensions. In the midst of the undoubted trials accompanying the profound tranformation we are undergoing (and it is a profound transformation, which, as these exchanges aver, is painful all over, however pregnant with promise), I find solace, direction and power in the moving and instructive words of the Universal House of Justice.

"Let no excessive self-criticism or any feelings of inadequacy, inability or inexperience hinder you or cause you to be afraid. Bury your fears in the assurances of Bahá'u'lláh. Has He not asserted that upon anyone who mentions His Name will descend the "hosts of Divine inspiration" and that on such a one will also descend the "Concourse on high, each bearing aloft a chalice of pure light"? Step forth, then, into the arena where all His loved ones are equally summoned, equally challenged and abundantly blessed. For to teach, Bahá'u'lláh Himself affirms, is to do the "most meritorious of all deeds". And at this extraordinary moment in the history of the planet, nothing whatever is of more critical importance than inviting people of every sort and every gift to the banquet table of the Lord of Hosts." (Ridvan 152, 1995, p. 3)

What I frequently feel in discussions of the Ruhi process is the presence, explicit or implicit, of "excessive self-criticism" and/or "feelings of inadequacy, inability or inexperience", which generate frustration, can provoke disunity, and, in the end, "hinder" us, and cause us "to be afraid", for the future of the Cause, the viability of its processes, or our own space and sense of belonging within its community. And really, it is only through that spirituality that breaks through us when "the heart giveth way, and willing or not, turneth humbly in prayer unto the Kingdom of the Lord", that the promises and assurances of Bahá'u'lláh achieve the inner plausibility and eventual certitude to act as a genuinely compelling counterweight to the ubiquitous material evidences of our inescapable "inadequacy, inability and inexperience", before what, with the eye of faith, is a Plan which is firmly in the mighty grasp of God, under the stewardship of His Universal House of Justice.

I have seen and shared in dismal, disempowering study circles. As I reflect upon them, my negative experiences of Ruhi have teded to take place at early stages of its implantation in a new cultural context, be that a national community or a cluster or locality. I remember it from the very beginning of the process in Scotland and encountered it again much later at a similar stage on the local level in different places, and again when I moved to Tenerife. There are two tendencies which I see in the early stages of the application of Ruhi, and which I have personally observed in some 5 communities in different countries, and heard echoed in other places too. One is to take a minimalist approach to Ruhi, which basically, as the experiences so reccurrently shared in this dialogue also painfully illustrate, may mean that only those who have done the relevant book are to do the core activities. Alternatively it may mean that only the core activities are to be done, and the anecdotes shared about Auxiliary Board members declaring that deepenings were a thing of the past, or the local discouraging of firesides, or the dismissing of Association of Bahá'í Studies meetings because they lacked a skills component, etc. This flies in the face of all the guidance which on the contrary urges us to be entreprneurial as individuals, to experiment, to initiate, wherever we might be or not in the sequence. The other extreme, which I have seen in the early stages too, is the maximalist extreme, where the instruments, instead of mastered, are altogether recast into alien if more familiar configurations. Here Ruhi becomes a poor deepening. A third hamstringing of the Ruhi model is, in my experience, to divorse it from the simultanoues and equally crucial elements of the new paradigm of growth, namely, the concept of the cluster and its stages of capacity building, and the concept of core activities. Isolated from these complementary elements, the effectiveness of Ruhi in consolidating and propelling community development becomes mutilated and hence distorted.


On the other hand, I have also found consistently, in my own personal experience, the Ruhi model's power to transform, to motivate, to unite and inspire, both new and old believers, from all social classes and levels of education and understanding, at the same time. In a recent Book 1 that finished last december, I had the precious gift of tutoring a circle which began with 10 non-bahá'ís and 3 Bahá'ís. The beginning was wonderfully fun and challenging, with an age range of 16-82, all women bar me. By the third or fourth session there were only 5 of us who could make it regularly, me the only Bahá'í, with occasional "parachutists" who dropped in and spiced the circle. They all became Bahá'ís. One more who had to leave the circle, became a believer the week after, and finished the book in her own town with different tutors. The transformations were palpable. One man, disabled and obese, with low self esteem and a serious problem with his temper, transformed so dramatically within the first few weeks, actually within the first few days of initiating the excercise of reading the writings morn and eve, with the single prayer he had been given, that first he remarked upon it, then his mum phoned another participant, without any idea that her son was involved in anything, to say that he had tranformed beyond recognition for the better. The atmosphere itself was transforming, so that one old lady that two of the participants were employed to care for, and who did not really follow very much, softened and revived, to the point that her relatives and acquaintances asked her carers whether they had been putting new make-up on her because she looked so well. I could go on with the stories. They proved successful in raising human resources too. The four new believers had been attracted in the first place by the single new believer with whom we started the circle. Only last week, some three months after ending book 1 and one month into book 2, the same man I mentioned, who has no eloquence, no apparent "leadership" qualities, and very limited knowledge, brought another soul into the Cause. The neighbouring circle had similarly strong results, with three of the four participants becoming believers and the other one a closet Bahá'í. One of those new believers brought, almost concurrently, the week after her declaration, another soul into the Faith. Another of those believers initiated a regular devotional in her home. For unit convention, they could not make it, but all sent postal ballots. The believers in my circle had had no previous contact with the Faith. One was a mormon, another a Catholic, another a more synchretic seeker. From the other circle they all recently went to the World Centre on a 5 day visit, without much money, all of which they spent on the trip. You can understand that such an experience can be deeply moving, and it was so for me. The bonds I have made I will take to the next life with me.


Now, this is just one successful experience. As I say I have also had pretty poor ones. And anecdote by anecdote we can build either picture. What is going on? That the process of developing, implementing, refining, transplanting, implementing, refining, multiplying, refining again, and disseminating reformulated models of cummunity learning, is a developmental, laborious, time-consuming and non-linear process, that obeys the more general dynamics of Bahá'í community-building:

"The Faith advances, not at a uniform rate of growth, but in vast surges, precipitated by the alternation of crisis and victory."
(The Universal House of Justice, A Wider Horizon, Selected Letters 1983-1992, p. 53)

"The Faith of God does not advance at one uniform pace. Sometimes it is like the advance of the sea when the tide is rising. Meeting a sandbank the water seems to be held back, but, with a new wave, it surges forward, flooding past the barrier which checked it for a little while. If the friends will but persist in their efforts, the cumulative effect of years of work will suddenly appear."
(27 July 1980, written by the Universal House of Justice to a National Spiritual Assembly)
(The Universal House of Justice, 1993 Nov 09, Promoting Entry by Troops, p. 11)

We are, still, in the "cumulative years of work" stage. In this respect it is instructive to recall the stirring, and to many of us dangerously so, call from the Universal House of Justice for pioneers. Whereas in the past pioneer movements obeyed a spatial priority, where do we need more Bahá'ís to create or sustain fragile National Assemblies, the priority today is qualitative: where do we need more Bahá'ís to establish successful models of community that may be applied to communities in earlier phases of the community development process, understood in terms of cluster categories. When we have this critical mass of working models of community generally, and of the core activities specifically, it is logical to expect the focus to shift from model-building, to diversified application and adaptation of tried and tested models of success. I imagine and sense however that we are close to a qualitative leap, the "sudden effect", for the empirical base of good practice is very rapidly accumulating, built on multiple and formidable piles of average, mediocre and plain bad practice in our efforts to reach the heights, like the many dead ends, detours and scenic routes one takes to find the way to the centre of the labyrinth. Such meanderings are indispensable and inevitable parts of the process of finding the right track, however, once that track is found, and mapped from different starting points, the subsequent comings and goings are smoother and infinitely and more efficient. One can begin to focus on beautifying the paths, rather than simply discovering them.

This to me is precisely the point of getting the system fully in place and understood before judging and modifying it. Book 6, for instance, suggests that the process of launching a teaching campaign focused on a receptive population might and should take something approaching two years of preparation, consisting of a number of systematic, iterative pilot projects, evaluation and refinement. That kind of rigour or such timescales for a teaching campaign is not something we are used to. Likewise, I think the timescales involved in establishing, implementing, and understanding the three new concepts of core activities, sequential training, and capacity-building segmented clusters, are much longer than most people work with to arrive at judgements of their efficacy or adaptability. I am sure, and several letters allude to this, that after a good few years more, during which uniformity of format allows for validity of comparisons, there will be a phase of regional modification and adaptation, but one based on a worldwide, large-scale empirical process of action research, over several years, going on even as we speak and stewarded by the ITC, with a solid statistical and qualitative base in each country of the world. Only then will we be in a position to know what is essential and what is non-essential to the working models we have only begun to put in place.

The simple process of selecting those concepts, (core activities, sequential training, and capacity building segmented clusters) to build the present working model, took close to a decade of cross-cultural comparison, pilot projects and experimentation, as I discussed in my paper, not to mention the decades that went into building the alternative models from which the selection was made. Anyone with professional experience of community development will recognise the timescales and incredible resistance involved in incorporating participatory structures into communities, and the even longer timescales involved in making them work, as well as the conflict they almost inevitably engender as they disrupt existing structures and replace, not do away (in this I agree with the sceptics) existing hierarchies. What changes, in my view, is not the existence of hierarchy, but the more widely accessible processes underlying them, and the more transparent criteria and processes for establishing them. Again, anyone with solid grassroots experience in participatory democracy, will know how in the process of change a good number of immature power-games operate, on all sides, which become increasingly marginal, if the strategy is truly participatory and process focused, as the new structures gather momentum, familiarity and efficiency, that is, as they become integrated into the commonality of a new community culture.

I agree entirely that to see Ruhi-propelled firesides, devotionals, etc., as the invention of the wheel is both inaccurate and inhibiting. As I suggested in earlier messages, the distinctive element of this Epoch is that Bahá'í activities are integrated in a subtle and complex yet overarching context that involves Ruhi, not as a stand-alone activity, but as part of a system and model of community building and community development that also includes clusters categorized in accordance to community capacity and core activities tried and tested and eventually arrived at as the key generators of Bahá'í community. I this respect it is interesting to note that the quest for these key elements, for the most important activities to focus on to build and develop communities, began systematically in the first 9 Year Plan, and only after immense experimentation and further systematic pilot projects it was found that these three, now four core activities, are the support of the proverbial lever.

In other words, what makes the new paradigm of Bahá'í community distinctive is not the concrete activities. As Century of Light explains, by the 1980's there was not an activity or approach that had not been tried. Rather it is their integration into a coherent, globally applied systemic model that enables systematic community learning to take place, and, out of the immense range of Bahá'í activity, identifies, not on the basis of theory or personal preference, but on the basis of exhaustive trial and error across decades and countries and ethnicities, those "core" elements that have the capacity, within a sufficiently large yet coherent geographical area with a basic institutional and community capacity (several functioning LSA's , a good number of capable believers who understand and support the new systemic processes of growth), to achieve a multiplication and enrichment of
Bahá'í community activity, and a context that facilitates growth. This coherent and shared model makes possible the meaningful comparison of data and achievements, which in turn enables refinement to the model. Thus the core activities began as three, but as the model was applied in a variety of contexts, it became apparent that the education of junior youth played a no less important, foundational role in the gestation of community as the previous three activities. We now have 4 core activities. Again, the devotional meetings and study circles were originally built into the model as Bahá'í only activities. The accumulation of comparable experiences within a coherent model allowed for a further refinement that first encouraged further experimentation in opening these activities to the wider community, and then made such involvement of the acommunity of interest in these core activities absolutely pivotal to the global model we are applying, going as far as designating them portals for entry by troops. This change was reflected in the new statistics of non-Bahá'í participation that began to be gathered. In the Canaries, devotionals that don't include non-Bahá'ís are no longer quantified, for the statistical needs of the model have moved on.

The point I'm making is that by linking our individual initiatives to the new mechanisms of this epoch, the core activities, the Ruhi focused institute process, the cluster and its area committees, the community of interest, the capacity building movement through cluster categories, what we are doing is not merely, or I would argue primarily, contributing in a frequently haphazard way to our local community. Rather, we are participating in a systematic process of cummunity learning on a global scale that, for community development professionals, is an incredible, awe-inspiring achievement. We do so, not only by our own reflection on how to make the new tools work for us, but specially by furnishing a unqiquely individual, precious atom of experience that, when systematically viewed alongside thousands of similar contributions, will reveal, under the inspired guidance of the Universal House of Justice the parts of our experience that are genuinely in tune with the potentialities of our moment, those which are redundant, and those that are obstructive. This is a feedback loop that makes the community, as opposed to individual, insights incomparably keener, more widely accesible to more diverse participants, and better skilled at growth, change and maturation.

In this light, it is important to recognize that Ruhi itself is very far from static, and that the empirical evidence that has been and is being gathered through its application in diverse cultural contexts has already dramatically changed its contents from its original Colombian incarnations. To cite but one example, in Colombia the arts played no significant part in the Ruhi methodology. In book 7 it is critical. Again, in Colombian Book 7 itself did not exist, and the sequence was not always the same. Originally Book 1 began with Life After Death. So, as with every other tool (examples could be added of change in our modelling of clusters, and I am certain the same will happen before long with junior youth, as the three core materials become tested and tried in enough environments for enough time).

With this in mind I, for one, consider myself very far from being in a position at such an early stage in the game and with such geographically limited experience, to really get what Ruhi is about. Each time I study it some more, and particularly each time I creatively and receptively apply it once more, as well as each time I see it applied in a new cultural or social or even individual context, I realize that there is more to it than I previously thought. What I feel though is enough confidence to recognise when its failures are due to parrochial and inevitably ephemeral applications of the process, and when they appear to stem from structural aspects in the methodology itself. The biggest barrier to the successful implementation of Ruhi, not as either an exclusive endoeavour, or as a panacea for all challenges and problems, but merely as a crucial tool in propelling and integrating the learning-in-action of our community on a global scale, is the often alien and particularistic conceptual models we use to approach it and define it even before studying or experimenting open-mindedly with it in a spirit of learning to use a new instrument.

An example of such particularistic "either/or" models, which the Ruhi books set out, in fact, explicitly to challenge, is sadly furnished by the examples, which I have also seen in many, many places, with similarly discouraging impacts on so many Bahá'ís who feel disenfranchised when the either/or becomes naturally embodied in us/them relationships (both by advocates and detractors of Ruhi), is the perception that firesides and deepenings are somehow, if not a thing of the past, then at least in competition with Ruhi study circles and at a lower order of priority. Faithful application of the books' methodology, however, shows this to be a serious distortion of the model. The House of Justice letters on this subject are almost repetitive. Not only is Ruhi not a replacement for firesides but on the contrary firesides are enjoined as an essential part of the current pattern of community activity, for many years now, and measured in the statistics as measures of community capacity, vitality and progress. Deepenings, likewise, far from being marginal to the process, are the main service activity together with home visits of book 2, and there are many letters suggesting their indispensability and complementarity. Again, many letters emphasize the inadvisability of replacing other activities with Ruhi, rather Ruhi is seen as an engine to stimulate a multiplication of precisely such activities. That in early stages the result is the opposite is to be expacted, as the priority becomes having a core of trained resources. That happened here in Tenerife, as it happened in Nottingham, the two areas of which i have some close experience of the process. Then, as the priority for completing the sequence became less when a sufficient number of tutors became available, the focus precisely shifted onto the complementary activities indispensable to the success of Ruhi. Thus, the Ruhi sequence hardly covers the administrative order, and we have found that as new enrolments take place through Ruhi, devotionals and firesides, the need to deepen on this theme was pressing and obvious.

ut even within this framework, the minimalist approach, can be excessive, so that deepenings that are not vernatim recitations of Ana's talks, or firesides that likewise depart from the given texts in Books 2 and 6, are somehow seen as deviations, or at most approximations with regard to the ideal deepening and fireside. When one reads them closely, one discovers that the deepening, home visit and fireside contents are not prescriptive but indicative. Book 2, for instance, specifically suggests that the talks provided are starting points. The participants, including the tutor, have enormous room for creativity when applying the basic concepts and skills cultivated in book two to thei specific local and individual contexts, another thing that is explicitly encouraged in Books 2 and 7. The same applies with Book 6. The teaching campaign is offered, like Ana's talks in Book 2, as a template, but the group is encouraged to arrive at its own daily programme and campaign through consultation on its specific needs. The public talks suggested as part of an intensive campaign have titles that bear at times no resemblance to the templates given earlier. It is here that is suggested that the process of identifying a receptive population, getting to truly know and understand its needs, developing appropriate materials and approaches, and finally designing, on this basis, a comprehensive campaign, is likely to take some 2 years. Hardly a reified prescription or a rigid formula to be followed...

All this is very well in theory, but what to do when face to face with narrow attitudes (on either side of the proverbial fence), with inadequate implementations of the process, or with categorical judgements of its merits wholly on the basis of personal preference, local experience, or anecdote? What to do when a community, local, regional or national appears to be either apathetic about the nationally adopted Ruhi model, or else excessively, discouragingly and polarizingly rigid in its application? After all, what prompted this discussion are the real life experiences of pain before inadequate applications of the model, regardless of the merits that it may possess in theory, or that it may possess in paractice in more receptive or more experienced environments.

In the last analysis, what is described in such negative, and very, very far from universal experiences, is to me simply more evidence of the conceptual distance yet to be traversed by one community to understand better what the Universal House of Justice, and for those who care to read attentively, the Ruhi model itself, advances.Here, as in everything in the Bahá'í community, the nobility of our endeavours lies in our persistent arising before an ever more palpable consciousness that we are but mere approximations of what we most cherish and seek and are bidden be. We can retard things, but not stop them, The Word trumps all things, soon or late, every time, for love, in the end, rules in our hearts. If the House of Justice says, deepen, have firesides, do home visits, do external affairs, scholarship, SED, as well as the "core" activities, then, some communities quicker than others, we will respond, because the power of the Covenant ultimately impels us. You can only ignore the guidance, with good intentions, so many times before you "get it", then it's there for keeps. Now, the responsibility we bear in understanding and responding to it with promptitude is undoubted, and our progress, our "spiritual velocity" and community development are dependent on that. Thus there have always been diverse levels of achievement and vitality in different communities, as some engage fully with the guidance earlier or more wholeheartedly than others. Nor is this static. The British Bahá'í community was at the very vanguard of the world Bahá'í community, precisely because of the promptitude and consecration of its response to Shoghi Effendi's guidance. A recent message from the Universal House of Justice suggests that this community lost vitality over many long years, and has only just reclaimed its destiny, through a leap in response to the guidance of the Supreme Body. I found it interesting that, in highlighting the most distinguished achievements in community building, Century of Light dwelt exclusively on communities in the global South, even war-torn communities such as those in Liberia, with none of the more established communities with clear destinies, such as the United States or Britain, being singled out for praise, save in the area of external affairs. And while the institutions have an essential, a critical role in leading the community's engagement to the guidance of the Supreme Institution, there can be no doubt that the power of response is fundamentally vested in us as individuals, and it is when a sufficient numbers of individuals respond fully and intelligently, within and outwith institutions, that a community achieves the potentialities that invest it with destiny and vitality.

I am sure that is the case with Ruhi as well, with some communities having a more rounded and engaged perspective than others. I also think this is why there is such a focus on priority A clusters, because we need a good number of functioning models of the potential of the new processes, not only for expansion but also for consolidation, for a community that is rich and varied and rounded and abundant, in diverse contexts, to be able to disseminate that learning and change, gradually, entrenched or short sighted attitudes and cultures in less discerning or responsive contexts. To return to the example of the British Bahá'í community, it was the success of the American 7 Year Plan that prompted the UK Bahá'ís to request a plan of their own, being given a ridiculously ambitious 6 Year Plan by Shoghi Effendi. Far from responding on time, the British community lagged dramatically in it arising, so that the Guardian was forced to offer to postpone the deadline a few months, saying it is the most I can do. Hugh McKinley tells of Marion Hofman visiting every believer in the final year of the Plan to say: "Friends, you know why we are not accomplishing more? Because we don't understand the station of Shoghi Effendi. Not his function as Guardian, but his spiritual station as the Sign of God on earth, as the Will and Testament refers to him. If we did, we would not delay one instant." This message, as well as the Guardian's urgent pleas, in other words, the vitality of their love for the Centre of the Covenant, made them finally arise with such vigour and sacrifice as to win all goals in time and have the distinction of being the community which, in war-time and under the Blitz, sent forth more pioneers, some 60% of the community uprooting themselves entirely, if memory serves. Perhaps a more spiritual, more loving, more reverent and consecrated understanding, not only of the function, but of the station of the Universal House of Justice might accelerate and refine our level and quality of spiritual response, and in that leap increase not only our commitment, but our spirituality and success.

And in the meantime, here we are, still, with the same question: all that is very well, and the community may indeed advance gradually toward its destinty, and all things get better, but in the meantime, we are, many of us, still confronted with unpropitious community environments, feel left out, see better ways of doing things, would wish Ruhi study circles would be applied in different ways, and that frustration does not go away, and sometimes carries on growing.

Here I sense the importance and urgency of people who would not naturally gravitate toward Ruhi (I include myself), to get deeply involved in its processes, to go through the sequence, learn to make it work for them, increasingly, and then, from the spiritual leadership that success in close alignement to the guidance and thrust of the Plans naturally engenders (I'm not talking institutional leadership, but the simple power of attraction), we are in a position to bring our individuality to bear on the collective processes, and ensure, through our diversity, that the notes we hear that pass others by become part of the music, and that the notes we cannot yet make sense of and others seem to hear so clearly gradually resonate within our consciousness. This is not a narcisistic endeavour, but rather one the Universal House of Justice explicitly furthers:

"The advancement of the Cause is an evolutionary process which takes place through trial and error, through reflection on experience and through wholehearted commitment to the teaching Plans and strategies devised by the House of Justice. Believers ...who appreciate the opportunities thus provided, can be of great assistance by encouraging their respective countries and assemblies to similarly invest themselves in the process." (22 August 2002, to an individual)


In fact, not only as a tutor, but even as a participant in the Ruhi process one can stimulate such rounded applications of the process, simply by carrying out the practices involved in a way that personally makes sense. Anyone who gets to book 2 has an ample field indeed, as part of the course, even as a participant, to initiate a wide-ranging series of deepenings. That is an essential, critical part of Book 2's requirements. One of the key skills it seeks to develop. I have found that in my participation, even when the tutor is not switched on to the practice elements of the books, which are increasingly being emphasised at all levels now that the hurry simply to complete the sequence is over and the focus is on completing it well, I can, simply by offering a personal initiative to fulfill the Book's requirements, not only make deepenings and home visits happen, but stimulate others to feel more confident about doing so too, and in any case imparting an impulse to this dimension of the process.

Now, if one does not participate in these books, if one does not bring one's power of individual initiative and spiritual leadership based on attraction and consultation, if one does not engage with the actual practices of the learning process that lift the method from a conceptual, spiritual excercise to a life-engaging, life-challenging, and life-transforming iteration of prayerful study, action, and reflection around a common and spiritually informed purpose, then, as Moojan points out, the speed at which we will finally apply effectively the Ruhi system, with its concommittant implication of a multiplication of deepenings, firesides, teaching projects, arts events, and social interactions, will be much slower. The Faith relies on our diversity to achieve maximum effectiveness. As long as all the people who are instinctively resistant to the initial applications, and conceptualisations, of the Ruhi process, fail to become engaged in enriching and transforming it to fully include their distinctive orientations, the process will be distorted by the undoubted insights, and undoubted blindspots, of that population of Bahá'ís that resonates immediately with its early, woefully inadequate application.

The Native American experiences and perspectives on the Ruhi process, shared earlier, are highly instructive in this regard, and echo my own experiences of seeing the sequence applied the sequence in a Spanish, evangelical gypsy context. If, when encountering applications of the Ruhi sequence that silence the voice and diversity of the Native American, or Gypsy, or any range of populations relatively marginal to the cultural bias of a given Bahá'í community's culture, (might one include the formally trained scholarly population?) the reaction was non-involvement, not to speak of passive resistance, the maturation of these new processes would be hamstrung and retarded. It is on the contrary by their full engagement with the core guidance that unites and makes equal all Bahá'ís, that a space is created, a very empowering space, to broaden and enrich the cultural content and practical expression of the shared model of the Ruhi process. And, again and again, we find that that process will engender resistance, but more consistently and lastingly, engenders success, such as that reported among the Native American believers and their community of interest, and in the growth engendering circles here in Tenerife, and in the successfully inclusive study circkes in Nottingham and in the groundbreaking study circles with evangelical ministers among the gypsies of Spain. It is that success that eventually leverages cultural change, for the drive to succeed in applying the divine guidance is ultimately a more powerful motivator for Bahá'ís than that of preserving the status quo, which we cannot but be, if it is our primary cultural referent, very strongly attached to.

When I hear the reports of the distorted implementation in these very early stages of the process, and personally witness them too, and then hear the voice of those who feel somehow disenfranchised by the current application of the new processes, I silently pray that those, the disenfranchised, become fully engaged in the processes, "even unto tutoring", for I know that on this depends, in very significant measure, the pace of our eventual arrival at the working model that Ruhi has been systematically tested and modified to be, over several decades in several continents, or, in our case, to become. When it is fully in place, when we can say that the overwhelming majority of Bahá'ís in a community are applying the Ruhi methodology in all its aspects, with the proliferation of devotional meetings, deepenings, home visits, personal teaching plans, firesides, small group teaching projects, artistic creativity and empowering of local artistic traditions, and intimate informal socializing, all focused on a multitude of small groups of increasingly spiritually intimate friends deeply engaged with and authentically enriching their family, work, neighbourhood and friendship networks, only then, will we have a basis to judge the effectiveness of the Ruhi system, and be in a position to identify, from a position of experiential as well as statistical and theoretical insight, the adaptations and modifications that might refine its workings in a given local or national context.

This may sound like pie in the sky, but it is in fact the daily, if far from prosaic experience of a multitude of study circles the world over, which as yet constitute but a tiny proportion of the whole. This whole, the entirety of the thousands upon thousands of study cricles running worldwide, may be said to be distributed, in different concentrations en each national and local community, along a spectrum ranging from simple learning by rote, skipping "boring" or "simplistic" sections, else turning them into interminable discussions of personal opinions, without a practical or even an emotionally or intellectually engaging component, and an artistic element, if any, at most stretching to doing kids' drawings ;-), where membership is limited, sometimes by design, to Bahá'ís only, and only the right kind at that, (I'm sure I'm not the only one who's been part of such scary circles); all the way to empowering, dymanic and intellectually and spiritually exhilarating study circle experiences such as those described by in Native American communities, and such as I witnessed among the ministers and leaders of the Gyspy evangelical churches, and in my own little group, and such as doubtlessly many, many more people have experienced, dotted around the globe and building slowly a critical mass of good practice. When this is in place, when we have finally enough truly compelling, and sufficiently diverse "successful embodiments" of the Ruhi process the world over, its maturation beyond the simplistic polarities of an early conceptual framework with a budding and in many communities virutally non-existent and undiversified experiential base, will, I am certain, dramatically accelerate, as we stop having to reinvent the wheel, which we still largely have to do in most local contexts.

In this, as in all things in this Cause, in the absence of a clergy, depending entirely on the ultimately unfettered consent and participation of the individual, else his or her non-involvement, change takes place, engagement is effected, participation is leveraged, reflection and reconsideration are prompted by, primarily, the mighty power of example. Hence the priority now is, clearly, achieving the necessary number working models, of compelling examples, of a rounded, abundant application of the Ruhi process and the other key processes associated with this Epoch, that can be relevant, not universally but singly, to large rural communities, large urban ones, tiny urban ones, tiny rural ones, mainstream, alternative, ethnically mixed or homogenous, upper, middle, working class, and "lumpen", global North and global south.

As time goes by, and I understand better the Ruhi method, and get more experience under my belt, and put more fire into it in my own process of maturation, I find that my wonder increases, and my sense of its immense potential deepens. It also emphasises for me the developmental nature of the skilling and capacity building process. In our cluster Ruhi almost paralysed everything for some two or three years. Now it is beginning to act as a catalyst of further activity, but that is also linked to the equally developmental and still unwieldy tools of the cluster itself, of the area committee, and especially the budding intensive cycles, all of them new tools we are but learning to develop. It took the World Centre itself, as I discussed in my paper on community, some 5 years to develop a working model with hand-picked communities. We are but 6 years into a process of integrating counter-cultural methods into frequently ill-equipped communities without the benefits of direct and daily support, participation and guidance from the Counsellors . To judge the effectiveness of these tools at this point in time seems to me a bit like trying to measure the worth or beauty of a building when the foundations are still being laid, or the speed and maneuverability and flair of a car while driven by someone who only just got their license, and frequently by those like me who are still learning to drive.

Be that as it may, it seems to me that the reply of Candide to the theoretical meanderings of Pangloss after a long journey of personal experiential testing of reified mental models, is most apt: "all that is very well, but let us cultivate our garden." Let's create, each one of us, models that work, that we can share and contribute from our individuality and diversity, within the shared context of the processes of this Plan, which will give the fruits we pluck from our individual plot, a currency and impact that will undoubtedly go far beyond our little garden. It may be that some of the communities that don't get it, might do so yet, and that when they do the potential for making up for lost time might very much be there.

It makes me think of one of the most suggestive and touching passages of the Master:

"The blessings of Bahá'u'lláh are a shoreless sea, and even life everlasting is only a dewdrop therefrom. The waves of that sea are continually lapping against the hearts of the friends, and from those waves there come intimations of the spirit and ardent pulsings of the soul, until the heart giveth way, and willing or not, turneth humbly in prayer unto the Kingdom of the Lord."
(Abdu'l-Baha, Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Baha, p. 192)

That is how I see the processes of the change of culture, of the new mechanisms and the inherent, hidden blessings in the Universal House of Justice's guidance in this challenging new Epoch: as lappings of divine grace against the hearts of the myriad variegated communities that make up the people of Bahá. Eventually, each and all will give way, and, "willing or not", discover the bounty of knowing that He is the prayer-hearing, prayer-answering God. In the end, as that tablet further declares: "Ye live, all of you, within the heart of 'Abdu'l-Bahá."

Is that not beautiful and brimming with certainty?

With love,

Ismael

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