On September 10, 2011, a group of us from Pasadena went to this workshop. This particular writer felt as if she had a brief glimpse into mankind’s collective future. I saw glimpses into our future, spiritual depth; laughter, vibrancy seen and unseen, palpable knowledge, wisdom, unity and a spirit of joy encompassed us. It was a happening. It was a day my soul witnessed power, majesty, and authenticity.
Dr. Joy De Gruy Leary and Oscar DeGruy facilitated. What a paltry word for their rainbow of words, their dimensions of being which reflected spiritual warriors. Dr. Joy DeGruy is well received throughout our nation for her work on Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, and Oscar DeGruy well known for his initiating Youth Workshops in dance, reflecting themes of unity, prejudice, diversity through dance.
The Bahá’í Writings compare people of African descent “to the black pupil of the eye surrounded by the white. In this black pupil…you see the reflection of that which is before it, and through it the light of the Spirit shines forth.” The administrative body for the Baha’is of Los Angles shared this concept in a letter addressed to the gathering:
The pupil of the eye appears black to us because most of the light that enters the pupil is absorbed by what’s inside the eye. Bahá’u’lláh’s reference is so compelling because light and vision are metaphors for understanding as in “I see,” “I see what you mean,” or “I get the picture.” Then when we consider that the “pupil” has another meaning – a student or one who learns – we appreciate Bahá’u’lláh’s words about the people of African descent in a new way.
Those who have been made to suffer for their ethnic distinctions may also become ennobled by the experience. With this understanding, we might all better appreciate the following words of the Master* writing about the difficulties one encounter sin life: “O thou who hast been sore afflicted on the pathway of the Covenant! Anguish and torment, when suffered on the pathway of the Lord, Him of manifest signs, is only favour and grace; affliction is but mercy and grief a gift from God.”
-*Abdu’l-Báha, son of Bahá’u’lláh
Some themes addressed at the Pupil of the Eye gathering are below. Also for those unfamiliar with the names of figures: ‘Abdu’l-Bahá means “Servant of God” and He was appointed by Bahá’u’lláh as one for the Baha’is to look for after Bahá’u’lláh’s passing. Shoghi Effendi, was ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s grandson, and when Abdu’l Baha died, His Will and Testament conferred upon Shoghi Effendi the station of Guardianship. I hope this helps.
THE NEED FOR HEALING. . .
Let the white make a supreme effort in their resolve to contribute their share to the solution of this problem, to abandon once for all their usually inherent and at times subconscious sense of superiority, to correct their tendency towards revealing a patronizing attitude towards the members of the other race, to persuade them through their intimate, spontaneous and informal association with them of the genuineness of their friendship and the sincerity of their intentions, and to master their impatience of any lack of responsiveness on the part of a people who have received, for so long a period, such grievous and slow-healing wounds.
-Shoghi Effendi, Advent of Divine Justice, p. 40
THE ROLE OF BAHA’I’S IN SOCIAL JUSTICE
“Movements for social progress and social justice, as long as they are disassociated from both political and religious partisanship, should be supported by those Bahá’ís who feel urged to undertake such work. Consequently there is no reason why you should not work for the betterment of your race through channels that in no way conflict with our Bahá’í attitude.”
-(From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual believer, November 23, 1941) (Compilations, Lights of Guidance, p. 532)
. . . Yet, it is clear, too, from the Teachings that every people, through its inherent potentialities and particular range of experience, will make its own distinct contribution to the creation of a new civilization. To the extent that African-Americans who embrace the new Revelation arise to do their part by adhering to the Teachings will the gifts which are uniquely theirs be realized in the splendors of the Golden Age. The “pupil of the eye”, Bahá’u’lláh’s metaphoric reference to Black people, will no doubt acquire clear meaning as they conscientiously strive over time to fulfill the divine purpose for which the Blessed Beauty came. There can be no doubt that Americans of African descent can find in themselves the capacity, so well developed as a result of their long encounter with injustice, to recognize and respond to the vision of love and justice brought by the Promised One of all ages. Imbued with that vision, past and present sufferings are transformed into measures of patience, wisdom and compassion—qualities so essential to the effort to moderate the discordant ways of a confused world and aid the healing of its spiritual ills. What better than the transformed character of a bruised people to smooth the course, to offer perspectives for new beginnings toward world order!
As to the need for scholarly works that will interpret the meaning of the issues created by the cruelties of slavery, it is not an empty hope that souls illumined by the Teachings of Bahá’u’lláh and equipped with trained minds will arise to author the kinds of treatises and books you rightly feel will promote understanding
-The Universal House of Justice, Letter Dated 3 June 2007
“Race is a concept of society that insists there is a genetic significance behind human variations in skin color that transcends outward appearance. However, race has no scientific merit outside of sociological classifications. There are no significant genetic variations within the human species to justify the division of “races.”
-The Biology of Race, James King (Contemporary Science)
Who Are We?
Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits, your habits become your values, your values become your destiny.
-Gandhi
“The principle of collective trusteeship creates also the right of every person to expect that those cultural conditions essential to his or her identity enjoy the protection of national and international law. Much like the role played by the gene pool in the biological life of humankind and its environment, the immense wealth of cultural diversity achieved over thousands of years is vital to the social and economic development of a human race experiencing its collective coming-of-age. It represents a heritage that must be permitted to bear its fruit in a global civilization. On the one hand, cultural expressions need to be protected from suffocation by the materialistic influences currently holding sway. On the other, cultures must be enabled to interact with one another in ever-changing patterns of civilization, free of manipulation for partisan political ends.”
-THE PROSPERITY OF HUMANKIND, a publication of the Bahá’í International Community 1995
THE IMPORTANCE OF CULTURE IN SAFEGUARDING THE SELF
Let me begin with the common empirical observations that people feel incomparably more alarmed by a threat to the psyche or the soul or the self than they are by a threat to the body. The death of the self is of far greater concern than the death of the body. People will willingly sacrifice their bodies if they perceive it as the only way to avoid “losing their souls,” “losing their minds,” or “losing face.” In addition, a person only develops a stable, integrated, and differentiated sense of selfhood or identity through the process of interacting with other humans in the community, or culture. The psyche is as dependent upon being nurtured by those modes of relationships and community, of childrearing and education, which we call culture, as the body is being nourished by food. One consequence of that fact is that a perceived threat to the integrity and survival of a person’s culture is perceived as a threat to the integrity and survival of the individuals personality or character, and to the viability of one’s ethical value system . . .Those are among the reasons why the death of one’s culture is tantamount to the death of one’s self. . .The loss of self-esteem is experienced subjectively as the death of the self. People will sacrifice anything to prevent the death and disintegration of their individual or group identity.
-James Gilligan, MD. (1997)
No less serious is the stress and strain imposed on the fabric of American society through the fundamental and persistent neglect, by the governed and governors alike, of the supreme, the inescapable and urgent duty — so repeatedly and graphically represented and stressed by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in His arraignment of the basic weaknesses in the social fabric of the nation — of remedying, while there is yet time, through a revolutionary change in the concept and attitude of the average white American toward his Negro fellow citizen, a situation which, if allowed to drift, will, in the words of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, cause the streets of American cities to run with blood, aggravating thereby the havoc which the fearful weapons of destruction, raining from the air, and amassed by a ruthless, a vigilant, a powerful and inveterate enemy, will wreak upon those same cities.
The American nation, of which the community of the Most Great Name forms as yet a negligible and infinitesimal part, stands, indeed, from whichever angle one observes its immediate fortunes, in grave peril. The woes and tribulations which threaten it are partly avoidable, but mostly inevitable and God-sent, for by reason of them a government and people clinging tenaciously to the obsolescent doctrine of absolute sovereignty and upholding a political system, manifestly at variance with the needs of a world already contracted into a neighborhood and crying out for unity, will find itself purged of its anachronistic conceptions, and prepared to play a preponderating role, as foretold by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in the hoisting of the standard of the Lesser Peace, in the unification of mankind, and in the establishment of a world federal government on this planet. These same fiery tribulations will not only firmly weld the American nation to its sister nations in both hemispheres, but will through their cleansing effect, purge it thoroughly of the accumulated dross which ingrained racial prejudice, rampant materialism, widespread ungodliness and moral laxity have combined, in the course of successive generations, to produce, and which have prevented her thus far from assuming the role of world spiritual leadership forecast by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s unerring pen — a role which she is bound to fulfill through travail and sorrow.
-SHOGHI EFFENDI in Citadel of Faith, p. 126
`Abdu’l-Bahá said: “…If the races do not come to an agreement, there can be no question or doubt of bloodshed. When I was in America, I told the white and colored people that it was incumbent upon them to be united or else there would be the shedding of blood. I did not say more than this that they might not be saddened. But, indeed, there is a greater danger than only the shedding of blood. It is the destruction of America. Because aside from the racial prejudice there is another agitating factor. It is that of America’s enemies. These enemies are agitating both sides, that is, they are stirring up the white race against the colored race and the colored race against the white race. But of this the Americans are submerged in the sea of ignorance. They will regret it. But of what use will their regret be after the destruction of America? Will it be of any use then? I told him of a letter which I had received from Chicago during the week, stating that two houses belonging to colored Bahá’ís had been bombed with dynamite. `Abdu’l-Bahá said: “I foretell things before they happen and I write about them before they occur. The destruction of two or three houses is of no importance, but the importance lies in what is coming, which is the destruction of America. The Arabs have many proverbs. For instance, `Heavy rains begin with drops before it pours,’ and `The dancer starts with shaking the shoulder, then the whole body.’ Now is the time for the Americans to take up this matter and unite both the white and the colored races. Otherwise, hasten ye towards destruction! Hasten ye toward devastation!”
Esther Bradley-DeTally
September 19, 2011
erity will recognize as standing at the confluence of two universal prophetic cycles, the Adamic Cycle stretching back as far as the first dawnings of the world’s recorded religious history and the Bahá’í Cycle destined to propel itself across the unborn reaches of time for a period of no less than five thousand centuries. The apotheosis in which such a life attained its consummation marks, as already observed, the culmination of the most heroic phase of the Heroic Age of the Bahá’í Dispensation. It can, moreover, be regarded in no other light except as the most dramatic, the most tragic event transpiring within the entire range of the first Bahá’í century. Indeed it can be rightly acclaimed as unparalleled in the annals of the lives of all the Founders of the world’s existing religious systems.
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