Erica Toussaint and the unity of humankind

ALL of the plenary sessions at the Baha'i social and economic development conference 2007 were incredibly inspiring and uplifting. It was worth coming down to Florida even just for the first night's opening program to hear Erica Toussaint speak. She is a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States and an incredibly brilliant, down-to-earth, joyful individual.

She kicked off the conference by reminding us that the Baha'i Faith is one huge social and economic development project and that we were all already actively engaged in this project through the work in community building and the fostering of unity that every Baha'i naturally engages in. She spoke of education as being foundational to everything that the Baha'is do and that it is through education that we seek to achieve our mission which is the spiritualization of human society and civilization.

She referred to this wonderful quotation of 'Abdu'l-Baha in connection with the importance of education:

"Material civilization, through the power of punitive and retaliatory laws, restraineth the people from criminal acts; and notwithstanding this, while laws to retaliate against and punish a man are continually proliferating, as ye can see, no laws exist to reward him. In all the cities of Europe and America, vast buildings have been erected to serve as jails for the criminals.

Divine civilization, however, so traineth every member of society that no one, with the exception of a negligible few, will undertake to commit a crime. There is thus a great difference between the prevention of crime through measures that are violent and retaliatory, and so training the people, and enlightening them, and spiritualizing them, that without any fear of punishment or vengeance to come, they will shun all criminal acts. They will, indeed, look upon the very commission of a crime as a great disgrace and in itself the harshest of punishments. They will become enamoured of human perfections, and will consecrate their lives to whatever will bring light to the world and will further those qualities which are acceptable at the Holy Threshold of God." (Abdu'l-Baha, Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Baha, p. 132)

Erica Toussaint also reminded us that while engaging in all manner of specific social and economic development projects is of course important and valuable, the "well-being of mankind, its peace and security are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established."

And so we should always keep in mind this greater goal for which we are working---the unity of humankind.

In light of this goal of the Baha'i World Community, let me display some proof of the success that the Baha'i World Community enjoys in bringing us all together-- the beautiful faces that I had the bounty of laying eyes upon at the conference.

I caught these three in animated conversation and asked if I could take a picture of them as they were so beautiful in their shared joy representing as they do the great nations of India, Cameroon, and China.

Another picture of Gustaff Besungu and his drum (you can just see it peeking out from behind him).

I met old friends from Macau --Farah and Farid Samandari. They introduced me to this wonderful Turkish woman who now lives in Germany and who I was not able to speak with as she is "only" able to speak Turkish, Farsi and German.

I wanted to take a picture of Navid's shirt. He is from Togo (of Iranian descent) and every day wore a different wonderful shirt.

He is currently a graduate student at MIT. This other friend in the picture lived in Tianjin, China for some years and we had nice conversation in Chinese together.

One of the very lovely faces in the bookstore.

Wife of the late Norwegian Baha'i sculptor Arild Juel Petterson and co-founder of Martha's Barn which is a "19th century barn that is in the process of being restored to be used as a facility devoted to promote education in the arts/sciences, encourage non-violent conflict resolution, and stand as restored historic site." What is unique about this barn tucked away in rural Pennsylvania is that it belonged to that great Baha'i heroine and world traveler Martha Root.

These two delighted everyone with their mutual love and affection.

"These children are neither Oriental nor Occidental, neither Asiatic nor American, neither European nor African, but they are of the Kingdom; their native home is heaven..." (Abdu'l-Baha, Tablets of Abdu'l-Baha v3, p. 647)