If I Had a Letter

Here are some new lyrics for a familiar song--Pete Seeger's " If I Had a Hammer"


If I had a letter
I'd read it in the morning
I'd read it in the evening
All over this land
I'd read about coherence
I'd read about community-building
I'd read about the love between
my brothers and my sister
All over this land....


If I had a method
I'd practice in the morning
I'd practice in the evening
All over this land
I'd build a vision
I'd avoid dichotomous thinking
I'd focus on process rather than events
All over this land....


If I had a plan
I'd build a new civilization
I'd nurture human potential
In my own locality
My mode of learning
Would be humble and open
I'd invite neighbors and friends
To the core activities
All over this land...

Well, I have a letter
And I have a method
And I have a Five Year Plan
For how to change the world
It's a letter from the House of Justice
It's a method called active learning
It's a Plan involving individuals
communities
institutions
All over this land!!!!!

Feast Communities

My previous post about Monkey Brains discussed the value in decentralizing Baha'i communities as they get too big, to allow for more growth. In the comments I got an earful from people bemoaning the loss of a larger community, "If you split up in groups before you have a cohesive fire started somewhere then those groups will fizzle out... Success isn't in division."

At the time of writing that, my city of Portland had 7 Feast areas, and had been alternating every other Feast from centralized to decentralized. Centralized attendance was in the 50-80 range, and decentralized attendance ranged from 4-20 people, depending on the area. The city has 150-170 active overall. The Baha'i center is an hour from certain parts of the city. After breaking up into 7 areas, overall attendance actually went up noticeably, especially in the outlying areas. So did Fund contributions, which usually follow attendance. A side effect of breaking up was that people became more intimate with Baha'is living close-by, and it gave a further boost to non-Feast related activities. It also became more friendly to new Baha'is, because they didn't feel lost in a crowd. In this case decentralizing was a catalyst for growth, in a city that hadn't seen noticeable growth for well over 10 years prior.

There is a challenge in decentralizing. If the areas are too small, as my friend commented, then the fire goes out. Out of the 7 areas two of them sometimes reached attendance of three people, depending on families being out of town. In some areas, if the Feast got up to 20 people, then it was difficult to host in most homes.

The Assembly just made a somewhat dramatic decision. From now on Portland will have three Feast areas, with no centralized Feasts. This effectively shapes the city into three distinct Baha'i communities, sharing a single LSA and a single cluster boundary, with a few central holy days. The interesting part is that while decentralizing, the areas got bigger, at least for awhile.

There are some serious advantages to this scenario. First of all, it avoids the large group problem of having so many people that personal connections get lost. Second, it creates communities of about 50 active believers, which happens to be the number much toted several years back as the magic number for growth (although since then the International Teaching Centre has discouraged relying on a formula for growth). Third, it also avoids the small group problem of not having enough people to keep the fire going with resources for a variety of activities.

There are also some serious disadvantages to this scenario. First of all, attendance will be in the 25-30 range initially, and will only grow, so most homes won't work for hosting. That puts us back into rented facilities, despite owning a Baha'i center (and spending a lot of $$$ for upkeep). Second, it adds to the travel problem that smaller neighborhoods fixed, so a trip from one extreme to the other still takes about 45 minutes. Third, in the downtown area where people mostly don't own cars, rides will have to be coordinated when the event is not close by.

The Assembly also will appoint two people from each area to coordinate Feast venues and hosts.

I'm very interested in feedback. What have other communities experimented with? What have you learned? What advice do you have?

Knock, Knock, It's the Assembly!

Many Local Spiritual Assembly members struggle to balance their work as part of an institution of the Faith with their personal and team teaching goals and the need to model participation in the goals of the wider community. Home visits are an ideal way to integrate the basic practices of the Ruhi Institute and the goals of the cluster into the work that must necessarily fall on the shoulders of the Assembly. Here are 10 ideas for incorporating home visits into the business of the LSA:

1. Visit with engaged couples to deepen them on Baha'i marriage and provide counseling and encouragement.
2. Visit community members to deepen on recent guidance from the Universal House of Justice and encourage the development of individual teaching plans.
3. Visit to welcome new members to the community and assess their needs and hopes (deepening, children's classes, avenues of service, etc.)
4. Veteran Assembly members visit the newly-elected in order to help them grow in their role, and those who formerly held a certain office (such as treasurer) visit new officers in order to ensure an effective transition.
5. Visit those who were unable to attend a Cluster Reflection or Feast to fill them in on the details and receive their input, sharing knowledge of the nature and importance of these gatherings as needed.
6. Visit the hospitalized and homebound to strengthen their sense of community, especially on Holy Days.
7. Visit with 14-year-old Baha'is in the community in order to have a discussion about the nature of the age of maturity and the ways in which the Assembly can assist them in their endeavors as youth.
8. Visit members of the Core Team to pray for the advancement of the Cause in the region, and to build stronger bonds of unity and fellowship between the institutions.
9. Visit community members who have relocated from elsewhere in order to help them find their place and path of service without their having to scramble for information about their neighborhood, cluster, or available resources.
10. Visit with friends who are struggling with a particular aspect of Baha'i law, especially when a specific visitor or visitors (one that is the same gender as the community member to be visited, or who has struggled with a similar issue, or who is a personal friend) might be more appropriate for a first conversation than the Assembly as a whole.

This is, of course, just a jumping-off point. Any other suggestions? How does your Assembly integrate home visits into its business? In what ways would you like it to?

Watching Libya Burn

The government of Libya in the past few days has accumulated massacres that are blatantly counter to any international standard of legitimacy. I feel the situation is already an avoidable stain on the pages of human history.

The resolution to the problem seems so simple. A dictator losing his mind is using extreme violence and outright lies to keep himself in power. He has given orders to bomb and machine-gun down unarmed civilians in mass. Today his troops rushed through the town of az-Zawiyah shooting dead any person they saw. At one point the troops broke into a hospital and began executing patients in their beds. There is no need to insinuate anything, he has openly admitted that he plans on killing as many people as possible if he is forced from power. He relies on blatant lies and bribes to keep his few supporters going, but those few have incredibly powerful weaponry. Clearly the international community should step in to prevent the massacres, put Qaddafi on trial for crimes against humanity, and restore order and justice.

The condemnation from outside of Libya has been strong, but it's been little more than sharing words, freezing assets, and starting an investigation. Some countries are simply more concerned about the flow of oil than the flow of blood. China is far more concerned with quelling any internal unrest than it is with preventing a massacre in Africa (Chinese reporting about Egypt and Libya have only focused on the scared Chinese nationals fleeing the chaos). As usual, China is trying not to set a precedent for the international community to step in and prevent governments from violently suppressing protests. This almost total avoidance of military intervention in any country by a permanent member of the UN Security Council has been a drag on the effectiveness of the UN, just as the United States' total reluctance to allow condemnation of Israeli transgressions has allowed injustice to continue in Palestine far too long.

Guidance Remix

I've been experimenting with Wordle as a new graphical way of looking at the language of the Universal House of Justice. I find it illuminating. Thoughts?

The 28 December, 2010 Message:

The Ridvan 2010 Message:

Young Heroes and Junior Youth Groups: Comparisons and Lessons Learned

From 2001-2002, I served as a corps member with City Year Cleveland. City Year is a year of service program for 17-24 year olds that draws inspiration from the nonprofit, corporate, government, and military models in order to engage young adults in an annual campaign of service. I was 18 years old when I joined, fresh out of high school, and the impact CY had on the way I work, serve, and lead has been immeasurable. One of my primary areas of service in City Year was the Young Heroes program, which eventually led me on the path to becoming a junior youth animator.

Young Heroes is a service-learning program for 6th-8th grade students, led by City Year corps members. At the time I was involved in the program, Young Heroes Cleveland engaged about 80 students in educational service activities all day, every other Saturday. Teams of ~10 students were each led by two corps members, who were in turn coordinated and organized by a small leadership team of other corps members.

What did I learn from Young Heroes?

Most of the cooperative games, unity-building activities, and icebreakers I know come from my experience with Young Heroes. My understanding of hoon a given saw to work with 11-14 year olds does too. I also learned a lot about documentation and organizational partnerships, which I think I ought to utilize more effectively as a junior youth group animator. But there are a number of ways in which the Young Heroes model is not conducive to what the Junior Youth Spiritual Empowerment Program hopes to accomplish. I've had to learn to keep these in mind in my work as an animator, in order to avoid unhelpful cross-pollinations.

The Problem of "Artificial States"

There is now quite a body of literature that points to the problem of so called "artificial states" which lack  "legitimacy", due to the fact that they were arbitrarily and haphazardly drawn up by European colonizers in the latter part of the 19th century (in Africa's case), with very little regard for preexisting human and political geography. Crawford Young, in his book "The African Colonial State in Historical Perspective" describes the impact that African colonialism had in a relatively short period of time in embedding either distorted or completely foreign political structures:

The colonial state in Africa lasted in most instances less than a century-a mere moment in historical time. Yet it totally reordered political space, societal hierarchies and cleavages, and modes of economic production. Its territorial grid-whose final contours congealed only in the dynamics of decolonization-determined the state units that gained sovereignty and came to form the present African polities. The logic of its persistence and reproduction was by the time of independence deeply embedded in its mechanism of internal guidance. 

Pierre Englebert, in his book "State Legitimacy and Development in Africa", explores the idea of "state legitimacy" in the context of Africa. His measure includes vertical legitimacy - the degree to which the state is responsive to the plurality of its citizens, and horizontal legitimacy - the degree to which the boundaries of the state relate to any coherent precolonial logic. He then correlates these measures to measures of good governance and development capacity. He begins his conclusion by saying:

"The historical endogeneity of the state, its congruence with underlying political institutions and norms of political authority-in a word, its legitimacy-is a crucial variable in understanding the choice of policies that rulers of developing countries adopt and the quality of the overall governance they provide. Both, in turn, are important factors contributing to economic development. Deficits of state legitimacy are therefore at the core of the development failure of many African states. 

Friends

I previously left a post titled Monkey Brains, where I showed that human brains want to be in social groups of 150, with a small group of about 12 friends.

Other research has shown that it only takes 6 good friends to be happy. Less than that and the individual's happiness drops off. Too many and the effect is diluted with an overall drop in happiness. Another study proposed 10 close friends as the magic number.

As strange as this might sound, I have too many friends. I think a lot of people struggle, especially moving to a new town, to find a small group of close friends, the kind where you can totally relax with and really connect emotionally. I had such an experience living in Wenatchee, WA for 3 months in 2008, and again in Madras, OR for 3 months in 2009. I experienced the sadness that comes from being alone in small towns that are largely emptied of 20-somethings. In both cases, the only real friends I made came from the Baha'i community, so I can also sympathize with countless studies indicating a marked increase in happiness of church goers. I also saw the depression (among some coworkers) that comes from losing the ability to make new friends later on in life. I think one of the worst end-of-life scenarios is to spent one's final years alone watching television.

Roots and Seeds

Most places I go, I am asked to speak on the Junior Youth Spiritual Empowerment program, due to my (relatively) extensive experience with it. I have been an animator since the spring of 2007. And I have never had a successful junior youth group.

This is not to say that I have not had success with the program. I have assisted in its implementation in at least five clusters. But I have never animated a group in the way it was intended, beginning with a group of 11-12 year olds and growing together through the program for three years.

Why? In my adult life, I have never lived in a single place for three years. 

Xtranormal Baha'is

Xtranormal is the latest greatest method for making your own videos. It's actually really easy, and there's an option for a browser based creation tool. All you have to do is choose a background, characters, and voices, then you type in the dialogue. The robotic voices are convenient to add some comedy to the scenes, and the movements are all easy to embed into the dialogue.

I made this as an exercise. The possibilities are endless.

Development Blogs

There are a lot of great blogs in international development. I think that Baha'is have a lot to offer to and learn from these discussions and we should be active in engaging (discussion/comments) if not potentially collaborating with the practitioners and academics involved.  As a resource for those interested, I thought it might be useful to provide a list of development blogs that I have enjoyed and followed (with the help of Google Reader), in no particular order. If you know of other good ones, please list them in the comments.
Chandan Sapkota
Chris Blattman
Dani Rodrick
Blood and Milk
David Roodman
Eric Green
From Poverty to Power
Owen Abroad
Africa Can...End Poverty
African Arguments
Aid on the Edge of Chaos
Aid Thoughts
Aid Watch
Barefoot Economics
Developing Jen
Development Horizons
Give a Damn about Poverty?
Greed, Green, and Grains
India Development Blog
Microfinance Blog
On My Way
Waylaid Dialectic
The White African
IPA's Blog
Beyond Profit
IFMR
Private Sector Development

First day

My wife and I just had the first meeting of a junior youth group. As with any group, it doesn't exactly fall into the ideal situation. There are 5 starting out, instead of 9 or 10. They are all boys, so no mix of gender. They are very unfocused and don't quite know what's going on.

On the other hand, this is the most ideal junior youth group I've started. For the first time I'm beginning with actual 11 year olds, as opposed to a mix of ages (my first group) or starting with mostly the same age but starting in either 7th grade (second group) or 8th grade (third group). That means for the first time, I could potentially study through all of the available curriculum with them, and it means I can start at an early age where they are still forming habits and attitudes.

As with any group, there are always little moments that make it all worth it. Out of the five, two of them are from Baha'i families, and one of those announced that he had read the section of the first book before coming, even though we didn't start the book on the first night. One of the boys not from a Baha'i family asked, "What if I don't want to come?" and I said, "Then you don't have to come?" The puzzled look on his face was part of his realizing that he's starting to make his own decisions, and if he attends then he'll have to own it.

After discussing the goals of the group and talking about expectations, we asked them to come up for a name for the group. The ideas ranged from, The No Name Group, The Awesome Group, The Group, The Couldn't-Think-of-a-Name Group, The Five Amigos, and much much more...

We did an activity of what I call "drawing telephone", a game where everyone writes a description of some crazy scenario on the top of a stack of stapled paper, then everyone passes the stack and has to draw a picture of the description, then the stacks continue getting passed around, alternating between drawing and describing. At the end everyone was rolling around laughing as their story was converted into some totally different scenario.

We concluded the night by everyone, including me, running around the house whacking each other with foam toys.

The Second Way

There is a way

to look at the crisis,

and not to cry. To see injustice,

famine, the virus of the blood, and yet stand

straight enough to speak

is difficult, but not impossible: forget your glasses.

Bring instead your weak

myopia, your astigmatic haze,

dulling the vistas of hopelessness until

there is only your nose and one pot of maize,

one school fee, one welcome song, one child

wailing in your arms. This way,

survive, and serve again.

There is only one way

to look at the crisis,

and not to cry.

But if you would cry, get up!

Walk out of that body, prostrated

and voiceless in its shame. Baptize

yourself in its tears and turn your back.

When you see the fires of impossible hope,

jump in! Blaze. Immolate fear in the coals

of your joy. This is the second way.

Then watch: these sparks,

they are heating a nation,

they are lighting the world.

On Human Resources

When I find myself wishing I could avoid a given core activity for a day, it's not the logistics I dread.  Planning, documenting, forging ahead--these things come naturally to me now.  It's the massive emotional investment in building genuine relationships that exhausts me, introvert that I am. 

The institute process has made me into a fine resource. 

I'm hoping it can make me into a better human, as well.

New guidance regarding homosexuality

The below letter was recently sent from the US National Spiritual Assembly to the American believers. It quotes from a letter to an individual on behalf of the Universal House of Justice, and directly clarifies what is perhaps the greatest social issue of my generation. It clearly encourages Baha'is to fight against discrimination and work for social justice, while leaving intact the clear moral guidelines around marriage. The prominent reference here is that with regards to homosexuals, "freedom from discrimination" can be actively supported, while "opportunity for civil marriage" would neither be promoted nor opposed.


This letter won't satisfy those looking for a reform of the underlying belief of homosexuality being an aberration. It does not present a technical case that would hold up in court, and it leaves the obvious conclusion that as the Baha'i Faith spreads, the social attitude towards sexuality will also spread with it. But to Baha'is caught in the line of fire between a polarized pro- and anti-gay society, this message seems to authoritatively address several recent issues. The Congressional bill that repealed the exclusion of homosexuals in the US military can be actively supported by Baha'is (in fact, I was going to blog about it as such but got busy), as can any effort to stem the harassment in public schools that leads to an unseemly high suicide rate among homosexual youth. Regarding the California Prop 8 debate raging in court, Baha'is can change the channel.

Taking Ownership: Questions for Reflection

What does it mean to take ownership of one's own spiritual education and community?

We bandy the phrase about a lot, but does taking ownership just mean participating in consultation, feeling a part of community, and being involved in the practices?

If I feel that a community or a process is my own, and if I truly value it, how do I show this?

Or another question, not unrelated:

What would it look like if every study circle participant, every devotional gathering participant, every animator, teacher, junior youth, and child involved in any of the core activities in a cluster, whether Baha'i or not, participated in intensive campaigns to extend these activities to others?

Why does our outward-looking orientation stop at the cluster reflection door?

Let's think about what kind of community we're raising up.  One that can catch the people who fall into it?  Or one that has learned to grow all on its own?

The Search for a Modern Theology

A while back I wrote "A Baha'i's Interpretation of Original Sin", which sought to challenge the dominant Christian understanding of "original sin" using passages from the bible paired with illumination from the Baha'i writings. Andrew Sprung also challenges "original sin", not by trying to reinterpret biblical scripture, but philosophically, based on modern knowledge of the human condition. He regards it "as a really pernicious myth that fundamentally miscasts the human condition". He starts by describing an internal dialogue he has with C.S. Lewis:

Blogging, Discourse, and Ruhi Book 2

I love blogs.  I love the democratic explosion of writing on the internet. It has introduced me to so many great thinkers and writers and ideas that have enriched my life.  Clearly, I've got a penchant for Baha'i blogs as well.  There are a few I follow religiously (ha!), several more that I drop in on occasionally, and others that I only know from links to specific articles that have been passed on to me by friends. I enjoy contributing to Baha'i Coherence, and feel comfortable here despite the fact that my background is considerably less academic than those of many of my co-creators. I feel like this blog is a wonderful forum for sharing our early experiments in contributing to the discourses of society.

the Site of Thinking

This short opinion piece in the New York Times outlines a compelling approach for practicing philosophy in our time. In it, the author describes what he refers to as field philosophy;

“Getting out into the field” means leaving the book-lined study to work with scientists, engineers and decision makers on specific social challenges. Rather than going into the public square in order to collect data for understanding traditional philosophic problems like the old chestnut of “free will,” as experimental philosophers do, field philosophers start out in the world. Rather than seeking to identify general philosophic principles, they begin with the problems of non-philosophers, drawing out specific, underappreciated, philosophic dimensions of societal problems...Field philosophy, then, moves in a different direction than either traditional applied philosophy or the new experimental philosophy. Whereas these approaches are top-down in orientation, beginning in theory and hoping to apply a theoretical construct to a problem, field philosophy is bottom-up, beginning with the needs of stakeholders and drawing out philosophical insights after the work is completed.

I think this helps highlight where the Bahá’í world has been moving in recent years. Gone are the days when Bahá’í "scholars" could content themselves with having an encyclopedic knowledge of Bahá’í teachings and history without extensive engagement with the wider society. And those serving actively in the field are discouraged from limiting themselves to simplistic activities, such as handing out pamphlets or walking in a parade. Service now requires a great deal more thought and effort. And intellectual pursuits inspired by the Baha'i faith are becoming more and more mobile and “embedded” in patterns of community action.

The junior youth spiritual empowerment program is perhaps the best example of this. A successful junior youth group is one that stimulates on-going dialogue among early adolescents around topics such as justice, beauty, love, education, prosperity, and others— and then engages them in service and artistic projects aimed at transforming society. Between the junior youth program and field philosophy we see two complementary movements. One is of philosophy extending its efforts to embrace the community. The other is of service extending its efforts to embrace philosophy.

Taken together, and each acting from its own pole, we see an enactment in practice of what philosophers have been talking about since at least Nietzsche—the systematic de-emphasis of a whole series of false dichotomies: mind/body, thinking/acting, theoretical/practical and others.

Statistics and Spirit

Earlier in the Five Year Plan, I was obsessed with statistics.  Cluster Growth Reports?  I devoured them like candy.  They fed my desire to know exactly what was happening so that I could determine next steps.

Then something shifted.  My teaching team's efforts started to bear fruit.  We grew in numbers, but more than that, we grew in spirit.  And ironically enough, now that our statistics show the beginnings of real growth in this neighborhood, I find I need them less.  I'm happier to know how one junior youth is feeling safe enough to express interest in new subjects, or that a parent attended children's classes for the first time.  I'm focused on the confidence our new teachers have begun to show, and the spiritually-based friendships now developing between former strangers.

We're expanding the number of our classes, home visits, and study circles, but what we're witnessing is a steady process of transformation.  I'm still recording the numbers, but it's the stories that have captured my heart.

How Many Does It Take?

How many people does it take to raise up a junior youth group?

One who is good at recruiting young people.
One who is good at explaining the program to adults.
One who is good at coming up with creative activities.
One who is good at facilitating discussion.
One who is good at playing sports.
One who is good at engaging the majority of the group.
One who is good at engaging the one who doesn't want to participate.
One who builds strong friendships with the youth.
One who builds strong friendships with parents and guardians.
One who lives in the neighborhood.
One who knows community resources well.
One who can offer rides.
One who can offer materials.
One who can offer prayers.
One who can document the learning and growth that takes place.
One who regularly visits the homes of the participants.
One who reaches out to visit the homes of the participants' neighbors.
One who teaches a class for the littler brothers and sisters.
One who facilitates a study circle for older family members.
One who can fill in during illness or travel.
One who can train more animators to take over one day.

These might be embodied in one or two individuals, or an entire cluster newly on the rise. But before all these, you need one who has the vision of something transformative and beautiful. At the very least, let that one be you.

It's time to...

"move beyond the culture of contest. It’s time to get down to the hard work of reinventing democratic governance."

Civil Society, Technology, and Development

Shanta Devarajan, the World Bank chief economist for Africa, has written a short summary on the post-WW2 history of development thinking/activity. He goes through the first attempt to correct market failures through government services and intervention ("the big push"), and then the second attempt to correct for government failures, which include rent seeking, lack of accountability, and the accumulation of massive debt, resulting in the much derided "structural adjustments" imposed by the IMF and others ("The Washington Consensus"). He advocates a progression to "Development 3.0", which emphasizes the role that civil society* and information technologies can play in empowering people to hold their government accountable. Accountable how? He outlines two areas where the government has been deficient:

"Jeune Street" reviews "Revelation and Social Reality"

"Jeune Street", a blog I have long enjoyed for its reflections on global governance and development, has posted a nicely brief yet comprehensive review of Paul Lample's "Revelation and Social Reality". Do check it out, and more importantly, if you are interested in the philosophical underpinnings of the Baha'i institute process, read the book.

The Virtue of Moral Anxiety

David Brooks has an interesting take on the U.S. debt crises and our political inability to deal with it. He cites this gridlock as a relatively new phenomenon, relating to a depleted level of moral anxiety in our politics.

For centuries, American politicians did not run up huge peacetime debts. It wasn’t because they were unpartisan or smarter or more virtuous. It was because they were constrained by a mentality inherited from the founders. According to this mentality, a big successful nation exists in a state of equilibrium between its many factions. This equilibrium is fragile because we are flawed and fallen creatures and can’t quite trust ourselves. So all of us, but especially members of the leadership class, should practice self-restraint. Moral anxiety restrained hubris (don’t think your side possesses the whole truth) and self-indulgence (debt corrupts character).

This ethos has dissolved, on left and right. The new mentality sees the country not as an equilibrium, but as a battlefield in which the people, who are pure and virtuous, do battle against the interests or the elites, who stand in the way of the people’s happiness. 

The ideal leader in this mental system is free from moral anxiety but full of passionate intensity. This leader pushes his troops in lock step before the voracious foe. Each party has its own version of whom the evil elites are, but both feel they’ve more to fear from their enemies than from their own sinfulness.

And the American constitution divides power so completely that big important action requires some humility on all sides, or else collaboration is impossible. All legislation becomes emergency legislation, too little, too late.