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Peace

The Universal House of Justice, the nine-member supreme ruling body of the Bahá’í Faith, published a peace letter on 2019-01-18. This post contains a short summary of what the letter is about. The complete text can be found in the Download link, below.

Peace LetterDownload
  • The letter is addressed to the Bahá’ís of the World
  • The letter is written on the 100th anniversary of the Paris Peace Conference which was held after World War 1 ended.
  • Bahá’u’lláh asked people to establish peace on earth.
  • The letter is five pages in length, divided into five sections, and 14 paragraphs.
  • Section /A/ is the introduction (paragraph 1)
  • Section /B/ is a reflection on the progress made towards peace (paragraphs 2 – 4), so what has happened so far
  • Section /C/ is a comment on some of the contemporary challenges to establishing peace (paragraphs 5 – 9), mainly the need for people to see unity and peace as the goal
  • Section /D/ is a statement of the contributions that Bahá’ís are asked to make (paragraphs 10 – 12), that they need to act on to make things happen
  • Section /E/ is the conclusion (paragraphs 13 – 14) and tell us what we must do – “build communities founded on spiritual principles and apply those principles for the betterment of your societies”
The members of the Universal House of Justice are, from left to right, Paul Lample, Chuungu Malitonga, Payman Mohajer, Shahriar Razavi, Stephen Hall, Ayman Rouhani, Stephen Birkland, Juan Mora, and Praveen Mallik. The House of Justice was elected by delegates to the 12th International Baha’i Convention in Haifa, in 2018-04.

Here are the specific contributions to world peace that Baha’is are asked to make:

  1. Accept the oneness of humankind. /6/
  2. Recognize that there is diversity, yet maintaining a love for all people, and subordinating lesser loyalties to the best interests of humankind. /7/
  3. Guard themselves from becoming enmeshed in conflicts or falling into adversarial methods. /9/
  4. Promote the well-being and tranquility of everyone [children of men]. /10/
  5. Educate people. /10/
  6. Create genuine love, spiritual communion and durable bonds among individuals. /10/
  7. Build up and broaden a system of social organization based on Baha’u’llah’s teachings. /11/
  8. Nurture communities. /11/.
  9. Cultivate environments in which children can be raised without racial, national or religious prejudice. /11/
  10. Champion the full equality of women with men. /11/
  11. Welcome everyone. /11/
  12. Empower everyone to build of a new world. /11/
  13. Invite followers of all faiths and none to devotional meetings. /11/
  14. Engage youth to build communities. /11/
  15. Govern in servitude. (This applies to members of local/ national Spiritual Assemblies) /11/
  16. Resolve conflicts and build unity. /11/
  17. Develop an electoral process. /11/
  18. Engage with those around them. /12/
  19. Make meaningful contributions to various important discourses. /12/
  20. Practice consultation. /12/
  21. Cultivate conditions that are conducive to unity. /12/
  22. Implement peace! /13/
  23. Build communities founded on spiritual principles. /14/
Some 1,300 delegates representing 166 countries, at the 12th International Baha’i Convention in Haifa, in 2018-04.



Posted on

Peace

This post began as a reaction to yet another senseless bombing in Syria. The only problem was, why should I react to that particular act of injustice, when the world was witness to countless acts of injustice daily?

The challenge for me is knowing where to put my energies. Is war violence worse than, say, domestic violence? Both result in trauma, injuries and death.

There is very little that I can do about situations on the world stage, with one exception. Ignore them. In particular, I can ignore the journalism that causes news items and other forms of frustrated agony to reverberate through the world’s households.

This misplaced time could be redirected towards my current activity focus: Workshop Activism.

I seldom read Norwegian news items. I know that people on my contact list will inform me of important events.

I have cut out Facebook. Instead, I have redirected my time to writing blog posts, and to reading other people’s blogs. Here, there is room for improvement.

Today, I will avoid reading the Guardian and the Independent. Rather than replacing these with yet more media, I want to spend more time in the workshop. If nothing else, I have a dust extraction system that has to be put in place, as well as a work surface along Machine Alley.  I have also agreed to spend the next two Wednesdays, supervising work at Hastighet Teknogarasje (Velocity Techo-garage) in Straumen.

Hopefully, both that workshop as well as a more private one at the nano-nation of Ginnunga Gap, will be able to teach peacefulness and co-operation, not through words, but through actions.