An Epilogue to My Epilogue

This piece is from the opening paragraphs of the last chapter of my memoirs.-Ron Price, Tasmania.

AN EPILOGUE TO MY EPILOGUE

The process by which a memoir or a poem emerges is partly the way Robert Frost puts it succinctly and which I quote approvingly here: “Sight, excite, insight.” Like all good aphorisms this is only partly true. There is so much more to the process. I write about this process here, indeed, at many places in this book. “By the time you start to compose, more than half the work has been done," wrote Irish Poet Seamus Heaney. "The crucial part of the business is what happens before you face the empty page," he continued, "before the moment of first connection, when an image or a memory comes suddenly to mind and you feel the lure of the poem-life in it.” Most of the writing in this memoir took place in my late fifties and early sixties. Much of the work, the living, had indeed been done: half, three-quarters, nine-tenths? The living, the thinking, two to five decades of preliminary writing, imagining, sometimes dry, sometimes fertile, literary experience--all of this set the stage.

If experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes, I'd had plenty of that. My hope is that not too many readers will find these volumes of memoirs unapproachable due to their length, their vocabulary, their overly analytical nature, the absense of a simple and interesting storyline, the relative absense of the traumatic conveyed in narrative form--society's violence and sex and mine--the short supply of romance and the kind of adventure that readers have come to expect in a good novel or TV program. If I possessed the humour and masterly narrative style of, say, a Garrison Keilor this work could be more enchanting and hypnotic. Sad to say, I do not. Readers will get what they see here. I am what I am and my style is what it is. Hopes and wishes are never quite enough to determine an outcome, although they help me travel along the road.

If one is to stay creative and remain tuned-in to the richness of being, of living, of reflecting and anticipating, as one must if one is writing one's autobiographical story in the seventh decade of their life; and if one is not to yield to depressing tones of déjà vu, one has to admit it is the fragment that offers an opening onto potential meaning. The fragment is imagination's stimulus to the opening of windows. For things in their meaningfulness, address us in a certain way. This is part of what we could call the realm of responsiveness, a realm that is an encounter, an encounter that is essentially a linguistic relationship. To put this another way: it is a way of saying things that keeps the process fresh for the writer. But, in the end, all is not words; poetry and thinking belong together in speech and in their devotion to the relation which is silent in all our speech. Wallace Stevens expressed the wonder of the world and its shining by means of the poetic word in the following lines of his poem "The Idea of Order at Key West:"

It was her voice that madeThe sky acutest at its vanishing.She measured to the hour its solitude.She was the sole artificer of the worldIn which she sang. And when she sang, The sea, Whatever self it had, became the selfThat was her song, for she was the maker.

Stevens knew that there is no world other than the one we create, the one of which we are the makers. And I have made a world here in this memoir. It is I who must inhabit it and, as in the daily routine of life, it seems to me that if there is no joy, no happiness it is hardly worth the exercise. The fragment, in this case the sea in Stevens' poem, does not deal with wholeness, although it may contribute to the completed account. Only through the fragment can one have access to a way of being that is dynamic, pluralistic and self-regenerating. To say this a little differently: lived experience is a critical shaping force in our lives. In some ways, this is only saying the obvious.

We must, as well, find some mythogenic zone, sone interior metanarrative through which we can sift our own experience, learn what we are and achieve some degree of unity with others. This unity is found in the context of a constant conversation between unity and disunity, a conversation in which juxtaposition plays with omission and collision. And often, no matter how much we understand the dynamics of our situation, we still get hurt and feel exasperated. No matter how strong our beliefs they must face the tribunal of our experience as a whole. In that tribunal analysis gives us the grammar for our concepts. But analysis is faced with the conundrum that at each moment of life's becoming that moment escapes our attempts to comprehend it.

Ours is a culture of the fragment, like life itself, and the Bahá’í Faith is a culture of the unity of fragments. Like the baroque, the postmodern--our world--shares above all a taste for mixing, palimpsesting, hybridization and discontinuity. Some of the distinct features of both the baroque and the postmodern are: self-irony, self-parody, saying one thing and meaning another, a rejection of static definition, ambiguities of definition, a constant or at least a periodic, crisis of identity which people seem to have to go through, a sense of incompleteness in which the culture and the individual are never fully capable of explaining themselves. Some of the distinct features of the Bahá’í Faith are its spiritual history, everywhere unfolded in the manner of a new and a single symphony, in a grand fortissimo now, in our time, with new harmonies and dissonances, irresistably advancing to some kind of mighty climax out of which another great movement will, in time, emerge. I have always enjoyed a quality that I think it is useful for writers to have, namely, a sense of history. Some writers have it and some don't. The American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald who wrote between the two wars had this sense.

By my late fifties and early sixties I had become what Robert Scanlan in his review of Susan Sontag's play Alice in Bed called a graphimaniacal phenomena. I turned all of my minutest experiences into words-about-experience. My experience had become much like that of Marcel Proust who transmuted his life, during years he spent in a cork-lined bedroom, into an all-but-endless narrative discourse that could and would be cut off only by his death. Some consider Proust's death a mercy, and the now fashionable metaphor, "the death of the author," has come to characterize the modern condition of fiction. The historical Alice James, Henry James' sister, on whom the play Alice James is based, left no doubt that she welcomed the literal death that would bring her acute physical and emotional torments to a close. I, too, will welcome my literal death for different reasons than Alice James.

This work I like to think, although I may be somewhat presumptuous in doing so, has some similarities to Virgil's Aeneid, Rome's national epic written in the years 29 to 19 BC. Just as Virgil's work envisaged a golden age so does this work; just as his work was permeated with the lack of reconciliation in the new Roman Empire just formed, so is this work permeated with the tragedy of the slowness of response of humanity to the Revelation of Baha'u'llah, the slough of despond and the social commotion at play on the planet, the troubled forecasts of doom, the phantoms of a wrongly informed imagination at this crucial turning point in history, a turning point represented by these four epochs. As Virgil's Ecologue opened up new perspectives, I like to think this work will do the same. Some read the Aeneid with an optimistic view and others have gloomy readings. Inspite of my own forecasts of gloom and doom, I see my work as essentially positive, optimistic and with a view that sees a bright future for humanity. When Virgil wrote Rome was at the start of an empire, a system, a new order, and Virgil was preoccupied with the notion of unity as were the Romans after a century of wars and violence.
I see myself as writing in the context of "the first stirrings of that World Order of which the present Administrative System is at once the precursor, the nucleus and pattern." As the Romans needed insight into their predicament not cleverness, so is this our need. As I live and write in Australia I sometimes think that the essentially comic spirit of the Romans has been passed on by history's circuitous forces to the Australians. As I watch decade after decade of entertainment dispensed by the print and electronic media, I can't help but agree with that delightful American critic Gore Vidal that laughing gas is pumped into the lounge room of Australians, indeed all western countries, on a nightly basis. I suppose if you are going to go down, you might as well do so laughing.

In my early adulthood I was critical of this endless private pleasure but with the years, and certainly with the onset of late adulthood, I came to appreciate what Thomas Hardy called the "instinct toward self-delight." Some have this quality with an exuberance that bubbles up. I have more delight now that I do not have to deal with the pains and pangs associated with bi-polar disorder, with full-time work, with the idiosyncrasies of people in groups and with my incapacities for dealing with a wife and children.

HARDLY ANYONE KNOWS

HARDLY ANYONE KNOWS

Yesterday I attended the Bahá’í Unit Convention for northern Tasmania. I drove home with my Tasmanian wife, Chris, and with the oldest Bahá’í who had attended the Unit Convention, a Mr. Simon van der Molen age 78. As we drove through the hills, valleys, flat stretches of road and the occasional little town: Westbury, Exeter, Birralee, I reflected on all those Unit Conventions I had attended since the early sixties. This Unit Convention system was devised by the Universal House of Justice and is described briefly in the book "Principles of Bahá’í Administration,(1976,1963)."-Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, 11 February 2007.

Well, that makes 40 meetings
of this electoral unit system,
as far back as'64, yes,
at the Brant Inn,
getting a bit vague now.

I have to take off the year
we lived on Baffin Island
and recently when I was
just too tired and did not
want to get elected so stayed
home and one of those years
in Perth WA when I had run
out of gas-a happening from
time to time over those 40 years.

Two words--forty years--which
are easy to write down but
deceptively complex and require
volumes to put in the details.
There's a blur of towns, places,
rooms, food, discussions, people,
drink, entertainment, voting, reports,
decisions, ballots, documents, letters,
photos, worries, sadnesses and joys,
heat, cold, across two continents,
just about dries-out the psyche,
fills the memory to overflowing,
thinking about it. You can't put it
all down in a prose-poem; it's just
too much, too late, too long------

the first forty years of this new
electoral system and me from 21
to these years of early late adulthood,
about the sametime frame as Moses
going to the Promised Land so long ago
just about every one has forgotten--
Now hardly anyone knows about
these little events that dot
the landscape of the world,
the first tier in a global electoral
system that is taking the world
by storm from Spitzbergen
to the ends of Tasmania:
but so slowly no one would
ever guess and with agrace
so contained as to pose no threat,
not this, not these few in their ragged
semi-circle far from the decisions
distantly drawing them forward.

The resolutions, often fragile,
as they inch their consequential
necessary way in a process that
has just begun in this final stage of history.

Ron Price 11 February 2007

One Common Faith

From a recent book by this name and commissioned by the Universal House of Justice.(2005)

FOREWORD

At Ridván 2002, we addressed an open letter to the world’s religious leaders. Our action arose out of awareness that the disease of sectarian hatreds, if not decisively checked, threatens harrowing consequences that will leave few areas of the world unaffected. The letter acknowledged with appreciation the achievements of the interfaith movement, to which Bahá’ís have sought to contribute since an early point in the movement’s emergence. Nevertheless, we felt we must be forthright in saying that, if the religious crisis is to be addressed as seriously as is occurring with respect to other prejudices afflicting humankind, organized religion must find within itself a comparable courage to rise above fixed conceptions inherited from a distant past.
Above all, we expressed our conviction that the time has come when religious leadership must face honestly and without further evasion the implications of the truth that God is one and that, beyond all diversity of cultural expression and human interpretation, religion is likewise one. It was intimations of this truth that originally inspired the interfaith movement and that have sustained it through the vicissitudes of the past one hundred years. Far from challenging the validity of any of the great revealed faiths, the principle has the capacity to ensure their continuing relevance. In order to exert its influence, however, recognition of this reality must operate at the heart of religious discourse, and it was with this in mind that we felt that our letter should be explicit in articulating it.

Response has been encouraging. Bahá’í institutions throughout the world ensured that thousands of copies of the document were delivered to influential figures in the major faith communities. While it was perhaps not surprising that the message it contained was dismissed out of hand in a few circles, Bahá’ís report that, in general, they were warmly welcomed. Particularly affecting has been the obvious sincerity of many recipients’ distress over the failure of religious institutions to assist humanity in dealing with challenges whose essential nature is spiritual and moral. Discussions have turned readily to the need for fundamental change in the way the believing masses of humankind relate to one another, and in a significant number of instances, those receiving the letter have been moved to reproduce and distribute it to other clerics in their respective traditions. We feel hopeful that our initiative may serve as a catalyst opening the way to new understanding of religion’s purpose.

However rapidly or slowly this change occurs, the concern of Bahá’ís must be with their own responsibility in the matter. The task of ensuring that His message is engaged by people everywhere is one that Bahá’u’lláh has laid primarily on the shoulders of those who have recognized Him. This, of course, has been the work that the Bahá’í community has been pursuing throughout the history of the Faith, but the accelerating breakdown in social order calls out desperately for the religious spirit to be freed from the shackles that have so far prevented it from bringing to bear the healing influence of which it is capable.

If they are to respond to the need, Bahá’ís must draw on a deep understanding of the process by which humanity’s spiritual life evolves. Bahá’u’lláh’s writings provide insights that can help to elevate discussion of religious issues above sectarian and transient considerations. The responsibility to avail oneself of this spiritual resource is inseparable from the gift of faith itself. "Religious fanaticism and hatred", Bahá’u’lláh warns, "are a world-devouring fire, whose violence none can quench. The Hand of Divine power can, alone, deliver mankind from this desolating affliction…." Far from feeling unsupported in their efforts to respond, Bahá’ís will come increasingly to appreciate that the Cause they serve represents the arrowhead of an awakening taking place among people everywhere, regardless of religious background and indeed among many with no religious leaning.

Reflection on the challenge has prompted us to commission the commentary that follows. One Common Faith, prepared under our supervision, reviews relevant passages from both the writings of Bahá’u’lláh and the scriptures of other faiths against the background of the contemporary crisis. We commend it to the thoughtful study of the friends.

The Universal House of Justice
Naw-Rúz, 2005

ONE COMMON FAITH

"There is every reason for confidence that the period of history now…"
There is every reason for confidence that the period of history now opening will be far more receptive to efforts to spread Bahá’u’lláh’s message than was the case in the century just ended. All the signs indicate that a sea change in human consciousness is under way.
Early in the twentieth century, a materialistic interpretation of reality had consolidated itself so completely as to become the dominant world faith insofar as the direction of society was concerned. In the process, the civilizing of human nature had been violently wrenched out of the orbit it had followed for millennia. For many in the West, the Divine authority that had functioned as the focal centre of guidance—however diverse the interpretations of its nature—seemed simply to have dissolved and vanished. In large measure, the individual was left free to maintain whatever relationship he believed connected his life to a world transcending material existence, but society as a whole proceeded with growing confidence to sever dependence on a conception of the universe that was judged to be at best a fiction and at worst an opiate, in either case inhibiting progress. Humanity had taken its destiny into its own hands. It had solved through rational experimentation and discourse—so people were given to believe—all of the fundamental issues related to human governance and development.

This posture was reinforced by the assumption that the values, ideals and disciplines cultivated over the centuries were now reliably fixed and enduring features of human nature. They needed merely to be refined by education and reinforced by legislative action. The moral legacy of the past was just that: humanity’s indefeasible inheritance, requiring no further religious interventions. Admittedly, undisciplined individuals, groups or even nations would continue to threaten the stability of the social order and call for correction. The universal civilization towards the realization of which all the forces of history had been bearing the human race, however, was irresistibly emerging, inspired by secular conceptions of reality. People’s happiness would be the natural result of better health, better food, better education, better living conditions—and the attainment of these unquestionably desirable goals now seemed to be within the reach of a society single-mindedly focused on their pursuit.

Throughout that part of the world where the vast majority of the earth’s population live, facile announcements that "God is Dead" had passed largely unnoticed. The experience of the peoples of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific had long confirmed them in the view not only that human nature is deeply influenced by spiritual forces, but that its very identity is spiritual. Consequently, religion continued, as had always been the case, to function as the ultimate authority in life. These convictions, while not directly confronted by the ideological revolution taking place in the West, were effectively marginalized by it, insofar as interaction among peoples and nations was concerned. Having penetrated and captured all significant centres of power and information at the global level, dogmatic materialism ensured that no competing voices would retain the ability to challenge projects of world wide economic exploitation. To the cultural damage already inflicted by two centuries of colonial rule was added an agonizing disjunction between the inner and outer experience of the masses affected, a condition invading virtually all aspects of life. Helpless to exercise any real influence over the shaping of their futures or even to preserve the moral well-being of their children, these populations were plunged into a crisis different from but in many ways even more devastating than the one gathering momentum in Europe and North America. Although retaining its central role in consciousness, faith appeared impotent to influence the course of events.

As the twentieth century approached its close, therefore, nothing seemed less likely than a sudden resurgence of religion as a subject of consuming global importance. Yet that is precisely what has now occurred in the form of a groundswell of anxiety and discontent, much of it still only dimly conscious of the sense of spiritual emptiness that is producing it. Ancient sectarian conflicts, apparently unresponsive to the patient arts of diplomacy, have re-emerged with a virulence as great as anything known before. Scriptural themes, miraculous phenomena and theological dogmas that, until recently, had been dismissed as relics of an age of ignorance find themselves solemnly, if indiscriminately, explored in influential media. In many lands, religious credentials take on new and compelling significance in the candidature of aspirants to political office. A world, which had assumed that with the collapse of the Berlin Wall an age of international peace had dawned, is warned that it is in the grip of a war of civilizations whose defining character is irreconcilable religious antipathies. Bookstores, magazine stands, Web sites and libraries struggle to satisfy an apparently inexhaustible public appetite for information on religious and spiritual subjects. Perhaps the most insistent factor in producing the change is reluctant recognition that there is no credible replacement for religious belief as a force capable of generating self-discipline and restoring commitment to moral behaviour.

Beyond the attention that religion, as formally conceived, has begun to command is a widespread revival of spiritual search. Expressed most commonly as an urge to discover a personal identity that transcends the merely physical, the development encourages a multitude of pursuits, both positive and negative in character. On the one hand, the search for justice and the promotion of the cause of international peace tend to have the effect of also arousing new perceptions of the individual’s role in society. Similarly, although focused on the mobilization of support for changes in social decision-making, movements like environmentalism and feminism induce a re-examination of people’s sense of themselves and of their purpose in life. A reorientation occurring in all the major religious communities is the accelerating migration of believers from traditional branches of the parent faiths to sects that attach primary importance to the spiritual search and personal experiences of their members. At the opposite pole, extraterrestrial sightings, "self-discovery" regimens, wilderness retreats, charismatic exaltation, various New Age enthusiasms, and the consciousness-raising efficacy attributed to narcotics and hallucinogens attract followings far larger and more diverse than anything enjoyed by spiritualism or theosophy at a similar historical turning point a century ago. For a Bahá’í, the proliferation even of cults and practices that may arouse aversion in the minds of many serves primarily as a reminder of the insight embodied in the ancient tale of Majnún, who sifted the dust in his search for the beloved Laylí, although aware that she was pure spirit: "I seek her everywhere; haply somewhere I shall find her."

"The reawakened interest in religion is clearly far from having reached…"

The reawakened interest in religion is clearly far from having reached its peak, in either its explicitly religious or its less definable spiritual manifestations. On the contrary. The phenomenon is the product of historical forces that steadily gather momentum. Their common effect is to erode the certainty, bequeathed to the world by the twentieth century, that material existence represents ultimate reality.
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That's all for now!