Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 8

Our Most Challenging Issue – Four

This is the fourthin a series of essays that use, as their centerpiece, the statement on race unity released some years ago by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States: The Vision of Race Unity: America’s MostChallenging Issue. The quoted segment below is Part II of the statement, and its primary focus is applying the spiritual principle of the oneness of humanity to the individual and collective life of the nation.

Buddha famously said, “It is indeed a fact that sa...

Our Most Challenging Issue – Three

In the last two paragraphs of Part I its statementThe Vision of Race Unity: America’s Most Challenging Issue, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States writes:

For too much of its history and in so many places the human race has squandered its energy and resources in futile efforts to prove the unprovable: that one portion of itself, because of separation by geography, a difference in skin color, or the diversity of cultural expression, is intrinsically distinct from...

Our Most Challenging Issue – Two

The following is from the statement “The Vision of Race Unity: America’s Most Challenging Issue”, published by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States. This is the national guiding body for the Baha’is of the continental US (Alaska and Hawaii have their own National Spiritual Assemblies).

In light of our nation’s distressing “discovery” that we are not a post-racial society and that racial animus is still alive in our communities, I decided to offer another way of...

Our Most Challenging Issue – One

I’d like to share some thoughts on race from my faith community because this urgent issue is still a source of social disintegration and only we as individuals and members of intersecting groups within our society can alter our trajectory.

These are the introductory paragraphs of a document published some years ago by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States, entitled The Vision of Race Unity. I hope to post further exerpts from the document in the near future.

oOo

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Well-Informed Electorate Take Two

I’d like to talk about elections.

No, not the mind-numbing chaos of the current presidential elections—which will no doubt affect the congressional elections to come, and traumatize anyone old enough to grasp what’s going on. I’d like to talk about an election that my husband and I and our adult children took part in recently—the selection of a delegate whose mandate it will be to participate in the annual election of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States.

We rec...

A Well-Informed Electorate?

Anyone who knows me knows that journalistic integrity and accurate communication is an obsession of mine. Especially in complex situations where the simplicity of soundbites contributes much to the functional illiteracy of our society.

In that spirit,ÂI’d like to remind folks of something that happened four years ago during a presidential debate. One candidateâMr. Romneyâmade a false charge against the otherâour president, as it happens. He claimed the POTUS did not refer to the Benghazi atta...

Is Love All We Need?

The Beatles sang that “All you need is love.” Out on Medium today someone argued that when it comes to racial prejudice, this is not true.

I think they’re right and wrong. It depends, I suppose, on how you define love and what you feel its limitations and manifestations are.

Iâm not sure anyone really believes âAll you need is love.â When it comes to any social ill, we also need justice.

âThe best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice; turn not away therefrom if thou desirest Me, and n...

Facts, Damn Facts, and Factoids

You may have heard it stated as fact recently that “a 2011 report from the Government Accountability Office found that illegal immigrants and other non-citizens, in our prisons and jails together, had around 25,000 homicide arrests to their namesâ”

This is true. But there are three important pieces of information that are left out of this claim.

1) How many of these individuals were illegally in the country (the statement lumps all non-citizens together).

2) How many were actually convicted o...

Abdu’l-Bahá on Kindness & Sympathy Towards Strangers & Foreigners

The following is the transcript of a talk given on October 16th and 17th, 1911 in Paris, France byAbdu’l-Bahá Abbas, son of Bahá’u’lláh, the Prophet/Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, of which I have been a member my entire adult life.

As you read, I think you may be struck by how familiar is the antipathy Abdu’l-Bahá describes—the divisive tribal sentiments he is lovingly telling his audience to relinquish.

This is an age-old aspect of human life and, therefore, this is an ageless message. It is a...

Abdu’l-Bahá on Kindness & Sympathy Towards Strangers & Foreigners

The following is the transcript of a talk given on October 16th and 17th, 1911 in Paris, France byÂAbdu’l-Bahá Abbas, son of Bahá’u’lláh, the Prophet/Founder of the Bahá’à Faith, of which I have been a member my entire adult life.

As you read, I think you may be struck by how familiar is the antipathy Abdu’l-Bahá describesâthe divisive tribal sentiments he is lovingly telling his audience to relinquish.

This is an age-old aspect of human life and, therefore, this is an ageless message. I...