Bob Gagnon at a Holy Day celebration
Hant’s Harbour, Newfoundland: He Hongyu, Joe Carter, Elizabeth Rochester, Michael Rochester
A small part of St. John’s ‘community of communities’ was the group of Newfoundland and Labrador Baha’is. There were fewer than 50 members in the whole province. The first
Baha'i to live on the island was Lloyd Gardner, who arrived in 1945. He was posted in St. John's by the Royal Canadian Navy. When Cathy and I arrived in 1974, the St. John’s Assembly, the first in Newfoundland, had just been established in 1969. Cathy and I became members of the Assembly in Mt. Pearl that had been founded only three years earlier.
The Baha’i Community was a mix of local and “come-from-away” members. There were, academics, professionals, a few artists, a car mechanic, an air-traffic controller, a truck driver, and several homemakers. For its size, it was very diverse. There were a handful of youth and children. Situated at the edge of Canada, with work and education options sometimes limited, many people left the province. Half of the people who became Baha’is in Newfoundland moved to other places.
The Baha’i pattern of life I experienced in Toronto and Montreal continued here. The monthly Feast was especially important. It had three parts; a devotional period, consultation between the community and the Assembly about community affairs, and an informal social period where we got to know each other better. It was a rhythmic cycling relationship between the individual, the community, and its elected leadership body. In the society around us, these three function were separated; you go to a church for devotional activity, government offices for administration, and, perhaps, to restaurants and bars for socializing. The Feast combined these functions in one event.
The Rochester and Rendell homes were centers for much of the Baha’i activity: Feasts, Holy Day Celebrations, and other gatherings. Most Baha’i communities in Canada were not large and a local community could still squeeze into a large living room.
After one such event at the Rochester’s, the adults were enjoying refreshments indoors and the children were playing out on the front lawn. There was an altercation involving two of the children. Elizabeth asked them to come in to talk. She was about to begin when I interjected and said to one of the children, “Let’s hear your side of the story.” Elizabeth, very upset, said to me, “Now you’ve gone and polarized the situation!”. I can still feel the sting of her rebuke. However, it was a very helpful introduction to the practical application of the concept of unity. I counted Elizabeth as one of my ‘frank’ friends.
Bill, Elizabeth Rochester
On another occasion, this time at another Baha’i’s home, many of the people attending were friends who had been invited to share in one of our events. There were still several minutes before the program began; people were chatting informally. Michael got up and went around the room to shake hands with everyone and welcome them. They were welcomed again by the host of the event when it started, but I appreciated this additional gesture. He wasn’t inhibited by shyness. Or, didn’t appear to be.
Elizabeth told me she was very shy and had to work hard to overcome it. Her ‘natural’ condition was not to initiate conversation, especially with people she didn’t know very well. In those days the ‘hippie’ preoccupation with doing things naturally was sometimes an objection to excessive formality, an objection to doing things for the sake of appearances. But it could also be an excuse to avoid the effort it takes to acquire good social habits. Elizabeth felt if you think your shy condition is ‘natural’, and there was no obligation to stretch yourself or sacrifice your comfort, then you might be limiting your potential for growth. She felt most characteristics are acquired. Acquiring them may not come naturally; it may take effort. The ‘natural’ feeling might come after you master the behaviour.
I enjoyed these deeper encounters with things that were so near. The process is not the end of thinking and effort. It is the beginning of a tremendously difficult process of moulding ourselves, as individuals and as societies - of trying to fly above the gravity of self-love.
Being part of the Baha’i community put me in touch with Baha’is from around the province. I felt a special kinship with the spirit of the Baha’is I met from Corner Brook. There was here a unique sense of humor that I was especially attracted to. This humour was only a short distance away from deep spiritual joy, and at the same time close to human hardships and pain. I have never laughed so deep and hard as I did with them. When they were in St. John’s, it was a special treat. One of them, Bob Perks, told me how embarrassed he was when he and I were walking down Water Street in St. John’s one day. I saw my friend, Beni Malone, a well known professional clown in Newfoundland, walking on the other side of the street. Without thinking, I called out to him,”Beni, come over and meet the funniest man in Newfoundland.”
In November, Cathy and I went on pilgrimage to Haifa, Israel via London, England. Baha’is go to pray at the tombs of the Bab and Baha’u’llah. The shrine of the Bab is on the slope of Mount Carmel in Haifa and the shrine of Baha’u’llah is nearby, across the bay in Bahji at the northern edge of Acre. This was our first time outside of North America. We arrived in Israel just over a year after the 1973 Yom Kippur Arab - Israeli War. Security was still very high. In Tel Aviv, the path from the airplane to the airport terminal was lined with teenager soldiers holding machine guns. After exiting the high alert in the airport, there was a sharp return to normality.
The next day, as we approached Haifa, we strained our necks from the taxi to get our first glimpse of the Shrine of the Bab. We happened to be there for the Birthday of Baha’u’llah. After everyone was seated for the event, Ruhiyyih Khanum[ Almost immediately after their marriage, she served as the Guardian's secretary, and then in 1941 until 1957 she served as Shoghi Effendi's principal secretary in English. From 1951, she was appointed to the International Bahaʼí Council, which was an administrative institution of the Baháʼí Faith created as a precursor to the Universal House of Justice to act as a liaison between the Council and Shoghi Effendi. Later on, in March 26, 1952, she was appointed to the office of Hand of the Cause of God – a distinguished rank in service to the religion – for which she attended to issues related to the propagation and protection of the religion.] came in and everyone stood up. She was the wife of Shoghi Effendi (1897-1957) and had grown up in Montreal as Mary Maxwell, the daughter of Sutherland Maxwell, one of Montreal’s most famous architects. Shoghi Effendi was the great-grandson of Baha’u’Ilah. I did not understand why everyone stood up, so I did not. Someone told me she was the last member of Baha’u’llah’s family. Then I stood up.
Ruhiyyih Khanum (Mary Maxwell)
When we left Haifa to fly to London, she was on the same plane. We were right behind her in line as we approached customs at Heathrow. She was an imposing woman, wearing a straw pith helmet. I asked her why she was wearing the hat. “I don’t have any other place to put it!”, she said. The immigration officer looked at her and asked what her profession was. “I’m a writer”, she answered. It struck me how she had to say that. Of course it was true, she had written several books, but her Baha’i credentials were not recognized here. We helped her with her bags and learned she was going to travel by boat through the tributaries of the Amazon River and visit the high mountain ranges of Peru and Bolivia. Thirty-six tribal groups were visited over a period of six months. The trip was recorded in a documentary film called The Green Light Expedition.
In 1982, she visited St. John’s as part of a tour of Canada. She came with a traveling companion, Violette Nakhjavani. Ruhiyyih Khanum shared her insights about the Baha’i Writings, news and stories about the development of the Faith in other parts of the world. She compared the spirit of people in the so-called less-developed world and the developed world. The former are like mirrors with a bit of mud on them that is easily washed off; the later look clear, but have a oily obscuring film that is more difficult to remove.
A Poem by Ruhiyyih Khanum, written on April 4, 1954
THIS IS FAITH
To walk where there is no path
To breathe where there is no air
To see where there is no light -
This is Faith.
To cry out in the silence,
The silence of the night,
And hearing no echo believe
And believe again and again -
This is Faith.
To hold pebbles and see jewels
To raise sticks and see forests
To smile with weeping eyes -
This is Faith.
To say: “God, I believe” when others deny,
“I hear” when there is no answer,
“I see” though naught is seen -
This is Faith.
And the fierce love in the heart,
The savage love that cries
Hidden Thou art yet there!
Veil Thy face and mute Thy tongue
Yet I see and hear Thee, Love,
Beat me down to the bare earth,
Yet I rise and love Thee, Love!
This is Faith.
Another visitor to St. John’s was Douglas Martin, a member of the National Assembly of the Baha’is of Canada. He gave a talk at a local hotel to which we invited the general public. In part of his presentation, he spoke of the historic importance of Islam - its contribution to civilization. The Baha’is regard Muhammad as a Messenger of God and the civilization of Islam that peaked in the 1200s, or so, was a response to that impulse. The cycle of civilization inspired by Mohammad had a life-span. It was a cycle that entered into decline; evidenced by the difficulties Islam faces today. The same thing happened to Christianity when the Byzantine civilization declined and the West sunk into a 1000 years of what we call the Dark Ages. The Baha’is see Baha’u’llah as the one who inaugurated a new cycle, this time a global civilization.
Douglas Martin
Doug explained how the Renaissance of Europe was based on the achievements of the highly advanced Islamic civilization on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea. Islam had absorbed and translated into Arabic, knowledge that came from as far away as Cadiz in Spain to Fuzhou in China. Europe borrowed extensively from the scientific, medical, artistic, governance and jurisprudence advances of Islam. Thanks to Islam, the writings of the great Greek philosophers were preserved. Europe translated them from Arabic into Latin.
Europe, however, resisted the spiritual message of the Koran. In his talk, he asked what might have happened if the Europeans had explored more carefully Islam’s spiritual message. What if the colonialists had been guided by Islamic rules of war?[ One example, a summary of Muhammad’s teaching by Abu Bakr, the first Caliph of Islam: “Stop, O people, that I may give you ten rules for your guidance in the battlefield. Do not commit treachery or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a woman, nor an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy's flock, save for your food. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them alone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_military_jurisprudence] So much cruel suffering would have been avoided.
His talk was part of the larger process of the Baha’i Community learning about Islam, the background faith from which the Baha’i Faith emerged. My initial interest was sparked by the Baha’i concept of a series of divine “messengers”, Muhammad being one of them. I noticed a Baha’i book called “The Secret of Divine Civilization”, by Abdu'l-Baha, spoke of the contributions of Islam and invited readers to learn more from another book called “The Intellectual Development of Europe” by William (John) Draper. I found a copy in the Memorial University Library. I ordered it from an old and rare book dealer in Ottawa. My copy was published in 1905, but the contents were based on research by the author that went back to the 1860s. I was surprised that so much was known about Islam so long ago. It verified the claim that much of the European Renaissance was based on the accomplishments of Islamic civilization.
* * *
Our understanding of Islam was deepened by the events following the 1979-80 Iranian Revolution in Iran. The new regime renewed the persecution of the Baha’is that had been so characteristic of the faith’s earlier development in Iran since its beginnings in the mid-1840s.
The Iranian Baha’is responded to the persecution with courage, without retaliation, and completely abstaining from partisan political action. The Baha’is were quick to denounce the persecution and found sympathetic support from many quarters. The Iranian cleric-led attacks on Baha’i Faith attracted so much attention,world-wide, it brought the Faith out of its previous condition of obscurity. A result opposite to that intended by the clerics.
Canada became a world leader in rushing to their aid, establishing the world’s first Baha’i Refugee Program in which Newfoundland played its part. The Baha’i administrative system of Assemblies was well established in Canada and, along with the National Assembly, enabling the Canadian Baha’i community to respond with a well-coordinated and long-term response to the crisis.
The following are excerpts from a report by Margaret Bremner published in Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees.[ Bremner, M. (2000). The Baha’is Of Iran. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 19(1), 6-10. Retrieved from https://refuge.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/refuge/article/view/22064Refuge, Vol. 19, No. 1 (July 2000)
]
“Canada was the first country to draw attention to the severe persecutions suffered by the Baha'i community of Iran when, in both July 1980 and June 1981, the House of Commons passed strongly worded resolutions urging the government to bring the issue to the attention of the United Nations. This was the first intervention of its kind to be made by a national legislature. Later, Canada was the first country in the world to accept, as refugees, women who were fleeing persecution based on gender.
“In late 1980, representatives of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Canada met with senior officers of both the Department of Immigration and the Department of External Affairs to discuss landed immigrant status in Canada for Iranian Baha'is in various countries who had not been able to renew their passports. The National Spiritual Assembly told the government that it would verify and guarantee the Baha’i status of all applicants and guaranteed that the Iranian Baha'i immigrants would not become public charges.
“The National Spiritual Assembly signed an umbrella agreement with the then Department of Employment and Immigration in October 1980, under which it assumed full responsibility for refugee sponsorships undertaken by its constituent groups. Thus, at the outset, this national body was, itself, the sponsor of all the Baha'i refugees who came to Canada.
“In 1982 there were 20,000 Baha'is in Canada, living in 1500 localities. In 325 of those localities there were enough adult Baha'is to permit the annual election of an administrative body called a Local Spiritual Assembly. Some of these Local Spiritual Assemblies became the constituent groups of refugee sponsorship. Canadian immigration authorities left the decision of where the Baha'i refugees would settle, entirely in the hands of the National Spiritual Assembly. Very careful consideration was given before a local community was enlisted as a constituent group.
The Newfoundland Baha’is organized the settlement of 20 or so refugees in Newfoundland. We all helped the newcomers settle in. Our local Feast took on a different atmosphere as we welcomed many new faces. We heard their stories, including escaping on foot overland through Afghanistan and Pakistan. One person had suffered the bastinado, a form of torture that involves caning the soles of the feet. He and his family opened a pizza restaurant in Mount Pearl. Later he went to testify at the World Court in the Hague as part of a hearing about the persecution of the Baha’is in Iran. Some of the refugees adapted less quickly. I remember one young man who had PTSD symptoms. When he heard loud sounds, he thought there was shooting going on.
Eventually, family by family, almost all the Iranian Baha'i refugees who initially settled in Newfoundland moved to Ontario or BC. The only one who came in the 1980s and remained was Farid Miri, who stayed in St. John's. He married a Quebecoise Baha'i working here, with her raised two sons and has been a member of the local community and Assembly for many years.
Notwithstanding the gradual migration of the refugees to other parts of Canada, Newfoundland Baha’is had played a significant part in rescuing them from straitened circumstances. They had participated in a globally-coordinated effort that received recognition and support from the Canadian government and the UN. Local Baha’i communities, such as St. John’s, had a stronger sense of belonging to a global movement that was becoming better known and emerging from obscurity.
Gradually our perception of history, and the role of Islam was being informed by the Baha’i experience. While this did not have any immediate impact on my relations with Muslims, or Newfoundlanders, I believe the Baha’is were being prepared, as world citizens, for the implications of a belief in the oneness of religions. This was well before the Islamophobia that developed among many North Americans after the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City.
The experience brought to our attention an accusation leveled against the Baha’is in Iran - and, later, in other Islamic countries - that they were spies for Israel. This view was based on the presence in Israel of the world center of the Baha’i Faith in Haifa. The Baha’is, however, were established in Palestine since 1868. Baha’u’llah and his family arrived as prisoners and exiles to be locked in the prison town of Acre across the bay from Haifa. Baha’u’llah had been banished further and further from his home in Persia as his influence grew. He was sent first to Iraq, then Constantinople, Adrianople, and, finally, Acre. The Baha’i World Community has been administered from there long before the formation of Israel. There are good relations with Israel, but the Baha’i Faith is not involved in politics, anywhere in the world. Non-involvement in politics is an explicit policy of the Baha’i Faith.
* * *
The Baha’i sense of belonging to a world community was reinforced by the construction of what were called Continental Temples. Ones had already been completed in Chicago (1953), Kampala (1961), Sydney (1961), Frankfurt (1964), and one had just been completed in Panama in 1972. Three more were to be built, in Samoa, Delhi and Santiago. Financial support came from all over the world for these projects, including Newfoundland.
* * *
The Baha’i writings stressed the importance of the education of children. The desire to apply these writings to the lives of our communities increased to the point where the Canadian NSA asked a committee to prepare a compilation of selections from the writings related to this topic. This National Committee for the Education of Children was based in St. Johns in with Elizabeth Rochester and Joan Rendell as core members. Cathy and I joined this activity soon after we arrived and helped produce a 78-page booklet titled "The Training and Education of Children". We also helped produce a flyer titled 'Reflections" published intermittently over the years 1976-78. It was sent to Baha’i communities all over Canada. In 1986, after Cathy and I had left St. John’s this Committee was succeeded by the Curriculum Development Committee (with the same core members), which developed a curriculum called "Education for Peace" around 1992-93.
* * *
Although I was part of the architecture ‘community’ of St. John’s, I spent most of my social time with the Baha’is and the large, loosely organized, ‘downtown arts community’. I loved to be in both these groups but there was, in fact, very little overlap. Cathy and I were among the few who moved in both circles. The Baha’i numbers were small and the attitude among the artists toward religion was basically negative. Much of the fuel for local satire and comedy was criticism of the Catholic Church. Their attitude toward religion was understandable. For example, Newfoundland was one of the first places in the world where the scandal of physical and sexual abuse by the Christian Brothers was uncovered. Criminal investigations into the Catholic-run Mount Cashel Orphanage began in 1975; and the facility was closed and torn down in 1989. Much of the content of local plays and satirical comedy contained ridicule and anger at the church.
“From 1996 to 2004 approximately $27 million in compensation was paid to roughly 100 victims of physical and sexual abuse at the Mount Cashel Orphanage by the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Christian Brothers of Ireland in Canada."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Cashel_Orphanage]
I felt at home with Baha’i writings and prayers; it was a pleasure for me to read and discuss these with others. There were only a few times that I invited a friend from the arts community to attend an event in my Baha’i community at which some of the Baha’i ideas would be discussed. My ‘artist’ guests were invariably uncomfortable. Was the ‘odour’ of organized religion too strong? Was it the intensity and intimacy of the group that frightened them? Was it too middle-class? Did the Baha’is project attitudes that displeased the artists? To this day, I’m not sure.
Despite the allergy to religion, people in the arts community soon found out Cathy and I were Baha’is. Perhaps an obvious indicator was abstinence from alcohol. My regular drink at the Ship Inn, a pub where many artists gathered, was half orange juice and half soda water. I didn’t have to tell the bartender what I wanted; she just said, “The usual, Joe?”.
Coherence and Fragmentation
In 2017, my second wife, He Hongyu, read my Newfoundland diary and asked me, “Why is it so ‘piece-piece’?”, she said. “The activities looked so fragmented. What relationship do they have with each other?”
One reason for a fragmented life in Newfoundland was the economy; it was difficult for an architect to have steady work. Sometimes there was no work. I did not have enough entrepreneurial sense or confidence to start my own design office. Economic conditions were an external factor that fragmented my life.
In general, my architectural work was less meaningful to me than the various projects I initiated ‘downtown’ within the arts community. By focusing on the latter in my ‘diary’, I reinforced the impression for Hongyu that my life was a sequence of small, isolated events. In fact, my life was not that fragmented. Most of the time I was working at a regular job, with regular hours, in regular offices.
Another dimension of the ‘fragmented’ experience was involvement in two very different communities: I had a Baha’i life and a downtown ‘artist’ life. I welcomed them to be more mixed, but did not find a way. I made many friendships in both worlds; but there was little traffic between them.
The need for unity in a secular and pluralistic world made the provincial government and society take responsibility for health and education away from the various religious denominations in Newfoundland. Interestingly, religion was not thrown out of the provincial school curriculum; it became part of social studies. They wrote a new textbook in which all the world’s religions, including the Baha’i Faith, were introduced. Canada’s Native spiritual heritage was presented as well. Overall, however, religion was increasingly marginalized. Segregation of religious and secular life was built into the society. As one of the few who simultaneously explored the “downtown artist” world and the Baha’i world; it was inevitable I had to live a kind of double life.
The variety of what I did was not intentional. The situations around me varied, so the responses varied. If you address needs as you become aware of them, you will walk down some unpredictable paths. For example, I quite my regular job as an architect to renovate two old houses in downtown St. John’s that were slated for demolition. This meant breaking away from my stable job as an architect to become a carpenter. This was not a whim. It was my concern for the state of the downtown; something beautiful was under threat of extinction.
It didn’t take much courage for me to so this, however. Cathy and I had no children. We could afford to take some risks. Also, I could always go back to regular architectural work. I had options. Many of the downtown artists I met, did not have this luxury. I have tremendous admiration for so many of them who were dedicated to their craft, and who were determined to draw inspiration, make a living, and have families in their own milieu. They dared to make this choice in a local culture that often said you are not good until you succeed in large centers such as Toronto or New York. Local artists believed the universal could be found in the local.
The consequence of their choice to pursue their work in Newfoundland often meant sacrifice and even poverty. Many of them did not have an alternate profession as a source of income. I had a parachute; they were jumping without one. I feel dismay that society’s relationship with the arts is so impoverished. This lack of relationship is another layer of “fragmentation”.
Collaborative Circles
Individuals from both the Downtown Arts Community and the Baha’i Community brainstormed, formally and informally; encouraged and participated in the initiatives of others; and invited others to participate in theirs. Commitment to social, cultural goals through shared activity meant working together, often in new ways. In both communities, working in groups was normal. Seeing needs, and pursuing goals together, made and deepened friendships. Friendships were a result of the process, not necessarily the goal. My friendships in both communities were rooted in having worked together, even sacrificed for a shared goal.
In both communities, there was a very strong collaborative spirit; one that encouraged creative initiatives. There was constant learning and sharing of what was learned. The ‘sun’ that propelled both my Baha’i and ‘downtown’ lives was a determination to make the world a better place. That may sound idealistic, but it’s real. There was sense of a cause. We were in it together.
The St. John’s ‘downtown’ artist community had some disputes, some cliques and prejudices. It had differences with Newfoundland’s not-’downtown’ arts community. Sometimes ‘downtown’ art added to polarization with its biting criticism and sarcasm. But, the abundance of creative collaborations - and the strong friendships upon which they were based - was so strong in this period, it was referred to as the ‘Newfoundland Renaissance’. On the Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage Website there is an article by Jenny Higgins describing this “Cultural Renaissance”.
“During the late 1960s and 1970s, Newfoundland and Labrador experienced what has been variously called a cultural renaissance, revival, or revolution. It was a period of sustained creative activity by local artists working in a wide range of disciplines in the literary, performing, and visual arts. Often for the first time, the local population saw their stories, dialects, and customs reflected back from the page, canvas, stage, or television screen. As the movement explored the province's culture, it also helped to validate and shape it”.[ Jenny Higgins, https://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/politics/cultural-renaissance.php]
I always felt privileged to participate, even though I was not very conscious of the larger processes at work. Was the awareness of a “Cultural Renaissance” part of the process or more a hindsight? In any case, it happened.
In 2019, I was talking with Harry Connors, a St. John’s Baha’i, about the collaborative characteristics Cathy and I had found when we came to Newfoundland. He said what we experienced was part of a wave of creative collaborations that began with the work done at Memorial University - in language, history, and sociology - from the 1950s to the 1980s. He said certain figures in the MUN administration at the time, notably Mose Morgan and George Storey, believed the University should be centred on the idea that Newfoundland itself be regarded as a place and a culture worthy of scholarly study. This idea, starting with reflections on Newfoundland English and dialect, influenced folklore, archaeological, language studies. It affected so many of the young students at that time who gave artistic expression to what they were learning about their own province. Harry introduced me to a book that described the process: "Observing the Outports: Describing Newfoundland Culture, 1950 - 1980", by MUN History Professor, Jeff Webb.
About collaboration as a matrix of creativity, Professor Webb says:
"Accounts of the production of knowledge often emphasize the influential scholar of big breakthrough and add to the myth of the solitary mind as the motor of innovation. Most of the important work in Newfoundland studies, however, resulted from collaborations that arose among friends. Collaborations and institutional supports are as often the sources of creativity as the genius working alone in the garret, and individuals usually among a community of scholars. The sociologist Michael Farrell has theorized the ways that friendship can blossom into productive creative partnerships. A "collaborative circle", to use his term, happens when "the members escalate their commitment to one another and deepen their interdependence until the circle becomes the centre of their creative lives". This book examines several such collaborations."[ Professor Jeff Webb, "Observing the Outports: Describing Newfoundland Culture, 1950 - 1980", p.11.]
Now (2020) I am able to understand that Cathy and I had experienced a phenomenon that started at MUN and impacted the larger Newfoundland society. In both the Baha’i and downtown communities, we experienced not only creative collaborations, we escalated our “commitment to one another” and deepened our “interdependence until the circle becomes the centre of [our] creative lives". The friendships and mutual helpfulness born out of this process - in both communities - remain to this day, as strong as ever.
Although I was immersed in both these communities, it is only thirty, or so, years later that I became aware of the parallels between them. The Baha’i Community’s awareness of its patterns of community life and development has matured in the past thirty years. And. books such as “Observing the Outports” by Professor Webb have increased self-awareness of related patterns in Newfoundland society.
The pattern of life that the Baha’is are attempting to construct addresses fragmentation by trying to build unity. It is an effort to express unity in diversity; to have variety and coherence.
It’s an alternative to our society’s adversarial relationships often characterized by cynicism, alienation, and power struggles. The object is to create a community that can creatively address needs both inside and even outside its boundaries. One Baha’i definition of community is as follows:
”a comprehensive unit of civilization composed of individuals, families and institutions that are originators and encouragers of systems, agencies and organizations working together with a common purpose for the welfare of people both within and beyond its borders; it is a composition of diverse, interacting participants that are achieving unity in an unremitting quest for spiritual and social progress.” [The Universal House of Justice, Ridvan Message, 1996]
To construct such an environment is actually an arduous learning process. Inevitably, the experience encounters both cohering, integrating forces, and fragmenting, disintegrating forces.
The dynamic of the Baha’i Community and the downtown arts community had (have?) much in common. Is there room for stronger collaboration between them? There is potential for an interesting dialogue; one that, I think, Newfoundland is in a unique position to pursue.
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