Anyway, I am a bit surprised at the consistent negativity towards Ruhi even
though the House has over and over made it plain it has no intentions of
forcing exclusivity to any form of deepening/teaching/studying.
Dear Dick,
They have said this, but in practice something else is happening. When our NSA tried to have the Core Curriculum offered as an alternative to Ruhi for the basic sequence, a representative from the World Centre came out and talked them out of it. Also, in practice other forms of service are being restricted for those who don't do Study Circles. For instance, I heard Counsellor Gene Andrews insist that in order to be a Home Front Pioneer under the present plan one must be willing to give study circles. Since Ruhi is the only curriculum currently available for that, this means you can't be a Home Front Pioneer without doing Ruhi. And in Australasia, as mentioned, Board Members are telling people not to hold other kinds of deepenings. Also, I know of cases in Europe who make Book 3 a prerequisite for teaching children's classes, and Book 6 a prerequisite for going on teaching trips. So one is going to be excluded from an awful lot of Baha'i activites. And a lot of us aren't quite ready for a 'year of patience' right now. ;-}
But I can accept that there are
members of our community who have gotten a lot out of it
I agree. In fact I may be the only one in my community that finds Ruhi hard to stomach.
Granted, you (and I
for that matter) may think it is overdone by some institutions and
individuals but so what?
I don't think it is a problem with it being overdone so much as being done exclusively. A lot of us think the idea of study circles is great and want to participate in the institute process. We just don't want to do Ruhi.
Someone mentioned their objection to Ruhi being that it doesn't address the
needs of the educated, well off westerners. OK, great. So develop
something you think will. Surely you don't think the House of Justice would
object to that do you?
It seems when our NSA did precisely that, the World Centre did object and persuaded them not to offer it as an alternative track of the basic sequence of courses.
I
?
Surely the tent is
big enough for that
I'm hoping you are right about this, Dick. But right now, I'm just not sure.
warmest, Susan
__________________________________________________
You are subscribed to Baha'i Studies as: mailto:archive@mail-archive.com
To unsubscribe, send a blank email to mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
To subscribe, use subscribe bahai-st in the message body to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Baha'i Studies is available through the following:
Mail - mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Web - http://list.jccc.edu/read/?forum=bahai-st
News - news://list.jccc.edu/bahai-st
Public - http://www.escribe.com/religion/bahaist
Old Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/bahai-st@list.jccc.net
New Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/bahai-st@list.jccc.edu
