" What I intended was: if you live in a culture whihc has a strong subculture of anti-intellectualism and then a method is introduced which is not appealing to the intellect, it can create a strong bias against that method."
Dear Janine, Ah yes, then we are on the same wave length. In fact I was just thinking about just how visceral my reaction to Ruhi was; that I open the book and almost feel it shouting at me, "We don't want you to think!" But my experience of this material is probably shaped, at least in part, by the anti-intellectualism I've seen in the community at large. "You say it is not working in the USA. Apparently the institutions has not yet picked up on that. However, they will. And if it is not working, then they will design something else. Abdu'l-Baha promises us that if we support a decision made in unison, even if it is a wrong one, the result is that truth will be shown." If I recall correctly the passage you are alluding to, I think it is one which has been misused a lot. Wasn't Abdu'l-Baha talking more about Assembly members all getting behind a decision that the majority agreed upon rather than so much the community at large? In other words we are talking about a situation where each Assembly member got their say before the decision in question was made. I think the frustration a lot of us feel is over the fact that we were never part of the consultative process which decided on Ruhi material to begin with. In fact, even our NSA seems to have largely been shut out of the process. It mostly came down from the ITC, which as you know, is not an elected institution. "Maybe it is a good thing that firesides have stopped, or at least for a while. The institute process is all about offering three things to the people outside our Bahai community: childrens classes, study circles and deepenings. And to me I think these are far more in line with what western culture need now than firesides, even though Shoghi Effendi encouraged us to hold firesides." He didn't just encourage it, he said it was the *best* teaching method. And I can't bring myself to introduce most of my friends to the Baha'i Faith through study circles. You mentioned how close its methods are to the Jehovah Witnesses. That is going to be the most striking thing to a visitor. I remember attending a Kingdom Hall meeting as a child and watching them use that method, thinking to myself that JWs weren't allowed to think. I never went back. "The way I see it is that at this moment we are gearing up to build channels by which entry by troops can become a reality. Everybody is busy doing the books now, and that means that temporarily other things are abandoned, but does not necessarily mean it is abandoned forever." Yeah, but we keep talking about 'multiplying' these activies which suggest to me that even when we are finished we just start the whole thing over again, which again, takes up all our resources. "I think in the USA at least two years have been lost because people had to get over their resistence, and because of the clumsiness of the facillitators, who interpreted the method very narrowly and did not give it the wide scope I feel it has." I have to say as a whole I find the facilitators in the US more flexible than the material itself seems to be. "I still would love an intense deepening though with a group of people who not only have deep intellectual knowledge, but who understand spiritucal values and processes very well. People with knowledge on all levels. Is that called irfan in Arabic?" It can be, though irfan tends to be more narrowly focused on mystical matters. I think the kind of deepening you are talking about is what a lot of us yearn for and maybe one of the reasons we find Ruhi so frustrating. Those of us who have been Baha'is for thirty-some years keep looking for something more, and we can't find it in our local communities. And the materials which come from above seem get more and more simplistic over time. But to be fair to Ruhi, its aim is to develop resources, not deepen. They didn't come up with a bunch of quotes they decided all Baha'is should know. They came up with what they wanted us to *do* and then found the quotes to match it. warmest, Susan __________________________________________________ You are subscribed to Baha'i Studies as: mailto:[email protected] 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/[email protected] New Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
