It is, indeed, fitting that the Baha'i Faith should be classified as it is at this site under 'Abrahamic Religions.' The Founder, Baha'u'llah, is related geneologically to Katurah, the third wife of Abraham. I posted an item on the Baha'i Faith here some 18 months ago. This time I will post a prose-poem on the Baha'i Faith to give the informative outline above a personal note. It is not my intention here to tell a lot about this new Faith. Readers can obtain this at a number of sites on the internet(bahai-library.org; bahai.org, etc.)-Ron Price, Tasmania.
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REENCHANTMENT
The great sociologist, some say the greatest, Max Weber, wrote about the reenchantment of the world. The phrase has come to be used in many contexts by sociologists and philosophers, scholars and social scientist specialists in various disciplines. This writer, this poet, sees the reenchantment of the world as having its beginnings with the birth of Shaykh Ahmad in the middle of the 18th century. By that time all the traditional religions were well into the winter of their lives, although there were many cold and sunny, bright and often windy days to come. From my perspective or at least one way of expressing this perspective, this reenchantment has been underway for over 250 years. This reenchantment has been accompanied by a tempest which, in the last 100 years, has seen over one billion people die from various traumatic social events.
Reenchantment has a host of forms: industrialism, capitalism, socialism, liberalism, conservatism, democracy, communism, science and romanticism to choose but nine of its many manifestations. The core and centre of this reenchantment is to be found in the Bahai Faith. The very nature of matter, new models of scientific knowledge, explosions in knowledge, in material goods and in population are all part of this reenchantment. To even begin to write about the transformation that has occurred in the last two and a half centuries when this reenchantment has been taking place would require a book. Our world is being transformed right under our nose and the noses of previous generaitons--did ye but know it!-Ron Price with thanks to Kate Rigby,
Topographies of the Sacred: The Poetics of Place in European Romanticism, University of Virginia Press, London, 2004, p.17.
They all got a slice of the action,
all got a piece of the cake,
as the essential revolution
proceded quietly, obscurely,
largely unnoticed, in the hearts
of millions who dropped out
of a socio-political world they
long ago found meaningless.
Some of the routines have gone on;
some of the laws have been obeyed,
but the roots of faith have been severed,
unbeknownst, seductively, insinuated
by revolutionary, spiritual, forces
that are entirely out of human control.
And here I am in this place in early adulthood
amidst diverse living things and natural forms,
beneath the sky, lights alternations and rhythms
of the seasons, in community worldwide now,
open to the advent of the divine and beckoning
the messengers of the godheads reenchantment.1
1 Kate Rigby,
op.cit., p.84.
Ron Price
January 16th 2006
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These are personal views not authoritative ones vis-a-vis Baha'i.