Transcript:Ruhiyyih Khanum/On marriage and family, 1982

Transcript of: On Marriage and Family, address at the ABS Annual Conference, 1982 by Ruhiyyih Khanum

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[0:00] The chairman in his kind opening remarks said I had been traveling a lot, but what he didn't make quite clear is that some kind of a microbe has been traveling with me. And I had what the British used to call years ago a gippy tummy through the last, I don't know what, twelve countries, was sort of crisis and getting better and more crises and its completely thrown me out of gear. I hate talking sitting down and I haven't had a chance to get myself together because I've left the meetings and gone to bed and then got up again and come back to the meetings so in advance I apologize.

[0:52] I'd like to read three of the Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh. He says... these are his first, the first two of these are the first Hidden Words of the Arabic and the first Hidden Words in the Persian. He said:

The first call of the Beloved is this: O mystic nightingale! Abide not but in the rose-garden of the spirit. O messenger of the Solomon of love! Seek thou no shelter except in the Sheba of the well-beloved, and O immortal phoenix! dwell not save on the mount of faithfulness. Therein is thy habitation, if on the wings of thy soul thou soarest to the realm of the infinite and seekest to attain thy goal.

O SON OF SPIRIT! My first counsel is this: Possess a pure, kindly and radiant heart, that thine may be a sovereignty ancient, imperishable and everlasting.

The candle of thine heart is lighted by the hand of My power, quench it not with the contrary winds of self and passion. The healer of all thine ills is remembrance of Me, forget it not. Make My love thy treasure and cherish it even as thy very sight and life.

[2:49] As I looked over the program for these meetings, I realize that you have the advantage of people speaking on this subject who are both professionals and Baháʼís. In other words, you have Baháʼí, I don't know whether they're psychologists or psychiatrists, but whatever they are they specialize in helping human mind and human psychology to function better. Now, as their views are illumined by the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh and their hearts are oriented to Bahá’u’lláh, I think that we are very, very lucky that at last in the Baháʼí faith we have people of this caliber. And I'm sure that you're going to hear some very wonderful talks during this course. And I hope to God that I'm strong enough to come and hear them myself, that I don't have to spend the rest of the time in Ottawa in bed, which is where I've been so far. But I think that any thoughts that I have to offer are just deeply felt personal opinions based on my observations.

[4:13] You know, the situation in the world today concerning divorce is of tremendous concern to the Universal House of Justice, the Hands of the Cause, the International Teaching Center members and I'm sure, to counselors and National Assembly Members, and traveling teachers, and teachers in the rank and file of the Baháʼís because it is a very, very acute thing. We live in an age that is rapidly disintegrating. And we should not be surprised that this is so because this is prophesized in all the Holy Books of the world and its prophesized in our own teachings, we've come to what in theory you might call the end of the world. As Bahá’u’lláh said, the old world order is being rolled up and a new world order spread out in its stead. Well, if you visualize it as a carpet and you've ever rolled up an old carpet, an awful lot of dust and bugs and lint and God knows what comes out of it in the process of rolling it up. And the holes appear, and so on before you could lay down the new one. So that it's not surprising that Baháʼís living in the present society should be affected by it to some extent, because we are all conditioned by our environment. Man is the most adaptable creature that the world has ever seen. He's able to live in the desert. He's able to live in the Arctic Northlands under extraordinarily difficult conditions. He has been able to develop culture and thought and personality, wonderful characteristics racially, in these different environments. You put a man down in the desert from the north, and he suffers for some time because his blood hasn't thinned out yet to deal with the intense heat. And you take a man from the desert you put him in the north and it takes a little while before his blood actually begins to thicken so that he can withstand better the tremendous cold. So that we are a very, very adaptable creature. Naturally, we are automatically affected by our environment.

[6:43] But I do think that there's not very much excuse for Baháʼís being more conditioned by the world in which they live, than by the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh. Because God gave us minds obviously to use them; surely not just some kind of an intellectual hijinks above the shoulders. And we have these marvelous writings of Bahá’u’lláh and we have the power of Bahá’u’lláh behind His Writings because what Bahá’u’lláh has given us is the Word of God. You know, the Word of God is different from any other word. It's the bread of life. You can read all the Tablets of the Master, the writings of the Guardian, the communications of the House of Justice for 1000 years, it will not have the same effect on you as reading one of those Hidden Words. Because the power of life is in the Word of the Manifestation of God because He comes from God. Now other thoughts, interpretations, reflections like ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and the Guardian and the House of Justice can direct that light, explain it to us, amplify it, enable us to perhaps use it better because we could certainly never do without the writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the Guardian, or the House of Justice. But the fact remains that the power is in the Word of God and the power comes from Bahá’u’lláh. So it seems to me that we Baháʼís should realize that whatever the forces of the world today are, they are absolutely nothing compared to the power inside the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh himself.

[8:31] And I don't think personally, perhaps this isn't the right audience to say it too, but I believe it, I don't think personally it matters how much you know or how much you read. We know that we should study the writings. We know that we should read the writings. But if you can't attain a sort of professorship level in your knowledge of the Baháʼí faith, well don't feel badly about it. Do you think anybody in the world knows the whole Baháʼí teachings? Nobody. Show him to me. No member of the House of Justice, no Hand, no Baháʼí scholar knows all the writings and teachings of Bahá’u’lláh. He may know Piecemeal. He may know more than I do or less than I do, it would be very easy to know more, but the point is that he doesn't have it all in his mind. There was only one person that really knew the Cause of God in one brain, one understanding and that was the Guardian and he died. So if you little fellows, relatively speaking, don't grasp the whole thing, don't feel badly about it. Just go on with what you have in hand. It's extraordinary if you have even a small thing what you can do with that one small instrument. Main thing is to use it and to use the power in the teachings to help you get through life. And I think that whatever explanations you hear here on the subject of marriage, divorce, and children are relative to the power in the Faith that you have to draw from because it is there.

[10:09] As I started to say, the House of Justice is extremely concerned over the increase of divorce amongst the Western Baháʼís. We often talk about it in Haifa and it's a source of great worry to the members of the House, the House as a body, the Baháʼís in Haifa, the ITC, and so on. But in addition to being a source of worries, it's a downright scandal. How on earth can we Baháʼís lift up our heads and talk about marriage to the people of the world with the extraordinary attitude toward sex and marriage and divorce in the world today if we can't be, say 10% better in our western countries than the ordinary population? The Baháʼí rate of divorce I understand, I don't know about Canada, but I know in the United States it's as high as the national rate of divorce. We should hang our heads in shame. What kind of Baháʼís are we? Are we being affected by that world out there? Corrupt to the bone and falling apart. Or are we reflecting the power and light of the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh which we have access to in our personal lives?

[11:36] You know a few years ago I had an interesting experience. There was a young couple that were having a lot of trouble. He drank very heavily and they had three children, but he was a good father, although he was drunk most of the time. And he loved his wife and it had been a love marriage, she loved him but the whole thing had reached the blowing-up point. And then the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh entered their life and she became a Baháʼí and so on. Well, about this period a traveling Baháʼí teacher, who I gathered was in her 40s at least, went and met this couple, saw the situation and wrote me a letter. And in the letter she said that "I don't see why anybody should suffer as much is so and so. I have advised her to get a divorce." Traveling Baháʼí teachers evidently one of their missions now. So I was furious. It took me a good month or so to cool down enough to write a polite letter back. And I wrote back and said that I considered that in view of Bahá’u’lláh's attitude towards divorce, it's permitted in the Baháʼí faith but it is very, very highly frowned upon, that I considered that this advice was absolutely wrong and that nobody had a right to give it to anybody else, least of all in this case. And anyway, the whole thing blew over and the man gave up drinking and became a Baháʼí and the whole family became Baháʼís, and very active and very devoted and united as a family. So when I next saw this young woman, I told her that I had written this letter to that woman. "Oh yes", she said "you know it was very interesting she was in the year of patience but after reading your letter she decided not to get a divorce." That was the traveling teacher.

[13:38] Marriage as I understand it in the Baháʼí faith is something that is the place to express your sex life and a lot of other things in life. Now, I know that sounds very strange, but I have heard Baháʼís actually in meetings get up and say that one of the commandments of Bahá’u’lláh is that you should marry. That's true. But in what context? He says "Marry, O people". And don't forget what He says for, He says Marry, O people, that you may raise up one to mention God in your stead. But he says Marry, O people, but it's not a law. If you, as a human being, with all this tremendous hereditary biological surge of sex, which is the way God created this world for everything, if you want to express that power normally, fruitfully in your life, the place for it is marriage. Marriage and children, the fruit of marriage, the blessing of marriage. But you don't still have to get married. But if you want sex along with a lot of other things, the place that you express it, as I understand, is in the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh.

[15:08] You see it's not a derogatory thing to not be married. And I'm only saying this because I hear such extraordinary statements made by the Baháʼí. So way out, so fanatical, fanatical in this direction, fanatical in that direction. And I don't believe there's any fanaticism in the Baháʼí faith. As Shoghi Effendi said we're orthodox but not fanatical. Anyway it was a beautiful distinction: orthodox but not fanatical. Anyway the point is that if marriage was a commandment of God that everybody on the earth had to marry, then why wasn't the Greatest Holy Leaf, the beloved sister of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the daughter of Bahá’u’lláh, the greatest figure in the Baháʼí dispensation, the greatest feminine figure in the Baháʼí dispensation, why wasn't she married? Very strange you know if this is the command of God why didn't Bahá’u’lláh apply it to his own beloved daughter? Why was Martha Root raised so high? She broke all the laws of God, she didn't marry. And you can go over the list of Baháʼís who have served this Faith with such distinction. And Hands of the Cause Agnes Alexander for instance, she never married. Knights of Bahá’u’lláh, outstanding pioneers, Baháʼí teachers and whatnot, all bachelors if you like, they haven't married. But then did they do something wrong? No. They just lived a different kind of life, which evidently was possible for them. And nobody has any right to condemn them or [?] them on it unless they're very unhappily married, maybe they say, "well, you were lucky, had enough sense not to marry." But the point is you cannot interfere in the life of another person and say, "Marriage is the law of God in this day, why aren't you married?" You see. Or you're married and you don't have children: "you're supposed to have children." We Baháʼís have a passion for telling each other what to do. Absolute passion. And I think that the more we mind our own business, the better off we're going to be and the better off the Cause is going to be.

[17:20] But we have to see society in the round. The place for sex is in a normal marital relationship in which, if you want to and God blesses you, you have children. I don't think you're going to be shot at dawn if you don't have any. But I think that obviously the blessing of marriage as it says in the teachings is children, and the purpose of children as Bahá’u’lláh clearly says is to bring them up to mention God, to commemorate their creator. Otherwise, he doesn't say anything. He doesn't say, "Have the dear little things because you should reproduce like guinea pigs." He said, "Raise them up to worship God in your stead." But that's quite a different orientation on the subject of marriage.

[18:10] If I had any advice to give young people when they are going to get married, I would say that perhaps the first thing to remember, and it's taken me 70 years to get this clear in my own mind. You see you have to remember that like all the members of the human race, once I was young too. And once I wasn't married. And once I was very headstrong, almost a suffragette, and didn't see why, I can remember when this law percolated down in the western hemisphere because we didn't have any access to the teachings the way you have now, you see. But suddenly I found out when I was in my late teens that if I wanted to get married, which I didn't at that point, but if I wanted to get married, I had to have the consent of my parents and I was furious. I was fit to be tied. And it was one of the great tests of my life. What's it got to do with you? You're not getting married. You already got married. But when I get married, that's my personal business. What have you got to do with it? You see. And I felt this very, very strongly. But like a lot of our battles as a Baháʼís, I came to a bump, so to speak, in the teachings which I didn't understand particularly and didn't like and I had to make up my mind. Am I going to go off the road or am I going to go over the bump and continue? So I decided, of course, that I loved the Faith and Bahá’u’lláh enough and believed in Him enough, you see there's where faith comes into it, to say, "well, if He said so, He must have known what He was talking about, it must be right". And so mentally I accepted this law.

[20:00] Now, that was what, a whole about 50 years ago, half a century ago. And every single year of my life I see how great this law of Bahá’u’lláh is, and it means more to me then it ever meant before. It is an instrument designed to protect marriage. It's not understood yet at all. I think many Baháʼís consider it an inconvenient formality. They can't understand why the devil, the way I couldn't either once, they had to get their parents consent. They can't understand, for instance, why they should get the consent of their natural parents instead of, say, their adoptive parents who were in every sense of the word the innermost heart of their hearts. They brought them up. They love them. They're their mother and their father. But still, they don't have to get their consent. They have to get the consent of their natural parents, and so on. So these things often arouse a great deal of speculation in the minds of young people. But one of the things in connection with this law that we have to remember is law is aimed at the greatest good for the greatest number. If there any lawyers in this room, I think they'll back me up. There's a legal phrase. I wish I'd written it down when I heard it, which is even better phrase than that. But obviously this is the meaning of the law. Law is designed for the greatest good of the greatest number. The laws of Bahá’u’lláh are not just for us in this room, not for the people living in the dominion of Canada. They are for the human race. They are for the people living in the villages, which I think we consider, is the sort of an inconvenient appendage to the human race. They are for the illiterate. They are for the poor. They are for everybody on the planet and their for the greatest good of the greatest number.

[22:06] Naturally around the fringe, like all laws, there are always fringe cases that work hardship. But which would you prefer? Would you prefer to have what seems to you a hardship in your personal life, or are you more interested in humanity? You see, in theory, because you're a Baháʼí fundamentally or a do-gooder, you're a humanitarian, so you really believe that this is going to do good to the human race. It's why you're a Baháʼí. I think that that's true of all of us. We have accepted it because we think it is the remedy that is good for the whole planet, for the human race, for the future of mankind. Then aren't you willing, in some strange circumstance of your personal life, to be sacrificed to the law. If the law is good for the whole world. Well, I am. And I think this is one of the attitudes that the young Baháʼís have to learn. They have to learn to accept certain laws of Bahá’u’lláh even when it pinches them so to speak, because the law is for the human race, not just for me or for you, but for the whole of humanity.

[23:24] I have so often heard cases where parents gave their consent to marriage because they were afraid that the children would disobey, particularly amongst the Persians. And they have suffered greatly from it and the children have been unhappily married and the parents sincerely thought, even in the very beginning, that the marriage was unsuitable, that it would not turn out well. But they didn't dare say anything to the young people for fear they would go ahead, marry, disobey the Bahá’í law and forfeit their voting rights, and then get into a whole mess and a long process of straightening the whole thing out. Well, if we educated the Baháʼís properly in an understanding of what this great protective law of Bahá’u’lláh means, then I don't think we'd have these inconveniences and these calamities that come upon families. That marriage is to create harmony in the world. Purpose of marriage: create harmony in the world, harmony amongst families. And I'm sure all of us know cases of a violent and bitter disruption in families because the child has gone ahead and married somebody that the parent couldn't possibly approve of. They were violently, violently against it.

[24:48] I have had in my experience, which of course covers a long time and a wide range, I've had so many examples of how non-Baháʼí parents capitulate to the Baháʼís, to their Baháʼí children in this respect of obtaining their consent. I remember a young man who married a very beautiful black girl. And when they came to Haifa's pilgrims, I said, "How did you get your parent's consent? Your parents Baháʼís?" He said, "Oh, no, they were very much against it." Well I said, "What did you do?" Well, he said, "I took her home for the weekend and they couldn't very well throw her out on the street so they had to be polite and she spent the weekend as our guest and when they saw what a beautiful character she was, what a wonderful woman, they were won over and they gave their consent. It's been a very, very happy marriage." And this often happens that the parent will hold out for a long period and often in the end capitulate.

[25:58] One of the most extraordinary things is the parents that won't give their consent because they don't think that the child should ask for it. That happens too you know, nowadays. The parents are very emancipated. So when the child goes and says, "Please, can I get married to so and so? I can't get married without your consent because I'm a Baháʼí." They say, "Nonsense, that's all poppycock. I'm not getting married. You're getting married. Do as you please. I won't have anything to do with it." You see. Then the child is just as much in difficulty as if the parents are against it and won't give consent.

[26:34] But we have to orient ourselves to these great laws of Bahá’u’lláh. We have to realize that to be Baháʼí isn't just a question of [?] universal peace and an international court of justice and an international language and you know, abolition of war and federated states of the world, all these things that are no effort on our part because we can't personally bring about any of those things. Society, the governments of the world have to bring about these big things. We can't. But, when I'm asked to apply a law of Bahá’u’lláh on my personal desires in life, that is the real pinch. And I think it's this kind of Baháʼí that we should learn to be: a Baháʼí that is willing to look at the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh and look at the laws of Bahá’u’lláh and say, because they come from God, they are just, they are merciful, they are for the good of the human race and I'm going to bow my head and accept it whether I like it or whether I don't. And I think when we have that attitude towards marriage, perhaps many young people will be a little happier in their marriages.

[27:50] When I am occasionally present at weddings, I always give the young people one piece of advice. Don't start fighting. Don't begin to assert yourself. You see, there is a very belligerent attitude on the part of women today. I remember once years ago a journalist asking me what I thought about women's lib. I think this was 1970? I said, "What's that?" I've been traveling in jungles and things. I hadn't seen any newspapers. I didn't even know what women's lib was. I said, "What's that?" "Oh," he said, "it's this and that." He explained the women's liberation movement. I said, "I don't approve of it. But if you want to start a men's lib society in the United States, I would be glad to join it." And he was delighted. It came out in two-inch headlines. But although women should have equal opportunity and equal rights and social justice with men, I don't believe in any attitude on the part of either men or women that leads to disputation and assertion of rights at the expense of harmony and so on. And I think that this is often what happens in marriage. The woman or the man, conditioned by the psychology of the society in which we're living nowadays, enters it with a me-first attitude. You know, people have called this the me-first period of this century. And this is really what's one of the fundamental things that's wrong with the whole century is that it's me-first. Me-first to a degree that even affects mothers in relationship to children.

[29:48] I heard about a case in California, I was staying with very old friends and I asked them about their children and they said the eldest son had been married and had three children. And one fine day, with a lot of little children, the wife just ups and says, "I have to express myself. I have been denied my personal expression in life, and I am going to find myself and express myself." And off she goes and walks out, leaves the husband, leaves the three children. Well, I don't know where it comes from, intense selfishness, mental aberration, me-first, you characterize it. The fact remains that this is the sort of thing that we are increasingly seeing in society and hearing in society. And if you can show me anywhere in the teachings of any prophet, I don't care whether it's Buddha, or Moses or Mohammed or Bahá’u’lláh or Jesus Christ or anybody where they tell you that me-first is the principle of life, I would like to see it because I don't think anybody ever taught the human race anything as pernicious and opposite to spiritual doctrines is that.

[31:03] And yet it's this attitude that I think, to a great extent, is damaging to marriage in the society in which we live here, say, in North American and Europe. It's me-first. I have my rights. I have to express myself. Bahá’u’lláh says, "Forget thyself." ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, my mother used to say, she had heard the Master say the secret of self-mastery is self-forgetfulness. And I think that the psychologists in this room will bear me out. A lot of psychological therapy is based on getting the person to stop thinking about themselves and dwelling on their own personality and problems and get their mind focused on something outside themselves. This is the whole teaching of Bahá’u’lláh: serve humanity, serve others. Do something for the human race, for your partners in life, for the members of the community in which you live, whatever it is, it's all an outgoing thing. We're extroverts in the Baháʼí faith, not introverts, you see.

[32:13] Anyway, this is a very, very dangerous thing. And when young people marry they often have been conditioned, I think, in their minds to the idea that, well, "He's not going to put me down. It's going to be on an equal basis." You see. Which usually in the mind of the person that has that idea means 90% me and 10% the other person. And they start asserting themselves and of course they have squabbles. I'd like to know any human being that's been married that didn't have a fight with their partner some period in life. Now, please don't think that I'm referring to my own marriage. Shoghi Effendi was the Guardian of the Baháʼí faith, and I never, never put him in the pigeonhole of a husband. So just get that idea away, that doesn't even come into the discussion. But I think that most people who marry have this tendency to have fights. Or beginning, middle, end of marriage, it doesn't matter. It's human to have a fight every now and then. But the point is not to cultivate the fight and above all, don't cultivate the harsh words because they shoot arrows. All of us are guilty of shooting arrows into the hearts of other people, whether it's the husband or wife or friend or whatever it may be, often our poor parents, that wound very, very deeply, and we can't get the arrow back. It's gone and it goes into the heart of the other person. And with luck it may heal but sometimes it never does, so that one has to really guard one's tongue in marriage and guard against fighting.

[34:00] The other day Violette and I were in a plane as usual and we got in conversation in the waiting room with a young couple going on their honeymoon. And he wanted to talk and she was reading, I don't know, magazine or something. And she said, "Shut up. Don't you see I'm reading?" Well, that's a good beginning for a honeymoon. You see, in the beginning you can kiss and make up. And the force of sex and attraction is so strong, usually, in the beginning of marriage that it will smooth over for the first six months or the first two years or whatever it is, it's liable to smooth over the violent seams that sometimes take place between young people. But then gradually it no longer smooth them over because it becomes a habit, becomes a normal expression in life, and so on. And it doesn't have that extraordinary capacity to reunite the couple that it has in the beginning of marriage. Well, they should think about these things. They should guard their tongues. Another thing, I think, in marriage is that don't sleep on a quarrel. This was something that I always thought was so wonderful in my own mother, who was really a very marvelous Baháʼí teacher, and a very marvelous person. And we had our squabbles. I fought with my father because I was very like him and he didn't know how to handle me psychologically the way my mother did. So we would have, you know, too little cocks. And mother would never, never allow us to go to bed with any inharmony in the house. There had to be the goodnight kiss and very often, the goodnight prayer together. We had trouble in our family, we open the book of prayers and had a prayer you see. Well these are very small things, but they help a great deal in families. They helped to keep us together.

[36:02] And I think that if the Baháʼís would realize that marriage is not only give and take, but surely the one who gives more is not cursed by God for giving more to produce harmony in the home and to maintain the marriage. Isn't this what is pleasing in the sight of God? Does God want somebody to come out with a victor? Does He want some woman to go out and say, "I won that, once and for all. I'm getting a divorce."? Or the man the same thing? Is this what God wants? Is this what He thinks is pleasing? Is this the way to keep the human race going in the bonds of matrimony? So that it seems to me that a great deal of the trouble in marriages is immaturity of judgment, hastily running into something that you're not sure whether it's a good thing or not. Perhaps your parents, they're very unhappy about it or you go against the wishes of your parents and then you get into it and you reflect all the modern attitudes of society. I personally, I just don't get it. I wasn't brought up that way. I haven't seen it in my own past. I haven't seen it in the West that I used to live in here in Canada, in North America. I haven't seen it in the East that I have lived in for 45 years, and I don't like it, and I don't think it's necessary, think it's the wrong attitude. And I think that people should evaluate their attitudes properly. As I say, this pernicious me-first attitude is going a long way to ruining everything at the end of the 20th century. You see it in every single field, marriage, plus the whole of society.

[37:58] Then I think that there is another force at work in the world today, I visualize it as a centripetal force. There are two forces, really. One of them is centrifugal, I don't know whether any of this generation ever read Edgar Allan Poe, but he wrote a very marvelous essay or short story called "[A Descent into] the Maelström". And as you remember, it was this vast, vast whirlpool in the middle of the ocean somewhere where if a ship came even hundreds of miles away in contact with this force of the whirlpool, there was no hope for it. It went down, you see? Well, there's a great deal in our society in the world today that is sucking us under, and that is the intense materialism of the society in which we live. As Shoghi Effendi said, "a cancerous materialism". But we won't go into that, we'll going to the other force. The opposite of that is the centripetal force, which is just throwing people out from their center. And I think that this is one of the strongest forces in everything to do with society in the West, and I mean typical Western society: Europe, North America, and the big cities of the world, which are all imitating it. This is the force of disintegration, the force of getting away from a center, getting away from a nucleus. And I think this is what has such a tragic effect in the home and a very tragic effect on the children. I know I have watched the society of the West as much as I could when I'm in it, which is every now and then. And I disapprove of it to the very bottom of my spine, I don't know what part of my anatomy to take as an example, but I disapprove of it wholeheartedly in other words, everything, everything disapproves of the present society.

[40:09] I think that one of the things that is so wrong is that there is no cohesion in the home. A home is no longer a home. I exonerate people where the wife has to work because I think that when it's actually necessary, for various reasons, for a husband and a wife both to have full time jobs and then you have children, there's precious little time to create a family life. And everything in the present society detracts from family life. The number of things that children belong to in this part of the world stuns me, and I cannot understand it. They have to go swimming, and skating, and baseball, and football, and the Girl Scouts, and Boy Scouts, and this club, and that club, and this school activity, and that school activity, 'til it's a shuttle service of getting these darlings to wherever it is they think they ought to be going and is usually the fault of the parents because they look at the other children instead of thinking as Baháʼís. What would be a good atmosphere to bring my child up in? They get on this treadmill of our present society and along go the Baháʼís, like mad and their children with them. Then they're so astonished that the marriage goes to pieces, that the children aren't the least interested in the Baháʼí faith, that they make a face if they have to go to the feast or the meeting. Because they could be going to the Girl Scouts or they could be doing this, or they could be roller skating, or swimming, or something. Why the devil should they be going to that Baháʼí thing, you see? Even if it's only once every 19 days. Well if you bring your children up that way don't be surprised if they don't become Baháʼís. Don't be surprised if you start fighting in your family because you're both nervous wrecks and you get a divorce. And then that's even nicer for the children.

[42:18] I remember a few years ago a little boy, a very dear little boy who at least as a Bahá’í, seems to have survived the cataclysms of his life. His father and mother divorced, and then each remarried. And then the father had to hyphenate his name with the women's lib mother that he'd married. So he looked at me very shyly and said, "You know, sometimes a little complicated", he was ten I think, "because I find I have three names. You see. My name is Smith, but Daddy's names now is Smith-Jones. And Mother is Johnson." Well, that's a lot for ten years old. And of course the first family goes off in smoke and each partner marries somebody else that has a batch of kids. And then these children sort of run a kind of a shuttle service around this environment. But they're so surprised if the children have hang-ups, if they're psychologically unsound, if they don't become Baháʼís, if they're insecure—a word that I hate but is probably very descriptive—and why wouldn't they be? I would be, too. I think children can stand an extraordinary amount of trouble in life. You see on one side we're always talking about the psychological damage, the trauma. They can't stand it. Well, he got dropped on his head. Somebody shrieked at him when he was born or something or other, and consequently sort of has carte blanche to go off the rails. But I don't think that's true. I think that's all a lot of nonsense.

[44:06] You know, I have to go by my own experience of life. I don't live my life out of somebody else's mind, somebody else's life or somebody else's books. I live it out of my own. I've had a life so full of sorrow than probably all of you put together in this room... I can remember agonizing scenes in my life. And then oh let's go about what happened to me after I had the honor of being married to the Guardian of the Baháʼí faith with all the troubles in his life. When the whole house shook because of Covenant-breaking and so on. And I was terrified for my soul and terrified for everything. And his sufferings became my sufferings because I loved him and hated to see him suffering like this, so I burned two in the same fire. And then I found him dead in the morning. And you know what's happened since then as far as work and service and what not is concerned. So nobody can talk to me about shocks and suffering because I've had more, as I say, than I think most people in this room all put together. But frankly, I don't see that it's done me all that much harm. I can still outrun any of you. I still, I still travel all over the world and try to the best of my ability to help the Baháʼís and help the Faith. And I don't think that you find me a very sad, or mopey, or introverted personality. So nevermind all of these things which we all go through in life, which are bad and hard for us, they're part of life. It's what you offset it with.

[45:50] I believe that it's the quality of what you give children that is more important than the quantity. And I believe that from my own life. I always said that to be five minutes with my mother when she was dying was a lot more interesting and fruitful than hours with anybody else. For some reason or other what she had in her of faith and courage and devotion and radiance, was so marvelous that anytime I was with her and anything I got from her under any circumstances, and I said they were often agonizing circumstances, were so much better than anything I could have gotten from other people. So it's the quality. I never saw my father. I hear people making all this fuss about "Ah, you know, you don't pay any attention to the children." He comes home, I have to do it all. And then he comes back from the office and he doesn't spend five minutes with the children and he goes and works over the weekend, and so on. Well, I think it'd be nice if the family, as Baháʼís, had prayers together and time together for their children and created a family atmosphere. I think there ought to be maybe that much time inside of a Baháʼí home. But I can't see the reason that the father should be exactly like the mother. It's not his function, it's not the same functions at all in the world: a father and a mother. And if the father is a wonderful person and a good Baháʼí, again, it will be the quality of what he gives to his children rather than the quantity of what he gives to his children.

[47:32] My father, first of all, he was an artist and an architect. And you know that Shoghi Effendi made him a Hand of the Baháʼí faith and he called him a saint. So beginning with that premise, we'll go back to my father. Daddy was extremely attached to art and architecture, and he always had this... he was chairman of the local Baháʼí assembly for years, but that was about it. And he always had this classic statement, he said, "I'm not a spiritual man." And he said, "I never enter church unless I'm the architect of it. Never been to church in my life unless I was designing it." Well, he had the old-fashioned Scottish attitude towards religion: that religion was something you did on Sunday, and preaching and formality, and he grew up with that and hated it so he never got any other concept of religion through his mind. But as I said, the Guardian thought that he was one of the most spiritual man he'd ever known, he said he was a saint. Different point of view, but the point is that all my childhood, mother said daddy never looked at me from the time I was born until I could draw. And when I got so that I actually was beginning to draw things, then he got very interested because of course that interested him, you see. She said he never said anything about my education, that when she wanted to consult him about it. He said, "Whatever you decide, dear", put his hat on, went to the office. And that was it. Now I'm not saying that that was a model. I'm not holding this up as a model of fatherhood. All I'm saying is that it neither disrupted my mother's and father's marriage nor seems to have done me any harm.

[49:23] All my childhood I remember my father and the great, you might say, productive years of his profession, working all day and coming back at night, had lunch downtown like most Canadians, and coming back at night at seven o'clock and having dinner and almost invariably going into his library and either to his books or his magazines on art and furniture and whatnot or working on a competition architecturally. And this was my whole recollection of my father's, my life at home with my father. It didn't do me any harm. I think my father was a marvelous man. I learned so much from him. He opened for me a whole world of art. He gave me something that has been such a blessing in my life. He gave me his eyes to see beauty. He taught me to appreciate it. In other words, everything he had in one field, he was able to communicate to me. And strangely enough, it was this gift of my father, his specialization if you like, his being steeped in his profession and his whole world of art and thought that enabled him, in the end to build the Shrine of the Báb and to bring great happiness to the heart of the Guardian of the Baháʼí Faith who really needed some happiness at that point, you see.

[50:53] So what I'm trying to get at is it's the quality of life. It's not the quantity. But you ought to be sure that the quality is there, that these wonderful spirituals values that exist for all of us, and particularly the power of the teachings, are able to come into our daily life in the home. This is more important than anything else. I think that one of the sad things to me, I don't know whether it couldn't be helped or not, but there's a lot of the gracefulness of life disappearing in the West. And perhaps everybody has to go around in jeans, I sometimes think if I ever see another pair of blue jean pants I'll shriek, but maybe we have to put up with it anyway. I won't have to put up with it at the most more than another 10 years or so... But the point is that perhaps this is all right. Perhaps nobody has to have what the French call "tenir", any kind of holding yourself together looking like a nice, polished, well dressed, soigné human being. I don't know. But it does seem to me that there's a lot of gracefulness in life that goes with a spiritual understanding and that this also is being continually lost in our society. And I don't know why there shouldn't be a little bit more of that introduced into Baháʼí homes if they make an effort.

[52:29] So many homes nowadays seem to be a question of opening the refrigerator door on the installment plan. And then they, you know, everybody has a sandwich or whatever there is, usually ice cream. And there's no sit-down meal of the family quietly together. They don't see each other together. Why do you expect your marriage to live if you haven't got even this much family life inside the doors of your own house? Why should it? Are you creating a family? Have you got an environment that belongs to yourself? Or is it all centripetal? Outside, outside, outside. And along with everything else, of course, added unto us has come television, which is probably one of the most terrible things that ever happened to the human race, so far. Eventually of course it may be a very marvelous instrument, but the amount of time that children waste. Who was it, this Nat Rutstein wrote a book, "Go Look at TV" which is unfortunately out of print, it's a marvelous book. And he figured out based on statistics in the United States that the average American, this was published a number of years ago, saw television seven hours a day. What do you think is going to develop any spirituality in a culture that they have their nose glued to this perfectly ridiculous things, mostly crime and sex and ads seven hours a day? How can this cultivate any family atmosphere? Some families actually have the courage and the guts, so to speak, to say "No, we're only going to have certain programs and we're only going to see them together." Or the children are allowed to see certain programs and that's it. And the rest of the time they don't. But other families they have actually, the TV is a method by which the selfishness of the mother and perhaps the selfishness of the parents can be manifested because they shunt the child off onto the television screen. "Oh, go look at the TV, that's fine." And then she's free to do whatever she likes, usually a half or three-quarter of an hour conversation on the telephone with somebody she knows. And this is the way the children are again decentralized from any force that might make the child feel that it has a home.

[55:04] I think that we forget that one of the great commandments, if you like, it's just as much of a commandment as far as I'm concerned as "Marry, O people", is to be polite. And I don't think that there's much courtesy left in the world. And yet Baháʼí parents are supposed to be courteous to each other, courteous at the Baháʼí feast, courteous at the Baháʼí meetings, courteous on buses to other human beings, and above all inculcate courtesy inside the home. If you don't teach your children manners, you don't teach them consideration for other people. If you don't help the child to have good standards, whatever the nature of those standards are, then why are you surprised and disappointed at the results that you get. You're only getting, after all, what you produce yourself. It's come back to you perfectly logically through your own failure. And I think that these to me are the things that people in this kind of a society should consider. You see our society, and I'm sure it's based on psychology, I mean the psychology of this period in history. Our society is of such a nature that people don't really want to think because they can't stand it. If they thought about the world in which they live economically, politically, socially and so on, they couldn't probably stand it. So everything is an escape mechanism. But we Baháʼís should pull ourselves back and say well I'm not like those people because I've got the Word of God. I have something else to hang onto. So why do I have to be like them? Let me try and offset this tremendous centripetal force throwing people away from the inner center, throwing the family out from its family center and so on by something else.

[57:07] And I think that one of the greatest instruments of doing this is prayer. I think that prayer is obviously a very powerful thing and a very wonderful thing, but I think that if we don't teach the children to pray, if we don't have prayers with the children, we are criminally neglecting our children. I remember a family that we were visiting on one of our trips. And they had a little boy about, I think he was around five or six. And I said to the parents, "Does he say a prayer at night?" And they said, "Well, we tried to get him to say a prayer at night, but he doesn't like it. So we don't want him to turn against the Faith. So we don't ask him to say a prayer." Well I said, "You're absolutely wrong. There's something the matter with you. You should teach that child to pray, you should teach that Baháʼí child prayers. Let him learn them and memorize them and see that he says them every night because otherwise you're failing in your obligation as parents." They're both Baháʼís and very good Baháʼís. So the father took that to heart, and the next day he said, "You know, I tried that on him last night and he liked it." Boy did you ever hear of anything so nonsensical that a five year old child is telling the father not to teach him any Baháʼí prayers? And the father is listening to the child and has absolutely no sense of discipline or parenthood or any other darn thing?

[58:42] I mean, you study animals. If you want to know how to teach children, you study animals. I know a lot about animals, and I've had lots and lots of pets all my life. You watch a cat. You watch a dog. You watch wild animals. Fine. The mother cat purrs, and she nurses the babies. And she licks them at [?]. And then if they don't obey her, out come the claws and the kitten gets a box that teaches it, "Don't you do that again." And if it does it again, out comes mama's claws and the kitten gets another terrific box. Foxes do it out in the wilderness, teaching their cubs otherwise the cubs wouldn't survive in the world that they're going to go out of their nest or whatever it is from their lair. The same thing is true of our children. If we don't train our children, we don't insist that our children know the faith of Bahá’u’lláh the way they should and take hold of the power of prayer, why should we be surprised if the children have no anchors in life, no point of orientation, no spirituals character? And whose fault is it, theirs or ours?

[1:00:00] Children I think are angels and very few children, I'm sure everybody would agree, are evil. Evilness is not a characteristic that is usually born in men. There are some people that, perhaps because of hereditary factors, are really evil, but there's such an infinitesimal proportion. Whereas children are really little angels. They're born in the world, they're beautiful. They're like white snow that falls down from heaven. Then what dirties them and what ruins them? We do. Now, they're also little devils because they have that animal characteristic of trying to get away with as much as they can. Therefore they have to be trained as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said, you have to train the children. You have to prune the trees. It says in the Bible as the twig is bent the bow will grow. It's the same old thing. You can't get it. And we're always so passionately interested in agriculture. Oh my, you know. We graft things and we train fruit trees and we read all about it in the Reader's Digest or some magazine, and we talk about it, but we don't do it with the children. Why? They need it even more than the trees, you see. But we don't do it because of a sort of an addled approach to what you can and cannot and should and should not do with children. I'm sure the psychologists are going to give talks, will elaborate on this point very much better than I can.

[1:01:31] I have another subject that I'd like to touch upon, and that is this. That first of all, to get back to prayer before I change the subject. When I was a child I was brought up that Alláh-u-Abhá was a prayer. And I used to say it. I had a rosary and I used to say it 95 times, which Bahá’u’lláh has given to us as a prayer. It's not obligatory but we may do it, you see. And it was a very special thing. This word Alláh-u-Abhá or alternatively, Yá Bahá’u’l-Abhá have really carried me across Africa, most terrible difficulties with the automobile and long, long treks in the wilderness and so on. They've carried me through illness. And they've carried me through public lectures that my mind was simply blank and it didn't know what on earth to say and so on. Well, at least we should teach this to the children. I used to tell the Africans in the villages. I said, look, teach that child to say Alláh-u-Abhá. In fact, Violette and I would teach the children on the spot Alláh-u-Abhá, say it. And two minutes later they were all saying Alláh-u-Abhá beautifully. Now I said, "If you're in danger, you go out there in the wilderness, you see a snake, you fall and hurt yourself. You're frightened. You're going to have an exam in school. You say inside yourself. Alláh-u-Abhá, Alláh-u-Abhá, Alláh-u-Abhá as many times as you want to. And you will find that this is your protection, that this brings assistance to you. This helps you in your exams and so on." We don't give these things, these precious, precious, extremely simple things to the children, but we give them plenty of physical presents. I was horrified.

[1:03:25] A few years ago one of your Canadian Baháʼís working at the World Center came back and we were talking, I said what it was like in Canada? Well, she'd had a good time. She'd seen her grandchildren and everything. But she said, "Really, you know this business of this Barbie doll-" which I've never heard of before. She said, "You know how much my daughter spent the last year on buying things to do with that doll? $2,000!" I said, "What?!" She said, "Yes. $2,000." I said, "You must be joking." "No", she said, "I am serious." She spent $2,000 because the little girl sees it on the TV. All of her friends have the latest Barbie doll, petticoat, and I don't know what, and it all costs money. And all in all, the mother had spent about $2,000 for that one doll that this child had. I remember some time ago I went to a birthday party of my little cousin and about four or five neighbors came in Bermuda. And everybody brought a present. So there was one very big, handsome box of some kind of a special toy like that, and I notice that he hadn't even opened it. He didn't open it at the party, and by the next morning he hadn't even unwrapped it, opened it. I said, "Aren't you going to look at that?" Well, he said, "I have a lot of others like it." Is that the way to bring children up? It's criminal. I'm not blaming the Baháʼís because I don't know what I would do in this society.

[1:05:00] I lived five months, you know, editing this film on the pilgrimage in Toronto and of course I went, I had a car because I couldn't get to work and back without it, and we went to the supermarket and we bought things and cooked and so on. So you see all of these parents with the little child stuck in the supermarket basket. Well, it's bad enough for adults, but it's not a very good education for children. But I don't know what the mother would do with the child if she didn't take it with her to the supermarket. But that's not healthy because just like the mother, the child passes down these aisles. It's one of the biggest gimmicks that's ever been invented by the human race. You pay as you go out, you see. You don't know what anything costs. You never bother to look and you just pick it up. I'll have this. I'll have that. And the child's little hand is always out there to grab something. And I've heard mothers arguing with the child, "No, I am not going to buy you another candy. You had a candy in the last shop, and that was the last one you're going to have now. You can't have another." Whereupon the child opens its mouth wide and raises H.E.L.L. in the supermarket. Well, it's not a very good way of bringing up children. But what the answer to that is, I wouldn't know because it's a very complicated society. Probably the best answer is pioneer. [Laughter]

[1:06:25] You know this is a child-oriented society. Now I don't think any of you were aware of it, but I am because I am an observer. My understanding is that there is a human race that goes through different periods. It's a child. It's an adolescent. It's an adult. It's middle aged. It's old and then it dies. And that's the human race. And it's all meant to be together. And it's all meant to be a very natural process, something we experience together. Again, get back to the family, get back to the bigger family, which is something nonexistent almost in our society but thank God all through Central American and the islands they know what the larger family is. They have a sense of family which is a precious thing and a great safeguard and wonderful for the children. Anyway, whatever it is. But these poor children in our society today are worshipped. I've never seen anything like it. We have developed into child worshippers, not so much youth worshippers. We're afraid of youth with good grounds. But we worship children. And because of this worship of children, the child is blown up way out of proportion. Your-slightest-wish-is-my-command sort of attitude. Whatever it's due to, I don't know. I think probably psychologically it is due to, I would say, but let the bigwigs the brain shrinkers here get busy on it. I think it is due to the fear of war, because annihilation is hanging over the planet. Whether people are ignorant and don't read the right things or hear, you know, get up into that intellectual level where they realize how great the danger is or not. Psychologically, the danger of annihilation is hanging over all of us. Well, always in history when there's a war the reaction is more babies, even more boy babies in the past. And this creates this attitude you see, of worship of children, people having a lot of children and people worshipping children. It's a giant psychological thing due to perhaps the peril in which humanity stands today. I don't know. I'm just, the way I explain it. But whatever it is, it means that we have child worship, and I don't think that's good for children. I think a child is just a member of the family, that's all. And he has his place that he has to fit into, just the way every other member of the family must have their place that they have to fit into. You can do almost anything with children. As I said, they're so seldom evil. They're good. They're wonderful and you can do almost anything with them. And they have their place in society and in the home, they can play a wonderful part.

[1:09:21] I remember two examples of Baháʼí children. I was having dinner with Mildred Mottahedeh who many of you know and who has, you know, produces some of the most beautiful china in the world. That's her profession. She designs it and sells it. And she had very, very beautiful dinner service on her table the night that we were dining there. And one of the Baháʼís was invited and had a five year old child. So this five year old child picked up a absolutely priceless plate and headed for the kitchen. And I said, "I think it would be better if you didn't take that plate. You better let one of the older people take it." And her father turned on me in a flash and said, "She has to learn how to do these things, Rúhíyyih Khánum!" And I said, "Yes, but she doesn't necessarily have to learn on Mildred's priceless china, supposing she breaks it." You see, the worship of the child. He didn't think of the hostess. Damn the hostess. Damn the china. Damn everything. The child has to learn that it's a good thing to take something out. Granted, I think that's fine. I think that's the way to teach the children to serve in the home. But you ought to have enough sense to know when your guest in a person's house that has marvelous china you don't necessarily experiment with your five year old child on her China. You see, sense of proportion. So that's one way of bringing up children, one aspect.

[1:10:48] Now, the other day we were down in La Ceiba in Honduras and there a Baháʼí couple, to my great chagrin, they have divorced, but I don't know, I think, sometimes divorce is necessary and is justified. That's why Bahá’u’lláh permitted it. And for reasons of their own, because it just was too explosive and didn't work they divorced. But they're both very attached to this extremely beautiful, intelligent Baháʼí child. And so they both live in the same town so that the child won't have a sense that it's lost one-half of its family. And this little girl came out, her mother went on to make arrangements for our meetings in a very distant place. She had to go ahead, was there a week, and we were only going to fly up special planes for two or three days. Anyway, the mother was away. So the little girl had to be with the father, even although it meant coming back late at night from a meeting in the village because there was no other thing to do with her. And she came to this meeting and one of the other nights we had been teaching the people there, Baháʼí villagers, a new Baháʼí song. So at the end of this meeting, in a big shed like that in semi-darkness, this little thing comes up and starts talking to Violette and me in Spanish. And I'd called to the father and I said, "What is she saying?" Well, she says, "Why don't you teach them that song that you taught in the other village the other night?" Five years old. She liked that song. She thought the other villagers had enjoyed it. She was five. She said, "Why don't you teach it to these villagers?" She was right. Then at the end of the [?], she picks up the mic like this and in a very clear voice, five years old, recites with great reverence a Baháʼí prayer that closes the meeting.

[1:12:44] Well you see, you can do anything with children. The fault is ours, not the fault of the children. You know, I'm sure all the Baháʼís in this room. Have I got to stop now at 11 o'clock? Well, what time is it? It's half-past ten. The fault is nothing to do with the children. But I think that we have to realize that nowadays, it has changed thank God. And this concept that you become a Baháʼí at 15, which doesn't exist anywhere in the religion of Bahá’u’lláh and was a misconception from the very beginning and that your National Assembly knows it, your National Teaching Committee knows it, and the Baháʼí teachers and the Counselors and the Board members and everybody knows it and I'm not gonna waste time on it here. But this thing was a very pernicious weed. It was a mistake, it got into the minds of the Baháʼís and we spent a good 30 years trying to get the weed out. Because weeds are very hardy as you know. So you have a Baháʼí child and you bring the child up to believe in Bahá’u’lláh. And that is your moral obligation and privilege according to Bahá’u’lláh himself. Now, if you have a non-Baháʼí partner, then you cannot boss him or her around and say, "No, I'm going to have the child brought up a Baháʼí" because of the religion of Bahá’u’lláh is not supposed to ever be a bone of contention. It's only a bone of contention when in Persia, they say deny it and we say we won't so were killed. But otherwise we don't make this a bone of contention. That's not the purpose of the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh. So you have to come to an amicable, peaceful arrangement inside the home with your non-Baháʼí partner. But if you have a Baháʼí partner, then you must bring your child up to be a Baháʼí. And I don't think that under any circumstances, a child should ever be made aware, now this is my personal opinion and I have been saying it everywhere, and I'm going to say it here. And I don't think anybody has ever told me I can't say it. I don't think any child should ever be told that at 15 it has to make a choice to be a Baháʼí. Because it's not in the Baháʼí teachings. Nor do I think that we should ever have the equivalent of communion or bar mitzvah for a 15-year-old child. That's not the Baháʼí teachings either. We haven't got these things in the Faith.

[1:15:14] Now, you can see by this latest development in the messages of the House of Justice for the first time, praise be to God, we have been asked to keep a Baháʼí census, which means that the child at birth is registered as a Baháʼí. And that's it. Now, when the child is 15 what happens according to the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh? It's an adult because He says, you could marry when you're 15. Maybe the state will choose to say marriage, is at 16, 17, 18, that's another matter. But in the laws of the Aqdas, Bahá’u’lláh permits marriage at the age of 15 for boys and girls. This is the age of maturity. Ever going to be more mature than when you get married and have children? Nothing else. And you are expected to assume your spiritual obligation, not a law, spiritual personal obligation. Have your obligatory prayer, whether it's the little one that long or the one that's this long, doesn't matter, just have it and fast when the time of the fast comes. That's all there is to do in the Baháʼí teachings with 15.

[1:16:28] Now, if for some reason or other you don't agree with me, let me ask you to visualize something. The whole of Ottawa is, say, 60 or 75% Baháʼí at this point or arbitrarily, all of its Baháʼí. And the whole purpose of the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh is to produce a new world order, different kind of society based on His teachings. We all agree with that. Probably most of us are Baháʼís because we think that this will be a marvelous thing in the future. We want to foster it. So then comes 15 business. You are going to ask inside the city of Ottowa, I don't know what the population is, say, a million arbitrarily. You're going to take everybody that's 15 years old and that would mean a birthday date, and ask them if they want to be a Baháʼí or not. When the whole state, when the whole city is based on Baháʼí laws and their application, you're going to create the upheaval of progressively asking tens of thousands of citizens whether they agree with what's going on? I mean, it doesn't bear thinking about. It is so stupid if you apply it that way that you can see it could never possibly be something that will exist in the future. And it should never have existed in the past. So that I personally believe that when children reach the age of 15 they should not be asked if they want to be registered as Baháʼís or not. They should be transferred by the Local Assembly from the list of children from 1 to 15, to the list of young Baháʼís from 15 to 21 which doesn't exist in the Baháʼí faith. It only exists is a legal voting age so we can own property. That's why people can only be on the Local Assembly over 21, because that was a legal age. And then the assembly can be registered in law to hold property. Otherwise, it has no meaning. No 21 in the Baháʼí faith. It's 15 in the Baháʼí faith, but for the time being. So they are changed from child to youth on the register, and later on they're going to be changed from youth to the legal voting age, whatever the House of Justice may accept for that period in that country, you see. And that's it. You're not going to ask them any questions. You're not gonna have a whole huge thing about it, because if you have any sense, you must know that the last thing in the world to ask a 15 year old in this society is, "Do you want to be a Baháʼí or not?" It's a good way to screw you. It's a good way to make you miserable. It's a good way to hold a threat over your parents. It's a good way to get out from something that may be the child doesn't even properly itself understand. It is the worst psychological age to ask such an important question involving the spiritual life of the child. And I don't think it's a question that should ever be asked.

[1:19:37] I think friends that we've reached the point where we can have a few questions because I don't wish to overstep my time, and I think that my time ends at what, somewhere here.