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Barr}: Religion 0 Society . Poli’ry . Ar’rs

In this issue...

The Language of the Arts Editorial

Reflections on Work and the Meaning of Career Marie Schejfer

A Poetry Anthology: Poems for Repair, Recuperofion, and Renewal

Introduced and selected by Herbert Woodward Martin

Matters of Opinion

Book Review ‘Asadu'lléb 'Alizéd's Yeanr afSilence, T be Baba’ Zr [/1 lb: USSR, 1938—1946: T I): Memm’m Of Hmau’lla’l) 2416de Hum Kazemzadeh

Book Review“

Andrew Linzey's Animal T bea/ogy Barbara Geiger

Film Review Gregory Nava's El Nartc M. Eric Horton

Exhibit Review Yinka. Shonibare‘s Alien Obxemium

Mum, Dag, 11/13 [fie Killr

Kevin A. Morrison Is at! harmful, subversive, a form of lying or idolatry?

Or a form of knowledge, a vision of what our world can

Spling 2002 and should become and what it is becoming?

Volumi' 33. N0, 3

[Page 0]

Religion . Socie’ry . Poli’ry o Arts

VOLUME 33, NUMBER 3

WORLD ORDER IS INTENDED TO STIMULATE. INSPIRE. AND SERVE THINKING PEOPLE IN

THEIR SEARCH TO FIND RELATlONSHIPS BETWEEN CONTEMPORARY LIFE AND CONTEMPORARY RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS AND PHILOSOPHY

Editorial Board:

BETTY J. FISHER KEVIN A. MORRISON

ARASH ABIZADEH ROBERT H. STOCKMAN 2 MONIREH KAZEMZADEH JIM STOKES DIANE LOTFI

4 Consultant in Poetry: HERBERT WOODWAFID MARTIN 9

WORLD ORDER is published quarterly by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the 19 United States, 536 Sheridan Road, Wilmette, IL 60091—1811. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher or of the Editorial Board‘ 59

Manuscripts and editorial correspondence: Manuscripts can be typewritten or computer generated. Article manuscripts should be double spaced through- 5 9 out, with the footnotes at the end and not attached electronically to the text. The contributor should

retain a copy. Return postage should be included. Send editorial correspondence to WORLD ORDER,

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money orders payable to Bahá’í Distribution Serivce. Send address changes to and order subscriptions from Bahá’í Distribution and Subscriber Service, 4703 Fulton Industrial Boulevard, Atlanta, GA 303362017. Telephone:1—800—999—9019, United States and 69 Canada; 404—472—9019, all other countries; E-mail:

<subscription@usbnc.org>. 71

WORLD ORDER is protected through trademark registration in the US. Patent Office.

ISSN 0043—8804

IN THIS ISSUE

2 The Language of the Arts Editorial

4 Interchange: Letters from and to the Editor

9 Reflections on Work and the Meaning of Career by Marie Scheffer

19 A Poetry Anthology: Poems for Repair, Recuperation, and Renewal edited by Herbert Woodward Martin

59 Matters of Opinion: Reviews of Books, Films, and Exhibits (Editorial)

59 ‘Asadu’lláh ‘Alizád’s Years of Silence, the Bahá’ís in the USSR, 1938-1946 Book Review by Firuz Kazemzadeh

61 Andrew Linzey’s Animal Theology Book Review by Barbara Geiger

62 Film Review of Gregory Nava's El Norte by M. Eric Horton

65 Exhibit Review of Yinka Shonibare's Alien Obsessives, Mum, Dad, and the Kids by Kevin A. Morrison

69 Authors & Artists in This Issue

71 Call for Papers: Cinema

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[Page 2]2 WORLD ORDER: SPRING 2002

The Language of the Arts

THE historical landscape is littered with attacks on the arts by critics who tend either to dismiss the arts as trivial or to rail against them as dangerous. The latter of these attacks is always the same: art is harmful; art is subversive; art is a form of lying or idolatry and liable to corrupt. Plato, though himself a poet, banished poets in his Republic. Reptessive political regimes often begin by coopting or closing theaters and taking over the press. Religionists have often matched the efforts of politicians, whether in their anti—iconographic attacks on religious art during the reform movements of the early modern period or, more recently, in the Taliban’s destruction of the magnificent statues of Buddha in Afghanistan. One sees other, misguided attacks in the recurring attempts to remove great works of art (from Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleéerry Finn to James Joyce’s Ulysses) from the classroom on the grounds that they are either profane or “pagan.” _

It is always easier to attack the arts than to defend them. While there have been eloquent defenses of the arts throughout history, they have almost always come in response to specific attacks, as defensive reactions, often after the damage of a critical attack has already been done. Thus we may ask ourselves, What is the true merit of the arts? On what grounds can, and must, they be Valued and nurtured? Perhaps we can start by saying that the arts are a form of knowledge. Walt Whitman said that poetry is a kind of knowledge that cannot be expressed by any other means. The Roman poet Horace observed that the dual purpose of art is to teach and to delight. Sir Philip Sidney, writing in the sixteenth century, said that poetry is more philosophical than philosophy because it makes ideas visible and concrete. Art, real art (as opposed to mere servile and derivative imitation), gives us a new picture of ourselves and of our world. In the hands of a great and visionary artist, whose instinct is always to heal, to refine, and to resolve, art gives a Vision not only of what our world can and should become but what it is becoming. Poet Theodore Roethke made the canny observation that things begin to happen before they are apparent and that poets live in the foreground of consciousness; thus they give us our earliest glimpse of the nascent world that we are in the process of inheriting.

[Page 3]EDITORIAL 3

One way to measure the value of the arts is simply to imagine (itself an artistic act) living in a world without them. Simply remove them, one at a time—music, paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, television, theater, printed words—and contemplate (another artistic act) the world that remains.

But perhaps the greatest value of the arts lies in their essentially spiritual nature. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said that music is “Wings for the spirit.” At their best, the arts do just that—-they lift, inspire, move, heal, revivify, envision, create, advocate, and converse. They have the ability to do what nothing else can do half so well: speak the language of the spirit and “sing of what is past, and passing, and to come.” For that reason, we should not need to defend the arts. Rather we should ask only that our artists give us their best creative efforts and that we, as audiences, strive to give them our best responses in return.

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WORLD ORDER: SPRING 2002

InterChange LETTERS FROM AND TO THE EDITOR

A new cover design for Wbrla’ Order is the most visible change to grace the pages of the journal since a new Editorial Board was appointed three years ago. It is the first of a two-part facelift, the second being a new internal format to be introduced in the Fall 2002 issue.

The new cover design is the brainchild of Richard Doering, senior designer in the Advocate Media Center in Park Ridge, Illinois. He began thinking about redesigning IVorld Order some eighteen years ago while studying typography at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, with Tony DiSpigna, a colleague of the well—known type designer Herb Lubalin. The erd Order editors kept Doering’s design on file and, when it began consulting about a new, twenty—first century look for the journal, invited him to submit a portfolio and then designs for a new cover.

“Getting started,” Doering says, “was a natural evolution from my earlier thinking about the feeling that I wanted to convey—one of stability and timelessness.” He “began searching for a typeface that would have a Classic look and also a hint of movement for a progressive flavor.” The Cochin typeface, which he found on the Web, “fit the requirements perfectly,” he says, and is used for the 1%er Order banner on the front cover of the journal.

Cochin (also known as Sonderdruck) was released in 1912 by the Paris foundry Deberny & Peignot. Named after the mideighteenth century engraver Nicolas Cochin, the typeface (for the graphic artists and designers among us) has a small x-height with long ascenders and several

unusual letter shapes, notably in the lowercase italic letters. It brings an unusual look to display type.

Since designers are often behind-thescenes contributors, let us tell you a bit more about Doering. He was graduated With honors from the University of Illinois in 1978 with a BS degree in medical art, after which he worked as a medical illustrator at the State University of New York—Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn. He left the medical center to pursue a Master’s degree in communication design at Pratt Institute, simultaneously honing his skills by working for an exhibit-design firm in Queens and for a Manhattan ad agency specializing in advertising for book publishers. In 1985 he moved back to Illinois to work as an illustrator/graphic designer in the Media Services department for Lutheran General Hospital. In 1995 the hospital merged with the Evangelical Health System and became Advocate Health Care, where he continues to work.

Change opens new horizons. But it also has its bittersweet side—in this case, the retirement of John Solarz, who has designed 1%er Order’s cover for the past twenty—five years. In Fall 1977 he modified the journal’s existing design, featuring fullpage photographs on both the front and back covers and adding Visual appeal with the creative use of colored cover stock and

colored inks. In Fall 1993 he redesigned

[Page 5]the journal again, using a different treatment for the contents listed on the front cover. When the Editorial Board began talking about a new design for the new century, Solarz told the Board that it was time for “new talent” to take up the challenge.

Soiarz began drawing as a child, his first mentor being his uncle, Walter Solarz, the art director of a larger advertising agency in Chicago. He received his formal train’ ing during his four years at the extraordinary (for its time) Lane Technical High School in Chicago, where he learned the theory of design and then applied it by designing college year books, college prep books, quarterly reports, and the like. After graduation at eighteen, he began working at Whitaker—Guernsey, the major advertising studio in Chicago. By the age of twentyone, he was winning, with his unique style, awards from the Art Directors Club of Chicago, the Society of TypographicalArts, and the Artists Guild of Chicago. In his early twenties, Soiarz moved on to the advertising and art studio of Bundy—Frieday, first as an illustrator and designer and then as art director. By the time he was thirty he formed his first company (Pictorum), soon followed by Paper Play Creations. His clients included, among many others, Scott Foresman, Harper and Row, Abbott Laboratories, Kraft Foods, Sears, Roebuck, and Co., Rand McNally, UNICEF, Rotary International, the Government of Samoa, and the Zoological Society of America.

Of this period of his life, Solarz talks

lovingly of the mentoring he received from

INTERCHANGE

5

the best typographers, designers, and photographers in Chicago, of the excitement of being in a dynamic milieu in which architect Mies van der Rohe worked on the floor above him.

But Solarz’s eyes light up most when he talks about the work he has done for the Bahá’í Faith. In 1991, he designed, for the Bahá’í International Community, boxed presentation copies of Babd’z/lla’la, which were given to heads of state (the design won an award from the Chicago Book Clinic). In 1992, for Bahá’í World Center Publications, he designed the first edition of 7776 Kitáb-i—Aqdas and redesigned the cover and internal format of the new series of Balm? Wbrld volumes. For the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States he designed, among other assignments, the presentation and study editions of The Promise of W715! Peace. For the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Samoa he designed a book about the Samoan Bahá’í House of Worship. For the U. S. Bahá’í Publishing Trust he designed books too numerous to mentionthe 1982 edition of Bahti’z’Pmyerx, Call to Remembrance, and the Champion Builder books being among his favorites.

And, of course, Solarz devoted twentyfive years to “7/0er Order, selecting photographs and advising about cover stock and ink colors. He says, of his work with various Bahá’í publishers, that he could not have done it without the open mindedness, the collaboration, and the harmony—all a vivid contrast to much of his commercial work. However limited the budget or tight the deadlines, the focus, the lack of egotisrn,

[Page 6]6

WORLD ORDER: SPRING 2002

and the shared goals enabled all the jobs to be done on time. All are jewels in his memory bank, which sometimes forgets the dates and the names but never the nuances of the design job.

John, we thank you for your unfailing instincts, your humor, your expertise, your patient mentoring, and your dedication to making W715i Order something that you and our typesetter have always been proud to include in your portfolios and that we have been proud to offer our readers. We wish you well as you move on to other phases of your career, including painting and mentoring your son who is studying to be an architect, keeping alive a family tradition. We miss you already.

Spring 2002 has been a busy and fruitful one for Herbert Woodward Martin, IVor/d Order’s poetry editor, professor emeritus of English and poet—in—residence at the University of Dayton, and a leading authority on the life and works of Daytonborn writer Paul Laurence Dunbar (18721906), the first African American poet and novelist to draw national and world acclaim.

In February, on the 96th anniversary of the death of Dunbar (and the 130th anniversary of his birth), Martin co—authored with Ronald Primeau and published In His Own Voice: The Dramatic‘ e”? Other Uncollected “707/65 of Paul Laurence Dun/mr (Ohio University Press). The book contains two previously unpublished works by Dunbar—a short story and a play—as well as an opera libretto, the lyrics to two musicals, and a number of uncollected works (fifteen essays, forty-one poems, four short stories).

In March, Martin received the Ohio Arts Council’s 2002 Governor’s Award for an Individual Artist. In early May, for his more than thirty years of teaching, publishing, and reading Dunbar’s poetry across the country (up to forty readings at year), he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters by the University of Dayton. In mid-May, Martin was honored by The Society for the Study of MidWestern Literature with its Distinguished Mark Twain Award for his contributions to Midwestern literature.

Congratulations to Dr. Martin, who, during this same period of time, was hard at work on the poetry anthology included in this issue.

- >l<

Letters to the Editor THE AESTHETIC IN OUR WORLD

I wish to thank World Order for paying attention not only to the social and organizational aspects of our world but to the aesthetic as well (although, fundamentally, the aesthetic is intrinsic to the social and organizational). Not only are the attractively designed covers of the magazine Visually pleasing, but the regular inclusion of poetry is food for the soul and meets the explicit goal of the journal to stimulate and inspire. In fact, I was primarily prompted to write this short letter due my wife’s and my enjoyment of Bret Breneman’s poem, “Táhirih: Mother,” on page 48 of the Winter 2001—02 issue. It is a poem with many dimensions—its sonority is acoustically engaging and comforting, it illumines a poignant moment in history, and it deals with crucial sociomoral issues of our times (gender and family). The poem structurally integrates both classical and romantic elements of the aesthetic of poetry: it has a delightful rhyme scheme but is not slavishly devoted to meter.

This same issue of World Order also has a sweet, direct, provocative, and minimalist poem by Janet Tomkins. Three lines long—but it packs a punch.

RHETT DIESSNER Lewiston, Idaho, USA

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[Page 8]

"mmaw...

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,. s m ,

[Page 9]Reflections on Work and the Meaning of Career

BY MARIE SCHEFFER

Introduction C ONCEPTS of career are shaped by culv tural expectations and personal experience. My grandfather was an engineer at the same company all of his working life. My father and uncle grew up in a household in which dinner table conversation often centered on engineering problems and possibilities. Not surprisingly, both grew up to be engineers, also spending their entire careers with a single company. Such patterns—following a line of work familiar from childhood and practiced by a family member, staying with one company from the time of leaving school until retirement—were common in the United States through most of the twentieth century. They are almost nonexistent now. What, then, do workers expect and want from their working lives? What integrating principle organizes a lifetime of efforts? What

1. This survey is being conducted by the Center for Human Resource Research at Ohio State University and the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago under the direction and sponsorship of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. The participants are now being surveyed biennially.

2. “Number of Jobs Held, Labor Market Activity, and Earnings Growth Over Two Decades: Results from a Longitudinal Survey Summary,” Bureau of Labor Statistics press release, 25 Apr. 2000.

3. “Number of Jobs Held,” 25 Apr. 2000.

4. “Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey: Employee Tenure Summary,” Bureau of Labor Statistics press release, 29 Aug. 2000.

might “career” mean in a time of downsizing, job-hopping, and extended leave to discharge family responsibilities? What do those who work seek from the experience? What place and meaning is work intended to have in human life?

Changing Views on Work ALTHOUGH statistics about patterns of job change have only been kept for a relatively short time, it is Clear how work patterns are changing. According to government surveys, most workers are changing jobs many times throughout their working lives. For more than two decades the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, a survey that began in that year and is still continuing, has tracked nearly ten thousand men and women born between 1957 and 1964.] A Bureau of Labor Statistics report summarized the findings of the survey through 2000 and stated that the workers surveyed held an average of 9.2 jobs between the ages of eighteen and thirty—four.2 To date, no survey has tracked respondents over longer periods of time, though jobchanging behavior is generally thought to slow down as people get older, as more than half of the 9.2 jobs held during the period the survey covered were held before the age of twenty—five.3 A separate survey found that, as of February 2000, the median tenure at a job was 3.5 years, with one-fourth of all workers reporting they had been with their current employer for one year or 1655.4 These statistics, sketchy as they are, can be seen as signs of restless search. What are workers seeking?

[Page 10].10 WORLD ORDER: SPRING 2002

Although the obvious answer is that workers are seeking a better situation, be that better pay, better hours, or a chance for advancement, it is also true that jobs contribute to people’s sense of well—being. Most people want to feel appreciated; they want to feel that their contribution has been valued and not just by a paycheck. Perry Pascarella, a management writer and former executive editor of Industry Wale magazine, has made the point eloquently:

Attributing only economic values to work

has rendered it meaningless and less than

a human endeavor for many. A person is

most truly at work when he presses the

limits of his abilities and grows, challenging himself and the universe. It is in working to satisfy his higher needs that he becomes truly man. He searches for significance, knowing that people are remembered for

What they produce, not what they con sume. . . .

. work, in its fullest sense, should allow for people’s spiritual strivings. Beyond the satisfaction of material needs, beyond the needs of society, work should enable each individual to pursue his or her search for meaning and significance.5

Thus the longstanding definition of work as an effort undertaken primarily to generate income and secondarily to achieve status is meaningful only on a very low level. For, once workers have satisfied basic needs, they expect other types of “well—being” from their jobs. They bring new expectations and desires into the workplace, hence the increasing

5. Perry Pascarella, 7712 New Achievers: Creating a Modern LVar/e Ethic (New York: Macmillan—Free Press, 1984) 92, 26.

6. Bahá’í International Community, Office of Public Information, T/ae Prosperity of Human/eind (Wilmette, IL.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, n.d.) 11—12 (section III).

number of business books on how to manage employees and run companies not only bigger, better, and faster but also with greater empathy and social awareness.

In the discourse on the value of work, both economic and in a human sense, the Bahá’í Faith offers a new perspective. Humanity is entering into its collective maturity, a developmental stage wherein beliefs are examined critically:

Present-day conceptions of what is natural

and appropriate in relationships—among

human beings themselves, . . . between the individual and society, and between the members of society and its institutions—reflect levels of understanding arrived at by the human race during earlier and less mature stages in its development.

If humanity is indeed coming of age, if

all the inhabitants of the planet constitute

a single people, if justice is to be the ruling

principle of social organization—then

existing conceptions that were born out of ignorance of these emerging realities have to be recast.

Movement in this direction has barely begun. . . . Its effect in reordering people’s relation to the work they do and their understanding of the place of economic activity in their lives will be sweeping.6 The process of maturation is a slow one,

and the element of “reordering people’s relation to the work they do and their understanding of the place of economic activity in their lives” is key. It requires changes both in the thinking of individuals and in the structures of society. In this reordering, the Bahá’í Faith provides an expanded understanding of the importance and nature of work by including work as an element of the individuals spiritual life. Bahá’u’lláh, the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, has written:

Occupy yourselves with that which profiteth

yourselves and others. . . .

. . . When anyone occupieth himself in a craft or trade, such occupation itself is

[Page 11]regarded in the estimation of God as an

act of worship. . . .7

Work, elevated to an act of worship, becomes an integral part of each individual’s devotional life and spiritual development. The Universal House of Justice, in a letter written on its behalf, lists a summary of essential requisites for spiritual growth that includes, along with the more familiar devotional practices of prayer and efforts to live up to high spiritual standards, “[s]elfless service in the work of the [Bahá’í] Cause and in the carrying on” of one’s “trade or profession.”8

Of the many passages in the Bahá’í writings that enjoin work and describe it as worship, none indicates that only work that earns income fulfills this requirement and merits this distinction. This implicit point is underscored by the Universal House of Justice in a response to a question from a woman concerning Whether the admonition to work requires that she “work for a livelihood”:

7. Bahá’u’lla’h, ??zhletx of Bahtz’ ’u’lla’h revealed after the Kittih—i—Athzx, comp. Research Department of the Universal House of Justice, trans. Habib Taherzadeh et al., lst ps ed. (Wilmette, IL: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1988) 26.

8. The Universal House of Justice, letter on its behalf, in The Universal House of Justice, Menge5 fiom the Universal Home of fmtiee 1963—1986: The Thim’ Epoch Of the Farmatz've Age comp. Geoffry W Marks (Wilmette, IL: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1996) no. 375.5.

9. The Universal House of Justice, letter on its behalf, 16 June 1982, in Bahá’u’lláh, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Shoghi Effendi, and the Universal House of Justice, Womm:Exmzetxflom the Wiring: 0thzhtz' ’u’lláh, thu ’lBahtz’, Shoghz' Effendi, and the Univemleouse offmtz'ee, comp. Research Department of the Universal House of Justice (Thornhill, Ontario: Bahá’í Canada Publications, 1986) no. 73.

10. Bahá’í International Community, Office of Public Information, Prosperity OfHumankz'nd 12 (section III).

11. ‘Abdu’i—Baha, Paris 7211165: Addresset Given hy thu’l—Bflha’ in 1911, 12th ed. (London: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1995) 55-1 REFLECTIONS ON WORK AND CAREER 11

You ask about the admonition that everyone must work, and want to know if this means that you, a wife and mother, must work for a livelihood as your husband does. . . . the direcrive is for the friends [Bahá’ís] to be engaged in an occupation Which Will be of benefit to mankind. Homemaking is a highly honourable and responsible work of fundamental importance for mankind.9 This reference to engaging in “an occupation which Will be of benefit to mankind” makes clear that work is defined by its outcome, not by income. This is one of the “existing conceptions” that needs to be “recast.”10 cAbdu’l-Bahe’l, the son of Bahá’u’lláh and His appointed successor and interpreter of His writings, highlights elements that raise work to the level of worship: In the Bahá’í Cause arts, sciences and all crafts are (counted as) worship. The man who makes a piece of notepaper t0 the best of his ability, conscientiously, cone centrating all his forces on perfecting it, is giving praise to God. Briefly, all effort and exertion put forth by man from the fullness of his heart is worship, if it is prompted by the highest motives and the will to do service to humanity. This is worship: to serve mankind and to minister to the needs of the people.11 This statement reframes work—any form of work, however humble—and invests a necessity of life With a richer meaning and significance. Work becomes a medium through Which individuals can express their highest values and aspirations in a practical, tangible way. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s choice of a craft for His example is instructive. Some forms of work may seem intrinsically noble and full of meaning, engendering respect and admiration, While others may not. Thus it is easy to conceive of certain professions, such as education or health care, as forms of worship. By choosing a manual craft, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá indirectly addresses the question of Whether certain forms of work are inherently

[Page 12]12 WORLD ORDER: SPRING 2002

higher forms of endeavor. It depends, He says, on the intent to serve, not on the type of work performed.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s comment on work highlights three elements that combine to elevate work to an act of worship. The first is performing the task to the best of one’s ability: striving for excellence. The second is investing one’s whole being in the task: working from the fullness of the heart. The third is the motive or intention one has While performing the task: the desire to be of service to others. It is thought-provoking to note that all three elements are brought to the task by the individual. They are not the domain of any particular form of work. They become part of the work through the deliberate choice of the individual. They cannot be mandated or imposed. While the element of striving for excellence is commonly understood and accepted in Western societies as a worthwhile goal, both Western workers and business thinkers give the last two elements—working from “the fullness” of one’s “heart” and the desire to be of service to others—very little, if any, attention.

Working fiom the Fullness

Of the Heart

MANY jobs are routine and repetitive. Their nature would seem to be such that they could be done without requiring the individual to be fully present and concentrating all his or her attention and capacities on the task at hand. What, then, invites “fullness” of heart? An important element is vision. Embedding tasks in the context of a vision can

12. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris 7711/65 55.1.

13. Rúḥíyyih Rabbani, known to Bahá’í’s as Rfihi’yyih Khánum, was the wife of Shoghi Effendi (the Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith from 1921—57) and a Hand of the Cause of God, one of a group of distinguished Bahá’í's appointed to stimulate the propagation and ensure the protection of the Bahá’í Faith.

elevate any job to a mission and call forth energy, excitement, and a greater degree of personal commitment to the success of the project. The classic example is that of two brick layers, working side by side, doing identical tasks. When asked What they are doing, one says he is laying bricks while the other says he is building a cathedral. Any form of work “prompted by the highest motives” can be embedded in a context of vision.12 A hospital housekeeping stan person once said his goal was to provide operating rooms clean enough to receive his mother. While the work itself will not change, Vision endows the most mundane labor with meaning, dignity, and satisfaction.

Working with the “71'” To Do Service RUHI'YYIH Rabbanj, aworld traveler and writer, gave a Vivid description of an example of work performed with “the will to do service to humanity” and assessed its impact, both on the recipients of the service and the service provider.13 In Prescription fbr Living she recounted a “remarkable and never—to—beforgotten lesson in how to work” that she had experienced on a streetcar in Brussels: I only rode on it fifteen or twenty minutes and that was many, many years ago. But the conductor on it taught me more about how to work than any other human being ever has. He seemed to feel that he owned that street car, that it was just as if someone entered his home when they got on it, that every person in it was his responsibility, that he was their host. He was entirely unconscious of this. He had just, somehow, put himselfinto his work. The duties of a street car conductor are striCtly confined in nature; he has to sell tickets and give change and see the company is not cheated. . . . But this man—perhaps he had never been made aware that all that was required of him was to finger dirty money and blow his hornwhelped old men and women and children on and off

[Page 13]the car; he handed their bundles to them; he held the baby till the mother got off; he walked up the car, like a man in his drawing-room, and seated some tired person comfortably or invited others to make a little space for a woman; . . . he smiled, he looked at you with an expression as much as to say, “So you’re here, I wonder what I can do for you?” It was like a miracle. I could not help wondering what this world would be like if all people did their jobs this way. . . . What is much more important, I am sure he was happy. Putting all he had into such avery unpromising job, he got a rich return of contentment; it was written on his face, a plain, tired, ordinary face but with an expression of almost luminous happiness. He had found the secret of work, which is service—the golden talisman that changes drudgery into pleasure and fatigue into contentment and boredom into interest. Can anyone say his efforts were wasted, that he was foolish? I was one of that man’s passengers, yet I shall never forget him as long as I live.14 Ruhi’yyih Rabbani’s description of one man’s service and similar calls to serve touch on a delicate point: society’s ambivalent feelings about service. The words “service” and “servant” spring from the same root word; but, while many find the concept of “service” noble in the abstract, fewer aspire to being the servant of another person, much less of humanity as a whole. As Pascarella has noted, “The desire to be served is out of proportion to the willingness and ability to serve.”15 Perhaps more have experienced the pleasures of being a service recipient than have savored the joy felt by the streetcar conductor as a service provider. The result is that being a

14. Ruhi’yyih Rabbani, Prescrzftion fbr Living, 2d rev. ed. (Oxford: George Ronald, 1978)) 91—93. 15. Pascarella, New Achiever: 5.

REFLECTIONS ON WORK AND CAREER 13

servant or service provider is not regarded as a highly desirable or honorable station in Western culture. Service jobs are frequently low paying and low status. Moreover, unpaid service in the home—caring for children, the disabled, the elderly—is often not accorded recognition at all as “real” work in a legal or economic sense. Such attitudes about service and those who provide it must be reexamined. If, heretofore, people have found a job, almost any job, of intrinsic value in establishing a sense of self—worth, as common experience and academic studies have sug’ gested, how much more an expanded concept of work such as that offered by the Bahá’í Faith can contribute to that sense of well-being. This new concept of work leads us to consider redefining the concept of “career.”

A Definition of Career THE Oxfimi English Dictionary defines “career” in two ways. One definition is familiar: “A course of professional life or employment, which affords opportunity for progress or advancement in the world.” The other is more general: “A person’s course or progress through life (or a distinct portion of life), esp. when publicly conspicuous, or abounding in remarkable incidents.”

Today when the word “career” is used, it is generally meant in the narrower sense of a paid occupation or profession followed as one’s lifework. “Career” has come to connote seriousness, commitment, and professionalism. Defining a form of work as a “career” often elevates the work done to a higher level of status and perceived value, in contrast to a mere “job.”

However, lifework is no longer as Clear-Cut as it once was. While my grandfather, my father, and my uncle all worked their entire adult lives as engineers in a single company, today everything, and everyone, is more mobile. Lifetime employment is no longer the norm in the United States. Neither workers

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nor employers define “career” as a lifetime of work with a single organization or even necessarily in a single field. The question, then, is, What could “career” mean?

Rethinking the Concept of Career THE use of the word “career” by Shoghi Effendi, the appointed head of the Bahá’í Faith from 1921 through 1957, provides a refreshing perspective. Shoghi Effendi uses the word in the more general sense of a “petson’s course or progress through life.” Four references to different individuals—two founders of religions, a heroine of the Babi Faith, and himself—reflect this usage:

. . . the distinguishing features of the career of Jesus Christ.16

The circumstances attending the exami nation of the Báb . . . may well rank as one of the chief landmarks of His dra matic career.17

Thus ended the life of this great Babi’ heroine, the first woman suffrage martyr [Táhirih]. . . . Her career was as dazzling as it was brief, as tragic as it was eventful.18

. the opening years of my career of service to the Cause. . . .19

Shoghi Effendi’s use of the word “career” marks a dramatic departure from its usual

16. Shoghi Effendi, God Passe: By, intro George Townshend, rev. ed. (Wilmette, IL: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1974, 1999 printing) 57.

17. Shoghi Effendi, GodPasses By 21.

18. Shoghi Effendi, GodPam: By 75.

19. Shoghi Effendi, Babd’z’ Administration: Selected Mestzzge‘s 1922—1932, 1974 ed. (Wilmette, IL: Bahá’í Publishing Trust 1974, 1998 printing) 51.

20. Shoghi Effendi, Bahá’íAdmim'smzl-z'an 192. See pages 188—92 for qualities that include, among others, a staunch faith, a calm demeanor, a forgiving attitude, willingness to sacrifice, a sensitive heart, generosity, affability, kindness, patience, magnanimity, indiscriminating benevolence, self—tenunciation, meekness, sleepless vigilance, tact, courtesy, and heroic fortitude.

meaning. Most people, if asked about the careers of Jesus or the Báb, would answer that one was a carpenter, the other 21 metchant. Shoghi Effendi in none of these instances was referring to a career as a paid position with a specific job description. Other writers would probably have used the word “ministry” instead of “career” in the first three of these passages, but Shoghi Effendi was noted for choosing words that had the exact shade of meaning he meant to convey. His repeated use of “career” must be assumed to

be intentional.

In considering the “careers” of Christ, the Bab, Tahitih, and Shoghi Effendi, several common elements beyond being “publicly conspicuous” and “abounding in remarkable incidents” come to mind. All had a sense of mission. All were examples of sacrifices freely made. Each exemplifies the qualities mentioned earlier that elevate any form of work into worship: effort put forth from the fullness of the heart, done to the best of one’s ability, conscientiously, and prompted by the highest motives, and the will to do service to humanity. In the same way that work in its highest sense is defined not by income but by the attitudes brought to it by the individual, so career extends this attitude over a lifetime.

It seems intriguing that Shoghi Effendi also used the word “career” to describe the life work of Bahi’yyih Khánum, daughter of Baha’u’llah. In a 1932 memorial letter reflecting on the life of Bahi’yyih Khánum, Shoghi Effendi noted that, in her old age, she “continued to display those same attributes that had won her, in the preceding phases of her career, so great a measure of admiration and love.”20

Today, when we think of women with careers, Bahíyyih Khánum would not seem to fit the image that first comes to mind; it is even less likely that we would think of her as a person with “phases” in her career. As

was customary in Middle Eastern societies during the 18005 and early 19005, she had no

[Page 15]formal schooling, rarely left her house, and never earned her own income. During most of her life she shared her family’s imprisonment. The primary direct recipients of her services were family members, others residing in the household, and guests.

21. Shoghi Effendi, Babti’iAdministmtion 188.

22. After the death of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in 1921, family members who had long wanted to assume leadership of the Bahá’í Faith, including ?\bdu’l—Bahá’s half-brother (described by Rúḥíyyih Rabbani as “disgruntled and perfidious”), moved swiftly to attack Shoghi Effendi. Rúḥíyyih Rabbani described the situation by stating that, “Like a hydra—headed monster, each head hissing more venomously than the other, they reared up and struck at the young successor of the Master” (Rúḥíyyih Qinum, The Priceless Pearl (London: George Ronald, 1969] 53, 51). The governor of Haifa and the High Commissioner for Palestine found the situation confusing at best. Shoghi Effendi spent six months stabilizing the foundations of the Faith, in the eyes of both its adherents and the civil government, before departing the Bahá’í World Center for seven months, leaving “the affairs of the Cause both at home and abroad, under the supervision of the Holy Family and the headship of the Greatest Holy Leaf [Bahíyyih Kha’mum]. . . ." (Shoghi Effendi, Babd’z’Admz'nixtmtion 25). He made a second retreat the following year from early summer until November, again placing responsibiiity for the affairs of the Faith in the hands of Bahíyyih Khánum.

23. Shoghi Effendi, telegram, in [Bahá’u’Héh ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Shoghi Effendi, Bahíyyih Khánum], Ba/yt’yyik fladmtm: The Greatert Holy Leafi comp. Research Dept, Bahá’í World Center (Haifa: Bahá’í World Center, 1982) 22.

24. Some of these adversaries were officials of the Ottoman Empire, whom the Muslim clergy had prompted to oppose the new religion. Others were internal to the Bahá’í Faith, including disaffected family members who resented the appointment of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi as successive Heads of the Faith and who worked ceaselessly to undermine 0r usurp their authority and positions of leadership. Shoghi Effendi wrote of this later challenge: “Amidst the dust and heat of the commotion which that faithless and rebellious company engendered she found herself constrained to dissolve ties of family relationship, to sever long—standing and intimate friendships, to discard lesser loyalties for the sake of her supreme allegiance to a Cause she had loved so clearly and had served so well” (Btl/vd’z’ Administration 190—91).

REFLECTIONS ON WORK AND CAREER 15

thile many of Bahíyyih Khánum’s services were undoubtedly related to housekeeping and other humble duties, she also assumed weighty responsibilities not usually given to women. Shoghi Effendi recounted that, While she was a teenager, Bahá’u’lláh entrusted her with missions of delicacy and extreme gravity, tasks “that no girl of her age could, or would be willing to, perform. . . 3’21 Twice during the last years of her life Shoghi Effendi placed in her hands responsibility for the affairs of the Bahá’í Faith during his extended absences from the Bahá’í World Center. This extraordinary responsibility fell to her during extremely perilous and tumultuous periods in the history of the Faith.22 Bahíyyih flénurn’s correspondence with Bahá’ís in the East and West rallied, confirmed, and steadied the fledgling communities. Shoghi Effendi paid tribute to her contributions to his own ministry by repeatedly referring to her in such terms as “MY SOLE EARTHLY SUSTAINER, THE JOY AND SOLACE OF MY LIFE.”23

Several observations emerge from reflecting on the events of Bahíyyih Khánum’s life that may have implications for the meaning of career, broadening its scope from the rather narrow, task-specific and income—providing niche it currently occupies in the United States. The first is the wide range of services she rendered. Some were internal to her family; some reached across the globe; some were ordinary household responsibilities; some permanently affected the course of the Bahá’í Faith. She moved easily among them all.

Shoghi Effendi’s reference to “the preceding phases of her career” implies that Bahíyyih @énum’s career assumed different forms at various times. Changing circumstances repeatedly narrowed and widened the scope of her services. At times she was restricted to directing the household or oHering tea and hospitality to Bahá’ís Visiting ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. At other times she was called on to protect and defend the interests of the Faith against fierce adversaries.24 The phases of her career

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did not stem from a planned progression of choosing a capacity to develop, gaining expertise, and offering increasingly more mature or refined services in that area. While Bahíyyih Khánum had no control over most of the circumstances affecting her life, she adapted herself to the needs of the hour.

Perhaps most important is the fact that Bahíyyih Khánum’s orientation was always toward service. She was an embodiment of what the Universal House of Justice has called “a distinguishing characteristic of Bahá’í life

. namely, the spirit of servitude to God, expressed in service to the Cause, to the friends and to humanity as a whole.”25

Bahíyyih Khánum operated from the position of responding to areas of need“What needs doing?”—rather than the position of individual preference—“How do I want to serve?” Service was the North Star that provided a fixed reference point in her life. This is not to suggest a passive or reactive nature. Bahíyyih Khánum possessed an active orientation to service. When a need presented itself, she was not deterred from meeting it by the enormity of the task or a lack of experience. In spite of the restrictions placed on her by age, gender, and imprisonment, she continually pressed the limits of her world to make a difference in the lives of others.

How might our understanding of career be expanded or reconfigured through reflecting on the career of Bahfyyih Khánum? The traditional, narrow definition of career limits the number of those who can have a career. In so doing, it becomes somewhat elitist, excluding those who do not have a paid working life, those who have retired, and

25. The Universal House of Justice, letter, 19 May 1994, in Right: andRespomibilities: The Complementary Roles of the Individual and Imtz'tutz'om, comp. by and on behalf of The Universal House of Justice (Ontario: Bahá’í Canada Publications, 1997) 39.

those who enter and exit the paid work force to attend to family needs. A career characterized by varying services, as seen in Bahíyyih Khánum’s life, adds the element of a particular set of attitudes toward work that is practiced over a lifetime. The form of work may vary during diHerent phases of one’s career, but the orientation and desired outcome are consistent. One’s identity as a servant continues throughout life.

Such a redefinition of career also frees individuals to perform work according to their unfolding capacities and the changing circumstances of their lives without making them feel that they are lacking focus or wasting time, for they are adhering to a larger organizing principle than that to which society is accustomed. A career of this nature encourages individuals to explore multiple capabilities and accommodates shifts among various fields.

An expanded definition of career also allows a fuller use of human resources and honors a variety of contributions, some performed professionally and others on an amateur basis, remembering that the meaning of amateur is “one who loves.” Career in this sense can encompass both paid and unpaid work. Open to all, this type of career could provide individuals with an identity as a valued and contributing member of society at any stage of life.

Finally, such a redefinition of career addresses the desire that work be meaningful and allow one to feel a sense of having contributed to a greater good. It serves as an integrating principle not just in one’s own life but in society at large by knitting it together with a shared definition and common goal.

Final Reflections WHAT application might a redefinition of work and career and the example of the life of Bahíyyih Khánum have to people today? Few will encounter either the onerous restrictions Bahíyyih Khánum endured or the lead [Page 17]ership responsibilities she was given. But every life is a mixture of opportunities, surprises, and unwanted but unavoidable challenges that require accommodation.

It may be useful to think of life’s activities

as a mobile, with multiple elements making

legitimate calls on time and energy—the need to earn a livelihood, the needs of family and community, the need for personal time. Giving greater or lesser weight to one changes the relationships among them all. Many people today are searching for integration of the spiritual and material components of life. They are trying to find multiple balances in their lives: balance between acts of service which earn income and acts of service performed for love, balance between devotional practices centered on prayer and reflection and devotional practices expressed through action. The perspectives suggested in reexamining what is meant by career alter the balance among the elements of life’s mobile while providing an overarching conceptual structure of a career of service. Economic activity assumes a different position in relation to devotional life and acts of contribution. A new definition of career gives new

26. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, The Secret OfDi1/ine Civilization, trans. Marzieh Gail in consultation with Ali—Kuli Khan, lst ps ed. (Wilmette, IL: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1990) 2—3.

REFLECTIONS ON WORK AND CAREER 17

meaning to the ever-changing kinds of work we do throughout our lives and thus to “career planning” and “career path.” These terms could come to be seen as the ongoing development of a wide range of personal talents and capacities coupled with periodic assessment of the match between an individual’s abilities and the needs touching most pressingly on his or her life.

At the present time, in the beginning stages in the process of “reordering people’s relation to the work they do and their understanding of the place of economic activity in their lives,” it is too soon to foresee changes that will take place in either the life of the individual or the structures of society. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, however, suggests that the changes can lead to “bliss” and “delight”:

And the honor and distinction of the

individual consist in this, that he among

all the world’s multitudes should become

a source of social good. Is any larger bounty

conceivable than this, that an individual,

looking within himself, should find that by the confirming grace of God he has become the cause of peace and well—being, of happiness and advantage to his fellow men? No, by the one true God, there is no greater bliss, no more complete delight.26 The concept of a lifelong career of service that may express itself in a diversity of ways will evolve and assume various dimensions, leading to richer, fuller lives for all.

[Page 18]

[Page 19]19

A Poetry Anthology:

Poems for Repair, Recuperation,

and Renewal

IN ordinary times, when events and social obligations do not quarrel with me about the order of activities, I find myself remembering Sir Philip Sidney and his essay “The Art of Poesy,” where he says that poetry must do two things: teach and entertain. For sheer enjoyment I read first for music, second for the subtlety of rhythm, and third for those concrete images that ignite my senses and astound my mind. In extraordinary times I read for solace and sensibility. I want to be shown the way, and in those times I inevitably turn to the old tried—and-true poets and to the present where new and fresh reputations are being made. I search for those poets who have crafted a vision to taste, to see, to follow. Whether they are established or just beginning, poets and their poems are the staffs on which I learn to lean for sustenance and sustaining.

What most excites me about the poems gathered here is the nuance and subtlety and the action that each poem displays. There is in each work “a place for the genuine,” as Marianne Moore so aptly puts it in her poem “Poetry.” This group of poems shows us the way; they advise us about “the roads less traveled by” that do make “all the difference.” Each poem is its own guide and its own solution. In the act of assembling these poems, I have been willing to open myself up to the divers experiences, to tune my ears to the range of the varying music of each poem, to listen to the voice of their particular melodies, to the inventiveness of their rhythms, to the sensibility of their utterances, to the

natural verbal action of personages, cities, and unusual objects, and, finally, to their genuineness.

The poets gathered in this anthology take the reader on journeys from Georgia through the Pacific Northwest to China and back. They are committed to shaping their ideas into traditional forms like sonnets and villanelles and into the many forms free verse takes. Their subject matter is equally far reaching: faith and spirituality; intercultural diversity; social and political responsibility; life, aging, death, and transitions; hope and forgiveness; personal and communal peace, for which, in the end, we all search, hoping that it will assuage the void and emptiness that occurs in each of our lives. The poets, with surprising turns in the road, expose us to the personal answers they have found. They seem to have been working toward a new vision, toward a needed new consciousness, toward a soothing and satisfying music. It is the lyricism and the music that strikes a potent note in these poems. It is the imagery of place and object that demands attention.

Providing an antidote to the sea changes about us, these poets draw our attention to the world’s life—enhancing beauty, offering us their visions in abundance. They assure us time and time again of the unbounded joy and hope that exists in the world. It is the essence of these elements, offered to us by these poets, that suggests repair, recuperation, and renewal.

—HERBERT WOODWARD MARTIN

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The Sweetest Melody

Is that which the heart sings when in longing desire

it calls within

the Ravisher of hearts.

—Robert P. Altork

Cosmopolitans

Each evening at seven o’clock sharp

in the green room of the Hotel Jingjao Mrs. Wang tries to teach us how

to speak Mandarin Chinese. After

a dozen lessons we can say slowly hello, goodbye, thank you. Also

count to ten on our fingers, ask

for coffee and tea in a plaintive

chant: Kah—fizy.’ C/mb!

Of course we forget it all when

we board the plane home. We ask the Chinese hostess for coffee or tea in the same old English. All we can remember is Mrs. Wang herself, frowning, her young face intense

as a light bulb, wanting us to

untie our unwilling tongues

to speak for ourselves, for her

country: Kab—fizy.’ C/aa/fl —Elinor Benedict

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Gliding

A twin—engine Cessna

gets this glider airborne above Calistoga in Napa

on a day so clear

that blue blood rushes

through your veins. Out toward the mounds of Bodega you drop your own umbilical cord.

777i: is learning to fly.

No eHort permitted;

instinct will suffice.

Don’t think, just obey the wind, which Will take you over

sea lions if you are lucky.

Then swing back over the schoolhouse where Hitchcock’s birds attacked. See wet houses on dry hills. Touch the tops of redwoods

as you make your way back to wine country where vines leap up at you. Ease your way

into the tingling valley

as if you were putting

a sleeping infant into her crib.

—James Brooks

[Page 23]A POETRY ANTHOLOGY

Mimosity

Shimmer of shadow, suggestion of wing, A stone, a boat, an open bay,

Images for which memory demands Their names and recognitions.

You know the mood? A sense of things

Being near at hand but not in comprehension, Which, should you now name them, would only be, At best, approximations—shimrner of shadow

Wisp of wing, not their deeper names Which is the urgency I press against Attempting to pose in relaxation

Yet continue in this moonlight to feel

The weight that stone still presses to my palm, Still rock to the motion of a boat

Heading towards an island—towards which I feel I’m traveling still, and all I remember

No more than a premonition of what

Is yet to come, or promises to, like a dream

In which these things were born as were the words Used to use the shadows of their names.

Haifa—the distant bay—no dream! And yet

The exactness of which I frequently fail to locate; Nor is the boat remembered here one of ‘Akká’s many But the one in which I swayed

In speculation—half sensing in anticipationHow it would be to face that bay: Imagination’s largess of which stone and boat Seemed and were tangible evidence

For which this naming is not nostalgia,

Is gratefulness for such given moments,

Mostly in silence and moonlight——their purpose Seen in brightest articulation by that Shrine

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Across the bay to which I crossed

—Not by boat but by bus—and knelt there Knowing it was the marvelous

AII things—stone and boat, imbuing moonlight Hinted at but could not equal As it perhaps was by that bird

—Gull or Hawk? I’ve never been sure whichomnipotent in the subject sky

When I stepped outside—his shadow dancing

On water as it still is in memory—frequently half sensed But never fully comprehended.

Yet what was largess if not that moment

And what was Viewed, both conditioned by The Herald’s golden, gleaming dome,

By which nothing has been the same again Or since; no moment so vivified

In that clarity and calm I’d willingly relocate, Can and cannot, fall from and into, Come closer to in retrospect that I have been From all that has since eluded me Half images perceived as shimmer of shadow,

Suggestion of wing, a sense of things

Being near at hand but not in comprehension, And so grasp at these, at best, approximations.

It will always be so; always unequal

To such largess, always unable to name their names, Yet forever shadowed, accompanied by,

Their sunlit names, their weights and verbs.

——Martyn Burke

[Page 25]A POETRY ANTHOLOGY

Trinity

I like the three trees that

Stand, silent sentinels

In our front yard.

I find them fanciful,

Reminiscent of

Northwest Pacific

Druidic lore, or, perhaps

Esoterically, Grecian columns

Sans arch.

They are fits, their trunks

Straight up, unbtanched at bottom, Straggling second—growth tops

Which allude to

Once upon a forest.

Their branches drop and

The children clean them up

Because they stifle

the growth of Whitman’s grass.

I have watched them filtering Moonlight in the wee hours

When all is silent and no breeze

Can stir their stoic

Sylvan watch. I don’t see

Elves or leprechauns, or even note Ringed fungal growths or scarred splotches Splayed in circles against the bark. They huddle, not too close, the smallest An echo of the larger, nearby, and

I remember, when sunlight sometimes Slants amidst the boughs, that They’ve shed time, endure,

Roots invisible, strong against the storms Until, like myth, they die.

—Heather Nablo Cardin

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Driving Through Georgia

I saw a bald, skinny white guy Wearing overalls without a shirt;

I could see a tuft of black hair Sticking out over his bib.

He was walking a small White goat on a leash, like I walked my collie. When I drove by he smiled

A semi—toothless grin

And waved.

—Patrick Carr

The Barbaric

Abraham sheathed the sharp dagger of sacrifice

at heaven’s command, and in obedience unbound His son and offered the accepted ram.

But men who do not know the feel of a child born in pain and aching to be free,

the feel of a suckling child held in arms eager for the nipple and the warm milk, the soft press of check to breast, and fingers that unfold in sweet, peaceful sleep those men who do not know would offer up a woman’s son and call the God of Abraham barbaric, those men who will not sheath their swords.

They are the barbarous ones who, day by day, A thousand thousand precious sons do slay.

—Druzelle Cederquist

[Page 27]A POETRY ANTHOLOGY

The Taste of Earth For Linda Marie DeCicco

The best wines taste of the land

which gave them birth.

The best people know who they are

and where they came from.

Three generations distant,

the south of Italy lives in Linda’s facehair as black as volcanic soil,

cheeks burnt with the Mediterranean sun.

Her dark eyes snap like the first hard frost of November.

Where the mountains rise from the sea,

where old ladies dressed in black

recount the harvests and earthquakes of their youth, a narrow cobble path winds its way

up the side of a hill. At the top,

a small stone house, its doorway scented

by the wine—dark roses of Calabria,

watches over the bay.

Inside, in the heat of the afternoon,

a daIk—haired woman stirs tomatoes

and olive oil in an iron kettle.

Adding cloves of garlic and pinches of herbsoregano for passion, basil for luck she cajoles the sauce until the taste is right. The eldest daughter ladles pasta

onto bright orange and blue earthenware plates. New red wine flows into old clay cups

and the family is nourished again.

The woman’s eyes slice lies from ragged words as cleanly as her hands fillet a fish.

Nellzz quesm cam, mio amico, parla solamente [a verim.

In this house, my friend, speak only the truth.

In the cool of the night

smoke from the cooking fire

drifts toward Sagittarius.

It mingles with the breeze

which blows across the sea from Spain.

Linda, the wind whispers to the ripening vineyards, cielz'm linda.

—Roger A. Chrastil

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A Chalice of Pure Light

Shadows fall over the garden

Where nightingales pause before flight.

Here in the springtime of roses, A journey of lover’s delight,

Someone has come to the Valley Of Search in the wisdom of truth: A wayfarer lost in her thoughts,

A world she thought she once knew.

Mystical waters consume her; Carry her into earth’s sorrows. With gnashing of teeth all around, She waits in deep contemplation

To find that from out of darkness, He gave to the world a New Plan. Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings Will bring A chalice of pure light to all.

—M. Riesa Clark

Who \Vlll?

I wonder who’ll teach the ice to How,

guide these caribou

to take shelter together?

Who will challenge

the pink salmon

to leap higher

to find the clearest pools?

Who Will urge

the northern lights

to lend rare beauty

to these southern skies?

Who’ll fill this urban tundra

with a gentle breath? Who will harpoon

all our hearts?

Let the trigger be swift! Let the bullet be love!

Let white ones be your mark! Only you can, Ooluk Nanatatuk!

—Cheryl Cudmore

[Page 29]Drowning in the Fire

I dream againmy longing an aria da capo

A POETRY ANTHOLOGY

that draws me back to the iron gates, their pillared strength a dream-compass

homing me towards True North,

where a bone—deep urging calls clearly to me from that secret cave where the dark marrow grows speaking the Word that is only a sigh,

yet a wordless lover’s plea:

my heart, in truth, the burning boat

that sinks in the blood—red sea,

drowning, at last, in the raging sky and buried whole in Thee. —S. K. Dapoz

Noon in March

Inside the gazebo

I am invisible.

Only the sun,

The trees, the birds, The breezes can gaze Upon my Windblown Philosophies.

I belong with

Sky and dirt;

I breathe the same As grass and earth.

——Megan Duffy

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There Is a Seat at the Table

There is a seat at the table

for every Native American,

and every African; every Christian

and Jew and Moslem, of every

variety; every refugee and

oppressed one; every sinner

among the hunt clubs, Stockbrokers,

and the few; the cabbie,

the foreman and the farmhand;

the old crone and the old man

with his pet peeves; the rock’n’roll

divas and the mezzo—sopranos;

the jazzman and the Indian

Classical sitar player;

there is a seat at the table

for the dispossessed of every continent;

for the peacemakers, and the wounded;

for every linguistic group and every

language Within them; for every shade

of brown; for every group within

groups; for every temperament,

school of thought and orientation;

every streetfighter and Brahmin;

for every nuance of intellectual

distinction; bring them on, there is

room for the human race in the human race, bring them on.

—Miehael F itzgerald

[Page 31]A POETRY ANTHOLOGY

A shin, a table and soul

I bumped my shin on a table

Up my leg travels shooting pain It is solid, massively stable

And I am toppling, a figure vain.

Imprisoned soul, brought down by so inane

A cage as this fragile body, subject

To decay and pain. But I am soul and will remain Long after this cage is less than dust. Now reflect

On the nature of this massive object Whose very atoms are but empty space, Indeterminate strings, wriggling, abject, Transient, entrancing, beautiful lace,

While I am simple, eternal soul Dazzled by details, yet embracing the whole.

—Larry Gates

The Needle’s Eye

Make wide, Oh Lord, the needle’s eye

and let me slip into the Kingdom’s heaven. Reserve for me, Oh Lord, a bit of sky

though undeserving I, to be forgiven.

Though sad, and sadly short I fall

of treading narrow, and safe of things forbidden yet I implore my measured grace, for all

that I have squandered the bounties I was given.

I kneel and weep and so incessantly beseech the earnest balm Yours only to bestow.

I crave and pray Your court to reach

with the faint offerings of my soul.

Though but a sinner, still I invoke the cry, Make wide, Oh Lord, for me, the needle’s eye.

—Rhea Howard Harmsen

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Pioneer

I suppose what they expected

Was some sort of a saint,

Maybe with a toseate glow to her

And an odor of Eau de Sanctity.

What they got was an insurgent,

A street-wise guerrillera,

Versed in the constant unforeseen.

She has no table manners,

Not ones you’d recognize,

And too few social graces

To bother counting.

Her mind plays ping—pong during prayers And she says so, right out loud.

She goes tranquilammte to the public square With her soul in curlers,

And when everyone looks at her, smiles. She says that we are all the same,

Only the names of the places are changed.

——Diane Huff

[Page 33]A POETRY ANTHOLOGY

nothing but sky to offer

it’s not much to look at.

the architecture haphazard,

the streets uneven,

the cars escaped

from the knackers.

it’s not even very clean .

with the kiosks on every corner

their universal counters with the grease—wrapped breakfast corncakes and the day’s news

held down by a stone.

the cigarettes sold one by one,

the cold soft drinks that bead

instantly in the heat,

the thimbIe—sized espressos, the lottery tickets that flutter in the air,

and over all the heat so tangible you can lean on it,

so overpowering

that even the brief shadow cast

by the Streetlight at noon is worth seeking, worth seeking the frangible breeze

that begins but seldom delivers.

what do we have to offer but skies

of endless inspiration,

Vistas that hold out promise

of grandeur,

and the contentment of youth with the street for a playing field and two bricks for a goal?

—Diane Huff

33

[Page 34]34 WORLD ORDER: SPRING 2002

Ever Graceful

for my father Jordon McKinney Shepard

i He is ever graceful,

C even unto his dying breath,

“J with merely a soft: spot between ending

and beginning.

His body simply ceases

to be the gravity for his soul.

Surely a gentle birth is best. He labors long. And thus, providential midwives,

with stories, prayers and songs, we hold hands across his chest. And, when all is still,

save for a certain quickening, we kiss shut his eyes,

easing him on through

as best we know to do.

i —Cynthia Sheperd Jaskwhich

[Page 35]A POETRY ANTHOLOGY

Longevity

I.

This spring, bayonets of bamboo pierce the porch surrounding

the only house she’s ever had. They’re spreading from the clump out by the old outhouse

Her sons mean to subdivide, make a gated community. Nobody’s bothered to bushhog the sweetgum and cedar

stealing a march on the pasture.

She’d hoped for the comfort

of these porch floorboards

squeaking beneath her rocker,

a pan of butterbeans in her lap

to shell of a morning,

a couple of great—grands in the pecan grove tethering June bugs With threads,

a pickup trailing a cloud

of dust up the drive.

11.

With the hand she can move, she pounds the tray of her wheelchair.

Her mother would recognize

the lap-baby she once was,

whining to get out of the highchair. Long gone is the woman who sweettalked her, whose rounded hip

she rode in the sling of a bedsheet knotted at the shoulder

While her mother churned and soothed, “Come, butter, come.”

35

[Page 36]gay

I l 36 WORLD ORDER: SPRING 2002 u I

a baby of her own into such a sling

to case his fussing.

She’d slide the crockery bowl

under the sifter-bin, spin out

a powered mound. She’d cut in lard, add a dab of clabber, a cup of buttermilk, sprinkle salt 03 the edge

of a palm, a spritz of soda

from finger tips. Finally, to the slapping wooden spoon beating up biscuits,

the little head would nod;

When he stirred the second time,

she knew he’d be sweetened.

IV.

Especially now she wants her own waking with cream and sugar.

The schedule here does not permit her

to ease into morning.

Every dawn for the past year

she’s burrowed for her husband’s

warmth in the bed, and every dawn

the Wide, cold edge startles her awake.

She tries to sit on the bedside

a few minutes before rising;

she needs to rock her head in her hands.

In sing—song voices they insist she move

to her chair; she’s locked in,

pushed down the hall to the recreation room. They leave her in the corner, waiting for breakfast,

III. 1 Many a daybreak she slipped lights glaring, heat on high, TV blaring.

[Page 37]A POETRY ANTHOLOGY

V.

She worries a place on her wrist, chafes against the tray.

Long-lost reverberations reach her car; she ceases fretting.

Something puts her in mind

of a song her mother once sang. There’s a strain to this resonance

she can’t quite lay her hands on.

She takes a sounding, drifting ever deeper, at last coming to test

within the lamentation of a crone

left beside the trail,

undulating side to side, cradling withered breasts in shriveled arms. Attuned, she croons,

“Come, butter, come.”

VI.

As she sings, her hand works.

She kneads the dinner bread

she must start soon after breakfast to get in two risings.

She smells the yeasty exhalation

as her floured fist punches down the risen dough. They’ll need two loaves, mounded tops buttered,

the crumb soft and fine.

She’d like to leave it like that, good, sweet leavening

rising, lightening, rising.

Not like this,

the dough left too long, collapsed, the yeast bubbling uselessly.

—Cynthia Sheperd Jaskwhich

37

[Page 38]

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Woodworking

She gets into the shower before

her radio alarm goes off; she’s bothered by the argument they had last night. It’s an old piece, with jagged lines, abrasive detail. As she’s lathering

she halts, alarmed by angry shouting. There’s gunfire—she slumps

in relief. Just the radio.

The commentator’s gravel-voice grinds her; she drips across the room to silence it.

She’s promised herself time this morning at her workbench to finish something. She pulls on gloves to work on

the piece she’s restoring for the living room, a fine endtable With good lines, well articulated detail.

She keeps trying not to think

about particulars, but about

how to restore the peace.

As the two of them get older, they’ve dried out, gone brittle, fiber and character.

She pours on a refinisher

which is slower, not so caustic

as the solution she often uses.

She must wait half an hour

before darkened varnish ribbons up against her scraper like wet sand.

She knows how to put things in. good repair between them: she must go with the grain, gently peel up a crazed shell,

uncover an intricate inlay,

smooth on tung oil with a soft cloth.

She knows what always happens:

with slight of tongue,

she sloshes on words that blister,

or with sleight of hand

she gouges the power

sander across the grain.

It would be useful to know more

of this craft of restoration,

how to dovetail two sides even,

miter two ends fair and square.

She’s lightened stains, lifted scars. Now she gives the endtable

the finishing touch:

pumice and oil, more pumice and oil, she polishes to a luminous patina.

Perhaps in time she’ll learn from her hands

what they’ve learned:

the ageless elasticity

of patiently oiled wood. Then she’ll know to bend, and, yielding, be of beautiful use.

—Cynthia Shepard Jaskwhich

[Page 39]A POETRY ANTHOLOGY

Out of My Element

Like a beached fish, I flail, like a grounded bird,

a spiritual being confounded in a body.

I falter, seeking my source, preoccupied With

the macro of space, micro of mass, ipso facto of time.

Cocooned in senses, so often I miss the celestial whisper coursing through me.

Careless of these true notes, I whistle them into the wind. Their Vibrating messages swim streams

of consciousness; now and then, like a godsend, they surface somewhere in a Vibrato, a brush stroke.

They ride high tides of dreams, then, miraculously appear in a shutter click, a soliloquy, and thus

elucidate the oldest voyage, from here to forever,

light the longest journey, heart to head and home again. —Cynthia Sheperd Jaskwhich

39

[Page 40]

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The Waters of Glenwood Springs

Hédu’l—Bflbd’ visited Glenwood Springs, Colorado, 26 Septeméer 1912. He stayed at the Hotel Colorado and bathed in the hot springs. This poem was written to Hlm’u’l—Ba/m’ for the eighty—fifi/a anniversary commemoration of Hit visit.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Servant of Baha, Servant of Bahe’t, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: We come to Glenwood Springs following Your footsteps. Be With us as we walk where once You walked.

Be with us to step in Your steps.

We wish to glow as bright candles.

We wish to shine as brilliant stars.

We wish to bloom as sun—filled flowers. All that You said, all that You showed us,

We wish to be.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá, You have poured waters of The Great Spirit into Glenwood Springs. We bathe in these waters and refresh our spirit. We rejoice in these waters~—our heart sings.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Servant of Baha, Servant of Bahá, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá:

Be with us, always. —Irving Kelsey

[Page 41]At Gethsemanj

The cicada buzzes left Then right,

Gnawing its song through the breeze Of September afternoon.

The silence of Gethsemani Opens with irony on

A host of sounds: Children’s laughter trifling

Beyond the hills,

Trucks humming out The thin ribbon of Country road.

This morning brought Deer tread soft In the woods across the way

And one small brown frog Frozen against the Threatening foot.

Tonight there Will be Bells and canticles And then coyotes Out beyond the hills.

—Susan McCray

A POETRY ANTHOLOGY 41

Rufina

The flowers of my soul are but one: a red lily,

fierce, truth—speaking.

It springs up each year

to trumpet my praise of God.

I have no bouquet the flower of my soul is one, and, recorded on slender bands, its frank trumpet will sound long after

my flower has moved on.

——Susan McLaren

[Page 42]

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his story—Iran

my cell in solitary

was small, no bigger

than your bathtub

I could not rest or sleep

when I became too weary they threw down cold water. no light, no measurement of time later, my friend said it had been three weeks, so I believed him the air? a slit in the wall

for foul breath to penetrate. this much water at my feet

so they offered none to drink. for three weeks little food but a daily piece of bread.

see how it fit into my hand

a crust so hard I feared

my teeth would break

so I dipped it at my feet

then ate

after three weeks

they removed me

I was blind for twenty minutes then I viewed my tormentors

what was my crime?

oh, that is a story!

the army kept calling me. I refused.

each time they appeared in the night, took me from my bed to that place. finally, I said yes,

I will serve your war

on their paper

I wrote my name and my faith. they laughed.

you’ll not advance

in this army until

you change that

write a different faith.

but I could only say

my heart, my voice and that name are one.

I laughed at their logic and declared my Lord

see, where the boot struck my jaw there is still a trace

here, and on my forehead I remember that kick

it shifted my brain

such a strange sound. their hissing cigarettes bore into my chest; cables traced the tracks of their rage on my back. my body is a map of

that tortuous journey

it hurt for a few moments

then I felt my Lord embrace me He carried me to a far place . . . from there I watched

the flecks of my blood strike my tormentors’ flaming faces. they were hungry

for my cries

I did not satisfy them

so many times

I was brought to that room where they shouted their need for me to deny His name. they insisted I tell them

the names of the others.

[Page 43]I refused

they shouted consequences no sergeant badge

to wear on my shirt.

they shaved my head

stood me high before

the soldiers, mostly boys and some men

the sergeant glared down ordered me to deny my Lord. oh, they were hungry

I begged to speak

they hoped I would confess I sang out His name

just as the blow struck

from the dirt, through my blood I glanced up at the majors

big like wolves

big like wolves, tears

on their faces

I must tell you about my buddy how close we were

like a brother, you ask?

closer than my brother

he followed me to that battle they laughed at him

for asking to be sent

to that place

my buddy heard the whispers they wanted to kill me

he promised to walk behind me he would watch for the bullet that was aimed at my back.

we heard stories

of the friends, fallen in the dirt

one bullet in the back of their heads

the battle was dirty I was splattered with blood

A POETRY ANTHOLOGY 43

somehow my buddy found me

he fell to my arms ‘

I was hot with his blood

he said good—bye.

the rest I have chosen to forget

but this I will remember—my red arms my heart a stone.

his hot blood his hot blood

on my body

for one day my eyes

could see only red

I sat gripping my machine gun with slick red hands.

I shot into the earth

I threatened the others

they dared not come near me. red was all I could see

now here is a mystery . . .

one night I left the road

to hike across a field

then my knife fell.

seeking the blade

my fingers touched a filament.

I dropped and froze

until morning light showed me the web.

each knot marked

the mines, a foot apart.

I prayed. then, hardly breathing stepped back, fifteen metres to the road

you say this is proof

that He Chooses me to live?

I tell you sorrow

Visits my heart. my Lord could not love me enough . . .

my story cannot be written

with crimson ink . . .

[Page 44]

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enough of this. I will tell you more about the fighting. the day that I was hit, red on my trousers drew a soldier to my side.

no medics here so I begged

him to help me. he paled backed away, then promised

to return to see if I lived.

a handkerchief silenced my cries my knife found the wound.

one bullet was easy but

the knife could not find the second

even as it probed bone

through the fever I heard

their voices:

put this one in the morgue he’s almost dead . . .

no wait, we could try something new

there’s nothing to lose . . . we could fly him to Tehran . . .

we need this soldier now. I Was returned to their war

but at last I came to Canada that journey is a map

of miracles . . .

the friends before me

made the path clear

to this home

——Catherine McLaughlin

[Page 45]A POETRY ANTHOLOGY 45

Intimation An exquisite tracery of branches etched against a glowing twilight sky. Summer evening whirrings of unseen insects unite 0n the cue of an invisible conductor. A soft night breeze moves the clouds, stirs the leaves, adding a whisper. The front porch rocker creaks to a momentary halt ———Pau1 Mantle

Late in Winter, Afternoon

The wild sky promises the Spring. So do the bare trees, imperceptibly budding.

Unerringly, the Wild geese believe it.

The sleepy hills murmur, “We believe.”

The waters shine assent.

—Paul Mantle

[Page 46]46

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Heat of Breath

“Ancient Semites taught that the sacrum at the base of the spine contained a mystical seed of

each person’s future resurrected body.” 7773 Wmen’s Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objectx

And so,

in the end, the cloud which takes the shape of neck, torso, and foot, exhaled

from a mouth in the back, is a cloak, somehow familiar.

What Will the body be there?

Mirror-Image? Hush Of the Past? Who planted this seed,

fed by flesh, speaking its name from first light to darkness.

Whose mouth blows into it with love, ardently, heat

of breath. And so,

who makes us?

——Valerie Martinez

[Page 47]The Eye of Earth

So the stream comes down in ringlets and the sheen, with its lashes, blinks and blinks and your eyes are there like those fixed on a flame, like those in the spell of an ember—calm and remarkably steady. Otherwise you might be away from the forest, or at your desk, or in the irises of someone come to cast you away into love, or in books all at this moment utterly misplaced. The eye of earth is meek right here, ferocious elsewhere, swallowing cities with its thunderous mouth. But meek right here . . . might hurt as much in some meticulous way. You are wayward. Now you know. It isn’t contemplation. Not reflection. No, the mountain has no Will and so it shines and is pure. You become yourself suddenly. You are offered up, rare, stark, enormous.

——Valerie Martinez

A POETRY ANTHOLOGY 47

Aureole

Circlet of gold, thousand—petaled lotus at the head, light rounding the dark curls of a sage who rolls her lips and tongue into the trees.

The child removes the brass plate, the harness around her ears.

The play is done. Her part, scribbles on index cards, scattered on the wooden, back stage floor.

The round makeup mirrors

with their white bulbs, halo, halo, halo,

blowing out.

Despite the sheet, the plastic amulet, she did feel something surge up

as Aura of Rome—through femur, belly and skull. Will she know? Whether legend, earth aspiring,

tug of sun—these magnets of heaven. —-Valerie Martinez

[Page 48]

A w=__ __ A.

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Knock Me Down

Grief is tortuous

my father dead

his broken family

trying to pick up the pieces dismantling photo albums dividing Christmas ornaments.

Even the wallpaper bleeds divorced, separated at custody, put in boarding school, summoned to war,

rejected by the new wife, fought over again and again.

Some siblings don’t speak others whisper secrets one hires an attorney to channel the rage.

I am at a loss.

—Carlin C. Mills

[Page 49]A POETRY ANTHOLOGY

Remembering the Old Poet from Magallanes

Full of white Wine He stands small And alone, looks Lost on the corner Below red and blue Zinc roofs that lean Toward the Strait.

He finds himself daily In bats drinking Morning Wine.

I meet him there

For the first swallow And see his eyes moisten

When he speaks about This land, or his father Who rises in the furrows Of his thought and verse, Appears and reappears As he does in the mirror Behind the oak counter.

His words fail to me

Like grain from the harvest,

Or grapes loose from the cluster. I gather them in,

Know that he dreams

Of dying in the rain

On the least rebellious

Day of his life,

That trees from the woods He loves will make a nest That others will call coffin, And the carpenters Will sing As they wrap him in wood And lay him in the earth He now holds in his hands.

I see him standing there, Smiling softly at me

From across the street.

He lifts a hand only Waist-high to wave good-bye, And holds it there,

As if he were afraid

I would go away

And not remember him.

49

——David A. Petreman

[Page 50]

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Littoral Birth at 13121 Negra

I

A boy stands on a beach At Isla Negra

Facing the horizon.

The line is straight There are no waves

The water has no color. He stares

Past the fish

Hurling themselves Onto the sand at his feet.

Only his head turns back

Toward the limits of land.

He cannot see the man behind him Worn green from a forest shroud, The avid embrace of tree and vine Curtailing the reach of his heart.

He comes with empty eyes To discover the sea

\X/ith empty hands

To gather in nets of algae Filled with motion and blue. He hears a language Emerging from salt and foam. One by one, the waves Become his heartbeat.

II

On the beach at Isla Negra Neruda walks the rocks. His wary stafl: prods,

Then strokes igneous lumps Sprung by liquid fire.

The rise and fall, fluid

As a submarinal scheme.

With a wave of his hand

He taps the world of stone, Awakens spirits we have lost, Watches empty crevices

Fill With foam.

His words are the ocean’s Breath as he creates the planet.

In When his words drop Into hearts like needed rain

People come to see What they have done to him.

Twice they buried him In the earth of his youth. He lies now at 1513 Negra On a bed of salt, Dreams the sleep

Of silent motion,

While waves

Lift him gently

Toward a sea of stars.

———David A. Petreman

[Page 51]A POETRY ANTHOLOGY

By the time

my mother was my age

I was propping her up, helping her fish

through long afternoons. Some days I held the pole, other days she did. I confess there were such sad things she pulled out, at times

I had to turn my head. Her skin was a warm stone, smooth as if polished

by a jeweler’s rag. And when she smiled for me, her eyes were Baltic amber, shimmery and wise.

When she cried out

in pain as I bathed her, her bones cut me

and I thought of relatives who died in prison camps.

After I dried and powdered her and carried her like a child

to bed, she read. When

the book slipped from her hands, her glasses held tight,

useless on her nose,

I’d imagine her bed cold,

her last words

and I would kiss her awake.

—Deam1a Pickard

51

[Page 52][Page 53]A POETRY ANTHOLOGY

How Hope Returns for Philip Sch uItz

Finally the feeling, lending itself

to a broken hand or heart, a foot or Wing.

The day arrivesyou are set free, the cast is cut OE.

Without knowing it,

the hard shell became you. It was an island,

familiar and small.

You knew the boundariesround as a bowl and white.

It is the cross

your mother once told you everyone must carry

at one time or another.

The mind plays trickslike shadows at the window, or a circle or the idea

of a circle—like a man or woman you marry but cannot trust.

The bird has to learn from

the hand that pushes it awayno choice but to fly or fall.

Fly or fall, start over.

Everyone knows the heart is miracle and muscle think of a love affair ending, or the death you believed you could never endure,

think of nights without sleep, Without dreams, the brittleness of the dark.

Think of the day hope breaks out, without fanfare,

without permission,

without Wings.

—Deanna Pickard

53

[Page 54]

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Aftermath

Straightening up from her weeding, surely Someone somewhere would see in this day more Than another morning to be lived though.

Now alone in his garden she seeks the filling Buds, her bark-rough hands suddenly gentle, Loosening, smoothing away the Winter’s mulch From tender shoots new-born, in need of light.

By noon the dalfodils are neatened, spent Yellowing leaves tied in miniature sheaves To make room for nasturtium, showy phlox With stalks already on tiptoe to be seen Above the stone wall bordering his lawn.

At least his garden still needs me, she’s thinking, And pats supporting earth against a limp stem Of torn buds; lets time flow through forgiving Fingers as she hoes heartease for her pain.

—Elouise E. Postle

[Page 55]Keeping It In

The novelists Iris Murdoch and Margaret Atwood say that people need secrets, which are it right amiproperptzrt of being human. Eddy} world is ohsessed with not having secrets, with letting it all hang out. These navelists argue that someone with no secret: is an impossibility.

You can’t tell it all: that’s plain to see. Not everything can be disclosed.

It’s better to keep it in sometimes, the wise course, the sensible middle,

21 question of timing, suited to the ears,

the sane line.

I’ve said this before. I don’t tell it all;

I keep some back, in poems and in life.

——Ron Price

A POETRY ANTHOLOGY

But Soft Echoes Bologna, 1976—79

Sometimes, secluded in a fictitious world

of illusions and fancies, I forgot the true one.

I heard but soft echoes of distant voices.

Dim glimmers, I saw, of remote lights.

Life for me

almost was not.

——Ju_lio Savi

55

[Page 56]

56 WORLD ORDER: SPRING 2002

After His Words Bologna, 22 October 1998

After His words I have no words of mine, only my heartbeat sound beating and beating

as a drum. I have no Wine, only the nectar of my tears. I have no breath, only the sighs from my breast. I am fading into nothingness. I am naught. Not even my name remains.

—Julio Savi

Despite the Light of Guidance San Giovanni in Persiceto (Bologna), 1979—83

The yearning

for the still remote

goal of inner knowledge spurs me in my journey, induces me to bend

all my efforts toward Thee, makes me to rise up again, Whenever I fall down,

for it I accept

every arduous trial.

But how often, alas, despite the light of guidance, I walk the paths of error.

—Julio Savi

[Page 57]A POETRY ANTHOLOGY

The Seamstress

No matter what, the edges seem to fray So you must trim the excess from the tips

The threads begin to gently fall away

The scissors always seem to know the way I pull them from the pocket at my hip No matter what, the edges seem to fray

The cloth, once White, has now begun to gray It folds and bunches as I slowly clip the pieces that begin to fall away

That girl, her blue eyes always in my way, with words that bite into skin like a whip No matter what, my edges seem to fray

Across the downy pillow her hair strays I take my silver shears and start to snip, and strands begin to gently fall away

The scissors cut the final thread of day I press a silent finger to my lips

No matter what, the edges seem to fray The strands begin to gently fall away

—Noelle Trowbridge

57

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58

. .‘m .m H‘"

, .rx‘.-. 3"!” ,

[Page 59]59

Matters of Opinion

REVIEWS OF BOOKS, FILMS, AND EXHIBITS

Book Review

YEARS OF SILENCE, THE BAHA’I’S IN THE USSR, 1938-1946: THE MEMOIRS OF ‘ASADU’LLAH ‘ALI’ZAD

BY ‘ASADU’LLAH ‘AL1ZAD, TRANS. BY BAHARIEH ROUHANI MA’ANT (OXFORD: GEORGE RONALD, 1999, XVIII + 192 PAGES)

HE literature of Stalinist terror is rich. The catastrophe that engulfed the

Soviet Union between 1935 and 1939 has left a record of government documents, diplomatic reports, historical studies such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, fiction, poetry, and, most important, memoirs of Victims. Members of the Communist Party, government officials, officers of the Red Army, intellectuals, and millions of ordinary citizens were swept into a vast network of concentration camps. Exactly how many were killed, died under torture, or perished from cold, starvation, or disease will never be known. Estimates range from ten to twenty million.

Although the terror was mostly indiscriminate, some groups and classes of the population suffered more than others; thus, for example, the rate of executions was the highest among the members of the Communist party. The Bahá’í community of the Soviet Union, concentrated in Central Asia and Transcaucasia, suffered particularly heavy losses, partly because of its strong commitment to its religion and partly because a vast majority of its members were Iranian immigrants who, after several decades in Russia—USSR, had kept their Iranian Citizenship.

‘Asadu’llah ‘Alfzad was one such Bahá’í. Born in Iran in 1910, he was brought to Ashgabat1 in Russian Transcaspia at the age of three, received a typical Soviet education, and worked as an engineer until he was arrested in February 1938 and, in 1939, exiled to Northern Kazakhstan. Yézm of Silence, the Bahá’í’: in the USSR: 1938—46: 7716 Memoirs of Hmdu’lla’b H/iza’d is not a memoir in

1. The Perso—Arabic name of the city (city of love) is frequently transliterated from the Persian as Ishqábád. The Russian practice was at one time to spell it as Askhabad, then Ashkhabad. Currently in Turkmenistan the preferred spelling is Ashgabat.

[Page 60]

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the conventional sense. It is a report written and submitted to the Bahá’í World Center more than thirty years after the events it describes. Inevitably it contains minor historical errors and a few misidentifications, some of which may have been introduced into the text and the illustrations by the editors. However, it must be stated clearly at the outset that occasional errors and infelicities of translation do not diminish the value of this simple and heartrending book}

Yéars of Silence is a chronicle of inhumanity inflicted by the government of a great and powerful country on several thousand innocent people. ‘Alizéd does not put the mass arrests, imprisonment, and exile of Ashgabat Bahá’ís into historical perspective. He tells of his own ordeal and bears witness to the suffering of dozens of others, both men and women, whom he knew. He takes his reader to the NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, one of the names by which the dreaded Soviet political police was known) interrogatories at Which the accused are always asked to sign papers confessing their anti-state activities: typically espionage and sabotage. Refusal to confess infuriates the interrogators. cAlizad describes the insults, the threats, and, finally, the torture inflicted on anyone who tries to resist. Most give in and sign incriminating false confessions, A few who do not give in die under torture. There are heroes but no heroics here, no soul searching a la Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon about the rights and the wrongs of the actions of the tormentors and their Victims.

Confession was inevitably followed by prison. By mid—1938 most of the male Ashgabat Bahá’ís had been through arrests, searches of their homes, interrogations, and condemnations. They now had to endure months of confinement in filthy, crowded cells, malnourisment, lack of medical attention, and uncertainty about their future and the future of their wives and children on the outside. ‘Alizéd illustrates the degradation of the prisoners by describing the toilet facility provided to ninety men who had to share a fivegallon tank placed in open View.

The tank was 60 centimeters high. One had to stand with his back to the

tank and empty his bowels into it just like a cow. To help the person who

needed to use the tank to overcome his embarrassment, two prisoners would hold up a blanket and provide him with some privacy. Stench, hunger, lice, cold in winter, and stifling heat in summer were the normal conditions of prison existence. Unsanitary conditions and malnutrition bred disease. The prison hospital was of little help, and few inmates sent

there came out alive.

2. For example: “Everyone. . . had forgotten their humanity,” p.70; “to kneel on ourknees,” pp. 77, 90, 91, 109 (emphasis added). And, of course, there are no jungles in Northern Kazakhstan or Siberia. The Persian jangzzl should have been rendered as forest.

[Page 61]ANIMAL THEOLOGY

‘Alizéd writes in detail about the inmates’ behavior. Although some deteriorated mentally and spiritually, most Bahá’ís preserved their dignity, their sense of solidarity and friendship, and their concern for their fellow sufferers. They did not confine their friendship to their own circle but extended it to Muslims, establishing bonds of fellowship and creating a sense of community among the prisoners. He tells the tragic stories of several individual Bahá’ís, among them leaders of the community, who did not survive the ordeal. The list of the fallen is long, but their names will not be forgotten, thanks in part to ‘Ali’zéd’s faithful recounting of their sufferings.

Exile to Northern Kazakhstan followed the prison ordeal. Terrible though conditions were in that harsh country bordering on Siberia, they were much better than the conditions in prison. ‘Ah’zéd and many other Bahá’í’s had useful skills that, after a period of initial misery, allowed them to survive. A number of Bahá’í women Chose to follow their husbands to Kazakhstan and were largely responsible for making the conditions of exile bearable. Their devotion, love, and strength of character sustained and inspired all.

During and after World War II the Soviet government released from concentration camps and deported to their countries of origin a large number of foreign citizens, ‘Asadu’lláh Nizéd among them. More than three decades later he recorded his experiences. We owe him our gratitude for preserving a part of the inspiring and tragic history of the Bahá’ís of Ashgabat, who had created a functioning community, built the world’s first Bahá’í’ temple, withstood persecution, and set an example of selfless devotion to the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh.

—FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH

Book Review

ANIMAL THEOLOGY

BY ANDREW LINZEY (URBANA, IL: U OF ILLINOIS, 1995, 214 PAGES)

HE natural world has become increasingly altered by human intervention,

from actions contributing to the melting of polar ice caps to the cloning of several species of mammals. Given this kind of unbridled power, how can people concerned with spiritual issues think about and relate to animals? In Animal Theology, Andrew Linzey makes a compelling case for our pulling ourselves up by our moral bootstraps to a spiritual level that gives us the comv passion to care for animals for nonutilitarian reasons.

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WORLD ORDER: SPRING 2002

Tracing the development of the theology and philosophy of the treatment of animals in Western thought from Aristotle’s day to the present, Linzey bases his arguments in favor of animal rights on traditional Judeo-Christian texts. He is careful to allude to such other recent and important currents of thought as feminism, while remaining fully focused on and committed to the issue of animals. Linzey takes on the difficult topics of animal experimentation, hunting, and vegetarianism, exploring contemporary religious attitudes toward them and responding to common criticisms.

For those already concerned with animal welfare in a progressively more crowded and mechanized world, Animal Theology offers sound scholarly research that will give new depth to their beliefs. Readers Who have not seriously considered this issue before—or have shrugged off animals as unworthy of their attention—will be spiritually challenged by Andrew Linzey’s cogent explications. Either way, Animal Theology asks us to undertake a stimulating spiritual adventure by confronting our own views on this significant subject and clarifying how we relate to our fellow creatures.

—BARBARA GEIGER

Film Review

EL NORTE

DIRECTED BY GREGORY NAVA; WRITTEN BY GREGORY NAVA

AND ANNA THOMAS (1983; RERELEASED 2001; 139 MINUTES)

T HE IMPACT of such forces as materialism, individualism, and cultural assimilation on families and individuals, especially those of Latin American descent in the United States, is a theme that Gregory Nava has successfully addressed in films such as E! Norte (The North, 1983) and Mi Familia (W Family, 1985), The rerelease of ElNorte in 2001 is testament to the timelessness of these issues and a demonstration of Nava’s remarkable talents as a filmmaker.

El Norte tells a familiar story about the quest for happiness, dignity, and justice in contemporary society. The main characters lead lives of material pursuit, sadly unaware of the ironic fact that this pursuit systematically deprives them of family and culture—elements that contribute to the safety and happiness they are seeking. In the end, however, whether With family or alone, Whether in the mountains of Central America or the suburbs of California, the Characters find that contemporary economic and social systems are so

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EL NORTE 63

powerful that they prevent many people from attaining the success, justice, and happiness they desire.

As El Nam: opens, a long line of weary Guatemalan Indians is returning from the fields at the end of a long day. The men work in slave—like conditions, laboring each day for pennies under the ruthless management of wealthy landowners who rule with guns and kill those who resist their power. Poor and virtually powerless, the men and their families, nevertheless, find comfort and a sense of belonging in the warm environment of their small Village. But when Arturo and his friends begin to work for greater freedom, the situation takes a violent turn, and Arturo loses his life. His daughter, Rosa, and son, Enrique, resolve to escape the Violent injustices by undertaking a dangerous journey to the north, alone, without their family, where they hope to attain the freedom and material comfort they have seen portrayed in the glossy pages of old magazines from the United States. The north of the film’s title, the United States, represents a paradise to the Guatemalan villagers, a place where Rosa and Enrique are sure they will find an alternative to their harsh life of virtual slavery. Thus they set out, leaving behind dead friends and relatives as well as family members and fellow villagers who have been prevented, for a variety of reasons, from escaping the harsh peasant life.

After a grueling journey filled With obstacles ranging from greedy thieves after easy money in Tijuana to the vigilant border patrol, the siblings reach their promised land. Although they have lost their family and are far away from the warm embrace of their Village, they still have each other. They are eager to work hard and do whatever is necessary to become part of the American Dream, even though they are illegal aliens from a vastly different culture and do not speak English. They accept these challenges as part of the quest for happiness, prosperity, and freedom. Yet, despite their working long hours and using their spare time to learn English, the ingrained injustice of an uncaring, materialistic system thwarts their attempts to assimilate and to better their plight. Most ofElNarte is devoted to the sad irony of their exertions.

Nava emphasizes the significance of the siblings’ migration with rich symbolism. The long, dusty bus ride (a striking contrast to the lushness of the Guatemalan countryside) and the filthy, rat—infested tunnel through which Rosa and Enrique must crawl to be “born” into the paradise of the United States both stand as metaphors for their journey and, indeed, for the entire immigrant experience. During the journey Rosa is forced to sell her mother’s valuable necklace to pay for expenses. Later, to better their chances of succeeding in the United States, they hide their Indian origins to pass as Mexicans. Both actions are symbolic of their bartering away their precious family and culture for illusory freedom and a glossy, magazine-induced conception of the Promised Land.

In the end, Enrique must choose between material prosperity (a promising job in another city) and his sister, a scenario reminiscent of his father’s choice to strive for liberation at the risk of losing his own family. To accept the job,

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64 WORLD ORDER: SPRING 2002

Enrique would have to leave Rosa behind. This choice would have been unthinkable in the village, where family comes first, but in a culture of individualism, the siren call of material wealth is difficult to resist. Nevertheless, when Rosa gets sick at the last moment, Enrique chooses to stay with her rather than accept the job.

Like his father laboring in the fields of Guatemala, Enrique joins a Virtual chain gang of migrant workers in Los Angeles. After their flight, their struggles, their attempts to realize their dreams of paradise, Enrique and Rosa are no better off than they were in Guatemala. In fact, they are poorer because they have lost their family, their Village, their culture, their home. The film ends by offering the Viewer images of the unenviable position of individuals left adrift in the world without family, forced into submission by materialism and abandoned in a culture obsessed with individualism.

The Visual effects of El Norte—spare, uncompromising scenes and seenery—underscore the grim reality that the characters face. A shack in Tijuana, the everyday inside of a suburban household, the alley behind a fancy restaurant in Los Angeles, and the dining room and kitchen of the same restaurant suggest the reality of Rosa’s and Enriques’s dilemma.

The simplicity of the performances of the actors Nava chose for the leading roles also contributes to the realism of his grim fable, for the performances are devoid of the polish and overacting characteristic of many contemporary Hollywood films. That the performers are not well known further allows the audience to accept them as representatives of the shifting masses of people making their way across the southern border of the United States.

The realistic depiction of the brother’s and sister’s journey to the deceptive northern paradise, flavored as it is by the setting, supported by the symbolism, and infused with timeless themes, suggests that the members of the audience, too, are intended to make their own journeys, reflecting on dilemmas in their own lives. El Norte is a somber testament to the reality of modern life, the dilemma of having to sacrifice important connections to survive. Whether in the safe confines of a rural Village or the competitive economy of a big city, whether in an attempt to challenge the system or to become individuals with dignity in the system, the forces of individualism and materialism are so powerful that people are cut off from their families and their culture, despite the best of intentions and actions. The film observes the emptiness of life divorced from family and culture, but it does not offer a solution. That task is left to the audience.

—M. ERIC HORTON

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YINKA SHONIBARE 65

Exhibit Review

AN INTRODUCTION TO YINKA SHONIBARE

ALIEN OBSESSIVES, MUM, DAD, AND THE KIDS (1998, A PART OF THE PERMANENT COLLECTION OF CHICAGO’S MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART)

RECENT postcolonial art has been exploring a series of interesting questions about nationalism and national identity. What is national identity? What makes one identify oneself With a particular nationality? Are national identities constructed discursively and socially, or is there something innately nationalistic about us? What are we to make of national identity today, and what is national identity making of us? In a series of contemporary art pieces the British—born Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare has taken a satirical look at the intersection of British and African national identities. His Alien Obsessives, Mum, Dad, and tlae Kids (1998) was part of the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art’s exhibition, The Age of Influence: Rzflectiom in the Mirror of American Culture (2000).1

Alien Obsessives, Mum, Dad, and the Kids includes eight three—dimensional stuffed figures made out of brightly colored African batik. The figures depict a nuclear family of aliens, resembling What the popular imagination has often conceived of as alien identity: large ovaI—shaped heads with big eyes and pointy antennae; long, slim necks; bird—like legs and duck-like, webbed feet; and hands with three fingers. The figures are spread out across the room with one talking to another in a corner, two or three gathered in another. Under each grouping of figures at linoleum disk, each one in a different color, evokes the space ships from whence they have come.

Aliens are outsiders whose intentions are ambiguous or unknown. In popular science—fiction literature and film, the alien might even live among “us” and adopt “our” ways of life. Yet aliens are never really human: Think of the popular Saturday Night Live Coneheads skit that was later turned into a feature—length film of the same name; or of Star Pele, in Which the differences between Dr. Spock, the Vulcan who accompanies the crew of the USS Enterprise, and the other members of the crew are often highlighted; or, more recently, of Third Rock from the Sun, the characters of which cannot quite be

1. The Alien O&mxz’wy exhibit is part of the permanent collection of Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art. The MCA collection, including a photograph of Alien Obsessive: (which, unfortunately, does not do justice to the installation) can be seen at <http://www.mcachieago.org>. For a detail of two of the figures, see <http://wwwnsad.ae.uk/gallety/exhibs/PAST/yinka.htm>. Alien Obsem'ues has also been featured in a major retrospective of Shonibare’s work at the Studio Museum in Harlem (23 Jan.— 31 Mar. 2002) and at various group exhibitions around the world.

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WORLD ORDER: SPRING 2002

human, no matter how hard they try. Sometimes the aliens’ intentions are purely evil. Consider, for example, the popular television show The X-Fz'les or any number of recent sci—fi films that feature alien space ships invading earth and leaving entire cities destroyed in their wake.

But the term alien is also often used to refer to either a legal or illegal resident of a country in which one was not born. Shonibare seems clearly to be playing on such racially stereotyped conceptions of the alien: the figures represent a nuclear family with six children, evoking the specter of the welfare family, while the figures themselves require the viewer to look down on them, for they stand between two to four feet high, thus disturbing viewers by implicating them in their tendency toward Western chauvinism.2 Such a disturbance in the Viewers’ psyches also invites reflection on assumptions First World cultures often make about developing countries. Colonialism, after all, has always relied on conceiving of a racial “other” that is somewhat like, but somehow not quite the same as, the “us” that defines national identity.

In Alien Obsessives, a work on which he has continued to build subsequent exhibits, Shonibare thus plays off of the various responses to the alien other and to conceptions of national identity.3 Not only are aliens represented in African batik, a symbol of national identity, but the batik itself is clearly shown to have been made in European and Asian countries and then exported to the African market. Shonibare thus highlights the ways in Which the notion of nationalism fails us in an era of globalization. If the very symbol of one nation’s identity is, in fact, manufactured in several other countries, what does this say about the authenticity of that nation’s symbol? Shonibare’s art thus occupies the space between the binary opposition of European and African identity, exposing the way in which both are, in essential ways, constructs. He questions, though does not completely reject, the very existence of national identities and the cultural identity that emerges from within each nation:

I don’t necessarily believe in national identity as a natural phenomenon.

. . . It’s basically a political tool that doesn’t serve everybody. . . . [Even

national cultural identity has] been used a 1m to attract people to places

of beauty and to promote local culture and to bring people in for tourism

purposes. But that’s like a form of theater, [sic] it’s always usually fake. . . .

it’s never in it’s [sic] original version. . . . It becomes some kind of cartoon.4

2‘ I owe the latter point to a conversation with Betty J. Fisher.

3. For example, Shonibare builds on the Alien Obsessivet theme with his current work Sparewal/e, in which three—dimensional figures dressed in space gear evoke the pioneering American spirit. Typically, however, the artist depicts the figures in the African batik he used in Alien Obxmz'ves and other works, thus complicating our understanding of What that spirit means and from where it is derived.

4. Lori Waxman, “Interview With Yinka Shonibare,” 29 Apr. 2001 <http://www.attnspan.com/

wotd/9>.

[Page 67]YINKA SHONIBARE 67

' By satirizing his own symbol of nationalism and thus calling into question all such symbols—whilc also highlighting the complexities and interrelatedness of conceptions of First and Third World nations—Shonibare invites his audience to abandon thinking solely in those terms, too.

—KEVIN A. MORRISON

[Page 68]

[Page 69]

Authors 8C Artists

69

ROBERT P. ALTORK, the owner of Dolphin Home Inspections, has published‘an album of original songs entitled Can You Imzzgz'ne.

ELINOR BENEDICT won the 2000 May Svenson Poetry Award for All That Divide:

Us and has poems forthcoming in Xanadu and Connecticut Review.

JAMES BROOKS, who teaches English at Chaminade Julianne High School in Dayton, Ohio, has published poems in numerous literary journals.

MARTYN BURKE is a painter, a poet, and a photographer.

HEATHER NABLO CARDIN is a junior high school teacher of French, English, and moral education.

PATRICK CARR is the assistant editor of Orpheus, the literary and arts magazine of the University of Dayton, where he is a

student.

DRUZELLE CEDERQUIST is a poet and the author of a forthcoming historical biogra phy of Bahá’u’lláh.

ROGER A. CHRASTIL, the marketing director of St. Paul’s Retirement Community, teaches business writing at Indiana University—South Bend.

M. RIESA CLARK, a poet and a nutrition distributor, owns M. R. Clark Service.

CHERYL CUDMORE is a freelance graphic designer.

S. K. DAPOZ, who owns Convergence Information Design for the Internet, re: cently launched Billet Doux Paper Arts.

MEGAN DUFFY is completing a degree at the University of Dayton.

MICHAEL FITZGERALD has published fourteen books of poetry, nonfiction, and children’s literature.

LARRY GATES, the sales manager for Hayco Roofing, has published a bilingual children’s

book and a volume of sonnets.

BARBARA GEIGER is a landscape historian and preservationist currently working as the a conservation coordinator for the Bahá’í House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois.

RHEA HOWARD HARMSEN, a plant breeder and production manager at a nursery in Puerto Rico, has published in World Order (Summer 1998) an essay entitled “Science in the Hands of Women: Present Barriers, Future Promise.”

M. ERIC HORTON’s review is prompted, in part, by his own sense of familial dislocation. He lives With his brother in Chicago, while his mother lives in North Carolina

and his father in New York.

DIANE HUFF, a development supervisor for CTB/McGraW-Hili, lived for twenty years

in Venezuela.

CYNTHIA SHEPERD JASKWHICH freelances as a poet-in—residence in South Carolina schools through the S.C. Arts Commission’s Artists in Education program.

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WORLD ORDER: SPRING 2002

FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH, a professor emeritus of Russian history at Yale University, is a member of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.

IRVING KELSEY is an attorney and also the Hearing Officer for the Colorado Depart ment of Education.

SUSAN MCCRAY is an attorney and a professor of English at Jefferson Community College in Louisville, Kentucky.

SUSAN MCLAREN freelances as a translator for businesses and for La Universidad del

Zulia in Maracaibo, Venezuela.

CATHERINE MCLAUGHLIN, who often writes about people and places in Alberta, Canada, has a passion for human rights, of Which her poem in this issue is an example.

PAUL MANTLE works on the help desk of the Information Services Office at the Bahá’í National Center in Evanston, Illinois.

VALERIE MARTINEZ, an assistant visiting professor of English at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania, has been receiving awards and honors for her poetry since 1987.

CARLIN C. MILLS is an administrative assistant for the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics at Indiana University.

KEVIN A. MORRISON, Who holds a BA. degree from Hampshire College in Massachusetts, is entering a Master’s program in English and comparative literature at the University of Chicago.

DAVID A. PETREMAN teaches in the Modern Languages Department at Wright State University, in Dayton, Ohio.

DEANNA PICKARD has been awarded two Ohio Arts Council Arts Fellowships and two Montgomery Arts Council Fellowships and has been published widely in literary journals.

ELOUISE E. POSTLE, a freelance journalist, has published essays and poems and is currently the chair of the Ohio Poetry Association’s High School Student Contests.

RON PRICE is the president and tutor in social sciences and humanities of the George Town School for Seniors, Inc., in Tasmania, Australia.

JULIO SAVI, a medical doctor specializing in gynecology and anesthesiology, is known to W/orld Order readers for frequent essays and for his books, including 7776 Eternal Quest for God and his recent Remotmm: Selected Poems.

MARIE SCHEFFER is a training specialist in the Office of Assembly Development at the Bahá’í National Center, Wilmette, Illinois, and a partner With Management Associates, Sioux City, Iowa.

NOELLE TROWBRIDGE, who holds a BA. in psychology from the University of Dayton, is a social worker currently employed as a job trainer.

ART CREDITS: Cover design, Richard Doering, cover photograph, courtesy, John Foxx Images; p. 1, 3, 7, photographs by Steve Garrigues; p. 8, photograph by Simintaj Soroushazari; pp. 18, 58, 67, 68, photographs by Steve Garrigues.

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CALL F OR PAPERS

A Special [Mac on Gloéal Cinema

ABSTRACT DEADLINE: October 2002 SUBMISSION DEADLINE: December 2002

4 Far publirruitm £11200}

Writ! Order is currently seeking articles and reviews for a special issue on “Global Cinema” exploring the artistic, social, cultural, political, and spiritual issues raised by film around the world. Submissions may consider either the cinematic elements (thematic or aesthetic aspects of a film, including the film’s style, issues of spectatorship and authorship, and so on) or production aspects (from film editing to post-production and sound mixing) of the entire range of moving images: mainstream and nonmainstream film, documentary, museum installations, and so on.

The editors welcome articles or reviews from any perspective, but we especially so licit manuscripts touching on:

0 Film as subject for criticism: critical studies or reviews of a single film, a movement, a director, or a series of films (for example, films with a common theme, the decade’s three most important, and so on).

0 Cinema in national, transnational, and diasporz'c context: studies of film from a particular country (Mexican, Iranian, French, Indian, Canadian, American, Chinese, and so on); the impact on the character of contemporary cinema by increasingly globalized and transnational financing, production, distribution, and viewing; the social, cultural, and political ramifications of film’s transnationalization, such as its potential for contributing to worldwide solidarity and/ot reproducing global power inequalities.

0 Film in a production cantext: The function of the camera, including depth of field, motion, portraiture, lighting, color, narrative structure, and composition; the relationship of film production aspects to narrative structure; the role of music or sound.

0 Film 45 a cultural artéfizct film in sociopolitical and/ or historical contexts; film outside the mainstream; film as product of and creator of culture; the impact

of film from one culture on a different culture; and so on.

0 Film 45 art: its power, nature, possibilities, and responsibilities, particularly as a medium of engagement with topics of urgent social interest (such as war and peace, racism, immigration, poverty, gender, religious persecution, spiritual longing. sexuality, and so on).

0 Top ten lists affi/ms: the editors will give a gift subscription to World Order and will publish the lists that are the most creatively, insightfully, instructively, amusingly, or otherwise fascinatingly

compiled.

For a copy of the “707151 Order style sheet for preparing a manuscript (and other tips), send an e—mail to <worldorder@usbnc.org>, or write the address below.

Submissions to the journal will be subject to external blind peer review if they fall outside the expertise of the editorial board or upon request by the author.

Manuscripts (in Word or WordPerfect) should be sent to <wotldorder@usbnc.org> or to LVor/d Order, Dr. Betty J. Fisher, Managing Editor, 4516 Randolph Road, Apt. 99, Charlotte, NC, 28211—2933, USA

Editorial Board: Betty J. Fisher, Atash Abizadeh, Monireh Kazemzadeh, Diane Lotfi, Kevin A. Morrison, Robert H. Stockman, Jim Stokes.

“70er Order magazine has been published quarterly since 1966 by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, and is intended, “to stimulate, inspire, and serve thinking people in their search to find relationships between contemporary life and contemporary religious teachings and

philosophy.”

Rellgion - Society - Polity - Arts

[Page 72]

Religion o Society . Polity - An‘s

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[Page 73]

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[Page 74]Forthcoming...

Robert H. Stockman sulveys the interfaith relations of the Bahá’í Faith

June Manning Thomas discusses racism and the planning of urban space

Julio Savi explores the continuing contest between exclusivism and pluralism

Gethry W. Marks reflects on the completion of the terraces, gardens. and buildings on Mt. Carmel

Phyllis Ghim Liam Chew examines religious pluralism in Chinese religions and the Bahá’í Faith

111m Kubala analyzes the impact of unity on architecture and planning

Jim Stokes ponders a common conscience in the modern world

and. ..

An International Round Table: The International Crimlnol Court and international public law with arficles by

John Washbum, Amen'can NGO Coalition Danesh Samoshl, University College London

Susan Lamb, Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, The Hague

Sovaida Ma'anl, Office of Legal Advisor, US. Department of State

Jeffrey Huffines, U.N. Representative for the Bahá’ís of the United States

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