Wendi’s Wanders

Thank thou God for that by reason of which He hath enabled thee to traverse the seas and countries and come safe to a Spot wherein the lights are shining with great brilliancy. `Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá’í writings

Moojan and I have just come back from a few days at the Northern Ireland Bahá’í summer school. It was held in a beautiful location and had a wonderful atmosphere. The talks were inspiring and the company excellent.

The theme of the school was `Learning from the Past, Looking to the Future’ - a sort of time travel. It made me think about my grandmother, Ann Gundersen Morris, whose life more or less spanned the 20th century. She was born in Norway in 1894 and died in Arizona in 1990. She came to the United States in a boat in 1902. When she left the United States to live for a while in Zimbabwe, she travelled from New York to London on Concord. When she was born there were no airplanes, no cinema, no radio, no freezers. Most houses had no electricity, no indoor toilets, no through-house heating. Much of the world was colonized by European countries. Only women in New Zealand could vote in a national election.

When Gramma died we had TV, microwave ovens, email, laptop computers, the Internet, the beginnings of the World Wide Web and the second generation of mobile phones. The UN had over a hundred state members. Women had the vote pretty much everywhere.

By the time she died communism had come and more or less gone, the Berlin wall had gone up and come down, apartheid in South Africa had taken hold and disappeared. The nature of war changed and people had walked on the moon.

The other big change was that the Bahá’í Faith had spread from the middle east to the west and from there to Africa and the Pacific and then to just about everywhere else so that by 1990 there were national Bahá’í governing councils in 151 countries. And Gramma, born a Lutheran in Norway, came to America and there, searching for truth, found it and became a Bahá’í.

She had what Bahá’u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá’í Faith, called a `world-embracing vision’. She vigorously promoted his teaching of the oneness of humanity. She worked to establish universal peace. She saw that through the teachings of the Bahá’u'lláh the world could be better for everyone - not just more materially or technologically advanced but more equitable, more just, more peaceful.

Gramma travelled from the old world to the new - and from an old world into a new.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i Faith, travel

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