Wendi’s Wanders

With every fleeting breath they cover the immensity of space, and at every moment traverse the kingdoms of the visible and the invisible. Bahá’u'lláh, Bahá’í writings

Today was one of those days when I am amazed that I am living in such an incredible age.

First thing this morning, I mentally journeyed back in time 39 years to Haifa, Israel, the Bahá’í World Centre. My first visit - how thrilled and excited I was at just 17 to see such a beautiful place. I arrived at night, saw the Shrine of the Báb all lit up and went to what is now known as the `old’ Pilgrim House. There I met about 50 other young people from around the world. We were all there to serve the Universal House of Justice for three weeks because 2000 Bahá’ís were arriving to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the arrival of Bahá’u'lláh in the Holy Land in 1868 and there were very few staff members to register them and guide them. Of all the great people I met there that night, one turned out to be very special - my husband.

Later in the day I took a journey through cyberspace. I am currently working on a great book by Denali Knight-Weiler called `Arising: A Year of Service Handbook for Volunteers’ which George Ronald www.grbooks.com will be publishing soon. I was trying to track down the lyric writer (Danny Deardorff) of a piece of music Denali had quoted from the 1979 `Happy Ayyam-i-Ha’ album featuring Hand of the Cause William Sears. I also wanted the actual lyrics and the publisher so I could seek permission to quote them. Googling Danny’s name and the album title brought me to Bahá’í blogger George Wesley, who just happened to have a picture of the album on his blog last year. I contacted him - a long shot - to see if he had any information. Straight away he emailed back with a contact email for Danny and the lyrics. Thanks George!

While I was doing this, I was looking at my Facebook friends and trying to see if any of them might have Danny as a friend. I didn’t see his name but recognized a few others I hadn’t seen in years and added them as friends.

While I was still doing this, my Skype line rang and it was my sister Bambi, skyping me from Mongolia, saying she couldn’t resist because it seemed so unlikely - when we were children Outer Mongolia was the place we thought was as far away from anywhere that you could get. I first went there 16 years ago - by train. Now she is there training the principals and teachers of international schools and talking to me on a computer.

Then I went to lunch in a pub with my new friends. We’ve been meeting every month for about four months now and for me it is like a `home visit’, that is, we have spiritual conversations. I don’t plan them, they just happen.

Today someone asked about life after death and everyone said what they thought. One person talked about reincarnation. Another disagreed, saying that she wanted to believe there was something after this life but couldn’t do it. Life ended, she said, with death and that was that. She seemed very sad about it.

I offered the Bahá’í understanding of the journey of soul, using the analogy of the child growing in the womb, developing what must seem to it to be pretty useless arms and legs and eyelashes and so on. It is only when the child dies to that world and is born into this one that the purpose of the arms and all gradually becomes clear and they become useful. Similarly, the soul in this world has to develop those qualities such as justice and honesty and trustworthiness that can sometimes be undervalued here but which will be the very things it requires when it moves on to the next world. My new American friend seemed to think this was a pretty interesting way to think about life after death.

Coming home, I reflected on how remarkable this age is. We can travel all over the world quickly and meet someone from another country and marry him or her and live in another part of the world. We can find people by just typing their name into a computer. We can know immediately what our friends are up to and see their pictures and videos and hear their voices. We can talk to people thousands of miles away and see their faces. We can pull whole libraries of information out of the air. We can contact total strangers with odd requests for information and get an immediate response. And we can go to a pub, drink water and eat jacket potatoes with new friends and share ideas that are out of this world.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Baha’i World Centre, Bambi Betts, Mongolia, life after death

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