Oct 30th, 2007
The Road (or the Train?) to Harrogate
As far as possible, rest thou not for a moment, travel to the North and South of the country and summon all men to the oneness of the world of humanity and to universal peace. `Abdu’l-Bahá, Baha’i writings
I’m travelling up Harrogate on Thursday for the annual conference of Soroptimist International of Great Britain and Ireland (SIGBI). SIGBI covers not only the UK and Ireland but also most of the Commonwealth countries as well, so a great diversity of people attend from all over the world. I love these conferences, which focus on the work the Soroptimists are doing to help lift women out of poverty, to empower them to take part in the decision-making that affects their lives and protects them from ill health and ill will - that is, from people who do not have the best interests of them as individuals or women in general at heart.
So the conference will be on a grand scale with noble themes. But I am thinking about getting there and back!
I am travelling by car (I know, I know, very unenvironmental. But I need to leave there about midnight on Saturday night and there are no trains at all after 19:05. Well, actually, there are. The 19:44 will get me home at 11:05 the next morning - a trip of 15 hours 21 minutes. The next train after that is a little better - it leaves at 22:37 and gets me in at 12:37 the next day after only 12 hours 37 minutes. So I am driving - the 150 miles will take me about three hours to drive. Too bad - I love the train but it is not going to work out this time.
I need to get back because we have our good friends Todd and Barbara Lawson from Canada visiting us and we are all going to a concert at the Albert Hall in London on Sunday evening to hear my friend Judith Mooney sing (in a choir, not a solo!) - the concert is in aid of the British Council for the Prevention of Blindness. As someone with a great many friends with visual impairment - and a grandmother who went blind in her later years - and having had severe shortsightedness all my life, this is cause I want to support - and I want to hear the concert too, of course.
In the past, we would never have considered travelling such distances in such a short time - now it is commonplace and we except to go miles and miles and miles to visit friends, go to work and entertain ourselves. On these occasions, I am supporting two good causes.
But I think about the environmental impact of this lifestyle and know it is not sustainable. I do rather hold out the hope that there is a solution to our energy issues, to global warming and to other environmental concerns that will be discovered once we people of the world recognise our oneness and begin to put in place the strategies that will enable us to cooperate rather than fight.
This hopes comes from a statement made by Shoghi Effendi, head of the Bahá’í Faith from 1921 until 1957, in which he outlined the outcomes that would result from a united world:
The enormous energy dissipated and wasted on war, whether economic or political, will be consecrated to such ends as will extend the range of human inventions and technical development, to the increase of the productivity of mankind, to the extermination of disease, to the extension of scientific research, to the raising of the standard of physical health, to the sharpening and refinement of the human brain, to the exploitation of the unused and unsuspected resources of the planet, to the prolongation of human life, and to the furtherance of any other agency that can stimulate the intellectual, the moral, and spiritual life of the entire human race (World Order of Bahá’u'lláh, p. 204).
I know the chances of this happening before I travel to Harrogate on Thursday are nil - on the other hand, the journey to Harrogate is to foster just such developments, that is, to be part of building that united world. I just wish the train would run after midnight…
Technorati Tags: Bahai Faith, Shoghi Effendi, SIGBI, environment, climate change, trains, Harrogate, Royal Albert Hall