“The well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established.” Baha’u’llah. One day I was walking along Charles River in Cambridge when I noticed two men in suites and yamakas looking for someone to take their picture with the Boston skyline behind them. I offered to take their picture. After I took a few photographs and was returning the camera, one of them spoke to me in Hebrew. I said: ‘I am afraid I do not speak Hebrew’. The man said: ‘but you are Jewish, right?’ Smiling and impressed, I replied: ‘Good guess! My ancestry is Jewish; in fact both sides of my family have included a couple of rabbis and are descended from Ecbatana, the ancient Persian city where Ester was from – but, I am not Jewish!’ The man gave me his card that identified him as the rabbi at one of the local colleges and asked: ‘so your great grandmother, grandmother and mother were Jewish?’ I replied, ‘yes.’ He said: ‘then you are Jewish!’ The young Spanish priest walked into our house in Needham with some urgency. ‘Where is your mother?’ he asked. I explained that it was my Mexican mother-in-law that was in need of his services and led him to her room. She had been seriously ill and very close to the end of her life. One of her friends visiting her earlier that day had become alarmed and had asked that we immediately find a Spanish speaking priest to perform her last rites. Through St. Joseph, where she was a parishioner, the Spanish padre was contacted and arrived at our door in an hour or so. I watched him say some prayers lovingly and tenderly and perform some rites that were completely unfamiliar to me. After a while, he stopped and said something to the effect that he could not perform the last rites since she was not close enough to passing. I asked what we should do for her meanwhile, and if he was going to come back again? He replied that we should pray for her. I said that we do, but out of respect for her, since she was a Catholic, we felt that it should also be done in a Christian way. He asked some questions such as, ‘do you believe in God, the Father’ and, ‘do you believe that Jesus was the Savior’, to which I replied in the affirmative. He said, ‘you can pray for her, you are a Christian!’ I have been in similar situations when I was also told by “good authority” that I must be a Muslim! Far from being offended or even uncomfortable I find these occasional mistaken attributions to other religions to be a confirmation of my Faith rather than its denial. I am a Baha’i which means I try to follow the teachings of Baha’u’llah in my day to day life. Baha’u’llah, who lived in the nineteenth century, was born to a noble and wealthy family. He taught that we are fundamentally spiritual beings and life is part of the journey of the human soul to acquire and perfect spiritual qualities such as love, justice, humility, selflessness and kindness. He taught that the Creator, known by different names at different times and places, has revealed himself to humanity throughout the ages by individuals who Baha’u’llah called “Manifestations of God”. It was through these Manifestations that humanity could learn about its Creator and acquire the spiritual perfections that it needs for its happiness, tranquility and peace. Baha’u’llah taught that there is only one human race and the spiritual foundations of the religions that were founded by Abraham, Buddha, Krishna, Zoroaster, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, the Bab and Baha’u’llah are all the same. They only differ in their “social” teachings because the needs of each age are different. He claimed to be the latest in this progressive revelation. As a result of his claim and teachings, Baha’u’llah was arrested, stripped of all his worldly belongings, imprisoned in the Black Pit of Tehran and suffered 40 years of further exile and imprisonment finally ending in the Ottoman penal colony of Akka, in the present day Israel. Despite all his suffering and the intrigues of the Persian and Ottoman empires to silence him and destroy the movement that he had started, Baha’u’llah in over 100 volumes of books, letters and epistles outlined the spiritual and intellectual principles that are needed to relieve a suffering humanity from “the tumult of religious dissension and strife” and establish the Peace for which the followers of all religions have been praying and waiting for.
Ramin Abrishamian www.boston.com June 2, 2009
We must recognize the sun no matter from what dawning-point it may shine forth, be it Mosaic, Abrahamic or any personal point of orientation whatever, for we are lovers of sunlight and not of orientation. We are lovers of illumination and not of lamps and candles. We are seekers for water no matter from what rock it may gush forth. We are in need of fruit in whatsoever orchard it may be ripened. We long for rain it matters not which cloud pours it down. We must not be fettered. If we renounce these fetters we shall agree, for all are seekers of reality. The counterfeit or imitation of true religion has adulterated human belief and the foundations have been lost sight of. The variance of these imitations has produced enmity and strife, war and bloodshed. Now the glorious and brilliant twentieth century has dawned and the divine bounty is radiating universally. The Sun of Truth is shining forth in intense enkindlement. This is verily the century when these imitations must be forsaken, superstitions abandoned and God alone worshiped. We must look at the reality of the prophets and their teachings in order that we may agree.
~ Abdu'l-Baha, Foundations of World Unity, p. 15
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