JOURNAL OF 26 DAYS IN ISRAEL

The following journal entries list the time and day before making the entry. The journal-entry was also embellished on my arrival home in Tasmania from my trip, with my wife Chris, to Israel in April/May 2009. My aim was to keep the journal as far as possible away from the basic facticity of: who, when, where, what and why in which most journals are kept. Readers of this journal may want to read my extended essay which follows in some copies of this booklet, an essay on how I see the keeping of a journal or diary. This essay will help to provide what I see as a wider perspective for this journal, a journal which follows in the entries ahead. In the case of this particular post that essay is not included. Only part of this journal is found here, only the first two weeks--and, if readers would like more, the days from 29 April to 12 May when my wife and I arrived home, they need only contact me. 15 April 2009 at 9:45 p.m.-Melbourne Airport After 14 hours of being out of bed and 11 hours after leaving George Town Tasmania, I make this first journal entry during this 28 day trip to Haifa, the Bah' World Centre(BWC) and back to George Town. After reading the first three chapters of H.A.L. Fishers A History of Europe1 and the first 15 pages of D.M. Lows abridged(1963) edition of Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, I cant help but feel: (a) the immense contrast between the pre-industrial and pre-modern worlds and our own and (b) the great swim that is our own world. My wife, Chris, and I have been at this Melbourne airport for four hours. It is like being in a huge department store, an immense hanger, a futuristic-other world. After spending most of the last decade in my study, going overseas is like an adventure in a strange land: partly exhilarating due to the stimulation, partly exhausting due to that same stimulation and my medications and partly resulting in a sense of my age-my old ageor more accurately my late adulthood(60-80) as the developmental psychologists call this period of the lifespan. I am now in my 65 th year and in three months will be on two old-age pensions. I began to feel old 15 years ago about the age of 50.

Vol.2, 1935. All books referred to in this journal are italicized. Sometimes the complete reference, publishing date, city, etc. is not included
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In some 25 hours Chris and I will be at the BWC. After 50 years of being a Bah' this trip is, in some ways, the apotheosis of my Bah' experience. As I have often written in the 25 years of my diary-keeping, the act of making regular daily and periodic entries has been a slow and difficult process. But, as Virginia Woolf expressed occasionally: I can give ten minutes to my journal. After reading Gibbon and Fisher, after two long walks in this airport-city of Hong Kong, I seemed ready to start this journal/diary of the 28 day trip to and from the BWC. There are so many different impressions, thoughts, stimuli and reflections that can occupy the pen as it moves and records the passing moment and what occupies the brain in this new world of a few passing seconds. To make this writing of value to a future age, as W.H. Auden said was a useful aim for a writer, let me focus as sharply as I can on the time, the stage, the phase, the epoch in which the Bah' international community is presently engaged in its global enterprize. In doing so I hope that I dont make the mistake that Oscar Wilde said was one so often made by the English. "The English, he said, are always degrading truth into facts" Wilde complained in Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated: "When a truth becomes a fact it loses all its intellectual value." Yes, Oscar, there is some truth there. Sadly or not so sadly, my journal has many of these so-called facts. I want to avoid in these journal entries writing material that readers can obtain in so many other sources. The internet, to take the one major example of detailed information available on pilgrimages and visits to the BWC, has a wealth of material. Here is just a few sample sites from the many that are now available: -----------------------------------------# Bah' Pilgrimage -- Bah' World Centre Information published by the Baha'i World Centre for pilgrims and about Pilgrimage to Baha'i Holy Places. # New film on Baha'i pilgrimage debuts New film on Baha'i pilgrimage debuts. 23 January 2006. HAIFA, Israel A new film about Baha'i pilgrimage to the Holy Land is now available as a DVD. ... # Reception Centre opens for Baha'i pilgrims to the Holy Land HAIFA, Israel A new Pilgrim Reception Centre has opened here to receive Baha'i pilgrims and visitors to the Baha'i holy places in Haifa and Acre and the ...

# Video results for Baha'i pilgrimage Baha'i Pilgrimage: Counting The Waves 4 min. 12 sec. www.youtube.com "The Cats of Haifa" (a Baha'i Pilgrimage ...6 min. www.youtube.com # What is Pilgrimage? Bah's in good standing may apply to undertake a pilgrimage, which spans nine days and consists of guided visits to the Holy Shrines, various other sites ... # Bah' Pilgrimage to Israel Bah' pilgrims have been converging at the Holy Land ever since Bah'u'llh (1817-1892), the founder of the Bah' Faith, was imprisoned in the fortress ... # Bah' Pilgrimage Being a brief compilation of notes taken while on my Pilgrimage in November 1996. The notes are, of course, very personal every individual has a different ... # Flitzy Phoebie: Baha'i Pilgrimage 26 April 2009 ... She made a Baha'i Pilgrimage in 1953, and when the Guardian directed the Baha'is to travel to foreign lands to teach the Faith he also said ... # Baha'i pilgrimage opens our eyes to global community 14 Aug 2008 ... As the world comes together this year for the International Olympics event, we wish to share our experience from 2007, of the world coming ... # Baha'i Pilgrimage Pictures - Haifa, Akka, Israel, Holy Land, Mount ... Baha'i Pilgrimage Pictures of Haifa, Israel presented by MartinsQuest.com. ------------------------------------Readers of this journal are not in need of more information on the Bah' pilgrimage, on the city of Haifa or Israel in general and so this journal is not filled with descriptive material, at least such material is kept to a minimum. Interested readers will drown in such material if they also engage in the print and electronic media or go to a good library--if they

are at all seriously interested in the various topics relevant to subjects raised in this journal. I will try, therefore, to make my journal entries highly idiosyncratic to my own particular perspectives, experiences and reminiscing. My aim, too, is to make this journal of value to others, a value based on what I hope is a more personal and stimulating content. One can but aim and hope. 16 April 2009 at 6 a.m.: Hong Kong Airport: In this great, this massive, bunker-city of an airport I began to reminisce about my mothers coming out to Australia in 1974 in her 70 th year and going through a similar series of airports to the ones I would see in this trip. She came to hold my hand, so to speak, while I was going through my divorce after eight years in a first marriage. She told me she took a small flagon of whisky to help her cope with the exigencies of the trip from Toronto Canada to Launceston Tasmania. I could also not help reflect, during that flight from Melbourne to Hong Kong and especially as the plane flew over Broken Hill, Tennant Creek and Darwin that I had not flown in that region for 23 years. Such a lot of water under the bridge since then, nearly all of my middle age and the first years of late adulthood. During that flight from Melbourne to Hong Kong I was sandwiched between a charming young woman aged 32 and my wife. All flights, except first class, are sandwich experiences and they have been that way since my first experience of travel by air in 1967 at the age of 23. I only slept for four hours during that first night-flight. This attractive woman who was going to be with her husband in Switzerland helped to occupy the time. She had an MA in Italian with a specialization in sociolinguistics. We had a good chat about her course and many other subjects in life and academia. I was able to convey the core of the Bah' Faith en passant since she asked several questions after my opening ambit. I kept the evangelistic tone as moderate as possible. The conversation was so engaging that I wrote the following poem: Its thanks to Roger that this poem goes the way it does as I fantasize a courtship, quite brief, a marriage now theres the ruban aborted fantasy in its opening phases and such a charming woman, far too late and simply does not fit into her lifespan or minewhat one

calls our life-narrative, the story of our lives which can really only go in one direction--fantasies and dreams a bonus for lifes periphery or, as that Bard once said: these dreams are the children of an idle brain begot of nothing but vain fantasy which is as thin of substance as the air and more inconstant than the wind, which woos.2 Here at the age of 65 I sit with life whizzing by to its final hour of my recorded time and with this world religion in its fifth epoch and a dozen years to go before the end of the first century of its Formative Age, a Formative Age so very unlike the Greek age by the same name. I travel to the BWC to renew and reinvigorate the focus, the new focus, that has emerged in the last decade, in this new millenniumspreading the teachings over the internet with time out occasionally for fantasies, the engagement in an insistent and concupiscible appetite and many sleeps due to an anti-psychotic and anti-depressant medication keeping me nicely contained to do this job for a Cause I have been a part of for half a century. 19 April 7 p.m. Haifa Israel: After four and one-third days away from my home nest I put pen to paper again in what appears to be a journal with little writing in it thusfar. I have acquired a cold which, on top of my sleepy-soporific bipolar state has rendered me incapable of: (a) listening to the 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. evening talks in the International Teaching Centre(ITC) by Universal House of
2

Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene iv, lines 98-100.

Justice and ITC members and (b) going with Daniel and Chris on this third day of our stay to the sites they viewed. Staying in my flat, then, I went through Gibbon marking the places, the quotations, for future use in my writing. I will now write a prose-poem to capture some of the experience of these 109 hours since leaving George Town. The airports we passed through from Launceston to Tel Aviv were enormous spaces, entire worlds where people wait for another stage of their lives to begin and we waited for another stage of our trip to begin. These airports were and are without doubt the largest enclosed spaces, places, in which I have spent time during my 65 years of living. Although these great palaces had an essentially commercial dimension, what struck me most was the emptiness, the great-cavern-like electronic caves where people waited for another stage of their life to begin: another marriage, another job, another job, another something in their lifespan.-Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, 19 April 2009. In the last two days my sensory organs filled these immense spaces with the holiest places in the world for members of the Bah' Faith and after my eyes were filled and my ears with more talking and listening I ran to bed to recuperate from more of the exhaustion of lifes journey. 50 years of service of varying degrees & kinds of efficiency and intensity and some 20 years now of this new paradigm3 taking me into retirement for lifes span of jobs into my own new base, new paradigm of activity to serve this tapestry of beauty this very incarnation of all that my mind has held dear, so.... very dear.... 20 April 4 p.m. Haifa: After nearly recuperating from what has been a 40 hour wog, after the second serious chat with Dan, Zuzu and Chris, after watching an episode of Seinfeld, after walking to and from Dans flat at 57 Hillel Street to our
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1988-2008

small abode on Masada several times, after visiting both the Shrine of the Bb and Bah'u'llh, after renewing my relationship with Dan after his year of absence at the BWC, I have with me the silence, the quiet and the absence of people which I need to record another journal entry. What can one say as life continues its booming and buzzing, its endless concern with minutiae and its search for spiritual closeness in these visitations to the shrines at the centre of the Bah' world, a world I have been involved with in one way or another for 56 of my 65 years. The Beauty of the Unseen, has, at least for me, shed its radiance in the heaven of Thine irrevocable decree.4 This Beauty finds its expression in marble, in the garden-terraces and in the extensive properties at Bahji. the beauty of the Adored One, has indeed been unveiled and I have indeed ascended to the summit of glory. But, for there is always a but, woe betide me for my transgressions. Do draw me away from myself and from the world unto the courts of Thy nearness.5 In these past 50 years has my spirit been a sacrifice and my soul a ransom? I would say: yea verily! I have been supplied, though, with the good of this world and hopefully of the world to come. This is enough for now, this quasi-meditation on the Tablet of Visitation and a preparation for sleep at 4:40 p.m. on this warm day in Haifa on the eve of the first Day of Ridvan which starts in about 3 hours. -------------------------------------I would also like to include Rob Weinbergs short article written largely for the those on the internet interested in the Bah' Faith. I hope some readers find this short essay by a Bah' writer and author of several Baha'i publications of personal value and, perhaps, even intellectually stimulating. (Go to the following site on the internet: robertweinberg.wordpress.com if you want to access his original blog entry or essay. There are several other articles, journal entries and commentaries on the internet that are useful to intending pilgrims and others who would simply like to read some personal reactions to the BWC, its gardens, terraces, buildings and historic sites. The Bah' World Centre is, it seems to me, in a continuous state of change, certainly in the first ten years since the completion of the Arc Project, the ten years my wife and I were able to make our visits to the BWC: a new pilgrim house, a new reception centre, more established gardens, etc. ----------------------------WEINBERGS ESSAY BELOW-------------------4 5

Bah'u'llh, Bah' Prayer Book, USA, 2002, p.328. idem

For the past three weeks I have taken up residency on the side of a mountain. Such a statement might evoke in the mind the image of a mendicant curled up on makeshift bedding in a cave, set amidst a barren rockface devoid of vegetation bar a scattering of scrubby thickets. You might envisage him crouching over a self-made fire, warming his hands or heating up a tin can of water to wash his face or assuage a galling thirst. Well, while not wishing to disappoint, I must admit that the reality may not be quite so poetic or self-mortifying but it is a whole lot better. The mountain in question, Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel, is one of the most spectacular spots on the surface of the planet. At night the mountainside is ablaze with lights from top to bottom. The view from its crest looks out across the Mediterranean, around a crescent bay, taking in the ancient crusader port of Akko, the borders of Lebanon and off in the distance, the peaks of the Golan Heights. And in the heart of Mount Carmel, visible from all sides, a luminous gem shines out as a beacon of hope in a troubled region. The golden-domed Shrine of the Bb is set amidst luscious, verdant gardens cascading down the mountainside in the form of nineteen spectacular terraces, vivid with colour, birdsong and unsurpassed beauty. Situated behind the Shrine of the Bb, there is one particular feature of this garden that particularly moves me when I visit it. It is a circle of towering, ancient cypress trees, standing sentinel-like in a spot where once, more than a century ago, the founder of the Bah Faith, Bahu'llh, sat with His son Abdul-Bah and indicated where He wished the remains of His forerunner, the Bb, to be interred. The Bb had been executed in Persia in 1850 and His earthly remains had been secreted away in His homeland for close on half a century. With infinite tears and at tremendous cost, Abdul-Bah while still a prisoner of the Ottoman empire until 1908 managed to direct the Bahs in Persia to deliver their precious charge into His safekeeping. Receiving the remains, acquiring the land and rearing that edifice were among the greatest challenges and achievements of Abdul-Bahs life. One night, He recalled I was so hemmed in by My anxieties that I had no other recourse than to recite and repeat over and over again a prayer of the Bb which I had in My possession, the recital of which greatly calmed Me. The next morning the owner of the plot himself came to Me, apologized and begged Me to purchase his property.

On the day of the first Naw-Rz He celebrated after His release from captivity 21 March 1909 Abdul-Bah had a marble sarcophagus transported to the vault He had prepared for it. In the evening, by the light of a single lamp, He laid within it, with His own handsin the presence of believers from the East and from the West and in circumstances at once solemn and movingthe wooden casket containing the sacred remains of the Bb and His companion, wrote Shoghi Effendi. When all was finished, and the earthly remains of the Martyr-Prophet of Shrz were, at long last, safely deposited for their everlasting rest in the bosom of Gods holy mountain, Abdul-Bah, Who had cast aside His turban, removed His shoes and thrown off His cloak, bent low over the still open sarcophagus, His silver hair waving about His head and His face transfigured and luminous, rested His forehead on the border of the wooden casket, and, sobbing aloud, wept with such a weeping that all those who were present wept with Him. That night He could not sleep, so overwhelmed was He with emotion. ....And now its back to my journal: 20 April 8 p.m. Haifa: On the eve of the first Seven Year Plan(1937-1944) refugees were in flight from tyranny into the free countries of Europe. They crowded into the major European cities, flocking to freedom and away from the forces of fascism and communism in the 1930s. Refugees leaving their homeland for foreign soil has become one of the themes of our age. These experiments in tyranny in Germany and Russia during these entre deux guerres years made all previous tyrannies in history pale. These colossal exercises in barbarism, these despotisms penetrating and allpervasive were dictatorships which are still little understood and especially by a humanity which appears desperate to believe that through some fortuitous conjunction of circumstances it will nevertheless be possible to bend the conditions of human life into conformity with prevailing human desires. Such hopes, from a Bah' perspective, are not merely illusory but miss entirely the nature and meaning of the great turning point which our world has passed through in the last century.6 European civilization, and its American extension, in 1936 were the trustees of civilization itself or so it appears to the retrospective historian
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For a commentary on this perspective see: Century of Light, Preface.

of our day or this new millennium. The common heritage of civilization itself was, in the historian H.A.L. Fishers words: the most splendid possession of man. The concept of world citizenship had emerged but a common political framework for future civilization and the globe on which this planet could repose upon a basis of unassailable security seemed unattainable. But still men dreamed. Ron Price with thanks to H.A.L. Fisher, A History of Europe, Fontana, London, 1960(1935), p. 1324. I, too, have dreamed and with pathetic persistence raised the call, but disappointment attended the response, extended to my own community and my own dear self. There were so many idle claimants and those who turned away from all the Messengers in the past in those years of this most perilous age of our existence when an ethereal holy force slowly surged through the making of this new Order, a sustaining shell that was guarding a precious pearl, a globaluniversal culture, a universal fellowship. 21 April 2 p.m. Haifa: Chris, Dan and I are sitting at the Fattoush restaurant under the olive trees. Ben Gurion carries a heavy load of traffic just a few feet away. Sparrows sing in the trees and the three of us relax after consuming our delicious meal. This is one of many meals in Haifa with hommos as a key part of the meal. I wont list all the items in this fine meal, although I did when keeping my original set of notes for this journal. We will take a taxi to the Hadar, an up-market shopping district in Haifa. Then its a sherut(a small taxi-bus) to Bahji for the celebration of the anniversary of the first Day of Ridvn program. Sitting here beside old Ben Gurion Avenue going back as it does to the 1860s--under these olive trees with the birds chirping away above my head, music playing for customers with six months to go before this 50th anniversary of my own service

to this Cause with my wife of some 35 years and my son of 31 years and my soul of 65 years given that that the soul does neither pre-exist this life nor reincarnate into some other form.....!! 21 April 4 p.m. Bahji-Akka: The 1st Day of Ridvn program is about to begin, the 166 th anniversary of the holiest and the most significant of all Bah' festivals, the festival commemorating the Declaration of His Mission to His companions. 7 I am sitting about 50 yards from a huge old olive tree. It has some historic significance that I was told when on pilgrimage nine years ago in 2000, but I can not remember this item of history. There are so many items of history in this visit to Haifanot only items in the 17 decades of Bah' history but, as the Haifa museum informs me, some 8000 years of history of this region.8 There are tall pine trees behind me, the same trees, the same setting where Abdul-Bah entertained notables from Akka before making the decision to try and rent a property a few miles north of Akka at Mazraih.9 I am informed of this fact by one Joy Sabour, a woman from the U.K. who is working in the secretariat. Joy told me many things about the BWC and especially the secretariat as I waited for the program to begin. But it is not my intention in this journal to go into: (a) all the details of the organization of the BWC and its 700 employees; (b) nor is it my intention, as I have already indicated, to go into the history of the city or the problems of the modern conflict in Israel between Palestinians and Jews; and finally: (c) I should also emphasize that this journal has no intention on delving into various issues surrounding Covenant-Breakers, issues which have been given some publicity with the expansion of the internet in the last decade.10 It is difficult not to poetize on what I see before me in this majestic setting: So many chairs, chairs1000 chairs Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, Wilmette, 1957, p.151. Haifa Museum, Wikipedia and a comment by Counsellor Stephen Hall. 9 God Passes By, op.cit., p.193-given the title Our Verdant Isle. 10 Readers can find out so many things on the internet. The only time, for example, that rockets have landed in Haifa was in July 2006see Workers son interns in Israel: see Bah.index.com
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and people chatting in its own musical form, a form that can not be deciphered and has its own unique sound all over my world. These eagles and urns, these cypress trees and rounded-hedges so evenly clipped, bushes and patterned gardens all initiated by that King of the world whom I hardly knew back then when I was so young and he was in his last yearsso old, so very old. Off in the distance, perhaps 100 yards away at the horizonI see blue shuttered windows and doors that tell the eye: this is the Shrine of the most precious Being ever to draw breath on the planet--where 1000 people circle, will circumambulate and return to that very new pilgrim house and then their various appointed assignations in early evening on this holiest calendarday.. 22 April 11 a.m.: Haifa: Chris and I are now ensconced in the second flat that Dan has obtained for us, for the rest of this 26 day visit to Israel and the BWC. This flat is only a five minute walk to the entrance gate to the Shrine of the Bb, about 100 yards up Puah Street and onto Shifra St. where Edward and Noel Broomhall stayed for several years during their work at the BWC. As I sit in this spacious lounge-room, spacious after the little flat Chris and I were in for the first three days of this sojourn in Haifa Israel, I can see the tops of the buildings below the Shrine of the Bb in this section of Haifa. Three feral cats, unowned and untamed cats separated from domestication, wander about outside the flat, for feral cats are everywhere here.11 Crows and starlings can be heard singing in the trees surrounding these old buildings. Virtually all the building in Haifa are built by stages in the years after WWI when the population grew from about 20,000 to the current population of about 270,000 people: 90% of the population are Israeli-Jews according to Wikipedia. Again, as I have indicated, this journal does not provide a focus on geography, history, demography, archaeology, the psychology of the people or the sociology of this urban agglomeration.
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For stories and information about these cats google Cats in Haifa.

In many ways Haifa is a simple, or should I say, complex industrial city with the problems that go with industrial cities: pollution, congestion, traffic as well as the many advantages of urban life. Wikipedia has a fine outline of aspects of Haifa for interested readers here. After one week of coming and going, of sitting in jets and walking through five airports; after locating ourselves closer to the extensive properties permanently dedicated to and constituting the sacred precincts of the Babas holy Sepulchre; after catching a cold and, hopefully, finally getting rid of it, Chris and I are ready for this second week of our four week stay. In the midst of these properties, recognized as the international endowments of the Faith, is situated the most holy court, an enclosure comprising gardens and terraces which at once embellish, and lend a peculiar charm to, these sacred precincts. Embossed in these lovely and verdant surroundings, in this exquisite tapestry of beauty, is the mausoleum of the Bb, a shell in which is enshrined that Pearl of Great Price, the holy of holies, those chambers which constitute the tomb itself and which were constructed by Abdul-Bah. Within the heart of this holy of holies is the tabernacle, the vault wherein the most holy casket reposes. Within this vault rests the alabaster sarcophagus in which is deposited that inestimable jewel, the Bbs hold dust.12 Last Saturday, I was privileged to join some 1000 Bahs pilgrims, visitors, guests and staff of the Bah World Centre gathered on that same mountainside and, in an act of solemn reflection, circumambulate the Shrine of the Bb, 100 years to the day since Abdul-Bah had completed that singular act which, wrote Shoghi Effendi, indeed deserves to rank as one of the outstanding events in the first Bah century. How transformed is this rocky mountainside since the night when Abdul-Bah brought the Bbs remains to their final resting place, close to that circle of cypresses, in a mausoleum befitting a Messenger from God Who had declared His mission on the very night of the very same year that Abdul-Bah Himself was born. Last year alone, the Terraces of the Shrine of the Bb attracted some 640,000 visitors and their beauty is being universally acclaimed. Last Monday, in Jerusalem, a special reception was held to celebrate the For a more detailed description see Shoghi Effendi, Citadel of Faith, Wilmette, 1957, pp.95-6.
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addition of the Bah shrines and gardens to the UNESCO World Heritage list. Commenting on the achievement, Israels Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit, said that the shrines reflect peace, beauty and tolerance. He said it was not only an honour for Israel to have the Bah Holy Places within its borders, but it was an honour for UNESCO to have them on its list of the worlds most culturally significant places. The sacrifices of the Bb and the dawn-breakers of the Cause are yielding abundant fruit, wrote the Universal House of Justice at NawRuz, the exact centenary of the interment of the Bbs remains on Mount Carmel, The magnificent progress achieved over the past century demonstrates the invincible power with which the Cause is endowed. As we processed from the Seat of the Universal House of Justice, along the semi-circular arc path to the Shrine of the Bb, I turned back and glimpsed the multi-coloured parade of humanity in all its diversity, moving together as one soul in many bodies. I remembered the dramatic circumstances surrounding the Bbs own execution and the vain hope of the clergy and rulers of His land that, with His swift demise and the brutal massacre of some 20,000 followers, the fire He had ignited would be quenched. The vision of humanity I glimpsed on Saturday demonstrated to me the futility of such attempts to snuff out this inextinguishable light efforts which persist in Iran to this day. He doeth as He doeth and what recourse have we? He carrieth out His will, He ordaineth what He pleaseth. Abdul-Bahs depositing of the remains of the Bb in the bosom of Mount Carmel marked the beginning of the World Centre of the Bah Faith. It was an act of love and obedience carried out by a son on the instructions of His Father. A seed, still bursting with life and potential, had been salvaged from a savagely felled tree and planted in new soil where it could take root. The circle of cypress trees, silent witnesses to momentous events, are now overshadowed by the efflorescence of Carmel, both in the magnificence of the gardens that now adorn its slopes and the vibrant variety of human hues that gather there in their thousands to pay homage to the martyred herald of their Faith. Today, these are the fruits of that seed, of that act of obedience. As the Universal House of Justice noted, It is but a portent of the ultimate realization of the oneness of humankind. 23 April Noon Haifa:

Dan is on his way to our flat as he is every day some time between 9 and noon. We either work out an agenda for the day after he arrives or we have it worked out before he arrives. Chris and I have come to refer to him as the chairman for he is a quiet and efficient organizer, firm but fair and a knowledgeable and experienced observer of the local scene. From my perspective this will have to be a day of rest for this cold combined with my medication for BPD requires me to take it easy much the same as I do at home: reading and writing, sleeping and doing a few domestic tasks. 23 April 1 p.m. Haifa: Dan has arrived, attended to some of his personal tasks associated with flat renting and arranging. He showed us some digital photos we took the day before and which he placed on his computer. We had a light lunch and discussed several practical matters associated with our new flat, with our stay and with the general arrangements he has made for us. I was born in a city much like this one13 here--Haifa-beside a lake not a sea in a Golden Horseshoe not in an ancient land of prophets but a steel city, a port city, English not Hebrew and now in the evening of my life this ancient land with its unalieviating glare can compete with that snowlocked bleak-lonely scape of land where I grew up: before a cynical winter set in stripping my young tree of narrow-idealism, lovesap stirred-I caught glimpses of Him in those birds flying over Akka & that song up from the Hamilton Ontario a working mens steel city with twice the population of Haifa, 600,000 to 300,000(circa). Both are port cities.
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Siyah-Chal-prison it rose. 23 April 1:40 p.m. Haifa: With four hours before Dan and Chris return from their afternoon of shopping and a visit to the beach by the Mediterranean Seawith a possible swim; and with the prospect of another evening meal at a local restaurant in store I can enjoy an afternoon of rest from what has become a great deal of coming and going and talking and listening in the last eight daysmuch, much more than I am used to in my daily round. The sounds of birds outside the window mix with the sounds of a bustling industrial city and these sounds drift into the lounge-room where I am sitting. This apartment building is one of many owned by the international Bah' community, the Universal House of Justice, here in Haifa. I could devote a page or so to the buildings owned, run and organized for the 700 staff; I could expatiate on how the whole thing is organized in the several departments but readers can find this sort of thing out in other ways and that is not the focus of this journal. 23 April 4:40 p.m. Haifa: I have just finished writing a brief commentary on this Tablet but will not include it here in this journal. But I will point out the years 1912 to 1921 and the interpretations given by Dr. Samandari which I found highly illuminating as well as several other comments on page 70. I leave this to readers as Chris and Dan will soon be here and we will be on our way out to dinner. My necessary, my psychologically essential, my quasi-OCD(obsessivecompulsive disorder) life has returned in its full this afternoon. I hope to go to the Shrine of the Bb and Abdul-Bah this evening. I will now have a short sleep. I have begun reading A Commentary on the Tablet of the Holy Mariner.14 I borrowed the book from Dan two days ago and intend to read its 75 pages this afternoon. I wont make any commentary on the book after reading it, but I invite readers here to obtain a copy for it provides very real insights into the future. The Cause and its vision is no crystal-ball or rabbits foot and it is far more mysterious than any
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Dr. J. Samandari, Badi Pub. Corp., Phoenix, 2004.

simplistic future forecasting that one light get from one of the many forms of future-gazing in which human beings engage. 23 April 7:45 p.m. Haifa: Chris and Dan have returned and told me about their day of shopping at the Grand Canyon and their visit to the beach. We have had a cup of tea; they had a rest and then we decided what to do for the evening. Dan showed meon his lap-top computer--an episode of The Simpsons about a raven. this episode seemed particularly relevant since a popular bird, perhaps the most common one, in the Bah' gardens is the raven. The Simpsons is a TV program Dan and I have been laughing at together for the last twenty years. I tried to do a rewrite of Poes poem The Raven which Dan got for me off the internet on his computer but it was too difficult. After Dan went home this evening i went back to Gibbons work. Gibbon refers to: chastity, temperance, liberality and mercifulness but, he says, that they only deserve the name of virtue(p.471) when they are supported by courage and regulated by discretion. I am not sure just what he means here but, it seems to me that he is hinting at a depth beyond the surface meaning of these quotations or, at least an application of these qualities as appropriate to the situation across a wide ocean of experience of the vicissitudes of this earthly life. Whole generations have been swept away in these epochs of the tempest in the lifetimes of my parents and myself since the passing of Bahaullah in 1892. Wealth and indolence has become for many the basis of a lifestyle and they tend to relax the springs of action.(p.491). The French sociologist Toqueville says much the same thing. But enough for now; it is time for bed at only 9:15 p.m. 24 April 2 p.m. Haifa: As the first hours of this 9th day on our trip slip away quickly, hardly recognizable, hardly recordable if I did not pay attention to the inner sense of persistence with which I began this exercise and which has continued thusfar through to the 9 th day of our 26 day holiday from our home in Tasmania. Chris, Dan and I have had: a fine lunch and a walk through the Hadar--located on the northern slope of Mount Carmel between the upper and lower city, overlooking the port and Haifa Bay. Hadar Hacarmel was once the commercial centre of Haifa and still is a commercial centre for tourists, a centre shared with other parts of Haifa.

Chris and Dan have gone off to walk in the Bah' gardens. In the next hour or so we will go to Bahji by sherut. 24 April 4 p.m. Haifa: The mansion of Bahji and the new Bah' Pilgrim House(google for more information) are closed today as these places are closed to visitors all days except Saturday from 1 to 8 p.m. But the Bah' Visitors Centre(BVC) at Bahji is open every day from 9 to 5:30 and, although I have no energy to walk to the Shrine of Bah'u'llh, I am now sitting in one of the two small libraries in this BVC. It is cool here as it is throughout the BVC. This is a small library but few come here as there are few who go to the library in the CST. A new library building is planned for the BWC but I was told by a fellow pilgrim that the Bahais do not own the land on which the proposed library is to be built. The Bahais do own the land where a future temple is to be built right at the top of Carmel, more on this later. Dan has just given me the Ridvn message for 2009. As a staff member he received it today in his pigeon-hole. I have read it twice, made a few notes, notes I will not include here, and I am sure there will be ample commentary on this message in the next few weeks. I began to feel like a short stroll and after several100 yards had to return for lack of energy. It is quiet here today; 3 days ago there were 1000 people at the Ridvn celebration, the Festival of the All-Merciful, here and the BVC was teaming with life and people. The official program for this 1 st Day of Ridvn and two of the other Holy Days, I shall not include in this journal.15 24 April 8:30 p.m. Haifa:

I have kept a copy of these programs in my files as mementos, memorabilia for future reference in my life, a life which in all probability will never see the BWC again.
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There is a tired look in the faces of the people here in Haifa. In many ways it is the same busy, occupied and self-preoccupied look one finds in most places, at least most places I have lived with the exception of some very small towns where i have resided since the 1950s. I can often tell a Bah' as I walk around here because some Bahais will look you in the eyes as they stand on the street or walk past you. I met a Canadian couple in their sixties from Saskatchewan by the smile on the face of the woman. I said to her: a woman smiling at me is a rare experience here in Haifa. You must be a Bah'! We struck-up a conversation and got on the same bus we were waiting for. Of course, I am not the brightest of people anymore due to my BPD which brings a certain tedium vitae into my life, saps my energy and enthusiasms and makes me disinclined to get involved in social activity after more than about two hours. On two old age pensions now in these middle years (65-75) of my late adulthood(60-80), I often feel an identity with the old people I see walking around Haifa: warn, ragged, unkempt. Often, too, many of the young seem to look old as well. Perception itself has complex roots and psychological aspects which it is not the purpose of this journal to go into. As one walks through the streets, through worlds of a thousand faces, faces and lives one will never know and never want to know for fear of drowning in information, in personalities and emotional complexities, tradition and modernity, technology and climate, architecture and commerce all come together in one great miasma of stimulation which the mind, the eye and the ear place on some kind of step-down transformer. In this way, almost subliminally one minimizes the sensory-motor affect so as to get on with the practicalities of ones own necessary and pointed assignations, to get on with ones job whatever it may be. The arts, luxury and literature are cultivated here in this industrial city by a potion of the inhabitants as they are in any urban metropolis. The elegant pleasures of life are enjoyed by most of the population in one form or another for there are many forms in our modern and postmodern age in the west unless one is living in poverty or some extremity or other. Few, if any, I would think starve here in Haifa, although I did run into the same beggar several times. In 2005 Haifa

had a serial killer who targeted mostly homeless people, people who regularly wandered throughout the city.16 Chris, Dan and I have just had a light meal in our flat. Dan has gone out to his girlfriends flatZuzu. We will go to bed early tonight since Chris is still fighting her cold. 25 April 11 am Haifa: As the first hours of this 10th day of our trip begin and another excellent sleep is tucked away under the belt of the brain and into unrecorded history except in the hippocampi as brain physiologists inform me, I make a mention calculation that about 40% of our trip is over. Chris has just written a note for the suggestion box to say that she gets an allergic reaction when she goes into the shrine where perfumed oils and incense partly fill the air. The polluted air of Haifa also does not help Chris respiratory system. After years of ill-health it looks like this visit to Haifa is going to be, in the main, an extension of her ill-health. I could write much more about Chris: the books she is reading here, her reactions to the sites, sounds, the gardens, inter alia. Dogs and cats are a common part of the eco-system here in Haifa. I have written briefly about this already and will not dwell on this subject again here. They contribute is a certain urban malaise here. Many of the buildings in Haifa, and especially those near the Bah' shrines and gardens, also have a malaise, a tiredness that exceeds the look of tiredness in peoples faces. These buildings reminded me of many in old Akka and the dirtier parts of many a city I have lived in since I left home nearly 50 years ago. These buildings might hold the attention of someone interested in the history of architecture or someone whose eyes tends to gravitate to the seamier side of life but, to the average tourist and passerby they are best just passed-by and as quickly as possible. The various forms of excreta from dogs, cats, birds and humans that also dot the paths in these old parts of Haifa occupy the other end of the spectrum of aesthetics, architecture and life that is Haifa and in which the Bah' tapestry of beauty is ensconced. I have been reading Edward Gibbons Decline and Fall while on this visit to the BWC. I have been reading this work for nearly half a century. In the last several days I have marked some 30 passages that seem to have some relevance, in one way or another, to the Bah' experience, its Yaakov Katz, Haifa man held for slaying 4 homeless, The Jerusalem Post, 31 May 2005.
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history and teachings, the setting in which this Faith exists and its ultimate reach in the centuries ahead. I will deal with these quotations when I get back to George Town as I will deal with many things that have stimulated my sensory and intellectual, my aesthetic and spiritual emporiums, during this experience half a world away from my home in the Antipodes. 25 April 8 p.m. Haifa: Chris stayed at home this evening since she has really not been well since we arrived. She is still working out her thyroxin levels and on top of this she has got a cold, perhaps on the plane, perhaps walking hither and yon in Haifa. Dan and i went to the Shrine of the Bb and Abdul-Bah, said the Tablets of Visitation---on both sides of the shrine, walked up from the 8th to the 9th terrace, walked past the old pilgrimage house, down past the new Pilgrim Reception Centre(PRC) on Hatzionut Street. We sat and had a glass on water on the 2nd floor the PRCalways a quieter part of that new building; we had a short chat with Dans girlfriend, Zuzu Adem. While there I met a young man cleaning the tables for the day. He was from California. I could write a short paragraph about him and his life as I could about many that I meet here at the BWC. This journal is not intended as an extended commentary on all the people I met and their lives, lives I came to know about as a result of many a conversation. After just ten days, I am finding the level of human interaction far beyond what I am used to in my intentionally quiet and studious life in Tasmania, a life I entered ten years ago when I retired after half a century of extensive social and verbal dimensions to my everyday existence. 11 a.m. April 26th Haifa: The last 12 hours were very pleasant ones and Chris and I are now into our 9th day away from our Tasmanian home and hearth. We both had a good nights sleepour best thusfar. I am inclined to insert Keats poem on sleep but I will resist that temptation. I did have a particularly unpleasant dream in which I was arguing about one of the divine questions---never a good idea as Abdul-Bah emphasizes in His Tablets of the Divine Plan. As Jung puts it, in another context, if one loses ones cool, one is always wrong. Controlled anger is okay but not the temper and its associated dissent and dissension. I have had bad dreams now for two years since my new medication regime for my BPD.

I am returning to my quotations from Gibbon today and making an effort to integrate them into this visitbefore getting back to Tasmania. There is much history here in Haifa, much in the hanging Gardens of Babylon, much here in Israel and I will allude to some of it as this journal continues. Dan has just come into our flat and our afternoons itinerary is emerging somewhat serendipitously as a result of: (a) our need to do a load of laundrysince domestic work must go on; (b) our need to shop for a few groceriessince we must continue to eat; and (c) Dans suggestion that we go out to Bahji. Bahji will be quiet with the exodus of pilgrims. There is a whole world of activity for pilgrims which I wont go into here. I have already written about this nine years ago when Chris, Dan and I came to the BWC for our pilgrimage. The routines, the itinerary and the organization of pilgrimage has changed a good deal and I invite readers to google the topic for any information they might want. 27 April 8 p.m. Haifa: The greatness of Rome, writes Gibbon, was founded on the rare and almost incredible alliance of virtue and of fortune. In the case of the new world order, associated as it is and will be with the present nucleus and pattern of Bah' Administration, and emerging perceptibly and imperceptibly around the planet, as something that will be founded on a similar alliance. The fortune in the case of the evolution of Bah' Administration and its increasing association with the coming world order will be associated with those mysterious dispensations of Providence locked into a wide range of factors which I can not go into here for fear of prolixity. The virtue will be associated with the inner life and private character of millions and, in time, billions of Bahais around the world. I can not help but see the present completed Arc Project here on Mt. Carmel as the apotheosis of all that the Bah' Faith represents. 17 As I gaze as it, now in its first decade of completion, the visual experience gives me a perceptual confirmation of the worth of all my fifty years of service, of a lifetime, of activity in a Cause that I first came in contact with as a child in Canada when the Canadian Bahai community had only

In art the term apotheosis refers to the treatment of a subject: a figure, a motif, a convention or a melody--in a particularly grand or exalted manner.
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two to three hundred members and the Australian Bah' community less than one hundred. 28 April Noon Haifa: Here at 14 Restaurant as it is known on Shabtash-Levi Street, if I have the name correctly, I have just enjoyed one of the best meals thusfar. Daniel selects all the venues for our meals. this one is in the low to middle range of cost and quality, but for my money, so to speak, the meal was one of the best. When I first wrote my journal, made its first edition, I wrote what I ate and what Dan and Chris ateso enamoured was I with the food but it seems irrelevant to include all the details here in the final edition of this diary. Like many of the places we are eating in here in Haifa, the local traffic is not far away. Over our head are bougainvillea and other citrus trees, or so Chris informs me from her knowledge base in horticulture. 29 April Noon Haifa:

I kept an additional 17 pages of A-4 paper with poems and prose entries for the period of time from 29 April to our arrival back in George Town on 12 May 2009. I also kept a range of handouts, information sheets and assorted memorabilia which is now in my study in a file for future reminiscing. These BWC resources are also kept in my journal in my study here in George Town. I have decided not to transcribe them into a final typed-copy unless I get some response to this partial-transcript encouraging me to do so. This booklet is now long enough and this partial journal conveys some of the spirit and content of the visit of Chris and I to Israel; indeed these journal entries are probably far too lengthy for many readers. The two weeks in the period of the visit that I have not transcribed into this published/public part of my journal for readers were filled with: (a) 3 holy day celebrations, (b) visits to the shrines, (c) many activities with Daniel and his girlfriend Zuzu, (d) special visits with the co-ordinator of the ITC, Linda Bishop and Stephen Hall a counsellor at the BWC during which IPGs, intensive programs of growth were discussed, (e) a guided tour of the ITC, the Universal House of Justice Building and the CST building, (f) a visit to Masada a famous historic site in Israel, the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee--among other historic sites, (g) many conversations and evening social activities, (h) evening talks in the ITC auditorium in which the new culture of learning and growth was given much emphasis, (i) delightful meals that Dan and Zuzu paid for and arranged by him in local restaurantsfrom top of the range to ordinary middle range spots---but all a pleasure for Chris and I, (j) the possibility of Daniel and Zuzu getting married in the next year or so and (k) so much more. I trust the above has been of value to some readers. I would encourage readers to google: Bah' pilgrimage, Bahai World Centre, Pilgrim Reception Centre, Intensive Programs of Growth(IPGs), Israel and Haifa among other words and phrases if they would like to know more about the topics referred to in this journal. The internet has a surprising numbers of entries on many a topic in relation to the Bah' World Centre, its activities, its purposes and programs. With the new culture of learning and growth now in its 16th year much has changed in the Bah' World. It is not the purpose of this journal to record these changes for so much that is happening in the international Bah' community, in its 120,000 localities and in its over 200 countries and independent territories and readers wanting to keep abreast of it all have their work cut out for them. I wish readers well and look forward to hearing from

anyone who receives a copy of this journal should they want to engage in further discussion. Ron Price George Town Tasmania Australia (9000 words)