26 days in israel

7/30/2019 26 Days in Israel

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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 arrivedhome, 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 GibbonsDecline 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 andpartly 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.

1 Vol.2, 1935. All books referred to in this journal are italicized.

Sometimes the complete reference, publishing date, city, etc. is notincluded


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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 cangive 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 assharply 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 inMaxims 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 andAcre and the ...


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#

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 alsoengage in the print and electronic media or go to a good library--if they


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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 tripfrom 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. Theconversation 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 intoher lifespan or minewhat one


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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: thesedreams 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 worldreligion 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.


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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 tocapture 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 wherepeople 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 incarnationof 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

3 1988-2008


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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 concernwith 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 theBWC, 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 Bah'u'llh, Bah' Prayer Book, USA, 2002, p.328.5idem


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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 handsor 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 ancientcrusader 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.


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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 incircumstances 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 Hisface 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:


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 all-

pervasive were dictatorships which are still little understood and

especially by a humanity which appears desperate to believe that throughsome 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

6 For a commentary on this perspective see: Century of Light, Preface.


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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 securityseemed 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 global-

universal culture, a universal fellowship.


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 shoppingdistrict 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 this50th anniversary of my own service


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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 166th 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 programto 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

7 Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, Wilmette, 1957, p.151.8 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 2006seeWorkers 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 onthe 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 everywherehere.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.

11 For stories and information about these cats google Cats in Haifa.


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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 ofcoming 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 apeculiar 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, closeto 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

12 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 itslist 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 Naw-

Ruz, 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, alongthe 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 ofCarmel, 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:


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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. Frommy 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.


Dan has arrived, attended to some of his personal tasks associated with

flat renting and arranging. He showed us some digital photos we took theday 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 snow-

locked 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

13 Hamilton Ontario a working mens steel city with twice the populationof 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 ofshopping 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 theinternational 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.


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(obsessive-

compulsive 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

14 Dr. J. Samandari, Badi Pub. Corp., Phoenix, 2004.


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simplistic future forecasting that one light get from one of the many

forms of future-gazing in which human beings engage.


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 ofThe 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 toodifficult.

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.


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 9th 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.


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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.


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 Bahaisdo 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


15 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 probabilitywill 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 someBahais 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 andenthusiasms 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 bya 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


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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 incensepartly 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 thebuildings 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 passer-

by 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

16 Yaakov Katz, Haifa man held for slaying 4 homeless, The JerusalemPost, 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 inthe Antipodes.


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 theshrine, 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.


22/25

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 theorganization of pilgrimage has changed a good deal and I invite readers to

google the topic for any information they might want.


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

17 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 exaltedmanner.


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two to three hundred members and the Australian Bah' community less

than one hundred.


Here at 14 Restaurantas 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 bougainvilleaand other citrus trees, or so Chris informs me from her knowledge base in

horticulture.



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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 alsokept 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 Haifaamong 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 16 th 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 cutout for them. I wish readers well and look forward to hearing from


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anyone who receives a copy of this journal should they want to engage in

further discussion.

Ron Price

George TownTasmania

Australia

(9000 words)

26 days in israel

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