How I Became a Baha’i by Rodney H. Clarken
Reprinted with permission, from Rod’s website, THE CLARKEN CHRONICLES, https://rodclarken.wordpress.com/personal/
I was born in 1951 to a mother who had dropped out of the eighth grade pregnant with my older brother and a father who helped raise four sons and a daughter on a farm where one-half of the crops went to the landlord. My family was suspicious of religion and generally thought religious people were hypocritical—thinking their beliefs made them better than others when they did not. My parents, especially my mother who had sought to be accepted by the church, had felt the sting of being rejected and looked down upon because of her condition. However, I was interested in things spiritual from an early age and attended a Quaker church in the town one mile from our farm.
By 15, I was giving talks and teaching Sunday School to youth two to three years younger than me while I continued to investigate different faiths and beliefs and seek answers to my many questions about life. I was impressed with the beauty, meaning and universality of sacred scriptures but perplexed and dismayed by the religious dogmatism, bigotry, prejudices and hatred that they engendered. At 16, I went to the Iowa State Fair with a classmate who was showing his pig there and discovered in one of my several visits to the religious booths answers to many of my questions in the teachings of Baha’u’llah.
As I spoke about these teachings in different forums, especially the pressing need at that time to eliminate racial prejudice and establish civil rights, I was challenged for my naiveté and lack of real involvement with the issues, so at 17 I left my all-white, homogeneous, rural community to get some experience while attending the University of Southern Mississippi. At 18, discouraged with the apparent irrelevance and meaninglessness of what I was learning at the university, I dropped out to become an initiate in the Bodhi Sala ashram in the French Quarter of New Orleans. After becoming ordained as a guru, I returned to Iowa to live off the land, pursuing a life of simplicity and spiritual wholeness in harmony with all. My receiving my draft notice for military service, set me on another journey of seeking meaning and conscientious objector status and back to college.
I was serving as a high school intern counselor in northern Minnesota in a large town off the White Earth Indian Reservation where I was living at 20 and one year later was part of the Wisconsin Indian Teacher Corps connected to the Stockbridge-Munsee Reservation. By 23 I was married and teaching in Tanzania and by 26 back in the States with two new daughters an lots of rich experiences from teaching in a girls secondary school on Mt Kilimanjaro and an elementary school in Arusha. I was appointed assistant dean of the school of education and human services in a private urban university when I was 27 and have served as a leader in higher education since then, most recently as head of a school of education in a state university.
My living and teaching in poor, rural, urban, black and Indian communities in the United States and in Africa, Europe, Asia and the Caribbean has helped me to developed an awareness, appreciation, understanding to and be enriched by theses cultures.
I have tried to honor the spirit of Baha’u’llah’s teachings to develop an appreciation for unity in diversity and the nobility of each person’s soul over the last thirty-six years when I worked in the various elementary, secondary and post secondary institutions in many different settings all over the world. Academic communities are, like my parents, generally suspicious of things identified with spirit or religion and caution against professional involvement with them, and public schools have rules about separation of church and state. Though my personal orientation was deeply spiritual, I was careful and guarded how I expressed it in my work. I have strived to respect institutional values while I lived a life in and out of the classroom that manifested the ideals, principles, virtues and values in which I believe. This was a gradual and growing process.
I remember my embarrassment for an elderly professor starting a graduate research course with a prayer and for a young professor giving a presentation on a spiritual topic at a professional conference. Though I believed in what they were doing and saying, I was afraid to do or say what I believed in. These and other experiences led me to further question my beliefs, convictions and willingness to live them in the face of criticism.
Eventually, as I gained more maturity and security, I chose to be more open with my spiritual and religious convictions. I did not want to compromise what I felt was right and the truth or who I was. I developed more courage to face the prejudice against things spiritual and seeing others who lived their lives with vulnerability and integrity, regardless of the social repercussions, Parker Palmers’s Courage to Teach, increased my resolve. Through these experiences I gained greater moral courage to be true to myself, to make mistakes and to drop my shield of having to be perfect. I believe these qualities are instrumental for effectiveness, especially when employed by those in influential positions.
That spirituality is more positively regarded and spiritual concepts are more praised with greater frequency and gaining more credence in the literature and scholarly circles also helps. For example, popular books advocating the inclusion of spiritual principles in education and leadership are growing to counterbalance the traditional ideas presented in other books that say one must master the arts of power, dominance, deception, scheming, survival of the fittest and other vices to be an effective and successful leader. Examples of books encouraging spirit and caring are 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Covey, 1989), The 8th Habit (Covey, 2004), Principle Centered Leadership (Covey, 1992); The Power Principle (Lee, 1997); Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (Collins & Porras, 1994); Good to Great (Collins, 2001); The Spiritual Dimension of Leadership (Houston and Sokolow, 2006). Examples of traditional views can be found in The 48 Laws of Power (Greene, 2000) and Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun (Roberts, 1990).
As my Bahá’í beliefs and practices have increasingly influenced my life, teaching and leadership and helped develop my professional, personal and spiritual potentialities, my confidence, well being, happiness, security and welfare, as well as those with whom I interact, have improved. I have striven to find my inner voice and then to inspire others to find theirs. I have had to learn to let go of or overcome my role identities, personas, ego attachments, vain imaginings, idle fancies, self-centeredness and desires to please and be accepted by others. In the process, I have increasingly learned to develop and trust my inner guidance and develop my authentic, higher and truer self.
In the process of learning of how to be and trust myself and not be so dependent on or influenced by the approval of others or messages from society, I have tried to live up to the virtues found in the world religions. I have gradually become freer from my servitude to the idols of worldly attachments and aspirations that I had been worshiping. As my actions as an educator and leader came increasingly from an inner core, rather than from a set of techniques, traditions and tips; from an inner moral authority rather than external formal authority, the voices of my heart, mind and spirit became clearer and stronger and those of my baser needs, desires and passions were moderated.
Operating from the heart and spirit enlists and elicits support, dedication and loyalty rather than trying to force and manipulate them. It calls on the highest powers and forces of the universe, touches the core of who we are and calls us to become the best we can become. It is a self-perpetuating system that is continually renewing those involved in it. It shapes values, character, and behavior and helps us transcend limiting and harmful prejudices, practices and paradigms.
As I have developed my heart and soul, I have been able to overcome my lower passions and attachments by focusing on higher purposes and capabilities. My life and leadership has been a series of successes and failures in this regard. Every day I am tested. Every day I try to better manage my affairs and responsibilities with rectitude of conduct based on moral and ethical principles founded in my faith. I try to take initiative in sustainable, creative and disciplined ways that enables those I work with and myself to persevere and overcome the many obstacles that are placed in our paths, turning stumbling blocks into stepping stones.
All of this is grounded in my faith and daily practice of prayer, meditation and reading from sacred scripture so that I might better serve and live a good life. My life and work are an exercise in service, prayer and meditation. My work is my place of worship and service to my faculty, staff, students, colleagues and humanity, my worship.
In developing my soul, I have focused on the “human attributes that manifests as consciousness, thought, feeling, and will, regarded as distinct from the physical body” (Encarta Dictionary). These attributes represent key spiritual capabilities that each person possesses and is to develop, and form the foundation for realizing all our potentialities. Our growing consciousness of these powers allows us to further develop them. Thought is actualized in pursuing and practicing the principle and ideal of truth, feeling in love and will in justice and service. The practice of truth leads to greater authenticity, love to altruism and will to justice and seeing that the greatest good is done for the greatest number. The capacities of thinking, feeling and acting and the principles of truth, love and justice are related respectively to the cognitive, affective and psychomotor/conative domains.
Our environment heavily influences our thinking. Because we each have unique environments and develop unique perceptions of reality that we construct from our experiences in these environments, we must continually renegotiate our understanding of truth in our interactions with other’s realities. Our thoughts are a combination of facts and falsehoods that we tend to see only as truth. Therefore, it is important to be engaged in a continuous process of re examining and re-evaluating our perceptions in an unfettered search for truth and authenticity. Scientific thinking helps us better determine truth from error, more accurately investigate material and spiritual reality and lessen distortions or inadequacies of knowledge. Consultation is one of the most powerful practices for developing knowledge, wisdom and unity. If our perceptions are guided by distorted theories, values, needs and desires or are otherwise biased or faulty, our spiritual development is limited. Through consultation, one has access to other perspectives of the hologram of truth, thereby allowing for a more accurate and holistic picture.
Love is an attractive and constructive force that operates according to measurable laws and principles involving both acceptance and concern. Acceptance without concern is tolerance and concern without acceptance is criticism or conditional love. Love is more complex and deeper than feelings of emotional warmth. It has the potential and power to overcome the repulsive forces of contention, dissension and hate. Love should strive to be altruistic: self-sacrificing, selfless, acting for others’ good and giving priority to legitimate needs of others over our own needs. We engender love when we encourage beauty, happiness and the best in others’ and our own lives.
Exercising will requires the capacity to strive, initiate and sustain action to develop our powers for justice and good. The principle of justice encourages us to strive for love and truth, seeking to eliminate prejudices and injustices from our environments and ourselves. Justice requires courage and generates greater intentionality and autonomy: capacity to make independent moral decisions and act on them. Acting with justice positively affects our environments and ourselves, creating a culture of safety and well being.
Over my life, I have strived to move to higher expressions of truth, love and justice, and to help others do the same—to move from egocentric to ethnocentric to world centric and spirit centric conceptions of them. I have striven to have more positive, authentic, and valid knowledge; greater altruistic, sincere love and increased autonomous, virtuous will. They each require power: the ability, skill, or capacity to do something. Imbuing our actions, feelings and thoughts with truth, love and justice is the greatest power a person, educator or leader can have. As we build unity in diversity of expressions of truth, love and justice, the individual and society flourish.
The world is in dire need of people at all levels of society who possess the core values, beliefs and actions necessary to guide their communities and institutions in these difficult times. Individuals and society suffer from the lack of balance in and the denial of the spiritual aspects of their reality. Spirituality has been marginalized, and therefore, its influence in most arenas limited. People with well-developed mental and physical powers who lack spiritual development have been the cause of much harm, especially educators and leaders. The dimensions of truthfulness, love and justice are often at odds with modern-day conceptions of leadership, such as competition, power and aggressiveness, therefore we need to have courage and fortitude to develop them
The effectiveness and utility of truth, love and justice is based on their holistic nature in addressing and representing the key virtues of the schools, teachers, administration, students and community that are interconnected and influence one another. There is a reciprocal relationship among them. The health of one affects the health of the others. May we each strive to make this world a better place for us all.
