This is not the time for anything that would further separate us. This is the time for what will bring us to the consciousness that we are already one human family.
Sadly, it takes humanity so long to put into action what it has always known. The family just keeps getting larger and larger.
Over a century and a half ago, Baha’u’llah, the prophet founder of the Baha’i Faith, renewed spiritual truth and laid the foundation for a consciousness of oneness on the greatest scale, which has since become the rallying cry of our time, when he proclaimed, “The fundamental purpose animating the Faith of God and His Religion is to safeguard the interests and promote the unity of the human race, and to foster the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men…”
There is more than enough wisdom in the world’s sacred traditions to put an end to the cancerous aberrations of human interactions that end up overwhelming us.
As Abdu’l-Baha, son and successor of Baha’u’llah, said in 1912, “There is nothing so heart-breaking and terrible as an outburst of human savagery! Concentrate all the thoughts of your heart on love and unity. A thought of hatred must be destroyed by a more powerful thought of love. Thoughts of love are constructive of brotherhood, peace, friendship, and happiness.”
Light and shadow are the core oppositions of this world, both parts of the whole, and the interaction of which ultimately lead to transformation. Even though we live in a world where Light far exceeds its shadow, we are still most in need of acquiring the attributes of light within us. A conscious life finds meaning in these essential contrasts, and it is only in consciousness that we collectively move out of the shadow.
As Abdu’l-Baha has further noted, “The breeding-ground of all these tragedies is prejudice: prejudice of race and nation, of religion, of political opinion; and the root cause of prejudice is blind imitation of the past — imitation in religion, in racial attitudes, in national bias, in politics.”
The greatest challenge of our time, therefore, is to understand, as Abdu’l-Baha said over a century ago, that “Humanity is one… all belong to one household. Boundaries and distinctions are human and artificial, not natural and original. All mankind are the fruits of one tree, flowers of the same garden, waves of one sea.” Our real challenge today is to put this understanding into action.
Fleshing out the sentiment of the day, from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s emotional Tony Award winning acceptance sonnet, is Abdu’l-Baha’s words of the early 20th century: “Love is heaven’s kindly light… Love is the one means that ensures true felicity both in this world and the next. Love is the light that guides in darkness, the living link that unites God with man… Love is the unique power that binds together the diverse elements of this material world, the supreme magnetic force that directs the movements of the spheres in the celestial realms.”
All words of love need to be turned into acts of compassion. All of our actions need to be kindly deeds reflecting what we know in our hearts. If we can accomplish this, as Abdu’l-Baha further says, “Sincerity and love will conquer hate. How many seemingly impossible events are coming to pass in these days! Set your faces steadily towards the Light of the World. Show love to all…”
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