Cultivating an Ecosystem of Learning: Fifty Years of the Association for Bahá'í Studies

Our first presentation this evening is titled cultivating an ecosystem of learning 50 years of the association for bahigh studies. Joining me for this presentation are the members of the executive committee of the association for bahigh studies. I'm going to call them up one by one. Please come join me on stage. Andres Shahidi Nead, Derek Smith, counselor Jasmine Miller Kleinhance, Mariam Ashani, and Todd Smith. And as we get ourselves situated, as we often do, we sometimes need a moment to get ourselves situated, um, I'm going to ask, uh, the secretary of our executive committee, Todd Smith, to provide an overview of this presentation. Hello everybody. Can you hear me? Okay. It is so wonderful to see all of you here. I just have to point out at the beginning that the executive committee has been grappling for many months now about how to present this in a befitting manner and we hope that we are going to be doing so. And I just wanted to share with you that there's a rumor out there that we we have written a play. I we don't know exactly who started that rumor. I just want to clarify that we have something close to a play but it's more of a table read but we don't really have a full table in front of us. So, but it's along those lines and essentially what we want to do is we want to in the first half of this we want to present a shortened version of the history of the association some of the major milestones that have taken place over the years and some of you might have seen that there is a new issue of the journal for bahigh studies and that journal has a retrospective in there that is quite a long retrospective and then there's an executive summary of of that retrospective and then there is this which is a an executive summary of that executive summary. Then the second part of this u presentation is just for us to share some insights in a more of an open manner just about some of the um elements of learning and the culture that we're striving to cultivate within this association. So we're extraordinarily grateful to be here with all of you tonight to celebrate this momentous occasion and Shabnam is going to be our narrator and the rest of us are just going to contribute some insights in a conversational style. So thank you very much. Testing tests for those joining us who may not know the association's history in detail. The Association for Bahigh Studies is an organization that exists to create opportunities for academics, professionals and other interested participants to bring insights of the Bahigh Revelation into serious conversation with the academic and professional discourses of society. It publishes a journal, holds an annual conference, and supports a growing network of reading groups, seminars, writing groups, and special interest groups who are learning to organize their own collaborative initiatives. But it started far more modestly than the description suggests. In January 1976, 80 people made their way to Cedar Glenn in Bolton, Ontario for the first annual conference of what was then called the Canadian Association for Studies on the Bahigh Faith. It had been called into being the year before by the National Spiritual Assembly of Canada in response to a specific goal from the Universal House of Justice to cultivate opportunities for formal presentations, courses and lectures on the Bahigh faith in Canadian universities and institutions of higher learning. The membership was small, the infrastructure minimal, but the founding generation was convinced that Bahigh thought had transformative contributions to make to the intellectual life of the age. My five colleagues here will walk through what happened next, not as a formal lecture as was mentioned, but as a conversation in which they tell the story together. Given the time we have, this provides just a brief overview of the many milestones achieved over the last 50 years. For a much fuller account, you are warmly encouraged to peruse the special issue of the Journal of Bahigh Studies, which has just been released. I want to start with who was actually there at the beginning because I think it's easy to lose sight of how small this endeavor was at first, especially looking at over 2,000 people in the room this evening. Jose Desh was the founding chair. Douglas Martin, the founding secretary. The rest of that first executive committee was William Hatcher, Glenn Aford, Elizabeth Lren, Michael Rochester, and Don Rogers. >> And while the membership was small, within a year they already started a pattern of holding conferences, which grew significantly. By the fourth conference, attendance had grown from 80 at Cedar Glenn to 200 in Toronto in 1979. They also launched a publishing program in this early period, the Bahigh studies monograph series starting in 1976. >> That's right. William Hatcher's The Science of Religion, John Hatcher's The Metaphorical Nature of Physical Reality, and Hussein Desha's volume on building a violence-free society, which reached 20,000 readers well beyond the academy, were among the first of the series. And what I think is worth pausing on is the approach behind that series from the very start. It wasn't conceived as writing for narrow specialist readership. The idea was to produce work rigorous enough to be taken seriously by scholars outside of the community but accessible enough to speak to the wider Bahigh community too and beyond that to audience who had never encountered the faith at all. William Hatcher himself building on this momentum toured and lectured on science and religion at universities across Canada taking the very questions in those monographs directly into classrooms and public halls. They also added a companion quarterly Bahigh notebook Cay Bahai launched not long after. These consisted of shorter pieces, literary writing, poetry, music published in both English and French meant to complement the more formal monograph series. >> And it wasn't only these friends that were there at the outset. David Smith, Abdul Misak Gadian were also part of that early circle of collaborators alongside Jane Fae. They also all presented at those early conferences and all went on to serve and speak at association gatherings in the decades that followed. Conference by conference in those first few years, that circle of presenters and collaborators just kept widening. Actually, if I can interrupt for just a moment, David Smith, Abdul Msar Gadiran, and Roshan Danesh, who was only a child at the outset of this process, watching all of this unfold, who went on himself to be closely engaged with the association's work. In fact, if any of them are here with us today, would you mind standing so we can recognize your contributions? [applause] What is amazing to me is how much progress was made in the first several years. For example, in 1979, just three years in, the House of Justice commended the association's publications, calling them one of the very favorable outcomes of the whole five-year plan. And in that same letter, the House of Justice set the further goal for the community by way of the association, that of expanding opportunities for teaching in Canadian institutions of higher learning and to the further develop the association itself. It's worth pointing out that this became something of a pattern. The House of Justice would pull the Young Association further into the faith's broader strategy at regular points, offering an evolving vision of its accomplishments and its purpose, almost as if it was handing a new horizon to the association just as it reached the one before it. And that pattern, steps taken followed by explicit guidance from the House of Justice pulling the association towards something larger repeats again and again across these five decades. You'll hear it surface a few times tonight. >> The 1980s bear that out. This is where the association's growth really accelerates. In 1981, Amatu Baha Roia Kanum, a hand of the cause of God attended the sixth annual conference. That same year, the association was renamed from the Canadian Association for Studies on the Bahigh Faith to the Association for Bahigh Studies. Its mandate now covered all of North America. The House of Justice's own language for that shift was that it had international ramifications. Then a year later, the center for bias studies opened in Ottawa, giving the association an actual physical home for the first time, a place for advancing the work year round. With that stronger footing, the association started engaging directly with the wider academic and intellectual world in a much more deliberate way. In 1984, the first symposium on the relationship of the Bahigh faith and Islam was held at McGill University. A real direct test of how a distinctly Bahigh perspective could contribute to a serious conversation with Islamic scholarship. Two years later, there was another significant development, namely the Bahigh Marxist dialogue at Luhelen in 1986 where Bahigh scholars sat down directly with Marxist thinkers to discuss questions of history, materialism, and social transformation. And that same year, 1986, which was the 11th annual conference, was held at the University of Western Ontario and drew around 2,000 participants. That was the largest gathering in the association's history up until that point until recent years, including tonight, which is in fact the largest one so far. 2,100. >> Pardon? >> 2,100. >> 2,100 participants tonight. That's right. >> The theme that year was creating a new world order. And the conference was actually held right after the Universal House of Justice released their statement to the peoples of the world, the promise of world peace. Both hand of the cause Rhyia Khan and Hannah of the cause Dr. Ali Muhammad Va were among the speakers at that 1986 conference. But if you ask me for one of the most consequential things that happened in this whole decade was the journal of bahigh studies which was launched in 1988 as a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary publication with abstracts of essays published triilingually in English, French and Spanish. At that moment, the association established a credible permanent academic home. >> And just two years later, in 1990, Richard Thomas published his book, Racial Unity: An Imperative for Social Progress, which coincided with the 15th annual conference in Atlanta on the theme of models of racial unity. Both events provided a good example of how the association was learning to speak directly to one of the most urgent public conversations of the time, not staying confined to purely theological questions. That monograph was very influential in my own thinking at a young age. >> And during that same time, growing confidence in the work shows up in the numbers, too. By 1990, membership of the association stood at over 2,300. There were also affiliated bodies now active on five continents. >> The decade that follows the 1990s is a quieter one in terms of expansion in the retrospective zoneelling. Growth slows in places such as in membership and some structures shift but the thinking nevertheless deepens. Yes. And in December of 1990, the House of Justice wrote a letter that explicitly linked the association's work to the community building efforts and outreach efforts of the wider Bahigh community. This framing was essential and shaped everything that followed. The conferences of the decade addressed really large questions as well. For example, there was a three-year series called Anarchy and into order that ran from 1994 to 1996 in Cambridge, San Francisco, and Edmonton and addressed issues in global governance directly. By the end of the decade, the association had substantial reach. By 1999, for instance, there were 27 international affiliates worldwide, and the journal was by then indexed in multiple academic databases. Publishing carried right through the decade, too, closing with June Manning Thomas's Planning Progress: Lessons from Shogi Offendi in 1999, a book that was republished 25 years later with a new preface, which indicates something about how enduring people found it. And there's a thread running underneath all of this during this time, specifically about the relationship between scholarship and the Bahigh Covenant. The question was how far independent scholarly inquiry can go while remaining in harmony with the faith's institutions. Exactly. And the House of Justice addressed that subject directly across this period, taking up questions about scholarly freedom and institutional authority and about how disagreement should properly be expressed within the community. All of that thinking is distilled into a compilation published in 1999, issues related to the study of the Bahigh faith. A core message of which is that truth in scholarly fields cannot be found if the evidence of revelation is systematically excluded. And at the same time, the House of Justice clarified that terms like Bahigh scholarship and Bahigh scholars shouldn't be used in a limited sense as though some are admitted to the circle while others remain outside it. And the same compilation observes that no segment of humanity is better equipped than the Bahigh community to take a leading role in developing scholarly paradigms capable of engaging spiritual, moral, and cultural realities. calling this effort a priceless opportunity of service and achievement. >> So if we zoom out across this whole founding period from 1975 to 1999, four themes stand out that still shape how we work today. The steady pattern of guidance from the House of Justice at every plan. The significance of the 1981 shift from a Canadian body to a North American one with international connections. the creative tension between serving a broad membership and remaining a rigorous scholarly body and the relationship between scholarship and the covenant pursuing active collaboration with the wider academic world while staying fully attentive to the covenant's framework. Now we turn to the years between 2000 and 2013 which were in many ways a period of further strengthening and consolidation. They involved the association working out in practice exactly what it understood its role to be. >> The annual conference was the most visible expression of that work throughout this time. It regularly drew thousands of participants and even contributors from well beyond the Bahai community. But there were also major publications as well. Notably, Nter sayed Logos and Civilization appeared in 2000. And in 2008, he followed with Gate of the Heart, which was the association's first co-publishing partnership with an academic press, the Wilfred Lauria University Press. It's worth pausing on a letter received from the Universal House of Justice from that same period, one that was particularly significant for connecting the work of the association with the wider pattern of development in the community. It's dated 24th April 2008. >> That's right. Up to that point, there was some uncertainty in parts of the community about whether rigorous scholarship was still important in the Bahai world that was increasingly focused on the core activities of the plan. The House of Justice answer was unambiguous though. Far from being a distraction from the effort to grow the faith, it said that Bahigh's scholarly activity was in its own words quote a powerful reinforcement of that very effort. It was also around this time that awareness really grew about how naturally this kind of work fits alongside everything else the Bahigh community was doing. >> Exactly. And that was an increasing recognition of the coherence among community building, engaging in discourses, social action that made it clear that participating in academic and professional discourse was exactly the kind of work that the association existed to foster in the first place. And that's around the same time the Institute for Studies and Global Prosperity ISGP began offering seminars for university students and recent graduates in North America. >> Right? This was around 2007 and 8. I myself remember studying the first year of the undergraduate sequence of ISGP in 2007. And the the significance of the ISGP's graduate seminars contributing to the ABS is no small thing. In the years that followed, they began flowing to association spaces, increasingly bringing with them a deepened understanding of the conceptual framework which would prove invaluable to the work that would follow. So it was with in this spirit with all of that groundwork already in place that the National Spiritual Assembly of Canada sought further guidance from the House of Justice on the role of the association. >> And in 24 July 2013, the reply arrived. The 2013 letter, which has proven foundational to the association's work over the last 13 years, acknowledged nearly four decades of the association's contribution. And it pointed toward what would be most productive going forward. It suggested a way of helping a wide range of believers not only train academics, explore their scholarly interests, and engage the discourses of their fields. >> What did that actually look like in practice? Well, most visibly it led to the rise of special interest groups and other small group initiatives which are focused settings where people from particular professional or disciplines can examine their fields discourse together. And that same conviction which Jasmine was referring to that participation should be open to everyone who wants to engage also led the executive committee in 2016 to discontinue formal membership altogether becoming more focused on cultivating a community defined by increasing levels of engagement. Around that same time, Holly Arbab and members of the Universal House of Justice, Paul Lample, Farzam Arbab, and Shia Razip wrote essays that help the whole community understand what it means to engage seriously, humbly, and effectively in the intellectual life of society. These essays still inform how the conceptual framework is understood to shape the association's work today. And that work showed up in concrete scholarship too. The 2018 book, Religion and Public Discourse in the Age of Transition, edited by Jeff Cameron and Ben Shul was published with Wilfried Laurier University Press and it was really a milestone in the sphere of Bahigh scholarship because of the collaborative writing process that was used to write the book which went on to inspire the journal for Bahigh studies own experiments in collective inquiry >> and One element that is central to that framework that is worth bringing out at this point and which was mentioned earlier in the messages from the national assemblies because you're here again tonight is coherence. And while coherence works at multiple levels, there's one that's worth pointing out which is that it should operate at many of the association spaces. its expanding network of reading groups, its reflection meetings, the journal itself, all as being part of a single ecosystem which strengthens each other and the whole of it produces a level of understanding that no single one of those spaces could produce on its own. On that point, the House of Justice refers to the concept of an ecosystem of learning in its 31 December 2025 message, which is proving essential to how the association conceives of its work. There is also coherence between the activities of the association and the community building efforts of the wider community. This is one reason why the association's relationship with the training institute has deepened so much in recent years. Many of the capacities and dispositions the association is trying to cultivate, habits of study and reflection, a spirit of service, the ability to correlate the teachings with accumulating experience are already being developed more broadly through the institute process itself. The 2013 message describes involvement in the institute as a part of a lifetime of inquiry, one that includes pursuing academic studies in the light of the revelation. So the association really understands its own work as building on and interwoven with that foundation. In addition, young people who've been engaged in community building and in the Institute for Studies and Global Prosperity seminars bring that same richness to their participation in association spaces. And the association has been learning how much that participation in turn strengthens its own work, particularly with growing the number of small group initiatives and long-term endeavors aimed at exploring a particular discourse. And it might be helpful to note that this widening ecosystem of small groupoup initiatives that uh we see today really began to take off in 2020. Reading groups, writing groups, seminars all started to multiply alongside special interest groups and they all [snorts] opened up new pathways for widening the circle of participation. We can see the fruit of all this in how the conference itself is growing and not just in terms of numbers but also in terms of the active engagement in seminars and breakout sessions. The conference serves as a point of convergence where the learning generated throughout the year can be shared thus giving rise to new small groupoup initiatives. We'll come back to what the 2013 letter set in motion and what it means for the association today a little later this hour. For now though, I think it's worth pausing on just how far this all reaches back. What struck me most hearing the whole arc laid out like this is how much of what feels distinctive about the association today, the emphasis on humility, on consultation, on drawing on science and religion together, builds on a long history of learning. It's been slowly refined and crystallizing across the more than 50 years of the association. And all of this has been held together by something that runs through all Bahigh activities, which is a Bahigh conception of history and where we currently stand in that arc of history. In their March 2nd, 2013 message to the Bahigh of Iran, the Universal House of Justice describes this conception of history. They say that humanity is approaching today the crowning stage in a millennial long process which has brought it from its collective infancy to the threshold of maturity. A stage that will witness the unification of the human race. This conviction is what inspires much of what the association's work is trying to do. And as Safhira mentioned earlier tonight that every act of serious humble and loving scholarship undertaken in the company of others is itself a vital contribution to this journey towards humanity's collective maturity and its oneness. 50 years is a significant threshold and the retrospective closes with gratitude for the guidance that called the association into being and sustained it across five decades of searching and building. for the counselors and the national spiritual assemblies of both Canada and the United States whose encouragement never wavered. For the visionary souls who gave the association its initial direction and for every collaborator and participant across every decade whose work gave all of this its meaning. As early as 1977, decades before the 2013 letter, before the journal even existed, the House of Justice offered a vision of exactly where all of this was heading. This is a quote from the House of Justice. As the Bahigh community grows, it will acquire experts in numerous fields. both by bahigh becoming experts and by experts becoming bahigh. As these experts bring their knowledge and skill to the service of the community and even more as they transform their various disciplines by bringing to bear upon them the light of the divine teachings, problem after problem now disrupting society will be answered. Nearly 50 years later, that's still what the association is working toward with an ever widening circle of participants learning alongside one another. [applause] As Todd mentioned earlier, we're going to now transition into a slightly different format in order to share again some of the insights and the approaches that have um that we've learned o over the last several years. Um and as the executive committee usually does, we enter into these conversation usually not with 2,000 people in the room. uh but we wanted to keep it as natural as we possibly can. So to set the stage for some of the questions that we'll ask at a time when fragmentation and polarization pervades so much of public life. Reaching this 50th year is an invitation for the association to reflect not just on what's been built, but also why it matters and what's actually been learned along the way. Over five decades, a small gathering, as we heard before, has grown into this widening network of participants developing habits of thought and ways of working together that stand in real contrast to much of what characterizes contemporary discourse. Academic life, as many of us know, has produced extraordinary achievements, and countless scholars dedicate themselves generously to teaching, mentoring, and the pursuit of truth. But certain patterns persist, too. Incentives that reward individual success over collective contribution, for example. competition for positions and funding that can overshadow the joint pursuit of truth. Pressures that reward narrow specialization over integrative understanding. What the association has been striving to develop in a different is a different way of working grounded in humility animated by service oriented always toward the oneness of humankind. Its own mandate speaks to helping build the capacity of the friends to contribute in the discourses of society in their academic fields and professions in a manner that enriches bah the bahigh community's capacity to discharge its mission work the house of justice itself has described as an effort to provide in the world of ideas the intellectual rigor and clarity of thought to match our commitment to spiritual and material progress in the world of deeds. My colleagues and I want to spend the next few minutes talking about what that actually looks like in practice. So I'm going to direct my first question to Derek. That's okay. So let's start with we just described the state of public discourse and and u the characteristics of intellectual spaces. So we we'll start with what the association is actually trying to transcend. And Derek, I was hoping you could shed light on what that culture of fragmentation actually looks like both in society at large and specifically within academic and intellectual life. All of us are aware of the culture of fragmentation that surrounds us. We can step outside of this building right now and we can see the symptoms of that culture besetting the community. It even exists around this beautiful city. And this happens in all of our communities. And we can see it most vividly, I think, in the political discourses of our society, those which are highly politicized. And in those discourses, what we see is almost constant acrimony and outrage and sometimes even devolving into outright threats against other individuals and other groups and sometimes we see that as a unfortunate bug in the system. But in fact it may be elemental to the system itself because many of the systems that are built to structure the discourses of our society are built on assumptions that the universal house of justice tells us are wholly alien to be bahigh thought. Those include the idea that self-interest itself, far from needing to be restrained, should actually be harnessed for the progress of all and that the arena of competition is what drives civilization forward. Now this idea is wholly alien to be bahigh thought and yet each of us is acculturated into it from the moment that we step into classrooms as youngsters. What what do we see when we enter a classroom and we see peers in a learning environment competing against one another for the best score for the highest mark. how they can outshine their peer in order to demonstrate that they are worthy of the recognition that comes with excellence. This idea is based on the assumption that human beings can only strive for excellence if they are in competition with one another. I think this idea is wholly alien to Bahigh thought. We can also see how it permeates the academic discourses and the institutions that academics and professionals inhabit right now where they are attempting to advance their own program of ideas oftent times in competition with other programs of ideas. And when it comes to extreme elements of competition, you will see scientists, social scientists, and people working in the humanities even sabotaging the work of colleagues who are seeking apparently the same object which is the generation of knowledge and the and seeking after truth. Um, one of the ways that we can also see this happening is the methodologies that we use in academic study and in scholarly fields. One of the primary methodologies that encompasses both the hard sciences, the soft sciences of social science and the humanities is the methodology of critique. What we seek is the weakest element in an idea or that which is most morally suspect. And then we use this hammer of critique to take apart and fragment these ideas. And so pretty soon all ideas begin to look like nails which are suited only for the hammer of critique. This too is alien to be bahigh thought. So these are some of the ways that we can see this culture of fragmentation permeating our society, but also the discourses and the institutions, the patterns of action and the habits of thought that obtain in professional and academic spaces. >> I have a follow-up question. So if that's what we're trying to move away from as an association, what allows the association to see differently? In other words, what are the core assumptions and dispositions that let someone question a discourse's own underlying foundations and to contribute to something different and construct it? I think one of the ways in which we are trying to look at the discourses of our society are given to us in the ele the most elemental aspects of the conceptual framework that guides the path of bahigh work in the world and the first of course the elemental one is the inter interdependence of all things right this is the core assumption that underlies our approach to discourses we couple that with the inherent dignity of all human beings. And when we have those fundamental con concepts in our conceptual toolkit, then we begin to do work inside of these discourse and in discourse spaces. And so the discourses, the manner of our approach to that, the spaces that we create in the association for Bahigh studies are informed by those principles. And then what we see is rather than a competitive approach to the generation of knowledge, we see a collective search after truth, collaborative forms of knowledge production and treating ideas not as commodities that are meant to be hoarded, but rather as gifts that we can give to others and that we can build upon. And so we see rather than critique as a primary methodology, we see grace and we see accompanyment. We also see this manner of working in which the highest aspiration or the best element of an idea of an research program is what we focus on and try to build upon. So Bahigh the association for Bahigh studies is cultivating fostering spaces and patterns of action and habits of thought that can lead to that kind of knowledge production and search after truth. >> Thank you. And Mariam's [applause] I have to follow him up. >> Yes, it's [laughter] a challenge to keep up with that same level of energy. But Mariam, since uh you're sitting right next to Derek, um how does this actually look like in practice? I'm thinking here of the process of learning in action and the relationship between action, reflection, study and consultation specifically. Yeah. I think if we look at the Bahigh world, there's coherence in the mode of operation we have which is learning and action. So at our communities, in so many of the spaces we're already in, we're really learning what does it mean to learn in action? What does it mean to be in this cycle of growth? And so ABS is no different. And so whether you look at the work of the executive committee, its various uh subcommittees and task forces um or even some of these smaller spaces like reading groups and seminars really all of these spaces are in this rhythm of study, consultation, action, reflection. and even the executive committee themselves ourselves we hold a quarterly reflection space probably reminiscent to things you may have in your cluster um we have other reflection spaces for the friends who participate and so again just very reflective to the outside Bahigh community this cycle becomes uh the cycle of growth within the association's work and so much of the organic growth we've seen over the past decade is a reflection of oper operating in this in this mode. And this mode of learning really falls within this conceptual framework that Derek alluded to that shapes everything we're doing in the Bahigh community. It's the lens through which we see reality and it's the lens through which we decide how we're going to operate that's coming from Bahigh principles and a Bahigh understanding. And so this allows for coherence in everything that we're doing. And so what we're actually learning in the community building process, the capacities we're building in the community building process directly translate into the spaces here in the association. So the relationship between study and action, um our ability to focus the sound relationship between individuals, communities, institutions. I think these all maybe sound familiar to many of us. It's what we're learning about uh in in many ways in our laboratories, in our community building process. And one element of the conceptual framework that's um especially become important is one that was mentioned several times which is accompaniment. And so we're learning how to accompany one one another again and and we're learning what that looks like uh in in various fields of endeavor whether in social action in community building. And so this spirit of accompanyment uh has also been propelling the growth of the association. And so in many spaces from reading groups to seminars um to special interest groups uh people are seeing themselves as as treading this common path of service. Uh and so you have those who are further along in their field assisting those who are first entering. Uh and they do this as they begin to read their discourses, the discourses of their fields, as they're consulting about how uh to contribute to those discourses and then also as they work together on collaborative initiatives, whether it's writing projects, um conference presentations. So many of the conference presentations you see today are a reflection of this or tomorrow will be a reflection of this as well as the seminars. So even some of the seminars you attended while you were here. And again because we're in this learning mode, these friends are brought together uh quite regularly to to reflect um and to think about next steps to plan to go back to the guidance and study to see what insights we can we can take into consideration as we move forward. And really this idea that the work of the association is never just figured out that we're constantly learning and expanding much like we're doing um in our in the Bahigh work we're doing in other spaces. And so what we really begin to see are some really incredible fruits of being in a learning mode um and this capacity to accompany one another. And we've seen it, we're seeing it in the outside community, but now we get to see it in the field of scholarship in this realm of the intellectual life of the Bahai community. Um, which is really inspiring to see as these fruits are coming to bear in this way. >> That's wonderful and a perfect segue into a question for you Todd. >> But they want to clap for her. [laughter] >> It's okay. [applause] This is the problem with being the facilitator and the timekeeper. So, um, so Todd, I was >> We're almost out of time. >> Sorry, >> we're almost out of time. >> That's why I [laughter] was moving. Um, but the whole point of this learning mode is is to foster an outward-looking orientation. And this includes developing the capacity to correlate insights, find points of unity, and harmonize perspective with others. Can you say a little bit more about that? And by little, I mean little. Now, [laughter] >> as long as everybody claps afterwards or something, no matter what. >> Actually, I I want to share one passage with everybody. This is from the ResMbond message of 2010 from the Universal House of Justice. It says, "A culture which promotes a way of thinking, studying, and acting in which all consider themselves as treading a common path of service, supporting one another and advancing together, respectful of the knowledge that each one possesses at any given moment, that this is the culture that we're learning to cultivate. And if I can just say something a little bit offscript, I have to say that working with this executive committee has been very much like this for me. that one can really feel that we're this is a group of people who are striving to manifest this mode of learning and that in addition to that we are learning alongside many many many facilitators many special interest groups that are themselves learning to manifest this this mode of learning it's just extraordinarily exciting >> to see this growing and I was thinking as is a um from a sociological perspective, a historical perspective, there is never been a social movement, and I hope this doesn't sound too dramatic, but I think it's true in the history of humanity that has ever manifested this particular mode of operation of action, reflection, consultation, and study. And that we're learning how to do this within this particular environment. and that we're learning how to apply this to scholarship and to engaging in discourses for me is is just so exciting. And part of this, as Shabna was mentioning, is developing this outward-looking orientation, which includes developing the capacities to correlate insights from the writings with insights from modern thought and from science. And recognizing that there's just a wealth of knowledge out there in the world that is so exciting to draw upon. and to be able to bring that knowledge into our own conversations to relate them to the writings and to allow that experience and that conversation to enrich our understanding of the writings themselves and then again to allow the writings to shed light on the significance of those discourses. We're staying at the um what's the hotel called? Right beside this convention center there's >> Weston >> the Weston there's a humanist conference happening there and they obviously don't agree with the fundamentals of what we aspouse in terms of belief in God for example but they adhere to so many thinkers that have much to offer and to be able to engage in conversations with them and to find as the house of justice says that precious point of unity and to be able then to then expand and the conversation from there I think is what we're and then sorry I have to keep on I have to say one more [laughter] thing because I really deserve your clapping afterwards and that is that this concept of harmonizing perspectives has been so liberating. This is in paragraph 4 of the 31 the 30 December message 2021 in that beautiful paragraph about the enkindled souls and it talks about harmonized perspectives. This has also been something that we've been learning about within the the reading groups within reflection spaces and it sort of assisted us in in in orienting our our work. So anyway, it's very exciting and I hope I covered the question properly but I just have to say that it's very very special to be serving alongside these five individuals. This is extraordinarily empowering. So [applause] >> thank you Todd. [applause] That's beautiful. Um two we're going to try and touch on two important themes. The first is coherence. The association of course strives to be intentional and to achieve coherence in everything it does. And I'm hoping Andres you can say a little bit more about that. >> And again little I'll try to keep it brief. U it's funny. I think of coherence as applying in at least three levels that are relevant to this work. And I have to admit it's a little funny to start coherence by dividing it into three categories. But it's still helpful for the mental exercise of it. And the first one I think is in relation to the disciplines we're engaging with. It has to be coherence with the way in which we engage them as bahighs. That also comes with a sense of mastery of that field at the same time. That mastery that allows us to see the knowledge that has been developed in that field accurately so that we don't go into either extremes of caricaturing its flaws on the one hand or credently buying into assumptions that are in direct contradiction with the faith. And that's a minimum requirements that we need to start to achieve what the House of Justice calls the synthesis of the perspective brought forth by the revelation with what is already present in the knowledge base of a field. And that's something that isn't achieved and done at any moment in time because that knowledge base is of course itself evolving and we need to be in you know involved in those spaces trying to extract with the humble posture of learning and confidence that the a the solutions to the ailments of society are found in the revelation but that we need to somehow unpack that in practice we engage with that's so I think that's one level in which I think of coherence um and so it's you can think of it as the individual with their field or the group that is interacting in a scholarly way with a given knowledge base. The second one is among the activities of the association itself. So there has to be coherence between how reading groups operate, writing groups operate, how reflection spaces are held, how this conference operates, what kind of culture we'll build we're building together and how ideas from one space eventually feed into the other. Right? So you we I think we're all familiar with this in the context of our cluster where we have people engaging in different types of community building activities and we come together once every three months to share about learnings in one space and they feed into the other and as was mentioned by Mariam Derek and others there's no different to this kind of work. There's this, you know, community health group. Well, it engages also with the groups that are thinking about parenting, those that are thinking about agricultural production. And what we're aspiring to is that the insights that emerge in one should feed into the other. And hopefully the insights of one then are built upon by the other in such a way that we little by little manifest the truth of oneness in reality, right? we have these disciplinary spe you know divisions but at the end of the day we're trying to build one you know set of knowledge that manifests that one reality is the assumption that Derek was kind of putting out for us and so there's a special role to think about the conference in that space right this is a place where we have a lot of that cross-pollination a lot of people come together you probably have the opportunity to sit in a breakout room that's far from your field and hopefully you learn from that maybe you learn something of approach maybe you learn something about content that hopefully then feeds into your very far field. Right? And then the third, I'll keep this one brief because it's is what has already been mentioned is a coherence between the work of discourse and how we're doing that in the association for professional and academic work with the broader work of the Bahigh community as well. There has to be coherence between the work of discourses with community building and with social action and you know a lot of the attitudes that we bring to that learning and action the spirit of service you know a self- aacement and all those types of wonderful virtues that we're trying to cultivate in our in our lives have to be present here maybe the only thought is that that to build on all these ideas is that I think we don't want to be thinking about these as parallel areas of activities we want to be thinking them of as a thread like a braid activities that kind of weave each other and connect each other in ways that hopefully at some point we can start not distinguishing one from another because we're bringing one attitude, one approach to all these areas of endeavor. >> Wonderful. Thank you. [applause] >> Now, uh we must end this conversation here with the by talking about the role of love. Uh, building on what Todd said, uh, I know for me what makes learning and serving alongside these individuals a real joy is the love that we share for each other and for the work. And so I'm going to ask Jasmine to expand on this idea of love. >> I was so hopeful that you were saying and now we're going to wrap it up. [laughter] >> Never. >> Um, The only reason I'm on this stage is because of my love for you [laughter] all. Um, otherwise I would not be here. Um, and I think it is such a unique characteristic that animates everything really. Abdul Baha talks about it's an animating force of the universe. I don't think we all think of this that we're in this room because of love, but we are. What is it that we love that brings us here? It is each other, but it's also a love of the divine, a love of reality, a love of truth. And all of these things coales in a space like this where we come together and we really explore ideas, where we we listen to one another, we cooperate, we try to really um release this force in a way that society is propelled forward. And we're just thinking about love. I don't know if how many of you are familiar with the July 22nd message from the House of Justice from 2020. But there's a particular paragraph that maybe we can just meditate on as we end this session. But the House of Justice says ultimately the power to transform the world is affected by love. Love originating from the divine. Love ablaze among members of a community. Love extended without restriction to every human being. This divine love ignited by the word of God is disseminated by enkindled souls through intimate conversations that create new susceptibilities in human hearts, open minds to moral persuasion, and loosen the hold of bias norms and social systems so that they may gradually take on a new form in keeping with the requirements of humanity's age of maturity. So I'm just hopeful if we can reflect on this, we can think of this love, the love that allows us to converse, to the love that allows us to act, the love that allows us to release the society, building powers of the faith in ever greater measures. >> Thank you all so much. [applause] Thank you to our executive committee and um to all of you for engaging with us.