Journey to a Sacred City
Not long ago I traveled across the Atlantic, in the opposite direction this time from the travels of my ancestors. Theirs had been a journey of hope; mine was a pilgrimage of gratitude.
read essay
'The Gate' to an Era of Maturity
The light is as clear and crisp as the air this October morning. Beads of rain, now past, cling to bare branches like gems, their prisms of color dazzling in the sunrise as they warm and finally let go. . . . Today’s sun is the same sun that rose, over a century ago, on the Kurdish villagers of Mah-Ku, where, in the summer of 1847, a mountain-fortress kept a new prisoner, the Bab.
read essay
On the Banks of the Tigris
Even as I join in the celebration, I take pause to wonder why Baha’u’llah chose Baghdad in which to make His greatest announcement. . . . It was an April afternoon in Baghdad, 1863, when Baha’u’llah left His home and made His way through the press of people gathered to see Him one last time.
read essay
An Astonishing Turn of Events
Even as I recall the astonishing turn of events surrounding the martyrdom of the Bab, I am struck by how much of the story comes from choices
– good and bad – made by ordinary people. Individuals who could never know that their choices would be woven into the fabric of collective remembrance and passed on to generations yet unborn. The setting was Tabriz, Persia, 1850.
A True Champion: Zachoriah Williams
I hear the word “champion” used these days, not so often in the sense of a fighter pitched against an opponent, but more often in the sense of an advocate who defends, supports, fights for a person or cause. Like a familiar super-hero, a true champion can emerge in the guise of the neighbor who lives next door.
read essay