 It's the energy of the arts, I think, that must be drawing you to your feet. I tell you, I just really wanted to come up here to see all of you. I've seen you in little pieces throughout the time that we've been together and naturally it's very beautiful to see you in small groups, in the sessions, but then to look out and to see all of you is really, really, I mean it just warms my heart. And of course, the music that we were brought this evening, I'm sure it makes it very clear to you why in its message of December, 2021, the Universal House of Justice speaks about the centrality of the arts so integral to the development of a community from the very beginning. Now, we all come from a different variety of communities to be sure and that's why the arts are so diverse. If per chance, in your particular neck of the woods, it would be better to use a country and Western song or to produce a modern dance or to maybe make some visual arts, that will work too. But now you're in Atlanta and so this is how we get down in Atlanta. And I truly, just from the bottom of my heart, I want to welcome all of you to this city. Now, I am not a native Atlantan. I was actually born in Portland, grew up in the Bay Area. Yeah, yeah, we've got a few Portlanders in the house. In any case, I arrived in Atlanta July 4th, 1992 with the intention of staying for two years to work for CNN. You can see I've extended my time quite a bit. But I love this city very much and I love the people that make up this population, the 1.3 million Atlantans that live in the Metro Atlanta cluster. So much potential, so much opportunity that we really have to take advantage of. And so we're really delighted that the ABS decided to bring the conference here. And we have this historic gathering, the first time since the pandemic to be together in person. And your large numbers demonstrate the degree of enthusiasm that you have for being together in this space and for considering the intellectual life of a community. So we have, of course, record numbers of people here, people of all ages, all backgrounds. And what we wanna do is to think about how we can contribute to not only the scholarship that's available on subjects like physical and mental health, technology. We're thinking about the just relationships between individuals and institutions and communities. And of course, artistic endeavor. We've been looking at history and many, many other disciplines as well. But you know, I don't know if you can feel it, I'm sure you can. This is much more than a conference that deals with a variety of subjects. As you well know, part of the mission here is to figure out how it is that the spiritual components that make up the Baha'i Faith, its centrality of the oneness of humanity, how can that be infused into all of the social spaces, all of the professional spaces that we have a chance to be a part of? And so in the thinking about the intellectual life of a community, we have from our own ABS this idea that really the overarching objective of the ABS conference is to serve as an uplifting welcoming space to explore, learning about contributing to academic and professional discourses essential to the generation of knowledge and the progress of humanity. As one among a growing constellation of ABS activities concerned with promoting intellectual life, the intellectual life of the community, it aims to foster an animated conversation among diverse participants about how to provide in the world of ideas the intellectual rigor and clarity of thought to match their commitment to spiritual and material progress in the world of deeds. So you can see that this conference is one of many ways that we are going to be expressing this idea of the intellectual life of a community. And many of you, of course, participate in the various working groups. You're in different seminars throughout the year. Some of you have been writing together. Many of you have been reading together. And of course, we're beginning to crystallize some of that. And some of you are being able to now begin to think about how in our various professions and other social spaces, are we able to apply some of these things? But of course, we're not rushing prematurely because we know that in developing the intellectual life of a community, we have many examples in which one group simply imposes its ideas upon another. And that's not one that really comes from the writings of the Baha'i Faith. You heard these wonderful voices singing about this power of unity and its ability to illuminate the whole earth. Well, that's not an illumination that comes about because someone manipulates you, someone who happens to have more education or more money or come from a more Western country or be more male or, you know, there's a whole variety of things that can lead sometimes to either intentional or unintentional feelings of oppression. Well, this instead is a learning mechanism. It's one in which you have to try things, you have to turn to the writings, you have to turn to the guidance, and then you have to make some plans and try to carry them out. And what's unique about this is that everyone, everyone has a right and a responsibility to contribute to this body of knowledge and to benefit from its acquisition. This has never been seen in all of the world's history. So we're trying to build it, but we're also, you know, driving the car. Often people get a little frustrated. They're like, what is this supposed to look like? And we say, well, you know what? We're actually driving and we're actually adding more it's on as we go. So it's a little bit difficult, but we know from our study of the writings of the Baha'i Faith as well as from our study of the guidance of the House of Justice that it is all going to be worth it in the end. I have a friend who often would say, friends, why are you lamenting about anything? We have the cliff notes on this one. We know how it ends and we win. So we'll think for ourselves about that as we consider the fullness of this particular passage from the Universal House of Justice, the one that the ABS draws its objective from. And you remember reading, of course, that the House of Justice wrote, as the contribution being made by the faith to the progress of society in different parts of the world gains greater visibility, the Baha'i community will increasingly be called upon to explicate the principles it advocates and to demonstrate their applicability to the issues facing humanity. The more the intellectual life of a community blossoms and thrives, the greater its capacity to answer this call. It will be up to the followers of Baha'u'llah to provide in the world of ideas the intellectual rigor and clarity of thought to match their commitment to spiritual and material progress in the world of deeds. So we really have to think quite deeply about this. On the one hand, when you approach any piece of guidance or even any new idea, you perhaps can look at it from a few different perspectives. One might be that when you read guidance from the House of Justice or you approach an idea that you're encountering for the first time, you might encounter it from the perspective of confirmation. That is, in some ways I can see that I already do that or I have some knowledge of that. And that's usually quite comforting. We don't want to be in a position where we in some way maybe inaccurately believe that we know nothing about a given subject or we have nothing at all to contribute. But you know, a deeper and perhaps richer exploration will also include that we need to actually begin to explore this more deeply. So we have confirmation, but we also have exploration. And in exploration, we might say these are all the areas that I have not yet been able to touch. I'm not quite sure what that looks like. I don't have experience with that. And you know, sometimes because we happen to be North Americans and we're beautiful people. I love North America, don't get me wrong. But we do actually love expertise. So we like the idea of knowing. And so it sometimes feels a little uncomfortable to present oneself and to say, you know, I'm looking at this and I don't know. What exactly would intellectual rigor look like? I mean, I'm a, you know, accomplished person. I've studied many things. But am I actually engaging in intellectual rigor? How would I test that, you know? How would it, how would I, and of course, the groups of people that I'm working with, how would we be able to test that we have clarity of thought, you know? So some of these concepts that emerge for us, it's really good for us to explore them. And that's why I love a lot of the reading groups, the writing groups, because they have an opportunity to do that. They have a chance, which we don't often have in our own professions, because they're just really, in most cases, aren't designed that way yet. And so it's wonderful when we can get together with some colleagues and we can say, you know, I don't have to pretend like I know everything here. You all already accept the fact that I have something to contribute because I am a human being. And therefore I have a right and a responsibility to contribute to knowledge. I don't have to hang a doctorate out front for you or anything else, other than the fact that we're all here to explore together these ideas. So, you know, in recent years, the ABS has really been blessed to receive talks on the intellectual life of the community, the Baha'i community in particular. And of course, because they've been able to make these videos available, many of you perhaps have watched the videos. The most recent one when Dr. Java Harry described the intellectual life of the Baha'i community in relation to the nine-year plan. And then earlier than that, when Dr. Arbaugh, who we all love so much and have learned so much from, also presented to us on the intellectual life of the Baha'i community. I have to tell you, you know, when I first encountered Dr. Arbaugh, unlike many of you who probably got to work with him, you may have served in Columbia with him, you may have worked on various desks, I did not have that opportunity. And in fact, when someone asked me, it was an auxiliary board member, perhaps around 2010 or something, the person said, I want you to go to Philadelphia and I want you to, because Dr. Arbaugh will be there. And I did not know who Dr. Arbaugh was. And it really wasn't particularly convenient. In fact, it was only with a few days notice and I thought, okay, well, I'll get a plane ticket and I will go, I don't know what this is. However, when I arrived, as most of you who did have a chance to work with the late Dr. Arbaugh, no, I collected notes like crazy. And I'll just issue to those of you who live in this cluster an apology, because I came home and I probably firehosed you with this. I thought this was the greatest thing I'd ever heard. The way this person was describing the development of a community and how it is that everyone will contribute to it and how it will expand and come to encompass all of the families, all of the children. I had probably 50 pages of notes and I roamed around a little roguish going and trying to share them with many of you. So if I disturbed you in that case, I am sorry, but not really so much because there was a lot there and we're still trying to learn about it. So this evening I just wanna draw on a few of the things that have been shared, but maybe just to expand on them a little bit because I'm thinking about the intellectual life of a community and the fact that when we think about a community and it's intellect, maybe we're thinking about beyond those who have formally enrolled in the Bahá'í community, though those who have will have a very central role in this. So what can we really make of this idea of the intellectual life of a community? On the one hand, we're thinking about intellect, right? And I think it's interesting because one of the definitions of intellect is the understanding or mental powers of a particular person. So in this idea, we have this isolated thinker who transforms the world and perhaps grows and kind of develops certain world views that we all come to adopt, but we think that it's just this one person. And so when I think about the intellectual life of a community, maybe I have to think a little bit more expansively and perhaps some of you in the room who have more scholarship in this area can think back about the fact that some of the ideas of intellect might have emerged from the period, the age of enlightenment and some of the ideas about the individual and how it was important for the individual to extend his understanding to others in order to discover truth. But to a certain degree, I think all of us can acknowledge we've been mesmerized by these ideas about this individual. He's just, he or she is so smart and they're just coming up with these ideas and they're in a lab and they're alone. And maybe one of the best examples we have of this in our understanding is, let's see, am I pointing it in the wrong direction or should I be actually going? I'm not sure why, oh, maybe there, all right. So one of these, of course, you know this gentleman, Mr. Einstein. So we often think about Albert Einstein. What a genius, this guy somehow just by himself, he was able to come up with this general theory of relativity and it just, it changed everything except that the scholars who have researched this and certainly those who were present in his contemporaries knew that wasn't true at all. In fact, those who are chronicling his work now at Caltech, they say he was not the genius working in an attic with a pen and paper. Einstein may not have been working with large teams but he was deeply embedded in the science community. Colleagues gave him advice and encouragement but also criticized his work and he in turn was instrumental in guiding and challenging others. So when we think about intellect, maybe we can extend it a little bit even as we think about some of the great thinkers that we've had in our history and those that are among us today. But chances are, it's not someone sitting in an isolated room by themselves. That's more of a beautiful mind and that didn't really turn out so well. Einstein, of course, collaborated with mathematicians, scientists from many disciplines, engineers and you know, notably, he was also contributing to discourses outside of those in physics as you are probably familiar with. He was one of the few leaders in the scientific community who actually took a stand for social justice. In 1931, he was of course one of the leaders who spoke and wrote quite avidly against the improper imprisonment of nine African American youth in Scottsboro. You know of this case, I'm sure, from your study of history. But the fact that Albert Einstein could partner with Du Bois and other thinkers and to say that the general theory of relativity and the sciences that I am actually exploring, they're not limited to this space. They're not something that exists just on a chalkboard. They're actually intended to enable all of us to make progress together. And so he took some very, very controversial stances during his profession and he was often called out by those who couldn't figure out why is this scientist of European origin partnering with the NAACP, speaking at the Urban League conferences, writing for the Crisis Magazine and so forth. And he did this, you know, throughout his career and he wasn't afraid to have scathing criticism. So certainly not a lone intellectual sitting in his laboratory just coming up with these wonderful theories. So we can think as well if we're thinking about the intellectual life of a community, then we can also think about a community. We talk about communities a lot today. We talk about social media as a space for different kinds of communities. We think about our educational and our professional settings. We use the term community all the time. But what exactly do we mean when we say that? Sometimes it's helpful. Again, when we have an opportunity to get together with our colleagues and others and try to explore a little more about these concepts. But at least one definition of community is a feeling of fellowship with others as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests and goals. And so if we think about some of the work of the Bahá'í community recently and we think about community, we might think a little bit about these global conferences. You all remember that at the beginning of this nine year plan, the Universal House of Justice, in order to help us to extend understanding about the nine year endeavor that we were about to embark on, it encouraged us to invite all of our friends and neighbors, our associates. And we would examine together some themes that would help us to understand where are we going? Where have we been in the past? What might be some of our next steps? And guess what? We can do that right here at the level of our own neighborhood, our own community. And we would of course welcome as well that anyone who participated would be able to contribute. They didn't come as passive observers. They came as contributors because we're all trying to work on advancing together. And I thought it was interesting that in the RISVON message written to the Bahá'ís of the world this year, the House of Justice referenced these conferences as a way that institutions and communities might want to learn about working with others. And one of the things that it said is that the Bahá'í community in the case of these conferences was demonstrating itself as a place that sees kinship, not difference. And so perhaps in looking at the community and the intellectual life of a community, we're seeking all those areas where we can see that there is this kinship. And then we're able to leverage those. In one of the talks that I referenced earlier that Dr. Arbab gave on the intellectual life of the Bahá'í community, he actually gave us a little bit of a glimpse into the characteristics of a community in which intellectual life blossoms and thrives. And so I'm not going to paraphrase, I'm gonna actually play this clip. Breakthroughs clearly need brilliant minds. So the culture we are developing does and should recognize the accomplishments of the individual. It should celebrate them. Talent should be recognized and nurtured. But a culture that respects knowledge in which the voices of the knowledgeable are heard and where great ideas and great works of art are admired is not necessarily elitist. To be an elite implies a sense of entitlement, of aloofness, of superiority. It is privilege demanding more privilege. Let me assure you that not for a moment do I believe that the Bahá'í committee has been or will ever be elitist. The teachings in general and the way that administrative order is set up protect us from such a future. What I'm trying to do is to ask us to recognize the features of a culture that is not elitist, but nurtures talent and encourages intellectual and artistic accomplishments so that we can promote it against the forces of an elitist society. The most important feature I believe is that in such a culture, knowledge is not the property of a few. It is accessible to all. Large bodies of ignorant people are not created and the oppression that results from depriving people of knowledge is never allowed to establish itself. But then what are some of the mechanisms through which such a culture is strengthened? And look at the institute process which is playing such a crucial role in our community building efforts in recent times may lead to valuable insights into this question. So we're thinking about the intellectual life of a community in which knowledge is accessible to all. And we know that we're learning a great deal about how that is possible, even though we recognize that across our continent there are many, many injustices as to how one might receive, for instance, a formal education. We realize that even though we live in a place in which there is a public education system, your zip code will depend on what that looks like for you. There are many other forces. But when we look at the training institute and what we're learning about that, we are learning that it is possible under so many different conditions to enable many, many people to acquire the knowledge necessary to contribute to the life of their own communities. From there, it often can grow and blossom. It may take all sorts of forms. But at the very outset, everyone has a right to contribute to how their own community is advancing. And yet without a basic sound education, it's not feasible for that to take place. And so we have this instrument of limitless potentialities in the training institute. But you may have noticed, of course, in the December 2021 message that the House of Justice described this area as educational endeavors and the training institute. So naturally, it doesn't mean that the training institute is the absolute end of this. And I'm not saying anything to you that you don't already know. But you remember, of course, a few days after we received the message in December of 2021, on January 1st, 2022, the House of Justice provided additional guidance about the development of the training institute at this particular time as it becomes a system of education capable of educating children from five years old all the way through the age of junior youth, through youth and adulthood. And we describe the idea that it's not merely a series of workshops and training, but it is actually a process to invigorate the intellect while in action. And you can see that in communities, how these new patterns begin to emerge as people who, no matter what their educational level, would not generally be reading after work. Let's get together in a small group and study something. Then let's get together and try to apply this. This is not a natural behavior of the average North American. So we're really reshaping how we see intellect and how it's actually engaged. And many of you, of course, have had a chance to watch the film that was commissioned by the Universal House of Justice and Expansive Prospect. And you saw these examples of the community building endeavors in Malaysia, in Kenya, in Brazil, in the United States. But the next time you're watching the film, just to kind of heighten the experience, take a look at how, as daily prayer, study, and service become the normal behaviors of larger and larger numbers of people, regardless of the amount of formal education or professional expertise that they have, the intellectual life of a community is flourishing. You're not seeing people who are waiting and simply complaining about the things in their society, saying, my goodness, it's just so horrible that this education system isn't meeting all of the needs or that we have employment difficulties or that our children are exposed to drugs at an early age or that young people become pregnant very early. They're beginning to explore for themselves how do we resolve these matters in our community? We're not being manipulated by others, but we have to develop the skills to be able to address these things for ourselves. Now, don't get me wrong, there will always be a role for experience and expertise. The assumption here is not that we do not need physicians to treat us because we're all reading books about medicine, but it is to know that you also have a right to learn about your own body just as you will go and seek a competent medical physician when you have a problem or just to make sure that you are receiving your regular checkups. Likewise, with so many other areas, the area of education, to be sure they will always be professional educators, but do the families in this community simply believe that they dropped their children off and then what happens to them next, they have nothing to say about? They have no way of being able to monitor this? I actually hear this a lot when parents will say, well, I'm not an expert at this. I met a mother once, she told me that she always finds care for her children by six weeks old because she's not an expert. Well, I think perhaps she might begin to develop some of the intellectual capacities of a community and understand that you are a mother and therefore, yes, you actually do have the right and responsibility to care for your own child and that you do have expertise in this and you can gain experience in it. But wouldn't it be nice if she wasn't all alone in that? Wasn't it be nice if she was actually part of a community that was trying to learn about these things together? The other element about the intellectual life of a community is that because it's organized around the idea that everyone is a protagonist in the endeavor, you don't leave those who are at the margins out there. We're constantly drawing them closer and closer to the center so that they're able to contribute their fair share. And so this goes far beyond mere intellectual pursuit. We have to think about what do we study? With whom do we study these things? How should we use the knowledge that we are acquiring? And beyond simply sharing my ideas, how is my community learning to focus the light of Bahá'u'lláh's revelation on the evolution of thought and the exploration of social reality? And then ultimately, how does that impact our individual behavior but also our collective behavior? Our interaction with our institutions? And what is the role of each of these three protagonists as we're trying to examine that? So we know that, of course, the dynamism of the community building process is that it doesn't, it's not a fixed point, right? It's always trying to draw closer and closer to the ideal, which is, of course, the oneness of humanity, but it will have to take steps along the way. And so I thought I would just share with you like one small example from a community here in Metro Atlanta wherein this idea of the intellectual life of the community came to be applied and as is normally the case, it was not their intention to do this, but the circumstances kind of reared themselves in that direction. So a few people in this particular community had the opportunity to study a few books of the sequence of courses, only two, I believe, one books, one and two, Reflections on the Life of the Spirit and the Rising to Serve. Now, at a certain point, there was a time where there was going to be a development placed in this community. And if you know anything about urban communities anywhere, there tend to be lines that are drawn and we tend to say people that live in this area have some value and people who live in this area have this value. So this particular community happened to be located south of Memorial Drive into Cab County. North of Memorial Drive is considered good, south is considered bad. I don't know how we come up with these things. In any case, these friends realizing that this development was coming into their community, they began to try just a small group of them, by the way, because only a few people had any knowledge at all that this was possible. But they began to just try to apply a few of the principles that they had learned in just studying two books. And among those principles were the idea that conflict and contention are not permitted and the fact that they wanted to make sure that the people in the community realized that they could contribute to the betterment of the world. They knew from the very first book of the sequence that the betterment of the world could be accomplished through pure and goodly deeds, through commendable and seemingly conduct. So they set out about this and I won't take you through all of the layers, but they surprised their county mightily because the county was not used to anyone who lived south of Memorial Drive, having voice to anything. And so these friends, they realized that some of them had of course studied books of the sequence and some of them hadn't, but they needed to work together. So they began to have community meetings and part of the community meeting was to make sure that everyone could speak about the issue at hand. And so whether you had a PhD or a GED, you had to be able to have this knowledge. And so just through a series of informal meetings, they were able to do this. What was interesting is that the county, being unused to anyone from this particular part of town, behaving in this particular way, they just made a certain assumption. They thought that because some people spoke a certain way and others spoke another way, that they would go to the people that they perceived as uneducated and they would try to change their minds. They sent lawyers and pastors and other people to go and talk with them and tell them that what they were doing was incorrect. They weren't successful. The friends were meeting every week and so it became quite a hilarious joke to them that they would come and they would say, oh my goodness, can you believe who visited me this week? And they tried to convince me of this, but I knew because we had all studied this particular case that that wasn't the case. And so they would all laugh. And then people who were perceived as being more educated would say, why don't they visit me? No one ever does a home visit at my house. And so it became a little bit of a neighborhood joke. In any case, the community was able to advance through all of these levels until such time as the developer withdrew the application. And so, okay, great, it looks like a victory, except that they weren't gone. They assumed that over the holiday break, there was a winter holiday and they assumed that all the people wouldn't turn their backs and forget, but they didn't. And now since they all learned something collectively, they were checking the county website and they saw that the developer put the application back in again. And so they alerted one another and they went back through the entire process. In any case, they were quite successful in making sure that the developments in their community reflect the needs of their own people. And they were able to use this skill to then later, when there was an environmental problem, sewage dumping in their area, they were able to apply the same principles and make sure that that was cleaned up, even though people told them, you don't stand a chance, you'll have to hire attorneys, you'll have to, all of these things that we know you don't have money to do. And nevertheless, simply by applying some basic principles. And what was wonderful, you might think to yourselves, well, they could have done that, even if they never studied any of the institute materials. But I will tell you that there were very subtle things. Like for instance, at one point, the friends found out some, maybe disturbing information about one of the attorneys of the so-called opposing side. But because they knew that they were not going to engage in backfiting or anything like that, they knew that that wasn't part of what they were going to use. They weren't gonna start posting on social media about what this person had done or whatnot. They were gonna simply continue to pursue truth. And the truth was that they had the elements necessary. So we can see that when we're really focused on the entire community learning together, we're able to advance not only the kind of material needs that we have in a society, but we're also advancing the idea of intellectual maturity. And I wanted to just share with you one more clip from Dr. Arbab and the fact that he spoke about this idea of reaching the age of maturity. The intellectual accomplishments of humanity during its long journey through childhood will not be ignored and thrown away. The child learns a great deal that is essential for the life of the adult. As individuals, we do not throw away our ability to read and write or our mastery of arithmetic and basic geometry or the moral code we have been taught when we leave childhood behind. Yet it is difficult to see how we can ever be adults if we insist on carrying with us our fascination with fairy tales that stimulated our imagination and brought us so much joy when we were children. The play things of childhood and infancy, Abdul Bahad says. No longer satisfied or interest the adult mind. That a decision to acquire the capacity to engage in a rigorous examination of the intellectual foundations of our civilization places formidable demands on the way the intellectual life of the community has to develop seems evident. Sifting through the habits of thought, the principles, the methods and the conceptions that underlie civilization today and deciding which can be retained and expanded upon and which need to be cast away is not a trivial pursuit. Which of our, which one of our societies cherished conceptions of human psyche? Which elements of today's elaborate theories of social progress? Which methods of education? Which conceptions of work, wealth, love, justice, freedom and authority are play things of childhood and infancy and what is to replace them? One thing is for sure. We cannot stand to decide and say everything will be made new. And then take pride in moving to the forefront of processes that belong to a world that we believe is collapsing. So take a moment just to think about that and many moments we'll have to think about that of course because that really is the crux of the matter, isn't it? We're driving the car and building the car. We're organic with the environment and trying to reshape the environment. And so when we think about this coming to maturity and it of course happens in waves as we move forward, I was thinking a lot about this morning when Dr. Penn was talking to us about how human life can come to matter. And he talked about the development of what could actually be a valuable way of mattering. But he also talked about dark matter or malevolent qualities that sometimes are brought by our own efforts even to encourage our young ones if you will. Sometimes we're doing all of the things to kind of stroke the ego. And we think it's encouraging and we're doing our best. I mean it's not as though we should go about beating ourselves up. But when we think about what Dr. Arbab was saying there, we probably want to also give consideration and I'll make this my final point perhaps. When does the intellectual life of a community begin? Does it begin when I complete university and then I'm a contributor to the intellectual life when I get my graduate degree, when I become a professional or does it begin in the life of a child? Does it begin in the home? Does it begin in the ways that children see their parents interacting? How do their parents demonstrate that they are contributors to the intellectual life of the community and recipients of the benefits of the intellectual life of the community? There's a portion of the message that the House of Justice wrote to the Continental Boards of Counselors in 2010, December 28th message. You all have studied this quite a lot. But this one section, paragraph 33, I think bears our further reflection and we'll continue I'm sure to look at it over time. Because when we think about the intellectual life of the community we have to think a lot about where it begins. And where some of these ideas that Dr. Arbab was describing, where do they begin? And maybe it's in childhood. The House of Justice wrote, the forces at work on the hearts and minds of the young to whom the guardian directed his appeal most fervently are pernicious indeed. Exhortations to remain pure and chaste will only succeed to a limited degree in helping them to resist these forces. What needs to be appreciated in this respect is the extent to which young minds are affected by the choices parents make for their own lives when no matter how unintentionally, no matter how innocently, such choices condone the passions of the world. It's admiration for power. It's adoration of status. It's love of luxuries. It's attachment to frivolous pursuits. It's glorification of violence and its obsession with self-gratification. It must be realized that the isolation and despair from which so many suffer are products of an environment ruled by an all pervasive materialism. And in this, the friends must understand the ramifications of Bahá'u'lláh's statement that the present day order must be rolled up and a new one spread out in its stead. Throughout the world today, young people are among the most enthusiastic supporters of the plan and the most ardent champions of the cause. Their numbers will, we are certain, increase from year to year. May every one of them come to know the bounties of a life adorned with purity and learn to draw on the powers that flow through pure channels. So sometimes when we read a statement like this, I will tell you the three words that I definitely dread. They put the fear into my heart. Do you know what they are? I get it. Do you ever hear that sometimes? A very profound statement is made or you read something that really requires depth and the first words out of the mouth of the people is, I get it, but I don't think we do. And I don't think we should be upset about that North American friends. We don't know everything. We should be very confident and comfortable about that. But this is really getting to the heart of the intellectual life of a community. Honestly, by the time one should reach university or graduate school, even with the assistance that we have through the institute process, ISGP, the Institute for Studies and Global Prosperity, all of these processes that we have, summers of service, wonderful ways that the youth that are being described by the House of Justice are able to see themselves in action and to apply their intellectual powers. But dear friends, by the time that they get to that point, there are so many other things that have pulled them. Billions of dollars have been spent making sure that they think this is important or that is important, that they think of themselves as important because they do this or that because they earn this grade or that. And it's often very difficult at that point to get them into another sort of way of being. So maybe we can think about, as we think about ways that we can continue to nurture this intellectual pursuits in the community, that it really does begin with the youngest ones in the community and thinking about ways that we can help them to reach this high level, this high standard and recognizing that we are parents, we are grandparents and we are mentors to the young ones in our community at all stages of their development. So as we're concluding this first year of the nine year plan and of course the first in a series of plans which has this single aim of releasing the society, building powers of the faith and ever greater measures, we can think perhaps that one of the indications we might have by the end of the nine year or 25 year series of plans, I don't know. But we might begin to think that people can describe the activities of the Baha'is in terms of a community. Today when I board a plane or I go into a professional setting and I let people know that I'm a member of the Baha'i Faith, many of them say, oh yes, I admire greatly the Baha'i Faith. Once I had a neighbor who was a Baha'i, I had a teacher who was a Baha'i, there was a Baha'i family on my street and you have to say how wonderful that they have such high regard. But one day perhaps someone will say to us, you know, the Baha'i community of, and you can insert the name, has done these things to help us with the intellectual pursuits in our area. And it's made all the difference in the world. So thank you all so very much for your time and attention this evening.