 It's an honor to be here this morning to address you and the Continental Board of Counselors is always delighted to send representatives to encourage the Association for Baha'i Studies and to be as individual participants enriched by the contributions of the Association at its annual conference. And I just want to say that last night to listen to Don Rogers talk uplifted me tremendously. The talks here have all been uplifting, but that one in particular I founded a source, a replenishment of wonder about what what what the artistic process is but what the processes are in which we are engaged as a global community. So I took this the quotation that I began that I then I took for the the title of the of the talk to build in the world of things a safe home for the children of men from a remarkable little 1912 book written by the Reverend Rockwell Harmon Potter who is a minister to the first Church of Christ in Hartford Connecticut and it was from a little book that he wrote called the common faith of common men and here is a fellow I felt who is inspired by the spirit of the age and to me it also expresses the aim of the Baha'i faith as we all know Baha'u'llah refers to himself as he who has come to build anew the world and furthermore he says that he's given the rulers and the ministers of the world that which is conducive to the safe to safety and protection tranquility and peace that happily the children of men may rest secure from the evils of oppression and he directs the men of God's house of justice to occupy themselves with the training of peoples the upbuilding of nations the protection of men and the safe man and the safeguarding of his honor. So this motif of construction and well destruction and construction or really reconstruction we see runs throughout the writings of Baha'u'llah Abdul Baha and the Guardian and we know that this wondrous system that Baha'u'llah has brought into the world has revolutionized mankind's ordered life and that he's rolling up the world and spreading out a new order in its stead and writing to the Baha'is of the world of the West in October 1940 Shoghi Effendi urged them amidst the chaos and tragedy of the world events at that time to work for the spiritual redemption of a reconstructed mankind. So to me this is the ultimate built environment that was my attempt to try to get this talk into the into the theme of this conference I guess in a way this construction project has been with the Baha'i community since its inception and it was given particular focus by Abdul Baha in the tablets of the divine plan but today I'd like to take a more a look I guess at the more recent elaboration by the Universal House of Justice of that divine plan beginning with the four-year plan from 1996 to 2000 which was followed as we know by the 12-month plan and then a series of five-year plans that will take us to the end of the first century of the formative age of the faith and these plans the House of Justice tells us have been designed as progressive steps in achieving a change in Baha'i culture so in my talk today I really just want to have a few glances at how this culture which has been refers referred to at different times by the House of Justice as a culture of growth a teaching culture and a learning culture how that's being changed constantly consciously deliberately and systematically so as we know the objective the single focus of this series of plans is an advance in the process of entry by troops and with that in mind the very interesting and exciting question becomes how do we get there and it is exciting it's stimulating and it's well dare I say fun so so I have a tremendous enthusiasm for this topic and I hope it comes across and in in these few remarks so to look at how we're going to go about achieving this deliberate change in culture I'm going to use a as a framework a series of points that were developed by Michael Carlberg in his book Beyond the Culture of Contest but before I get to that I think it'd be good to make a few general comments about the nature of this change first we're seeking individual and collective transformation within the framework of authoritative guidance and through the provisions of the covenant the Baha'i community will remain firmly united and firmly founded on the teachings of Baha'u'llah and around the institutions that he established particularly the Universal House of Justice in this day so while the community will welcome an infinite diversity in regard to secondary characteristics it will also firmly uphold the teachings sorry firmly uphold unity in relation to secondary to fundamental principles sorry I messed that up it will also hold uphold firmly unity in relation to fundamental principles and it is always the teachings of Baha'u'llah that constitute a divine standard for determining what aspects of a particular culture will be retained now as the community is seeking to arrive at higher and higher levels of understanding of how to build a spiritual civilization how to build the kingdom of God on earth how to serve the needs of humanity we bring forward our various perspectives and our varied perspectives we take care to do that in an atmosphere of unity and self-discipline and after we consult then we act and then we reflect on our action and that is the pattern the mode of operation in which we find ourselves now and as always as Paul Lample writes in his new volume revelation and social reality which has been mentioned a number of times at this conference we are seeking what he refers to as a dynamic unity not perpetual criticism and contention so describing this series of plans that started in 1996 and leading up to 2021 he writes during this period the community will transform its understandings its patterns of life and many aspects of its institutional arrangement the change of Baha'i culture is the fruit of a change in the Baha'i approach to understanding and practice how we understand what is written and translate it into reality and action as it pertains to the growth of the faith so those are just a few general observations about the nature of this change in which we find ourselves now so having made those comments let's go back and look at these factors that Michael Carleberg has outlined as necessary in the achievement of cultural change so the first thing that he says is that we need to denaturalize if you're going to change a culture deliberately you need to denaturalize cultural practices old cultural practices so I was I so what I'm trying to do is apply this framework that Carleberg has developed to what what I see going on around us now so I'm going to make some comments about this you may agree with them you may disagree with them that's fine we can talk about that later but this is this is from my point of view this is what I've seen so as far as denaturalizing cultural practices one of the things that I would say I have noticed is that we are moving away from what has been referred to as a congregational model practices that are related to that and that's characteristic of western religious denominations that congregational model we are moving towards a more engaged and active community model with the emphasis on individual initiative but within the framework of the current plan and the house of justice wrote to an individual in august 2002 they said this to mistakenly identify the high community life with the mode of religious activity that characterizes the general society in which the believer is a member of a congregation leadership comes from an individual or individuals presumed to be qualified for the purpose and personal participation is fitted into a schedule dominated by concerns of a very different nature can only have the effect of marginalizing the faith and robbing the community of the spiritual vitality available to it so the house of justice then has told us very good reason why we need to change away from this cultural practice which I think we have adopted in many cases in our communities from the the wider society and the other religious organizations that surround us we found that the there are there are various activities various we call them practices perhaps within the Baha'i community that have assisted us in in overcoming the the congregational model or changing the congregational model if you think of the difference in a community that visiting people in their homes makes then that's a tremendous makes a tremendous change in the atmosphere of the community I would say that as a as a young Baha'i growing up that most mostly the community life was centered around events like deepening feasts holy day commemorations and so on so we did come together as in a way as a congregation there was a program that was planned for us and we in a way became as a as a community became consumers of those programs that were offered to us by people but now we go and we visit people in their homes we have deep spiritual conversations with them we engage in a study a very active study of the writings with them and the principles of the faith and I think particularly this tool of the of the visit of people in their homes is a very potent means for transforming this congregational model to an active community-based model we have moved from centralized initiatives to grassroots initiatives and we have changed many of our teaching practices we have moved from I think a model of more formal firesides where people the only model that people followed was to invite an eminent speaker to give the fireside and then people were invited to come to that fireside and listen we have moved away from I would say proclamation style presentations of the faith towards more direct teaching of the of the faith of the of the not just the principles but the figures that may be reaching out to other people's hearts through the faith we have changed children's classes which were often centralized which were offered generally to Baha'is only to neighborhood children's classes that have been open to all and there are other other many other changes that you can think of I don't want to be labor this so that's the first and this is not sequential so this is just the first point that that carlberg banks is so there are cultural practices that we have propagated in the Baha'i community that are changing that have been deliberately changed the second thing that he the second point that he makes is he says well if you're going to change a culture you need to change the psychostructural dimensions of the culture psychostructural dimensions he says refer to attitudes values beliefs response tendencies that are acquired through social learning and he says you do this through raising awareness rethinking values and identities reforming attitudes and beliefs and reinforcing those through social institutions so this process of reforming the Baha'i community's views about that mysterious thing that we started to hear about called entry by troops really began during the four-year plan and it was articulated by the universal house of justice particularly in its 1996 letter to the Baha'is of the world and the house in that letter said that there were three participants in the plan the individual the community and the institutions and it said they can foster growth such growth referring to entry by troops or making an advance in the entry by a process of entry by troops he said three ways first by spiritually and mentally accepting the possibility of it second by working towards embracing masses of new believers and three by setting in motion the means for affecting their spiritual and administrative training and development and it seems to me that that that that first part of it the mental and spiritual acceptance of the possibility of advancing the process of entry by troops was a huge hurdle for many of us i think that falls under the psychostructural changing the psychostructural dimensions of the culture the necessity of this mental shift was reiterated by the house of justice a few years later when it stated explicitly to a letter in a letter to an individual that old modes of thinking which while valuable in many respects have not been conducive to rapid growth and so the Baha'i community began to transform into a learning culture throughout the four-year plan which really focused on what paul lample says is consciously cultivating a capacity for learning in the Baha'i world and the vehicle of course for this was the training institute with its very practical goal of raising up large numbers of believers trained to foster and facilitate the process of entry by troops and i love this last part trained to foster and facilitate the process of entry by troops with efficiency and love two things that we don't often think about going together efficiency and love if you have efficiency without the love it's a mechanical process if you have the love without the efficiency then you simply have ran randomness or or a lack of systematization and you're not able to follow through in a real way with people who may may be thirsty for this faith of ours and it's important to note that the all of the training institute materials are entirely centered on the creative word in fact you could look at the first quotation in the first book of the ruhi curriculum which is the betterment of the world can be accomplished through pure and good leads through commendable and seemingly conduct and if you think about that the entire curriculum is within the kernel the seed of that quotation everything that that follows in all of the books that we have received so far that have been developed so far really relate to the betterment of the world and that's the key because we had to learn that these are training materials they are not deepening materials they are and we had to learn what training means and we had to reform our attitudes to what many of us originally saw as rather simple study courses and gradually we have been learning that they are deceptively simple and that there is an incredible benefit to be gotten from them when we learn how to practice the train put into practice the training that we receive through them so the process continued and by january 17th 2003 the house of justice was able to speak of the culture of learning that's taking root everywhere as the Baha'i world community focuses on advancing the process of entry by troops now paul lampel again i i quote him quite a bit because i'm so excited by this new book of his he describes this culture as characterized by dialogue rather than debate by constructive experience at the grassroots rather than elaborate planning from the top by systematization rather than freneticism and by reflective refinement rather than derogatory criticism that is the culture that we are striving to build the method is not mechanical formulas or rigid instructions instead mr lampel notes the house of justice opens an arena for action encourages diversity of responses worldwide promotes learning to determine the most effective patterns of action and unites the global community behind proven practices that is the method in which we are operating now so with the system of training in place then through the four-year plan the first five-year plan from 2001 to 2006 turned the friends attention more towards the cultivation of individual initiative particularly related to teaching and the need to establish an environment of sustained encouragement a culture of growth in which the believers see their duty to teach as a natural consequence of having recognized and accepted bahá'u'lláh and they say in this culture teaching is the dominating passion of the lives of the believers and you remember this quotation which i think don mentioned last night fear of failure finds no place why not because mutual support commitment to learning and appreciation of diversity of action are the prevailing norms mutual support commitment to learning and appreciation of diversity of action those are the prevailing norms so here's more changes to our psycho structural psycho social structure and by addressing this challenge of expansion and consolidation which is the challenge of advancing the process of entry by troops and addressing that challenge through learning that community paul lample says was able to overcome the paralysis that we had experienced before that originated in debates on the best method of teaching and arguments about the success or failure of particular initiatives that we'd undertaken and we began to move beyond those concerns towards um an ability to encourage all people and i think we're still acquiring this i don't think that we've got this yet but an ability to encourage all people to um cultivate ever more effective action in the best way and he says the result has been an integration of various activities into a vibrant and sustainable pattern of growth and that's brought us both qualitative and quantitative changes in our community so while we have an emphasis on teaching especially on direct teaching direct teaching of the faith it's pretty clear that we need that we well we need to be pretty clear about what we mean by teaching the faith and um it's not just a narrow concern with increasing membership that is not what this is about the purpose of the faith of teaching the faith the house of justice says is to attract human beings to the divine message and so imbue them with the spirit that they will dedicate themselves to its service and this world will become another world and its people another people and that is the project of constructing the safe home for the children of men i refer you back to section nine of the document century of light which was commissioned by the universal house of justice which offers a succinct synopsis of the challenges and progress of the Baha'i community in developing the human resources that have led us to the stage of growth at which we find ourselves now and the house of justice was writing about this document to an individual and said that these passages in the document this in section nine seek to acquaint believers everywhere with the profound change in Baha'i culture that the preceding decades of struggle achievement and disappointment made possible and that was capitalized on through the agency of the four-year plan so it's a wonderful retrospective at the learning that occurred in the previous decades that have enabled us to be where we are today so section nine of century of light if you get a chance to read it another change i would say in the psychostructural dimension of the Baha'i community life refers to what we call an outward looking orientation and that we've adopted you know that we've opened our study circles our children's classes our devotional meetings to all the inhabitants of the locality from the beginning of the five-year plan and the document building momentum that the teaching center produced in 2003 says that that's signalized a change in the culture of Baha'i communities and so by 2002 the house of justice was able to say that the culture that's now emerging is one in which groups of Baha'u'llah's followers explore together the truths of his teachings freely open their study circles devotional gatherings and children's classes to their friends and neighbors and invest their efforts confidently in plans of action designed at the level of the cluster that makes growth a manageable goal so Baha'i's are striving to expand social social circles their friendships and friendship the the teaching center pointed out in building momentum is the surest foundation for touching people's hearts the development of this relationship and it was so wonderful to hear Don talk about these relationships last evening from an artistic point of view and then relate them to the processes of growth in which we find ourselves now and the teaching center also said okay and if you're going to do this you need to re-examine your priorities reorder them to allow more time to develop relationships and to teach people we need to understand more clearly and more deeply the forces that are operating on the world stage and what the solutions are that are offered by the revelation of Baha'u'llah and we need the the teaching center said to sincerely voice and genuinely express solidarity with our fellow human beings all of this part of this development of this of this outward looking orientation and so throughout I think the the efforts that we are making as a community to change these attitudes have been reinforced by the institutions the senior institutions of the faith by elected institutions at every level and then by the institution of the counselors as well the third thing that Carlberg talks about needing to change if you're going to change a culture is a change in the socio-structural dimensions of the culture so you change attitudes and then you change the socio-structural dimensions of the culture just like another side here to me it's interesting that you know Paul Lample has written two volumes and the first one came out a number of years ago and it's called creating a new mind and to me it addresses that whole idea of changing the psychostructural elements of a culture and now most recently he's written this new one which is about the construction of social reality which is about the socio-structural changes that we're making to our our culture so the social structural dimensions of a culture would include social institutions that represent structures of authority that constrain and cultivate attitudes ideas and behaviors and if we recall that institutions are one of the participants in the in the plan then we see okay this is an important element changing the socio-structural dimensions of the culture so the system of training institutes that was developed throughout the world was referred to by the host of justice as the chief change chief propellant propellant of the change in culture in the RIS 1 2000 letter at the end of the four-year plan and the house of justice also said of these of these training institutes and I would say that this is you know some social structural change in the community they referred to this development of this network of training institutes as the greatest single legacy the single greatest legacy of the four-year plan in the field of expansion and consolidation so this was huge the development of these training institutes network was was a monumental development for the behind community so then what went along with that shortly after after that plan ended was the devising of the construct of the cluster and the agencies the development of the agencies that function at the cluster level and the house of justice referred to it as a construct of a size where systematic plans can be devised and enacted making growth a manageable goal so we have this temporary construct this is not you know will not endure forever it is not a divine institution in the sense that the local spiritual assembly is a divine institution but for this stage in the development of the behind community the cluster and the agencies fault functioning at the cluster offer us opportunities for this psycho sorry social structural change that are beyond the scope of a single local spiritual assembly particularly in clusters these geographic small geographic areas that extend beyond the bounds of one cluster or one assembly area I think that we are also seeing changes in the functioning of local spiritual assemblies a widening of their vision perhaps where that did not exist before to incorporate all the inhabitants of a locality a resetting of their priorities and we're starting to see changes in other socio structural dimensions of our culture changes to our feasts and so on the fourth point that curlberg makes is that we need to change the community's discursive constructs so I'm going to talk a little bit about discourse here's so discursive constructs he refers to as cultural ways of talking and thinking about things that influence the way that we act in regard to those things there was a training in a canada recently where group of group of individuals came together and we're reviewing the guidance that has been received over the past number of years from the senior institutions of the faith and they were trying to achieve a higher level of unity of understanding regarding the terminology that has developed in the behind community in the course of the last several plans and that will exist in these plans and develop further in these plans over the next number of years they realize that there were well over 100 terms that we now use in the behind community that were either new terms that have been developed or are terms that have been used in the past but that we have reframed for example even the term training institute we understood that in a different way before the four-year plan in most parts of the world we understood a perhaps a new term would be outward looking orientation and I've just talked about the term accompaniment what does that mean you know if you look back to the 2005 letter from the house of justice written on December 27th it starts to talk about how the tutor accompanies the study circle participants throughout a journey of spiritual search and discovery we talk about practices you know there are many many many of as I said over 100 terms that we have introduced these discursive elements that affect the way that we think and that we act then we have then we have discourses that have developed these these would you might call these an ongoing formal conversation carlberg refers to them I think quite nicely as a scaffolding for human talk thought and practice and our discourses both enable us and they limit us so our discourses are changing in the behind community and I think our discourses have been very deeply affected by our interaction with the training institute so the training institute came first and then the changes in the discourse have become rapid and deeper I think since then so all of these discourses I would say though are centered on the sacred word that's to me what the most is the most exciting element of these this development of our discourse so give you a few examples that come to my mind about how our discourse is changing I think we're changing and we're seeking to change further our discourse about who we are and how we talk about ourselves both within the behind community and in the wider community so behinds who are participating in the framework for action will often describe themselves in terms of service now so for example I'm a teacher of children's classes or I have the bounty of hosting a devotional meeting in my home I I work with junior youth to help them navigate through that difficult period of life and develop you know the ability to form strong moral choices or to make make morally sound choices and to articulate what they think about these issues that are facing them that's how many people are now beginning to talk about themselves and and talk about the behind community and what I find so exciting about this is that people in this humble posture of learning when they talk about themselves this way I think really there's an element of humility that is a language of humility that has that has developed we're not saying that we are the best ever in these processes but we're saying that we're trying to contribute to society at the same time I think we can convey our confidence in the framework in which we are acting and safeguard the majesty of Baha'u'llah in that process so we talk about ourselves as part of a neighborhood now we're not people who come into a neighborhood and teach we are teaching our friends our neighbors our our colleagues who live in these neighborhoods in which we ourselves live and work we are people who are in fact affected by that environment as much as they are we are expressing our solidarity with them and it is genuine how do we improve the environment for example of the neighborhood and I was giving an example the other day about a simple project that a group of junior youth in one neighborhood in in one cluster they had an idea they consulted and there were many many non-Baha'i junior youth in this in this junior youth group and they said well there's no element of beauty in our neighborhood it's all concrete and dirt and so they got together and they decided well we're gonna we're gonna plant some flowers and so they did they they managed to grow and get some some beautiful flowers and they planted this little plot and one of the neighbors was was looking at them at these this group of youth most of them who live there and that evening one of the Baha'is who is living in the neighborhood looked out and saw that he was out there with a bunch of tools you know he had a hammer and he had had no wood and everything and and went out and asked well what are you doing and he said well this is the first thing like this that we've ever had happen in this neighborhood and I didn't want anybody to destroy it so I thought I would build a fence around it to protect it this fellow had no connection with the junior youth group he was a neighbor there who was inspired and wanted to assist with this transformation so this discourse of working in neighborhoods I think is an important one we are speaking differently about the Baha'i faith I think than we used to we are emphasizing that this is the changeless faith of God eternal in the past eternal in the future focusing on the oneness of religion which suggests indivisibility rather than talking about the unity of religions which suggests multiplicity so if we go back to that document that we've had recently one common faith we can renew our our thoughts on that on that issue about how we're talking about the faith avoiding this tendency to see ourselves as just another religion among many religions in the world we are reforming I think our discourse how we speak about the core activities we speak about them as a paradigm of empowerment which belongs to the entire community not just the Baha'i community we are talking about partnering with people and developing skills that will lead to the betterment of the world we're not talking about discrete little activities that we are undertaking but a pattern of growth and we're talking about teaching in a differently different way and I think our discourse needs further development in this so that we avoid talking about teaching one way when we are within the Baha'i community and talking about the core activities and teaching and what we are doing in neighborhoods around the world in another way when we are talking to people who are not part of our community it is one process we need to refine our language so that our language is one as well okay so the fifth thing that um michael carlberg says um and this is the last point that he makes is he says we need to change our comprehensive discursive formations and he says that our comprehensive discursive formations are simply a constellation of different discourses that we have and those those the constellation of discourses characterizes a given culture at a given historical time and he says its members are born into this constellation of of discourses they grow and develop in it and they learn normal ways of thinking and talking and acting and I would say that that is one of the most exciting things that I have seen within this these processes of growth I would say that you know our our disc our comprehensive discursive formations really surround the various aspects of the intensive program of growth that we have now the requirements of various phases in a cycle of growth discourses that we're having about teaching and consolidation this consultation action reflection model that we have the discourse that we're now having surrounding what is coherence among the the different activities in a neighborhood and so on I am so excited about this because what I see is that we now have new believers and youth who have come up through a series of trainings and this is the normal discourse for them they don't need to work at understanding what this new discourse is because because it is all that they know that is the culture of the Baha'i community as far as they are concerned I find that so exciting and in some clusters we're starting to see large numbers of new believers as well as well as a as youth and and those of us who are still flexible of mind enough to to adopt to this new paradigm of operation we're starting to see these new believers for whom this three-month cycle of activity in which we're now operating these three months uh rhythm the the rhythm of these cycles of growth the activities of the study circles and meeting nape devotional meetings neighborhood children's classes and so on the junior youth program are entirely natural that is the current the culture of the Baha'i community and we're also starting to change our constellation of discourses surrounding social action we used to think about social action maybe a social and economic development projects and they were there were there was this project orientation so I think we're moving beyond that towards the recognition that social action has a great range and it can include individual actions such as teaching children's classes in a neighborhood to the most complex of organizations um that that promote social and economic development but don't let anybody tell you that teaching a children's class in a neighborhood is not contributing to social action because it will change the culture of that neighborhood as well the junior youth um spiritual empowerment program Karlberg says that it's important to remember that these are cultural constructs that these discursive environments are constructed by our culture and they're not permanent that they can be reformed and so we had a discursive environment that was different a generation ago in the Baha'i community we are now having a discursive environment that has certain features and that will that will evolve that dynamic unity that that the house spoke about or that Paul Lample spoke about sorry you know will will evolve and our discourses will evolve I'm getting I'm getting to the end of my time our daikim yes okay so I'll try and finish up now I just want to say a couple of things I want to say that that that we can talk about changing culture and there are different ways that we can talk about changing that culture we can change the outer form of the activities which is addresses only the surface culture so we can begin doing the things that we are called upon to do holding children's classes in neighborhoods um having junior youth programs holds hosting devotional meetings that will change the outer appearance the outer um form of the activities in which we are involved but the house of justice says that that is not sufficient that in fact what we need is what they referred to in a letter to canada as a true change in culture and that is really what we are moving towards deep culture change I would say which pertains to people's attitudes emotions impressions and thought processes all these these things that I've been talking about this morning so they said to the house of justice said to canada that great you've got a wonderful bold goal of of adopting these different um bringing about these different um intensive programs of growth across your country you won't achieve that goal by merely adopting the outer form of the activities of the five-year plan this is not a mechanical process the house of justice told us in December 2005 that this is a spiritual enterprise and told us before that in in 2001 as well and there are challenges to changing that that culture of growth there there's a cultural drag that exerts its force on us from the wider society but we are overcoming this and it's natural to resist um resist these changes but if we can acquire the ability to recognize the what what carlberg refers to as the cultural sorry the historical specificity of our culture environment and to step outside that if only in our imaginations at first he says then we can change the culture so think about this the house of justice initially asked us to spiritually and mentally accept the the the possibility of of entry by troops and then we need to believe that we are advancing the process by recognizing that it's already underway we know that now and then we need to work towards it to put our effort towards it and through practical experience we are finding that our acceptance of this mental this our spiritual and mental acceptance of this possibility has been or is being formed into joyous enthusiasm and confirmations we have had continuous guidance from the senior institutions of the faith that expand our vision that take us forward on this path and um in October 2008 there was that wonderful message from the universal house of justice that tells us not to underestimate the power that's inherent in the system nor mistake the true purpose of the global enterprise in which we're embarked so i'd like to wrap up with a few final points all right i can do that okay so i want to relate this to this conference a little bit at least because i think that scholarly activities play a role in the exploration of reality related to the development of this new culture we believe that very strongly house of justice wrote back in 1997 to an individual it's apparent apparent that the crisis of contemporary civilization is impelling thinkers in many lands to explore new scholarly methodologies capable of coming to grips with spiritual moral cultural and social phenomena not hitherto encountered no segment of humanity is so well equipped as the Baha'i community to take a leading role in this effort as a body of people who are being steadily freed by the revelation of Baha'u'llah from the gravitational pull so to speak of the cultures in which their habits of mind have been formed the community already has a unique approach to the exploration of reality this approach needs to be sharply honed as an ever more effective instrument of social transformation the devising of the new scholarly paradigm called for by this circumstance offers a priceless opportunity of service and achievement to those Baha'is who enjoy the dual gifts of spiritual faith and intellectual faculties trained in the best that contemporary society has to offer that's a huge contribution that scholars can make to this new culture the second point that i'd like to make is something that i really alluded to earlier is that the culture that we're developing is one that develops through unity and diversity we need to accommodate a wide range of actions while keeping our focus on expansion and consolidation we will appreciate the different activities undertaken by different members of our community and as the House of Justice said appreciate the salutary effect of the aggregate on the growth and development of the faith because one person each person cannot do everything and all persons cannot do the same thing and the House says that the understanding of this is important to the maturity which by the means by the demands being made on it the community is being forced to attain forced to attain not just that it's a good idea but the the exigencies of the time are forcing us to to attain this maturity this is a culture that we are developing of spiritual empowerment in which as i said mutual support commitment to learning and appreciation of diversity in action are the prevailing norms all the House of Justice has said can find some part to play in the multifaceted requirements of their clusters and i would contend that that includes scholars as well as others a culture is enriched by various contributions if our individual initiative is disciplined by an understanding of the requirements of systematic action and advancing the process of entry by troops if we undertake our tasks in a humble posture of learning within the framework divine by the plan then we can avoid the tendency of falling into dichotomous thinking we will see that active activities that give expression to a diversity of actions and talents become harmonized into one forward movement activities that give rise that give expression to a diversity of talents become harmonized into one forward movement and we will avoid the stagnation caused by endless debate over personal preferences of approach i want to close with a quotation that i think relates to the qualities that may help us keep keep in mind how to approach this huge task in which we are involved this is from again from paul lampple's book and it relates to this humble posture of learning i think applying knowledge for constructive change in the bahá'í community does not involve self certainty or self interest but self sacrifice it involves doing what is right not becoming self-righteous it sometimes requires suffering which is an inevitable aspect of trying to champion justice it involves absorbing the pain and anger of others and returning love and compassion in an effort to build unity it involves demonstrating patience when understanding is lacking or capacity is undeveloped it involves exercising power to shape and release human capacity for the advancement of the cause and the well-being of humanity it requires intellectual capacity to generate new knowledge but wisdom to convey that knowledge which can sometimes be challenging and disconcerting in the face of generally accepted belief in practice in a manner appropriate to context it involves proceeding with humility and flexibility to continue to grow and learn and to foster learning in others so friends as we work let us remember these things and let us remember ultimately why this work is so important first that the crying need of a human first we must remember the crying need of a humanity that bereft of spiritual sustenance is sinking deeper into despair second we must remember the urgency of the responsibility to teach with which we each have been entrusted as members of the community of the greatest name and ultimately the vision of the world civilization and culture for which bahá'u'lláh has given us the blueprint and which we are beginning to build a civilization and culture which Shoghi Effendi says in their plenitude should be regarded as far as this planetary life is concerned as the further most limits in the organization of human society may we all in whatever capacity we are moved to serve and within the framework of guidance that we have been given by the universal house of justice participate in this most great construction project the building of a safe home for the children of men