Category Archives: Personal

America’s Last Chance

by kaweah

The year was 1966. The times they were a-changin’. In the Bahá’í universe, the pieces were falling into place. The first Universal House of Justice had been elected, and the world seemed to be ready for new answers and new leaders. It was the time of Martin Luther King Jr. and Muhammad Ali. Malcolm X had recently been assassinated. Black Americans were asserting their status and rights as full citizens. The time was right to introduce Black America to Bahá’u’lláh’s message of racial equality and unity.

I was just a year old. My family moved from south Los Angeles to Saint Helena Island, just off the coast of South Carolina. We lived in the town of Frogmore, the location of legendary Penn Center. Saint Helena Island, midway between Charleston and Savannah, had once been a sanctuary for free blacks (Union territory during the Civil War), and the location of a school for the same. It remains an active cultural heritage center to this day. In the 1960s, Penn Center was a conference center for some of the leaders of Black America. My parents even joined in a meeting attended by Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson, and—I daresay—even Joan Baez. Continue reading →

My Life as a Fanatic

by Igneous1

When I was a young man, I turned toward the Qiblah and prayed to Allah. I fasted for a month every year, and I refused all alcoholic beverages. I exchanged Arabic greetings with my fellow believers. Of course I went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where I lived for a year and studied Arabic so that I could better understand the words of Allah. You might have found me carrying around a copy of the Holy Qur’án—just in case I might have some free reading time. And, yes: I was a virgin, though perhaps not entirely by choice.

If you had asked me back then whether I was a Muslim, I would have denied it, for I was a member of a Shi’ite splinter group that refuses to be identified as Muslims. It’s a long story—let’s just say that it’s hazardous to be called a heretic in Iran. But when I look back at my youth I say, “what a Muslim!” Continue reading →

Annual Update

by kaweah

It’s been over thirteen months since I last posted to this blog. There’s a good reason for my absence: I haven’t had much to say about Bahá’í matters. Perhaps this is because not much is going on—I’m in no position to say. I will say that I only created this blog because I wanted to remove the entries on Bahá’í matters off of my principal blog (now named Kindling, but with the original motto).

I never had any intention of blogging on the Bahá’í Faith indefinitely. I just didn’t expect to have that much to say on the topic.

Recently, I did contribute an article on my conversion to Zoroastrianism to the Project Conversion site—back at Naw Ruz time (Naw Ruz was a Zoroastrian festival long before it became a Bahá’í holy day). This article wasn’t about the Bahá’í Faith, but it might be of interest to anyone who’s wondered what a “native-born Bahá’í” like me might do in terms of religion after having moved away from the Bahá’í Faith.

Turkey Mike’s Big Game

by kaweah

Our son Michael got his name from Carolyn’s great-grandfather Michael Patrick Donlin. No, this wasn’t the “Turkey” Mike Donlin who starred for the New York Giants. Our Mike Donlin lived in Ireland during the Great Famine. He spent his youth scaling sea cliffs, stealing eggs from sea gulls to fight off starvation. We don’t have any reason to believe that he played baseball, but that’s okay. Our son Michael is more than willing to compensate for that family shortcoming. Trouble is, he’s had some trouble getting recognition. He’s not a big kid, and his dad doesn’t have connections. After spending last spring watching his coaches ignore him, I wasn’t sure I wanted to put up with another year of Pony League. We signed him up for a couple dance classes. We would have had him play soccer in the fall, but baseball was cheaper, and I’m a sucker for cheaper, so we signed him up for fall baseball.

Our Say Hey Kid

Our Say Hey Kid

My Dad was a San Francisco Giants fanatic. His unfailing allegiance to the Giants began with his childhood, when he and the Giants were in New York. Listening to him talk about Willie Mays, you’d have thought Mays parted the Red Sea. Dad could never shake his addiction to the Giants no matter how badly the Giants did. He knew it to be a waste of time, but the Giants were too much a part of him to be cast aside. He endured year after year of mediocre seasons. To be sure, there were some good Giants teams over those decades, but the best of them hadn’t won the big prize since New York, back in ’54.

Last year, the Giants won their division on the last day of the regular season. As they battled through the playoffs, Michael was playing “fall ball,” watching the Giants make history and ratcheting up the intensity of his own play, diving or sliding head-first whenever he got a chance. He did well enough to earn the team “most valuable player” honor, and his fall ball coach expressed disappointment next spring when he failed to acquire Michael in the draft.

The Giants finally won the World Series. Obviously, this was big news in our family. It made me very happy to know that Dad—who’d just turned 86 years old—had finally seen the SF Giants win it all. Being blind, he had to see it with his ears, but he saw it just the same.

Last April, the day before we had planned to go on a trip to the desert, we got news that Dad had suffered a heart attack, and that he would not be long for the world. We changed our vacation plans, and, immediately after Michael’s game the next morning, we hit the highway for Oregon. Every time we stopped, whether to camp, to fill up the gas tank, to eat, or to walk the dog, Michael wanted to play catch. He had thoughts for his grandfather, however, and he was worried that the hospital might not let him into his grandfather’s room. Well, it turned out that he would be permitted to meet his grandfather a couple times. The second time, Michael wore his baseball glove, and presented it as though it were his hand. Grandpa’s frail fingers inspected the glove. Perhaps just making conversation—or perhaps not, Dad asked Michael to play for him. I thought nothing of it at the time.

After several days of visiting, we sped back home to San Jose and, prodded on by Michael, got back just in time to get him to his baseball practice. His team was preparing to face the Giants, the team at the top of the league. On the morning before that big game, we received word that Dad had passed away, and Carolyn dutifully informed Michael just before game time. His response was “Why’d you have to tell me now?!” Carolyn, desperate to recover from that mistake, then remembered Grandpa’s request, and she reminded Michael. Suddenly he didn’t mind so much. He would play this game for Grandpa, ironically, against the “Giants.”

It didn’t start well. Michael grounded out, then he struck out. Carolyn went to the dugout to check on him. He was crying. I didn’t try to comfort him. I didn’t know how to begin. But his team—the Astros—managed to build up a 2-0 lead against the Giants, and in the final inning, the Astros’ manager called Michael in to take the mound and finish the game. This was a first. Michael had been telling me that he could be a closer like the Astros’ ace “Lights-out” Ledbetter. Michael didn’t pitch flawlessly that day, but he was effective—as usual. He even dropped to the ground to nab a soft line drive just before it would have hit the pitcher’s mound and bounced who-knows-where. Michael completed the shutout of those looming Giants, and was honored with the game ball.

What a way to see Grandpa off.

The Astros finished the regular season in first place. That victory against the Giants, as things turned out, served as the tie-breaker. Michael has three of the best players in the league as teammates, but he too has played a big part in the Astros’ success. During the regular season, Michael was 3rd on the team in run production, 4th in batting, and 3rd in extra base hits (and all without a composite bat). As one of the team’s four regular pitchers, he had the second best ERA, allowing only three earned runs all season. But more impressive, this kid loves the game. He is so full of baseball it can get a little embarrassing. Last night after practice, he received his jersey for an upcoming tournament. He’d asked for number 24, Willie Mays’ number, and he got it. He didn’t make the slightest effort to hide his joy. It was as though he thought he’d been transformed by that jersey into the Say Hey Kid himself. I was a little overwhelmed, and I barked at him to get his bat and helmet, but inside I was happy for him; I was jumping with joy.

The Dread Jensens

by Igneous1

Back around the close of the 1970s, my friend next door showed me a newspaper article that seemed to be about my father. It was about a Bahá’í chiropractor—a Dr. Jensen—who was making prophecies about a coming calamity. My father, Dr. John Jensen, is a Bahá’í chiropractor with a Bahá’í fondness for doomsday visions. Fortunately—or unfortunately, as the case may be—the Dr. Jensen featured in the article was out in Montana, a long way from my home in central California. It was some other Bahá’í chiropractor named Jensen.

The old Montana State Prison

The old Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge, Montana

This was quite a coincidence, of course. It’s not like there are many Scandinavian Bahá’ís like there are hoards of Scandinavian Mormons.

Actually, my father’s dad was one of those Scandinavian Mormons, but that’s another story.

One thing the Bahá’ís and Mormons do share, though, is a peppering of heretics across the Rocky Mountain states. Must be something about mountains that brings out the heretic in people.

This Dr. Leland Jensen of Missoula, Montana was well known among researchers for his string of failed prophecies. He was also known for being convicted for sexually molesting of a minor. It was while doing time in the big house that Jensen received his calling, as so oft it happens. Upon release, Jensen founded his own Bahá’í sect, and commenced to doing what prophets do.

My father was and is quite different. He is a principled man who would never entertain prophetic delusions or manipulate people as the Montana Jensen did.

But my father did—and does—share Leland Jensen’s apocalyptic view of the immediate future. He is a Bahá’í, after all. It’s in the scripture. A lot of bad things are going to have to happen for the world to be cleansed before the last century ends.

As a child in a Bahá’í household, I learned about a horrible calamity that would soon cleanse the world of its blind materialism and render it receptive to the light of faith in Bahá’u’lláh. We weren’t sure what exactly would happen but we knew it would necessarily be bad—something along the lines of Zechariah 13:

In the whole land, declares the LORD,
two-thirds will be struck down and perish;
yet one-third will be left in it.
This third I will bring into the fire;
I will refine them like silver
and test them like gold.

Two-thirds of the people of the world would perish, and many of the survivors might wish they had perished as well. It was a retributive promise laid over the real danger of the Cold War. It was easy for a child to internalize.

Noted skeptic Michael Shermer has also heard of Leland Jensen. Shermer discussed Jensen at length in his book How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science:

On a brisk April 29 morning in 1980, Dr. Leland Jensen, a chiropractor and leader of a small religious sect called the Baha’is Under the Provisions of the Covenant, led his devoted followers into fallout shelters in Missoula, Montana, to await the end of the world. Within the first hour, Jensen believed, a full third of the Earth’s population would be annihilated in a nuclear holocaust of fire and fallout. Over the course of the next twenty years most of the remaining population would be ravaged by conquest, war, famine, and pestilence. (page 192)

What I find interesting about this Leland Jensen episode, beside the curious parallels in my family, is the way that Jensen and his followers handled the failure of Jensen’s prophecies. It reminds me of the rationalizations offered by Bahá’ís in response to the failure of mainstream Bahá’í prophecies of peace and calamity in the 20th Century:

Psychologists who studied Leland Jensen and his Baha’i sect … discovered that when the end of the world came and went, they did not quietly disband and go home. Psychologist Leon Festinger applied his theory of cognitive dissonance to failed prophecy, and argued that the stronger one’s commitment to a failing cause, the greater the rationalizations to reduce the dissonance produced by the disappointment. Thus, paradoxically, after the 1980 debacle in the bomb shelters, not only did Jensen and his followers not abandon the cause, they ratcheted up the intensity of future predictions, making no less than 20 between 1979 and 1995! Jensen and his flock applied one or all of the following rationalizations:

  1. the prophecy was fulfilled—spiritually
  2. the prophecy was fulfilled physically, but not as expected
  3. miscalculation of the date
  4. the date was a loose prediction, not a specific prophecy
  5. God changed his mind in order to be merciful
  6. predictions were just a test of members’ faith.

How We Believe, page 202

Looks Aren’t Everything

by Igneous1
Bahá'u'lláh in Edirne

Bahá’u’lláh in Edirne, Turkey

As a young Bahá’í on pilgrimage, I remember not being delighted by the photograph of Bahá’u’lláh that only pilgrims and janitors are permitted to see. Having grown up with charming images of `Abdu’l-Bahá, my expectations were high, and unfair to Bahá’u’lláh.

Portraits of `Abdu’l-Bahá are as common in Bahá’í households as crosses are in churches. “place the picture of `Abdu’l-Bahá in your home,” Bahá’ís are told (Lights of Guidance, page 520). They are instructed to post these portaits up high in prominent locations. This is done out of what they call “respect.” In spite of this idolatrous practice, Bahá’ís consider themselves special for not displaying portraits of Bahá’u’lláh.

I don’t intend to criticize Bahá’u’lláh for his lack of physical charm, but when I hear Bahá’ís wonder at the attractiveness of `Abdu’l-Bahá, I am moved to ask, “why do you place significance on such matters?”

Abbas Abbas Everywhere

Abbas Abbas Everywhere!

I can’t help but be skeptical regarding the motives behind the Bahá’í prohibition against portraits of Prophets. Given the Bahá’í affection for graven images, I’m inclined to wonder whether the prohibition would have ever been laid down had Bahá’u’lláh been better looking.

Bahá’ís are told not to keep photos of their Prophets because such photos could too easily become idols; believers would focus on the appearance of their prophet, and be distracted from his message. Yet, the anticipation of Bahá’ís to view the one Holy Image in the International Archives Building in Israel is only heightened by that prohibition of graven images, and Bahá’ís shudder at the prospect of seeing the image of Bahá where they ought not, as though the image itself has some kind of ominous power!

Diary of a Map Geek

by kaweah

I was born in California and raised in transit. In my parents’ fifty years of marriage, they have resided in forty different places in a half-dozen states and nations. My father is a restless man. He gives the term “blind ambition” new meaning: he is quite literally blind, and seems charged with a deep, innate pride. He lost most of his eyesight at age three, and then lost his eyes at age twenty. He doesn’t regret being blind, perhaps because he has achieved a great deal in his life that he might not have achieved had he been sighted. He has seen success after success as a chiropractor. As a wrestler from Mount Kisco, New York, he was once crowned state champion. They called him “King Kong of Kisco.” Blindness seemed to give him better body-awareness, and it sometimes distracted his opponents, though it was not quite enough to stop the national champ from pinning him at the national tournament in San Francisco.

My mother has also leapt some hurdles. A child of a Dust Bowl farmer, she fell victim to rickets (malnutrition) as a child, and grand mal seizures as an adult. Her tremendous will power has helped her to stabilize her blood sugar metabolism and avoid the seizures that once vexed her. Though she was timid and bereft of self-esteem as a young adult, she has since blossomed and shown herself to be a natural businesswoman with a particular knack for accounting. She and my father appear to have been made for each other, though she has never found a cure for his wanderlust.

Just after my first birthday, my family moved from south-central Los Angeles to Frogmore—a Gullah village on an island off the South Carolina coast, where my parents once attended a meeting of Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). After Frogmore, we returned to California, and bounced around Santa Maria for several years. Then we returned to South Carolina, where my parents bought what had once been a boys’ home in a hamlet named Jericho. They’d planned to make the three-story hotel-of-sorts into a regional religious center, but the old building was a maintenance nightmare, and only served to impoverish them. Long before my parents ever managed to sell their “Hotel Jericho,” we moved across the low country into a small trackside house. There was no hope there to make a living, so we moved to the edge of a black neighborhood in nearby Walterboro, where I happened to attend a small Catholic school where I was the only non-black student. After that, we moved up near Greenville. A year later, nearly penniless, we returned to California and moved into a mobile home on the Mojave Desert near Lancaster, then moved to Hanford in the San Joaquin Valley, where business was always good. We did so well in Hanford that we moved to South Africa. That didn’t work out, so we returned to California and pitched our tents in Red Bluff. Next, we returned to South Carolina, and bought a house in Lancaster—our second hometown by that name. We soon went broke again and returned to California. We settled in Tulare, again in the San Joaquin Valley, and business was good—so good, in fact, that we returned to South Africa—well, almost: on the way to Africa, my little brother and I got jobs as security guards in Israel, but our parents went ahead and moved to Africa, and not for the last time, I might add.

Most of that moving was done either for missionary purposes or to finance further missionary work. All the motion left me a bit dizzy and not particularly rich in friends, but it was a valuable experience. It was an ongoing lesson in faith and financing, to say nothing of restlessness and alienation! It has informed my personal view of the world, which has always involved maps.

The maps began as the wallpaper of my childhood. There were the maps we used when moving across county, state, and country. There were the maps used to plan moves that we never made—Belize, British Columbia, etc. There were the maps used to plan missionary campaigns throughout the countryside. At age twelve, I began to explore the countryside on my own, with the help of a county map. Then I discovered the trove of maps at my local library and the libraries of the cities that we visited. I wrote chambers of commerce everywhere, and was rewarded with more maps. Maps became my personal window into the world.

Maps present the world in a form that is at once abstraction and art. They showed me the world in a way that text and photos never could. They facilitate both exploration and imagination. It is in this capacity that maps introduced me to the Sierra Nevada. I can still see in my memory the images of maps that inspired my excursions into those mountains during my high school years.

What I learned from the Sierra Nevada became part of me. With its giant sequoias, granite domes, golden trout, caverns, canyons, wildflowers and wildfires, dizzying heights, blue lakes, waterfalls, alpenglow and starry nights, the Sierra Nevada instilled in me a passion for nature and the natural sciences. The Sierra introduced me to earth science and astronomy, and by association, taught me to enjoy physics and mathematics. More recently, the Sierra has inspired me to study geophysics and plate tectonics, to understand the mechanisms that have forged the Sierra, California, and our planet. From what I have read, it seems that earth science and planetary science are in the midst of a golden, revolutionary age, and I’m off to join the revolution.

Beware Anonymous Cheques!

by kaweah

… and keep your credit cards close to your vest!

… and Burn in Hell, Budget!

Keep your credit cards close to your vest!

Keep your credit cards close to your vest!

I just got a cheque in the mail for $9.95 to be paid to me. It’s a very official, professional-looking cheque, addressed to “California Resident”, and issued from “California Processing Center”. I was set to cash the damned thing, when my wife Carolyn — bless her observant soul — pointed out to me that I was being scammed. She showed me the small print on the back of the cheque:

By cashing this check I agree to a thirty-day trial offer in Just for Me. I understand that the $13.99 monthly fee will be automatically billed to the card I have on file at Budget unless I cancel my membership by calling 1-877-658-9097 before the end of the trial period …

From another blogger who nearly got suckered by the same scam: Beware: Budget Car Rental Autovantage $10 Check Scam

Why Do You Reject Your Lord?

by kaweah

One of the songs I remember best from my Bahá’í youth I may have heard only once or twice, and that, only in part:

World, world, world, world, why do you reject your Lord?
When will you receive your Savior, Bahá’u’lláh?

The couplet echoed in my head until it was as though I’d heard it a hundred times.

I think I remember it being sung in a three-part harmony, with the slow, plodding tempo of a funeral march. I thought it was quite beautiful then, but over the years it began to seem haunted with the dark, lonesome misery of a cult chant. The idolatry in it is almost palpable.

Here’s the complete lyric, according to an obscure Internet source that I don’t see any point in citing:

World, world, world, world, why do you reject your Lord?
When will you receive your Savior, Bahá’u’lláh?
Peace, peace, peace, peace, this is what we’re waiting for.
Love shall conquer all the hatred, Bahá’u’lláh.
Joy, joy, joy, joy, inside of every man,
If only he would discover Bahá’u’lláh.
World, world, world, world, everything has been fulfilled.
For the Prince of Peace has come – Bahá’u’lláh, Bahá’u’lláh.

Mimi

by kaweah

Our daughter wants access to photos of Mimi from her summer camp; an excellent excuse to cease neglecting this blog …

Mimi's Humane Society Photo

Mimi's Humane Society Photo

Back on June 17, just three days before Mom’s heart attack, we adopted this darling gal from Humane Society Silicon Valley. She had lost her home when her family of seven years had moved—another foreclosure? She had spent three months in foster care, with a student at Palmer College of Chiropractic here in San Jose, who did a great job of bringing her weight down, which was particularly important for her, as she suffers from bilateral hip dysplasia.

Mimi Upon Her Throne

Mimi Upon Her Throne

Mimi is definitely pure mutt, a noble mix of Australian shepherd, maybe blue heeler, and Labrador retriever. She seems to have got her dense, black coat, webbed feet, and love of water from her Labrador pedigree. She also seems to have a rather soft (gentle) mouth. When she first entered our back yard, she plopped right into our little fish pond, which has not been the same since.

Uvas Falls

Uvas Falls


She loves to prance, wade, and swim in Uvas Creek. She even jumped from a cascade down into one of the creek’s little pools.

Mimi is our first mammalian family pet. I’ve cared for strays before, and even had strays spayed and put down, but never “owned” either a dog or cat. I’ve always wanted a dog. I like cats, but I love dogs, which is precisely the reason why I’ve avoided ownership, knowing that dogs in particular need activity, attention, and maintenance.

Mimi is no exception. In fact she’s downright bossy when it comes to getting her walk, but she’s worth it. She’s pulling her weight. Besides infusing our lives with affection, play, and loyalty, she’s helping one of us overcome her acute fear of dogs, and teaching our rambunctious little human pup how to be a little more gentle!