Namibia trip reinforces faith journey

FROM HEART TO HEART By Beverlee Patton
For The Register-Guard
03/15/2008

I first went to Namibia in the late 1990s to serve as U.S. Peace Corps Associate Director for Education. I returned in 2002 to reunite with friends and to work on the Namibian Oral History Project. My Namibian hosts helped me to identify and to contact a number of Black and White Namibians who had been close friends with each other during the apartheid period when such friendships were forbidden and dangerous.

I learned that the genuine affection that developed between these cross-racial friends enabled them to not only transcend their differences but to brave the forces of injustice that held the reins of that nation for so many years. That summer I also met some Hutu and Tutsi gentlemen from different refugee camps in Zambia. Their faith in Bahá’u’lláh (which translates as the “Glory of God”)—the founder of the Bahá’í Faith—enabled them to overcome their tribal differences. Their friendship was a sharp contrast to the massacres that they had so recently witnessed in Rwanda.

These courageous people reinforced my faith in the wisdom of the guidance that Bahá’ís around the world have received from our senior most institution, the Universal House of Justice, which has written that “prejudice, war and exploitation have been the expression of immature stages in a vast historical process…the tumult which marks [humanity’s] collective coming of age is not a reason for despair but a prerequisite to undertaking the stupendous enterprise of building a peaceful world… Such an enterprise is possible; the necessary constructive forces do exist; unifying social structures can be erected.”

Around the world Bahá’ís engage in a process of community development based on Baha’u’llah’s pivotal principle of the oneness of humankind. In every community we are forming friendships between people who are not just like us. We join with our families, neighbors, and colleagues in systematic activities that include small devotional gatherings where we pray for healing, for justice, for peace, and for spiritual growth. We meet in small study groups to deepen our knowledge of God and to develop spiritually. We hold moral education classes for children in our neighborhoods. We encourage and train youth to take leadership in every aspect of community life. Here in Eugene I enjoy hosting regular devotional gatherings and study circles in my own home where old and new friends deepen our bonds of friendship and restore our faith.

These activities may appear too simplistic to change the divisive conditions existing in the world today; yet the results are dramatic. The Bahá’í Faith has grown to be the second-most widespread of the independent world religions. It embraces people from nearly every ethnic, racial and tribal group. The change is happening by learning and praying together, and by making friends who engage together in a practical process with a spiritual purpose. I have had the wonderful opportunity to observe this process evolve from Oregon to Namibia, where making friends makes a difference, and literally transforms our lives.

Beverlee Pattonallen is a member of the Eugene Bahá’í community and formerly served on the Coordinating Committee of the monthly Interfaith Prayer and Reflection service.