Once again we arrive at the most highly celebrated season of the year, the Christmas Season, although celebrated throughout the remainder of the year by different observers for different reasons. This last week of the Gregorian calendar year is most famously celebrated as the Christmas season regardless of one’s religious affiliation, or with none as commercialization of the holiday continues to heighten.
Unique also to this holiday season is the common principle of “Peace on earth and goodwill toward men,” more applicable (at least in theory) during this season than at any other throughout the year. Yet turn on any news cast and war (or warring mentality) still dominates. We cannot continue to pray for peace while continuing to wage war! What must it take before learning that “Leading by Example and not by force” is the most impressive and only successful way!
Much more impressive is how America, the most representative microcosm of the diverse populations of the earth, treats her own citizens– “…your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free…” as invited by Lady Liberty as she hold her lamp high in New York’s Harbor; her descendants of slaves brought over on slave ships; her Native Americans who remain herded on isolated reservations on their own original land! In saving the peoples of the world, America, it may be time to look in the mirror! “Reality, like electricity, may be invisible but dangerous!”
This special season of “peace on earth” is followed by Brotherhood Week (12/24-31), observed by those who truly believe in the brotherhood of man and those who sincerely desire to extend the Christmas spirit throughout all the seasons of all the years. It is a desire and hope being increasingly clung to by a sorely tried humanity. In spite of our perpetual advancements in science and technology, there still remains in the world an increasing number of those who find no warmth or kinship from or towards other members of the human (or even their personal) family. And as the many centers of unity develop, too many dissolve into racial religious or other hostilities.
Brotherhood Week expresses the theory that if and when a strong, universal center of unity is accepted by enough true “lovers of mankind,” these disparities will dissipate and desist.
Consider how, when the rain, heat, sun and gentle winds cooperate with each other what beautiful gardens are produced; and how the various plants, trees, etc. associate with each other adding charm and beauty to one another throughout each of the seasons. In like manner when the divine Collective Center, the radiance of the Sun of Reality and the breaths of the Holy Spirit are brought together, the variety of races and differences existing within and between countries will become the cause of the splendor of the world of humanity.
The believers in brotherhood must therefore first be true believers in God (by whatever Name) that they may display true effort to promote the heavenly teachings. Their motives must be purified in order to establish attraction between the hearts of the world of humanity. The glorious aim of world brotherhood will not be realized except through the promotion of divine teachings which are the foundations of all holy religions. No other power can establish brotherhood!-–that must precede ‘Peace on earth and goodwill toward men.’ (excerpts from “Baha’i Talks” by Dr.S.I. Dean.
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