Each year with the setting of the sun on March 20, the first day of spring, Baha’is throughout the world gather to break the 19-day fast and to celebrate the beginning of a New Year (Naw-Ruz). During the preceding fast period not only is the habit of daily devotions and prayer reinforced, the combined spiritual impetus of the universal effects seems to create unimaginable spiritual ties and occurrences. It also strengthens self-discipline and, while being made more aware of the worsening conditions of the world and our immediate environment in particular, we also become more cognizant of our potential contribution to the problems if not contributing in some way toward their solution. “To sin by silence” is equally unacceptable.
In mankind’s infancy love of family, tribe or other communal settings, fear of God (or other Spirits) reigned supreme. However as mankind matures scientifically and technologically, that love shifts more to self-sufficiency with those having the most to share often the least willing to do so.
I frequently refer to the interview I once heard with a world-famous symphony orchestra conductor who when asked what he considered the saddest word in the English language, replied unhesitatingly, “exclusion.” I thought the question itself was odd enough but the answer was even more so from a man whose life and career had been spent in such exclusive musical profession. In retrospect, however such exclusion has become manifest throughout modern society regardless of racial, religious, academic, social or political status, creating a subsequent source of division that begets competition and rivalry, none of which is conducive to happy, peaceful cohabitation. Exclusion begets prejudice and vice versa. All the wars in human history tend to derive from some form of prejudice or exclusion that fuels and intensifies love-–of wrong things as open land, air and water that belong to no particular person or people.
Mere knowledge of such fruitless wars and chartered paths down dead-end streets has proven insufficient in itself. Consider also the magnitude of war, once fought on designated territories by designated soldiers and armies, reducing devastation and damage to limited lives and areas. How very different the sophisticated secret warfare and weaponry of today that defies the imagination while destroying thousands of unaccountable innocent lives in an attempt to get to one or a comparatively few guilty ones over extended periods of years!
O friends! Each Spring is no longer just another cycle of the sun but the beginning of a New Cycle of Reality, a New Age, a New Time, a New Day! Therefore it is very blessed. “The rising of the sun at the equinox is the symbol of life and likewise the symbol of the Divine Manifestation of God, signalizing New Life for the world,” state the Baha’i Holy Writings. “Human reality begins to live, our thoughts are transformed and our intellect quickened. The Sun of Truth bestows eternal life just as the solar sun is the cause of terrestrial life…This period of time is the Promised Age! Soon the whole world as in springtime, will change its garb. The New Year hath appeared and the Spiritual Springtime is at hand!” (Investigate!–1-800-22unite)
