CIRCUMNAVIGATION
Four hundred years(1519 to 1919) after Ferdinand Magellan and 237 men left Seville1 and began the first successful attempt of humankind to circumnavigate the globe, ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s Tablets of the Divine Plan were unveiled in New York. The early 16th century is generally seen as the end of the Middle Ages. Those Tablets are generally seen by the Bahá'í community as beginning a new pioneering period. They initiated another attempt to circumnavigate the world but, this time, in spiritual terms. An English edition of all those tablets was published in 1936 just as the North American Baha’is were planning their first formal teaching program, the Seven Year Plan, which began in May 1937. The year I joined the Baha’i Faith, in 1959, those Tablets were published in book form under the title Tablets of the Divine Plan for the first time.2-Ron Price with thanks to 1&2 Wikipedia.
Only 18 men returned to Spain
in that harrowing voyage and
this new voyage was also just
as harrowing and is not for the
timid and the overwrought, not
for the vainly pious, those who
are pusillanimous of spirit, nor
the bloodless prigs among us...
This much is plain: the journey
is not for those wary & in despair
of love------this trip on unvariable
storm-lashed brigs....unreasonable
rains, long waits for salient doves
to bring living twigs....with a lean
provision of devotion, with weeks
& months of never-ending dark—
this is no vacation..with unhygienic
perils such as chronic & committed
rapture or incipient dedication------
forget your notions of a luxury cruise.1
It was that way for Magellan and.......
circumnavigation still has problems...
in this new planetization age......!!!!!
1 With thanks to Roger White, “A Parable for the Wrong People,” The Witness of Pebbles, George Ronald, Oxford, 1981, pp.69-71.
Ron Price
19 July 2009
