Scenes from San Diego: a photo of me with Dr. Gwen Etter-Lewis and Pamela Brode, co-authors; a photo of Laura Maben and her mother Julia Bailey, aged 96 next month, who came to San Diego from Huntington Beach to hear my talk and those of my colleagues; some sights from around town.

Here is the text of the e-mail of my memories, sent to family and friends, for anyone interested:

Recollections from San Diego, May 17-20, 2007

As is often the case, I am tempted to go chronologically so that I won’t miss anything, but then I think about all the highlights of the last few days and want to share them all at once. I wish there were no time! Actually, I learned a bit about time, physics and quantum theory of its mysteries, mixed in with everything else during the wonderful presentations of the weekend, from my colleague and new friend, John Medina, whose book, Faith, Physics & Psychology, I heartily recommend.

I will speak first, perhaps, about John, since I would like to introduce you a little to each of the people I met this week who have made such an impression on me. I had decided, before going to San Diego at the invitation of Baha’i Publishing, who in conjunction with the San Diego Spiritual Assembly and its collaborators, Barnes & Noble, organized the first ever American Baha’i Book Fair, to read some of the books of the people I would meet. So I read John’s book and the one by Brian Lepard, Hope for a Global Ethic. These books represent accessible and scholarly approaches to critical social issues, but in particular I was delighted to find that John Medina’s critique of the Cartesian-Newtonian model of thought coalesced with my own remarks in my Master’s work about the impact of Cartesian dualisms on women. I had hoped to discuss some of these things with him (and did), as well as dedicating a poem to him after he presented a little on the hologram. Moreover, I was also enchanted to meet his wife Nancy (a lawyer, singer, and a member of the organizing Task Force) and their delightful son Joachin (pronounced Wakin for y’all serious Anglos).

I was met, on arrival at the airport, by the indefatigable servant of Baha’u’llah, Jane, (pronounce Senior). She has been a Baha’i since shortly before her retirement from her principalship, and subsequently has spent four years serving in Haifa and other times travel teaching. In this case, she was a driving (literally) whirlwind behind the Task Force and its vision to ensure that the Book Fair was a success. She met almost every plane (some, Tim Moore met, and I had the pleasure of hanging out in the cell phone area waiting for the arrival of Professor Gwen Etter-Lewis, co-author and editor, with Richard Thomas, of a series of stories about early African American Baha’is. But that’s a whole other story.) All we were missing was the Starbucks coffee…but we were happy to have several meals together, in between the sessions.

The cast of this particular weekend included: Jane with the Task Force (and Russell and Nancy and many volunteers), Tim from Baha’i Publishing, several people from Barnes & Noble, both at the store and at the Center. Authors: Pamela Brode with her book Power of Prayer: Make a Joyful Noise. Brian Lepard, Hope for a Global Ethic. Doctors (Professors) Richard Thomas and Gwen Etter-Lewis, Lights of the Spirit: Historical Portraits of Black Baha'is in North America 1989-2000. These friends were joined at a couple of the sessions by Dr. Adrienne Ellis Reeves, a contributor to the book through the story of the Ellis family and the most lovely and sprightly octogenarian I have ever had the delight to meet. Miss Adrienne hit it off well with the other super-elder present, my friend Laura's mother, Julia. Author John Medina, Faith, Physics, and Psychology: Rethinking Society and the Human Spirit. Author Heather Cardin, Partners in Spirit: What Couples Say About Marriages That Work.
As mentioned, my dear friend Laura, a former colleague at Maxwell International Baha’i School, drove south from Huntington Beach, California, with her mother, Julia, who is 96 next month, to listen to the talks we gave at the Baha’i Center on Saturday.

On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, groups gathered at the Barnes & Noble “Bookstar” store to hear our addresses (Pamela’s was on Wednesday so I didn’t hear it, mine was Thursday, Richard & Gwen’s was Friday night.) These were groups of Baha’is and their friends gathering at the store. The Center was the venue for the larger events, and a host of volunteers kept us well-supplied with food, music, and opportunities to talk about our books. The lovely Susan Lewis Wright was there, as well as Shabnam, whom I had first had the pleasure of meeting in Kentucky at the home of the Giffords. She turns out to have the voice of an angel, and she sang several selections from the Writings. I managed to buy the last CD she had with her. Oh la la!

So in between the events of the Book Fair itself, our dear hostess, Jane, took us around on Friday (us being Pam and me) to see some of the sights of San Diego itself, in between picking up our arriving colleagues. It is a beautiful, beautiful city. In the rose garden Pam sang prayers: she has an exquisite voice and is actually trained as a singer, and has travelled with Voices of Baha. We went to Balboa Park, where there are many buildings of Spanish architecture which now are Museums, Art Galleries, and a Botanical Garden, giving us a taste of the beauty of the area and a hope, on my part, that someday Bern and I can go back and be tourists there for a longer time. Maybe we’ll be able to do a little travel teaching in this gorgeous part of California.

It’s an amazing city, sandwiched between the desert (which I could see from the plane and which took my breath away with its mountainous vastness: you would never want to get lost there!) and the ocean. On Sunday, after all the hoopla was finished, I was the last to leave the area so Jane kindly took me to the Quail Botanical Gardens just north of San Diego on the road to L.A., and we wandered amongst the hundreds and thousands of varieties of everything from corkwood and bottle trees to aloes (one looked like salmon-coral), banana and orange trees in flower and fruit, cacti tall and tiny, flame trees, frangipani (not yet in bloom for the year) and fruit trees in many sizes and colours. I took over two hundred pictures, which I will try and post for people who want to take the visual walk with us. After the spiritual richness of the weekend, it was almost too much to meander through this area of physical beauty, and then drive down the coast of the Pacific ocean, watching the surfers plunge in, and think about the ocean of spirit for which they served as an appropriate metaphor.

We celebrated convivial meals with one another, in between times: we were nine Baha’is from around the States (and Canada!) on Sunday morning. Richard from Michigan, Gwen from Ohio, Pamela from North Carolina, Adrienne from California and her beautiful niece, Tim from Illinois (at least right now), Brian from Nebraska, Jane from San Diego itself, Heather from Gatineau, with waffles and eggs from Coco’s, an American chain which was celebrating the strawberry. Did I count right???

We met many of the Baha’i friends and their families, who showed us warmth and hospitality beyond my dreams.

The talks, for the most part, were videotaped, I believe for the use of the American N.S.A., so perhaps if you are in the States you’ll be able to access some of them. I was fascinated by the diversity of subjects, and especially delighted to learn about the history of the African-American community of Baha’is. I was also pleased to learn that because Richard is originally from Detroit, he knew many of my Canadian Baha’i friends of the older generation, since he had gone to Windsor and Toronto area for Baha’i events, back in the day. We spoke warmly of Michael Rochester, Douglas Martin, the Raynor family and Jamie Bond, as well as of our mutual friend, my cousin Jack McLean. Richard also possesses a rich sense of humour and I enjoyed his laughter and reminiscences. Pamela’s spirit lives, I guess, in an almost constant state of prayer! She is a tiny but formidable woman, and I very much enjoyed hearing the story of her Jewish heritage and her discovery of the Baha’i Faith while she was on a kibbutz in Akka, as a young woman, and her first visit to the Holy Shrines, knowing she had to learn about this faith and returning to the U.S. to do so. I also was blessed to hear about her family, and shared some of my thoughts about my parents, grandparents, husband and children with her, and with others during my talks, honouring, I hope, Jessie and William Halsted for their legacy, and Auntie Ruthie (Kern), who went to the U.S., met Ali Kuli Khan, and brought the Faith home for my mother and her sisters and her parents. I also recalled, with gratitude, the role the Robarts family played in my father’s acceptance of the Baha’i Faith, back in high school years in the 40s in Toronto.

It’s so hard, even for a person given to writing, to convey how full these four days were, with the wealth of exchanging story after story with fellow and esteemed writers, with the astonishing hospitality of Jane and her team, and with the absolutely lovely, although surprisingly cool, physical environment. I fell in love with jacaranda trees in their full and glorious bloom of purple, and with flame trees in red blossom above gnarled trunks that were paintings against the playful shades of grey of the California sky.

I loved chatting with the precocious and lovable Joachin about cars. I loved hearing his father talk about growing up on the Arizona/Mexico border as a Yaqui Indian, despite being overcome by grief at the experiences of racism he and his family endured. I loved hearing Nancy and Shabnam and Pam and Susan singing and singing and singing. I buried my nose in the scent of jasmine and wished Melodie could be with me since she loves it so (but perhaps she will find some in Rwanda). I met a woman with whom our family will share pilgrimage in July (Parminder) and will look forward to that. I was asked to address the youth, and spent fifteen minutes with the dance workshop, telling them stories which I hope were not too scandalous! I sat in the hot tub with Laura at the hotel on Saturday night and visited until we were almost drooping from exhaustion but loving how she looks so beautiful and wise and warm. I like her as a blonde! And meeting her mother, Julia, was simply precious, along with seeing the photos of her two grandbabies.

I had longer visits with amazing local people: Robert, a Bolivian-American who introduced me to his two sons, one a student at Yale, the other a boy, Luke, overcoming extraordinary difficulties with his health; Dr. Henny, a Clinical Psychologist who counsels people in struggling marriages; Mrs. Erma, matriarch of a Baha’i family, and her daughter Lua; Jimmy, African-American poet, who gave me the best hug in the world; Zhanna, a Russian immigrant and nurse who has joined the San Diego Baha’i community; Zia, an elder who escaped from prison in Iran on the eve of his execution, and who had served as a pioneer and travel teacher to Russia and remote parts of Iran before coming to America, where after being widowed, he has started a new family as an 85-year old father to a three-year-old daughter with his wife, Rebecca, who is in her mid-20’s. Amazing.

I have been in an immersion experience which no words can truly describe, but I wanted to record some of it before I forgot any of it: the scent of jasmine and roses in the midst of a desert which has been made to bloom, the site of the first-ever gathering of Baha’i authors of trade books on every subject to share our thoughts and hopes with a community of interest. I have been richly blessed, and am now back home to await the blessing of our family’s pilgrimage to Haifa in July. I am very, very happy, and back at my computer, writing. Writing.