The Wisest Amongst Us and Fair

The world is bound by a lot of rules. The rules of the road, the rules of the classroom, the rules of common etiquette, there are rules everywhere. Sometimes the rules are easy and they make a lot of sense - they're there for our safety, to protect us and keep us from injury, harm, sickness, or death. Sometimes, they're less obvious, but we're still expected to follow them. We're told so often that rules are there for our own good, even if we don't understand them. There will always be rules you like, and rules you don't; rules you are willing to follow and rules that are dealbreakers for you.

When I mention to people that I'm a Baha'i, if they know anything about the Faith, they usually ask about the rules. (And even if they don't, people generally realize that religion = rules). They ask what they are, or they mention ones they know and ask me how I cope with obeying. (For me, a lot of the time the "no alcohol or other intoxicating things" is the one that people tend to get stuck on.) Why would I choose to be a part of something with rules like that? There's rules about prayers, about how to live, there's whole books on it. The world is full of enough people telling you what to do , why would you willingly listen to one more?

I stumble over this a lot. The no intoxicants one is easy - I've struggled with that sort of thing in the past, so this, to me, is a convenient way to take the temptation out of my own hands. I never made what people might consider "huge mistakes" with anything, but I know I've made some pretty ungood choices in my past when influenced by those substances. So now, it's nice. I can just go "I don't drink because I choose to trust that Baha'u'llah asked me not to for some very good reasons", and it's done. It doesn't matter if you agree with the decision, but I feel better and more okay with sitting with it. It's not about me trying to keep myself away from something that I struggle with (although that's a nice bonus), it's about me trusting that He asked me to do this, so I can keep a clear head and help the world be a better place.

Some of them are trickier. I'm not always great at remembering my prayers, backbiting and gossip are often very, very tempting, but I try. I try because I want to - because when I was seeking, the rules felt manageable, like I could try to do it, and as I've continued to try my very best, I have seen so many ways following Baha'u'llah's rules have helped me be a happier, kinder, safer person. I've been able to do more, and be more, and I've been able to serve my community in ways I'd never ever ever thought I could.

The rules give me structure, and structure makes my brain happy. My brain *likes* knowing what's next. It keeps my anxiety dinosaur from roaring quite so loud, it keeps my brain spiders from skittering around making messes of things. So now, I can go to Feast even though it means more people than I'm technically happy with in terms of crowds and social stuff and small talk. I can make the newsletter, I can speak up during consultation, I can make friends in my community, I can live and breathe and sleep a little easier, because I get to give so much of the hard decisions to someone else. Baha'u'llah's already told me what to do, so I don't have to stress about it. Baha'u'llah said to "Let each morn be better than its eve and each morrow richer than its yesterday", and to me, that just means that hey, every day is a new day where we can do a little more, try a little harder, and make the world a little happier. And His rules help me do that.

Last night I was talking with a dear friend about some stuff in my life, and he reminded me of another quote I like a lot: "Bring thyself to account each day ere thou art summoned to a reckoning" - in context, it's talking about the fact that we are all going to die someday, and will be accountable for the choices we make, but to me, it also is a nice reminder to think about the day I've had. What did I do well? What was good? What did I learn? What would I change the next day? It helps me refocus myself, and to think about how I am using the rules and guidance that Baha'u'llah has given us, for myself, and for the world around me.

The rules are there because I am loved, because He knew what I'd need to be able to be my best self, what humanity would need as it grows and changes. They're not there to put me down, to subjugate us, but to give us hope, and life, and the tools we need to make the world more awesome. They're an audacious ask, a act of care and compassion. They're an act of trust - trust that we will follow His guidance, that we will trust that He knows what we need, even if we don't understand it yet.

So yes, there are rules. Not nearly as many as you think, and it's surprising how many are just natural extensions of trying to be a good person. But they're rules I can sit with, and that's all that matters.

Whispering a Prayer in the Fury of a Storm

Full of mixed emotions tonight. Recently, I had to step back from an internet community I put a lot of love and tears and energy in for a long time, because I couldn't sustain the sheer demand on my spoons that it was requiring, with all the changes going on in my life. I'm not the same me that I was, and that's....kinda to be expected, but it's still hard when it's the community that gave me a large number of my friends, it's where I met my husband, it's indirectly responsible for me coming to find the Baha'i faith. So it was a hard thing to let go.

On top of my personal stuff, it meant that the leadership had to look for new humans to serve it, which is done through an election using the Single Transferable Vote model. It's not a perfect system. It never has been, and never will be. It's better than First Past the Post style stuff, but you've still got people campaigning and you've got politics and oh, it's a mess. But election went on, people nominated themselves, they declared their "platform" (such as it is), people voted, people were elected.

So here we sit, where I'd ideally be feeling like oh hey, cool, the community is safe in the hands of the best people that the site could find to lead itself. Except...the community is unhappy. The election was...messy, and while the people who were elected are good people, there's still a lot of upsetness and worry around what this means for the site/community now, because the approaches of the new moderators worry some of community, for a variety of reasons.

And honestly, this post isn't about my feelings on the issue in terms of the site itself - the election went how it went, the people that got elected know how things work, they know how to handle the things they need to handle. But it just has me thinking a lot about how election systems as a whole are kinda broken - this whole thing about campaigning and trying to convince people you are the best thing they need, and sometimes there's lies and sliding the truth just a little sideways, and I can't help it, all I see is how unhappy and confused the community is now. They thought they were getting what they needed, and now they're not sure, and everyone's kinda on edge as they try to figure out what is going to happen going forward.

That got *me* thinking about the other election I've been a part of recently-ish, my local community's yearly election for our Local Spiritual Assembly. (If you don't know how Baha'i elections work - any Baha'i in good standing over the age of 21 is eligible to both vote AND to be voted for. There's explicitly no campaigning, no nominations, you're really not even supposed to discuss who you're going to vote for with others (discussing the sorts of qualities or ideals etc that you might look for in the sorts of people that your community needs to lead them is a separate matter, however, and that is something you definitely should be trying to figure out together!). It's basically supposed to be between you and God to figure out who you feel are the nine people in your community best suited for this role.

We have some guidance, as Shoghi Effendi reminds us  - "Hence it is incumbent upon the chosen delegates to consider without the least trace of passion and prejudice, and irrespective of any material consideration, the names of only those who can best combine the necessary qualities of unquestioned loyalty, of selfless devotion, of a well-trained mind, of recognized ability and mature experience... Nothing short of the all-encompassing, all-pervading power of His Guidance and Love can enable this newly enfolded order to gather strength and flourish amid the storm and stress of a turbulent age, and in the fullness of time vindicate its high claim to be universally recognized as the one Haven of abiding felicity and peace."

And yes, spiritual election is vastly different than internet community moderatorship election, but it just made me think about how different the election felt. Yes, we had far from a perfect turnout at our election, and yes, I am sure there are people who disagree with how it ultimately went, and I am sure you could poke holes in the logic of how it works if you wanted to . But it very much felt like my community was doing it's best to come together and find a group of people that represented all our needs, and who we felt could help guide us through the next year as we kept walking the path that Baha'u'llah has laid out for us.

So now I just kinda find myself sitting here, going  "Okay, well, now what? How do I sit with all of this? How do I keep this weird guilt at bay that the unhappiness is my fault for saying I couldn't keep leading?" and I think the only real thing I can do, is remind myself that sometimes, saying you can't do something is the most important thing - knowing when you no longer have the same capacity to love/care/give of yourself as you used to is a very tricky thing. I can sit with the community, I can love on them, I can help remind them of their good bits, and maybe, we can talk about what we can do, regardless of our feelings about the leadership body, to both respect the position and role of those who are serving as moderators, but also keep making the internet a better, kinder, welcoming, supportive, useful place. It might feel like "All I ever do is try to empty the sea with this teaspoon; all I can do is keep trying to empty the sea with this teaspoon" style labour (h/t to Shakesville for that one) but if all of us have teaspoons, maybe it will not be so bad.