Flora Teckie — As we begin a new year with joy and anticipation, we all yearn for a better world, and a peaceful and a prosperous future.
The ideals we cherish for the new year would usually include living in a peaceful community, one in which justice for everyone prevails, and where, individuals would treat one another with love, respect, and understanding. Is building such communities possible?
According to the Bahá'í International Community, "Peace-building over the long term requires the transformation of society, a transformation based on justice, involving education for all, the alleviation of poverty and the abandonment of deeply rooted prejudices."
The realisation of our hopes and dreams for lasting peace will depend on our unity as humanity - a realisation that we all belong to one human family, only varied in the secondary aspects of life, and that we are citizens of one planet, created by one Almighty God.
The Bahá'í Writings affirm that "Every human creature is the servant of God. All have been created and reared by the power and favour of God; all have been blessed with the bounties of the same Sun of divine truth; all have quaffed from the fountain of the infinite mercy of God; and all in His estimation and love are equal as servants. He is beneficent and kind to all.
"Therefore, no one should glorify himself over another; no one should manifest pride or superiority toward another; no one should look upon another with scorn and contempt; and no one should deprive or oppress a fellow creature."
The realisation of our hopes and dreams for a peaceful and prosperous world will depend on accepting and applying the principle of the oneness of humanity. World order and peace cannot become a reality without embracing human diversity, and the realization that our physical differences such as skin colour or hair texture are superficial and have nothing to do with any supposed superiority of one ethnic group or another.
The Universal House of Justice, the governing council of the Bahá'í International Community, states that "World order can be founded only on an unshakeable consciousness of the oneness of mankind, a spiritual truth which all the human sciences confirm. .... Recognition of this truth requires abandonment of prejudice - prejudice of every kind-race, class, colour, creed, nation, sex, degree of material civilization, everything which enables people to consider themselves superior to others."
The realisation of our hopes and dreams for a peaceful and prosperous world in the new year will also depend on reinforcing our material achievements with spiritual perfections.
The spiritual dimension in life can be understood, in practical terms, as the source of qualities that help us rise above narrow self-interest. Such qualities include compassion, love, justice, trustworthiness, courage, humility, cooperation and the willingness to sacrifice for the common good - qualities that will also enable us to build a unified global civilization.
A new year is often associated with resolutions on how to change our material lives for the better.
It should also be a time for new and noble resolutions on how to transform our spiritual lives and the society we live in.
"In this new year new fruits must be forthcoming, for that is the provision and intention of spiritual reformation. ... of what avail is the reformation of physical conditions unless they are concomitant with spiritual reformations?
"For the essential reality is the spirit; the foundation is the spirit; the life of man is due to the spirit; the happiness, the animus, the radiance, the glory of man -- all are due to the spirit; and if in the spirit no reformation takes place, there will be no result to human existence," state the Bahá'í Writings.
Spiritual transformation is the basis for lasting improvements in our lives and central in our approach to social change.
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The changes necessary for building a unified and just global society will only be possible by touching the human spirit, by appealing to universal values that can empower us to act in accordance with the long-term interests of humanity.
The Bahá'í Writings state, " ... we must strive to become more spiritual, more luminous, to follow the counsel of the Divine Teaching, to serve the cause of unity and true equality, to be merciful, to reflect the love of the Highest on all men, so that the light of the Spirit shall be apparent in all our deeds, to the end that all humanity shall be united, the stormy sea thereof calmed, and all rough waves disappear from off the surface of life's ocean henceforth unruffled and peaceful."
The realisation of our hopes and dreams for global peace and prosperity will, therefore, greatly depend on our acceptance of the fundamental oneness of the human family, on our unity as humanity, and by reinforcing our material achievements with spiritual perfections.
