User:RonPrice/Pioneering Over Four Epochs

PIONEERING OVER FOUR EPOCHS: autobiographical study and a study in autobiography 6TH EDITION By Ron Price TABLE OF CONTENTS VOLUME 1:

PREFACES                         Six Prefaces to Six Editions

Chapter 1	                     Introduction 1

Chapter 2 	                     Introduction 2 Chapter 3	                      Letters

Chapter 4	                      Diary/Journal/Notebooks

Chapter 5	                      Interviews

Chapter 6		          A Life in Photographs

VOLUME 2: PRE-PIONEERING

Chapter 1		         Ten Year Crusade Years: 1953-1963

Chapter 2		          Pre-Youth Days: 1956-1959

Chapter 3	                      Pre-Pioneering Days: 1959-1962

VOLUME 3: HOMEFRONT PIONEERING

Chapter 1	                     Pioneering: Homefront 1: 1962-1964 Chapter 2                             Pioneering:  Homefront 2: 1965-1967

Chapter 3                             Pioneering Homefront    3: 1967-1968

Chapter 4                             Pioneering Homefront    4: 1968-1971

VOLUME 4: INTERNATIONAL PIONEERING

Chapter 1	                   International Pioneering 1: 1971-1973

Chapter 2                           International Pioneering 2: 1973-1974

Chapter 3                           International Pioneering 3: 1974-1978

Chapter 4                           International Pioneering 4: 1978-1982

Chapter 5                           International Pioneering 5: 1982-1988

Chapter 6                           International Pioneering 6: 1988-1996

Chapter 7                           International Pioneering 7: 1996-2007 Chapter 8	                   Epilogue

VOLUME 5: COMMENTARIES, ESSAYS AND POEMS

Chapter 1	                     Credo, Poems and Resumes

Chapter 2	                      Pioneering An Overview

Chapter 3	                     Anecdote and Autobiography

Chapter 4	                     Autobiography as Symbolic Representation

Chapter 5                         Essays on Autobiography

Chapter 6                        A Study of Community and Biography

Chapter 7	                  About Poetry

Chapter 8                      Social Topics of Relevance

Chapter 9                     Praise and Gratitude __________________________________________________________                 SECTION I                                                  : Pre-Pioneering SECTION II                                                : Homefront Pioneering SECTION III                                               : International Pioneering

The material below is found in other locations and, although not included in this autobiography, it could be useful for future autobiographical, biographical and historical work. --- SECTION IV       Characters/Biographies: 24 short sketches SECTION V	Published Work:Essays-300-Volumes 1 to 4—1982-2008 SECTION VI	Unpublished Work: Essays-Volumes 1 & 2---170 essays .......................1979-2008                                                              Novels-Volumes 1 to 3---12 attempts ......................1983-2008 SECTION VII	 Letters  :  Volumes 1 to 25  :3000 letters.1960-2008 Volumes 26 to 50:2000 postings..2001-08 SECTION VIII      Poetry :   Booklets 1-61:     6500 poems....1980-2008 SECTION IX 	 Notebooks:                     .........300.............1962-2008 SECTION X.1     Photographs           :  12 files/booklets/folios....1908-2008 SECTION X.2      Journals                 :  Volumes 1 to 5.....…........1844-2008 SECTION XI       Memorabilia          :   1908-2008

DEDICATION This book is dedicated to the Universal House of Justice in celebration of the forty-fifth anniversary in April 2008 of its first election in April 1963 and to Alfred J. Cornfield, my grandfather, whose autobiography was an inspiration to the one found here. - Caveats:

1. The document below is a necessary abridgement of a narrative work of 2600 pages; it has been truncated here to fit into the small space for this document at Bahai Library Online. This document is both an outline and a curtailment of an epic-opus, an abbreviated, a compressed, a boiled down, a potted, a shorn, a mown, a more compact version of my larger epic-work. This abridgement of the 6th edition of my autobiography will include changes in the months ahead. When a significant number of changes are made a 7th edition will be brought out. It is my hope, although I cannot guarantee, that this brief exposure here will give readers a taste, a desire, for more. 2. The inclusion of quotation marks, apostrophes and accents has often proved difficult as have the addition of footnotes. Hopefully this will be remedied at a later date. ______________________________________________ Preamble:

A 2600 page, five volume narrative, a 300 page study of the poetry of Roger White, the major Bahai; poet of that half-century; 6500 prose-poems, 120 pages of personal interviews, 400 essays; 5000 letters, emails and interent posts; 300 notebooks, five volumes of diaries/journals, 12 volumes of photographs and memorabilia, a dozen attempts at a novel, indeed, an epic-opus of material has been integrated into an analysis of my religion, my times and my life. This variety of genres aims at embellishing and deepening my own experience and that of readers. Only a very small portion of this epic work is found here, a portion that readers can dip into anywhere.

This is the autobiography of an ordinary Bahai, perhaps the most extensive one to date. This epic-opus illustrates, so I would argue, that you dont have to be a celebrity or a person of some fame or renoun to have a biography or autobiography. The autobiographies and the biographies in the Bahai community that have come into Bahai bookshops since the Kingdom of God had its inception in 1953 with the completion of the Bahai temple in Chicago are, for the most part,about individuals of some significance in the Bahai system of social status or stratification like Hands of the Cause Furutan, George Townshend and Martha Root. Extant autobiographies and biographies have been written about or by individuals with some special, publicly recognized, talent or experience like: Andre Brugiroux who hitch-hiked around the planet; Dizzy Gillespie or Marvin Holladay both of whom had a special musical talent and fame; Louis Bourgeois or Roger White, men of great artistic or literary talent; Angus Cowan or Marion Jack two of the 20th century's great teachers.

There are now hundreds of short & often moving biographical & autobiographical pieces by or about quite ordinary people with simple stories of their lives and their often significant contributions to the work of this Cause. Such accounts can be found in the many volumes of Bahai World and other books like Claire Vreelands And the Trees Clapped Their Hands. If, as Shakespeare suggests in his play Hamlet, “bevity is the soul of wit,”  there is a potential for much wit in much Baha’i biography. Sadly there may be little here in this work if one follows the same reasoning. But if, as Walter Pater emphasizes in his essay on style, the greatness of a work lies in its content, perhaps there is hope for this work. Like the poet-writer Jorge Luis Borges, I like to think of myself as unusually liberal in his insistence that every reader must have his own autonomy: "I think the reader should enrich what he's reading. He should misunderstand the text: he should change it into something else."

Here is one of the first extensive autobiographies about one of these quite ordinary Bahais, without fame, rank, celebrity status or an especially acknowledged talent, who undertook work he often felt unqualified or incompetent to achieve, with his sins of omission and commission, but with achievements which, he emphasizes, were all gifts from God in mysterious & only partly understandable ways, ways alluded to again and again in the Bahai writings. They were achievements that arose, such is his view, due to his association with this new Revelation and its light and were not about name, fame or renoun, although some of these now tarnished terms play subtely and not-so-subtely on the edges of many a life in our media age. These achievements and their significance are sometimes termed: success, victory, service, enterprize, sacrifice, transformation, all words with many implications for both the individual and society.

This story, this narrative, is unquestionably one of transformation: of a community, a Cause and a life that has taken place in a time of auspicious beginnings for both humankind and the Bahai community, at one of historys great climacterics. The concept of this oeuvre, this prose and poetry, as epic, took shape from 1997 to 2007 after more than 50 years of association with what may well prove to be the greatest epic in human history, the gradual realization of the wondrous vision, the brightest emanations of the mind of the prophet-founder of the Bahai Faith and what Bahais believe will become, over time, the fairest fruit of the fairest civilization the world has yet seen. During these last ten years, my final years of full-time teaching in a technical college in Australia and the first years of early retirement, this concept of his work as epic has evolved.

By 2009 I had been writing seriously for at least 50 years and writing poetry for 45. The concept of this written opus as epic gradually crystallized after more than 40 years of his association with and involvement in the Bahai Cause between the two Holy Years 1952/3 and 1992/3 of the Formative Age and at a time when the projects on Mt. Carmel and the garden terraces on that Hill of God were being completed. With the increasing elaboration, definition and development of the structure and concept, the notion and framework, of this entire collected work as epic has come a conceptual home of reflection, memory, imagination, action and vision which readers will find described, albeit briefly, in this abridged, this truncated, edition and document at Bahai Library Online.

No intelligent writer knows if he is any good, wrote T.S. Eliot; he must live with the possibility, the theoretical uncertainty, that his entire work has all been a waste of time. This provocative idea of Eliots, I believe, has some truth. But whether for good or ill--write I must. One of the results of this epic work is another provocative idea which I like to think also has some truth; namely, that my work was a part of the new patterns of thought, action, integration and the gathering momentum of Bahai scholarly activity indeed, the change in culture evidenced in the Four Year Plan(1996-2000), that befitting crescendo to the achievements of the 20th century; that my epic work was a part, too, of that very beginning of the process of community building and, finally, a part of those traces which Abdul-Baha said shall last forever.

To approach this epic or even the truncated edition of my 2600 page narrative in two Parts at Bahai Library Online and read it certainly requires an effort on the part of a hopeful internet user. I like to think that such an effort will be rewarded, that such an exercise on the part of the reader will be worthwhile. Of course, as a writer, I know that I can make no such guarantee.

Some writers are read most widely for their fiction; there is often a closeness for them of the two worlds, reality and invention. Fiction for these same writers often represents a mere short step from their essays or their poetry. A similar sensibility pervades all their work in whatever genre. I do not write of reality and invention, at least not consciously. Fiction does not inhabit my several genres, although I like to think there is a common sensibility across all my writing—but I’m not so sure. I leave such an analysis, such a statement, to readers.

The American poet William Carlos William’s used the term locality or ground and expressed his agreement with Edgar Allen Poe that this locality or ground was to be acquired by the “whole insistence in writing upon method in opposition to a nameless rapture over nature. . . with a gross rural sap, he wanted a lean style, rapid as a hunter and with an aim as sure — Find the ground, on your feet or on your belly. . . . He counsels writers to borrow nothing from the scene but to put all the weight of the effort into the WRITING.” For me, for my written expression, this locality or ground in either my verse or my prose was not easily attained. The evolution of my oeuvre since the 1960s and its present style here in Pioneering Over Four Epochs reveals my long struggle to capture the complex interrelationships between self, society and the sacred.

For some 1800 pages of this autobiography readers can go to Baha'i Library Online>By author>type the word 'Price' into the box>click on the word "Go", then scroll down to Part 1 and part 2 of this autobiography. - Readers here might enjoy what is, as far as I know, the most extensive analysis of the new Baha'i paradigm of learning and growth. This analysis is part of my memoir or autobiography. I posted an introduction to the paradigmatic shift in the Baha'i community, the new culture of learning and growth that is at the heart of this paradigm, 18 to 24 months ago. I did this posting at several internet sites. It seemed like a good idea to give readers some specific steps on how to access this now revised article/essay at Baha’i Library Online(BLO).

In that two year period there have been many thousand views of my article at the few sites where it has been posted. In addition to googling "Baha'i Culture of Learning and Growth" and accessing my article in the process, readers can take the following steps to access my article at BLO: (i) type Baha’i Library Online or Baha’i Academics Resource Library into your search engine; (ii) click on the small box “By author” at the top of the access page at BLO; (iii) type “Price” into the small box that then appears and click on the word “Go;” and then (iv) scroll down to article/document item #46 and (v) click on that item and read to your heart’s content. When your eyes and your mind start to glaze over, stop reading. The article can be downloaded free and you will then have access to a revised article, a 150 page, 70,000 word context for all this new paradigmatic terminology that has come into the Baha’i community in the last 13 years.

The statement is a personal one, does not assume an adversarial attitude, attempts to give birth of as fine an etiquette of expression as I can muster and, I like to think, possesses both candour and critical thought on the one hand and praise and delight at the process on the other. I invite readers to what I also like to think is “a context on which relevant fundamental questions” regarding this new paradigm may be discussed within the Baha’i community. It is also my intention to update this article in the months and years ahead. One of the advantages of the BLO site is the freedom it gives to a writer to update the article right on the site in an ongoing process as new insights from major thinkers in the Baha'i community and information from the elected and appointed institutions of the Cause comes to hand.

If time and the inclination permit, check it out. You may find the piece of writing too long as I'm sure many readers do. After a few paragraphs of reading, you will get the flavour of the exercise. Just keep reading if your mind and spirit are enjoying the process.