End of war

[RonPrice]

Tonight I watched a doco entitled As it Happened: The Last Day of World War I.1 There were many items of interest in this documentary to me as a teacher of history for over three decades in schools on two continents. There were facts and visual specifics of heightened interest to me personally, psychologically and religiously. The last man in the British Commonwealth killed just two minutes before the peace was signed at eleven in the morning was a Canadian, one George Lawrence Price, perhaps a distant cousin in my Welsh-Canadian family. I will never know.

The Tablets of the Divine Plan now included in many books in Bah?'? libraries were published after World War I in Star of the West Vol. IX No. 14 on November 23, 1918 just twelve days after this armistice. This small volume collectively refers to 14 letters or tablets written between September 1916 and March 1917 by `Abdu'l-Bah? to the Bah?'?s of the United States and Canada.. They were then publicly unveiled five months later, in April 1919, at the National Convention of the Baha?is of the United States and Canada.

Four of the letters were addressed to the Bah??? community of North America and ten subsidiary ones were addressed to five specific segments of that community, provinces and states of the United States and Canada. Of primary significance was the role of leadership given to its recipients in establishing the Baha?i Cause throughout the planet by a process that became popularly known in the international Bah?'? community by the mid-1930s as pioneering. This was a process of introducing a Faith that claimed to be the emerging world religion on the planet into the many countries, regions and islands mentioned in those same tablets.

These collective letters, along with the Founder?s, Bah?'u'll?h?s, Tablet of Carmel and His Son?s, `Abdu'l-Bah?'s, Will and Testament were described by the legitimate successor and authoritative interpreter of this Faith, Shoghi Effendi--as three of the Charters of the Bah?'? Faith.-Ron Price with thanks to SBS TV, 8:30-9:30 p.m., 28 August 2009.

One war to end all wars
and another one to begin
another set---but this one
on a totally different plane
of our existence and a war
which I would be engaged
in all my days, to my last..
breath, little did I know....

But this new one had no guns,
swords or uniforms; the battle
would be waged to the four....
corners of the earth until the...
very foundations of old order
had gone and a new one would
be spread out in its stead in a
process mysterious, subtle and
quite insinuatingly unobtrusive.

Ron Price

 

[DodgeFB]

Tonight I watched a doco entitled As it Happened: The Last Day of World War I.1 There were many items of interest in this documentary to me as a teacher of history for over three decades in schools on two continents. There were facts and visual specifics of heightened interest to me personally, psychologically and religiously. The last man in the British Commonwealth killed just two minutes before the peace was signed at eleven in the morning was a Canadian, one George Lawrence Price, perhaps a distant cousin in my Welsh-Canadian family. I will never know.

The Tablets of the Divine Plan now included in many books in Bah?'? libraries were published after World War I in Star of the West Vol. IX No. 14 on November 23, 1918 just twelve days after this armistice. This small volume collectively refers to 14 letters or tablets written between September 1916 and March 1917 by `Abdu'l-Bah? to the Bah?'?s of the United States and Canada.. They were then publicly unveiled five months later, in April 1919, at the National Convention of the Baha’is of the United States and Canada.

Four of the letters were addressed to the Bah?’? community of North America and ten subsidiary ones were addressed to five specific segments of that community, provinces and states of the United States and Canada. Of primary significance was the role of leadership given to its recipients in establishing the Baha’i Cause throughout the planet by a process that became popularly known in the international Bah?'? community by the mid-1930s as pioneering. This was a process of introducing a Faith that claimed to be the emerging world religion on the planet into the many countries, regions and islands mentioned in those same tablets.

These collective letters, along with the Founder’s, Bah?'u'll?h’s, Tablet of Carmel and His Son’s, `Abdu'l-Bah?'s, Will and Testament were described by the legitimate successor and authoritative interpreter of this Faith, Shoghi Effendi--as three of the Charters of the Bah?'? Faith.-Ron Price with thanks to SBS TV, 8:30-9:30 p.m., 28 August 2009.

One war to end all wars
and another one to begin
another set---but this one
on a totally different plane
of our existence and a war
which I would be engaged
in all my days, to my last..
breath, little did I know....

But this new one had no guns,
swords or uniforms; the battle
would be waged to the four....
corners of the earth until the...
very foundations of old order
had gone and a new one would
be spread out in its stead in a
process mysterious, subtle and
quite insinuatingly unobtrusive.

Ron Price

Wow! That would be good to know. But I doubt I could ever wrap my poor old brain around all that in a year.

 

[deanhills]

Wow! That would be good to know. But I doubt I could ever wrap my poor old brain around all that in a year.

All I know is that some of the best poetry ever originated from soldiers in World War I. Perhaps it was a War that was so brutal and painful to endure, the silver lining for soldiers came in expressing it in works of art like poetry. Viz Siegfried Sassoon:

"How to Die"

Dark clouds are smouldering into red
While down the craters morning burns.
The dying soldier shifts his head
To watch the glory that returns;
He lifts his fingers toward the skies
Where holy brightness breaks in flame;
Radiance reflected in his eyes,
And on his lips a whispered name.
You'd think, to hear some people talk,
That lads go West with sobs and curses,
And sullen faces white as chalk,
Hankering for wreaths and tombs and hearses.
But they've been taught the way to do it
Like Christian soldiers; not with haste
And shuddering groans; but passing through it
With due regard for decent taste.

Source

 

[RonPrice]

Belated thanks, deanhills and DodgeFB, for your responses. There were some good war poets, Sassoon among them. As far as wrapping your brain around a poem, a concept or, indeed, life itself, deanhills--not to worry--the unvierse in all its glory is simply beyond our comprehension---but we try in part.--Ron in Tasmania