This blog is about the Bahá’i faith with a focus on practice in life. It is my hope that my own practical experiences and path guided by the light of this great revelation that began unfolding in 1844 may help you on your own path. This will reflect my own understandings and experience, and it is my hope and prayer that we’ll both benefit from this process.
A little about me, Harold Shinsato. My first encounter with the Bahá’i faith was from a believer with whom I had fallen head over heels in 1985. What she shared with me impacted me greatly, yet I had been an agnostic having abandoned the Roman Catholic faith and God at the end of my high school education in 1980. It was a difficult period, and although I found a way to believe in God again through very deep introspection in the mid-eighties, I did not investigate the Bahá’i faith any further. The Bahá’i faith is an independent religion, as different from Islam as Islam is from Christianity, but Bahá’i’s recognize the truth of Islam, just as Muslims recognize the truth of Christianity. I was deeply prejudiced against Islam, and my own prejudice was too deeply rooted for me to search further.
My turning back to God was very abstract and metaphysical until I decided to accept an invitation from my father in 1991 to join him as he and a couple other gentlemen from the Giddeon Society were going on a mission to distribute bibles in Moscow. Now I mentioned being prejudiced against Islam. My prejudice against evangelical Christianity was probably even more sharp and contemptuous, but as a software developer at Xerox from ’84-’86 – I had been exposed to very early internet discussion forums. My experience in those forums showed me that the “bible-studies” group were much more open minded and even intelligent at times than most of the bickering on the non-religious “social-issues” group. So by 1991, I was not as prejudiced, and what the heck – I’d get a chance to see Moscow! Well, our bibles and our contacts did not show up for three days until my companions confronted me gently about my commitment to Jesus, and the whole period had shown me how much my fathers commitment had benefited him. So I made my first adult spiritual commitment, and within hours our contacts in Moscow found us, and we were soon meeting with Christians who had been in jail for years, and who practiced their faith hiding behind bushes in the harsh Russian winter. They got us our bibles, and we distributed them. But within a day, the attempted coupe d’état happened, tanks rolled into Red Square, curfews were established, a huge protest happened, tracer bullets flew, I prayed like crazy, and the next morning the Soviet Union was over.
Part of my commitment to my father and to God, was to read the bible daily and to find a church. I’ve been reading the bible nearly daily since then, and I did find a church though it took a year or so. The Church of Religious Science, which was a “New Thought” church that best fit my metaphysical leanings, and because I deeply loved and believed in science. I was serious, took classes, did the readings, joined the board. I benefited so much from that community, yet by 1996 I recognized something was missing. I went to a Rainbow Gathering, and when I saw a Bahá’i group there, I was astounded at how clear the message was, and the impressive historical impact of the Bahá’i faith. I listened to a talk, took lots of notes, and when I came back home from that mystical week in the national forest with thousands of hippies, my enthusiasm went dormant until 1998. I studied, visited Bahá’i’s, and made my commitment. I’ve been quite serious since then. Though my teaching efforts have not been through a website until now.
The faith has included teachings that only begin to make sense after practice. I mentioned I loved science. A highly influential historian of science, Thomas Kuhn, wrote a deeply impactful book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In a new scientific paradigm, all the fundamental concepts (like time and space) are renewed and no longer fit within the old understandings. Although I share a common experience as a traveler with you now through the 2020’s, I have come to respect the truth in the words of Jesus (Yeshua) through the apostle John in Revelations 21:5 “Behold, I make all things new.”
You can learn more about me on my personal and professional website. There are means to contact me there. I’d be happy to communicate with those sincerely wishing to learn more.
Some of my fellow travelers in the faith also have blogs, such as People of Baha, the School of the Land, the Baha’i Land and Star Baha’i.