Thoughts on Pioneering

Pioneering

When people come by my house and see a white guy living on a dirt road in a small rural area they usually give me a strange look like… is he lost? One day a couple of ladies stopped in front and starting yelling, “Buenas! Buenas!” which basically means, “Hello! Anybody home?” When I came to the door I saw the surprise on her face and she sort of paused…

Is the owner home?
Yea.
Could you get them?
You’re talking to him.

It turned out her friend was pregnant and they wanted some star fruit that grows on the trees in my yard. So when they came in they obviously were curious, what’s going on, why are you living here? I tried to explain that I was a pioneer but the only way they understood was if I used the word “missionary”. After they left I felt a bit unsatisfied with my explanation so this is my own personal clarification of why I came to Ecuador, please feel free to comment.

Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith (1921 – 1957) chose his words with great care. For the word pioneer, he used surcadores. Forgive the Spanish but I’m living in Ecuador and sometimes I just can’t think of the English word. Surcar means to plough, so surcadores would mean something like ploughers. I think this word unlocks a new meaning for the many souls who have left their homes in order to bring a new message or new piece of knowledge to the world. A farmer plows in order to prepare the soil for the crops he hopes to harvest for the next season. There is a period of hard work because the quality of your fruits and vegetables depend on this beginning stage. Patience and care is needed as the crops begin to grow. Then you enjoy the success of your harvest but that’s not the last stage. The last stage is when the fruits and vegetable give back to the land in order to produce the next harvest. This is a great analogy for why I am pioneering here in Chongon, Ecuador.

Briefly, the project I’m working on falls under the description of social action projects. As of now we are calling it the Media Project whose aim is no less than to influence the majority of Chongon (where I live) with positive messages that will reconnect people with their nobility and raise the consciousness of what it means to be advancing together towards a more united, a more peaceful existence. We spent months discussing and deepening on how to make positive media. Just the past week we produced our first fruit, in the form of an 11-minute video. We hope this fruit and many others will awaken or encourage the spiritual consciousness of the people here; who will then start producing their own fruits.


Progression

“Upon our efforts depends in very large measure the fate of humanity.”
–The Universal House of Justice, Wellspring of Guidance, p.120

One of the worst things that is happening in the world today is this prevailing feeling of powerlessness. People believe that the world is falling apart from something they cannot fix on their own. In part, it’s true that people with more resources and more material power have more responsibility to the environment, economy, education, etc, but it is our efforts combined together that decide the future. Everyone in the world comes from families. Individuals create families, families make up a community, communities make up a city, cities make up a state, states make up a nation, nations make up a country, and countries make up the world. By reconnecting the individual with their nobility, the world will change.

One of the responsibilities of being a pioneer is carrying a job to its end. I am here, mostly learn with the community, and help with the empowerment of the individual so that we may realize our potential as noble human beings. This may take a long time, perhaps years, decades, or centuries. I’ve committed only two years to the project for a number of personal reasons. Everyday I’m reminded of the importance of working here and those reasons are slowly diminishing. For as Shoghi Effendi so adeptly states,

"Neither the threatening world situation, nor any consideration of lack of material resources, of mental equipment, of knowledge, or of experience-desirable as they are-should deter any prospective pioneer teacher from arising…”

In that brief statement he touches on all of my reasons. I pray I have the strength, determination, and courage to see the project to its end.

A World Community

This entry is a bit long, but there is still so much more to talk about. Outside of my responsibilities to the Media Project, I have my relationship with the community of Chongon. This is the other part of being a pioneer, which resonates more with the position of a Missionary. As stated in the dictionary, a Christian Missionary promotes the word of Jesus Christ, well a Bahá’í pioneer promotes the word of Baha’u’llah, however the manner in which Bahá’í’s teach their beliefs greatly differ from that of other religions. Bahá’í’s believe it is everyone’s choice to investigate what uplifts his or her soul and therefore it is not permissible to sermonize, moralize, criticize, or proselytize the Faith. Another teaching that Baha’u’llah has given us is that the Bahá’í Faith is not for us Bahá’í’s. He states,

“The fundamental purpose animating the Faith of God and His Religion is to safeguard the interests and promote the unity of the human race, and to foster the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men. Suffer it not to become a source of dissension and discord, of hate and enmity.”

The idea that religion should not be the cause of disunity seems obvious and yet it creates the strongest divisions in the world. I understand when people say “I’ve lost faith” or they don’t believe in “organized religion” because of what’s going on in the world. However, the Bahá’í Faith takes the individual’s relationship to religion beyond this barrier and says that’s fine be wary of those things that cause dissension and discord, but let’s work together, as one, towards the advancement of the spiritual and material progression of humanity.

To try to wrap this up, because I feel there are a lot of deep themes here which would take a whole lot more time and discussion to fully reveal their significance, I’ll end with another quote from Shoghi Effendi about the environment in which we live. I used this quote in my Master’s project and it’s a good reminder of my hopes for the Media project and how I view my relationship to the community in Chongon.

“We cannot segregate the human heart from the environment outside us and say that once one of these is reformed everything will be improved. Man is organic with the world. His inner life moulds the environment and is itself also deeply affected by it. The one acts upon the other and every abiding change in the life of man is the result of these mutual reactions.”
-Shoghi Effendi