BWs AND HIS CHARISMA

BWs AND HIS CHARISMA Biological weapons(BWs) have led in recent years to an increasing threat from biological terrorism, especially since 1995 and events in Japan associated with a religious cult and their use of biological weapons. -ABC Radio, 31 August 1999, Symposium of the International Union of the Micro-Biological Society. By the end of the first phase of the Plan: 1937-1944, biological weapons, associated terrorism had become a threat, a threat which did not go away, kept breaking out again and again; and now programs are being put in place for the first respondents, the front liners, in case this new terrorism becomes a reality and not just a remote threat. As the Universal House of Justice approaches the fortieth year of its trusteeship of that global undertaking begun over a century before, of the institutionalization of His charisma, the heat seems to be going up and up. Ron Price 31 August 1999 __________________________and continuing____________ A CONTRIBUTION TO KNOWLEDGE Socrates once complained, in his Apology, of the inability of poets to talk analytically about their work. According to the significance of the Greek root of the word ‘poetry’ it covers all forms of art or human productivity. In the tradition of the great books, novelists like Cervantes, Fielding or Melville called themselves poets. Poetry with these writers was regarded as narrative, the invention of good stories. A poet was a teller of tales. Aristotle in his Poetics emphasizes subject matter in poetry not language; plot was the most important thing made by the poet in narrative poetry, not the verses, not the rhyme or metre, according to Aristotle. So, the historian and the poet differed not. “Epics,” wrote Cervantes, “may be as well written in prose as in verse.” So it is in this epic, this series of thousands of poems written in the fourth epoch of the Formative Age, that I continue a form of poetry, a poetic tradition, going back to the Greeks. -Ron Price with thanks to The Great ideas: A Synopticon of Great Books of the Western World, Vol. 2, William Benton, Toronto, 1952, p.400. This is no imaginary construction, no fable or fantasy of words, no warble for some made-up tale. This is a contribution to knowledge and would pass Kant’s muster1 of serious business for understanding, imagination and a certain play. I hold the mirror up to nature, to life and to the world and have it speak as it lives and moves before my eyes over this half century or more. I strive to be clear, but not ordinary and use words as simply as possible. Bacon associated poetry with history; Aristotle put philosophy in its camp. My emotions communicate to my intellect with the power to sap and upheave my world resulting from some inflamement, some being carried away with thought and I heed only one dream: this poetry.2 These many years now I have been drawn unto Him in prayer and He did answer me so slowly I was not sure it was Him; now I am unsure whether I hear with His ear. Is this the spring whereof the near ones drink? It is hidden under the veilings of sense. Have the wrappings of illusion been stripped?3 1 This is how Kant judges poetry: its contribution to knowledge. 2 Emerson’s essay “The Poet.” 3 Baha’u’llah, Seven Valleys, p.24. Ron Price 15 November 2000 __________________ that's all folks!