The call of Abraham and of his subsequent pilgrimage has become part of the primordial journey of the Jewish

people. "It is part, too, of that theophany, that appearance of God to man, that has been sedimented in narrative" writes George McLean and has become part of that biblical "primordium around which a people" has been shaped.(1) This primordium, Peachey says, needs interpretation and application in the changing circumstances of time and place, our time and place. And that is what I am doing here in this brief comment as I relate this theme to "community building." Having embraced a new theophany and become a part of a new Faith community which claims descent from this original Abrahamic experience, I am in possession of a new tradition, arguably now in its third century, which possesses a richness of detail that was scarcely perceptible in that first primordium, but which has been enacted again in the life of Baha'u'llah, the Founder of this new community. I have been engaged in building this new community for half a century. This new narrative and its history of some two centuries now(2), not unlike Abraham's, is of immense value to the international pioneer in the Baha'i community as he or she goes about their engagement in community building. Most of us are involved in community-building in some form or another around: family, some volunteer group we have joined, a tribe, a town or city, a nation state. In the last century or so a new community has emerged: the global community and the Bah' Faith has been involved in building this global community, a global community within the larger global community. Contemporary religious practitioners usually have little direct engagement--historical, archeological, sociological--with that seminal Abrahamic-primordium of community about 2000 BC. Tradition and its institutional configurations overshadow this ancient narrative and, to a lesser extent, are animated by it. But, for me, in the Baha'i community, Abraham's story has found eschatological and apocalyptic significance in what you might call a contemporary rerun. In this globalizing, individualizing, pluralising world, a prophet, a manifestation of God, has been forced, not called, out of his country, taking his kindred with him on the journey. I find in my life and in pioneering over four epochs, that the narrative of Baha'u'llah's exile, his journey-narrative, is one I can shape as I become more familiar with it and as it shapes me. In a world of some 20 million refugees and millions more living in countries in which they were not born, Baha'u'llah's exile could be seen as a metaphor for our times.

"Learning the existing Abrahamic story, its language and its logic," says Peachey, "enables individuals to experience on their own in the terms of that story or to use it as a foundation for new and expanded experience."(3) Learning the story is like learning a language. Learning a new tradition, any tradition and becoming a part of that tradition is also like learning a language. Learning this language is essential if one is to function within that tradition's parameters. The story of Abraham is the beginning, the first chapter, of the Israelite narrative; the story of Baha'u'llah is the end, the last chapter, of this same narrative extended into our time, our age. Such is my view. This idea of learning the language of community has similarities to anyones efforts to build community: a football club, a family, the people in a work-place even a loose and informal group of friends. You pays your money and you makes your choice, as they sayand you spend your days building community in some shape or formand then you die and you leave behind you whatever community with whom you have been engaged. From the father, the first patriarch, the birth, of the Hebrew people about 4000 years ago, if not before, right up to our time, our modern age, in the person of Baha'u'llah, this pattern of leaving one's country and going to another land is, in some ways, the basic myth, model, metaphor, for the international pioneer. The Baha'i pioneer goes and makes his home "to develop the society God calls"(4) Baha'u'llah's followers to build. "I will make of you a great nation,"(5) God says to His people in The Bible. The international pioneer is also in the same position, only he is at the beginning of a global, a planetary, system, a world Order, that he is helping to establish. This is the core of that pioneer's service to humanity. God will train both the pioneer and the Baha'is, it would appear, following the metaphor right back to Abraham, in a series of sacredhistorical events different from, but similar in other ways to, the great literary-metaphorical history that is The Bible. Abraham's leap of faith is ours, too, as we walk into history. Baha'u'llah's exile over forty years(1852-1892) took place only once, as did Abraham's journey, but each inaugurated the history of a divinehuman relationship which will go on unfolding for centuries, millennia to comesuch is the belief of those who call themselves Bahais. Just as Abraham had little comprehension of the nature of his call or of his destiny at the beginning, so, too, are we in a similar position, although we do have some glimmering, indeed, much more than a glimmering, of the

future given to us in the Baha'i writings. At the very start of the building of this World Order of Baha'u'llah, of community building, it is difficult to fathom the process, the reality, the meaning. The narrative takes unexpected turns; uncertainty enters in from time to time. Faith is at our core, in the centre of our narrative, as it was for Abraham. But history, for the Jewish people, and for the Baha'is, is seen as an extended course of instruction filled with lessons and tests by which God seeks to educate us for our redemptive work. In this narrative is found the meaning and purpose of our lives. To help establish the Kingdom of God on earth. Just as Abraham went from his country, kindred and father's house so does the international pioneer, launched on a mission to other people, to all people, wherever he goes. The journey has gone on in our own time in the life of Baha'u'llah. That great journey of the Abrahamic peoples is the paradigmatic, the metaphorical, vehicle, that the pioneer takes on board as he becomes a part of a wondrous tradition that weaves its way through the holy Scriptures of four of the world's religions. For the pioneer's story is the story he will find there in that holy writ. Therein will he find his life's meaning and purpose. --------------------------FOOTNOTES----------------------------------(1) Paul Peachey, "The Call of Abraham," in Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change, Series 1, Vol.7., George McLean, editor. (2) If one takes the history of the Baha'i Faith back to 1806 when Shaykh Ahmad, the chief precursor of the Babi Faith, took up residence in Iran for the last two decades of his life. (3) idem (4) ibid.,p.75. (5) Numbers 23:9. Ron Price 8 April 2010