Bahá´í Related Stuff
In relation to my own art | The Bahá´í Faith + the arts | Bahá´í related essays or presentations | Bahá´í Related Links
What is the Bahá'í Faith?
- Diverse Bahá´ís: an unfinished website I started making in Dutch and English for my local Bahá´í community. One day I'll change this into a website reflecting diverse Bahá´í friends' viewpoints from around the world, because that's more what my own Bahá´í community experience is about.
- What is a Bahá´í? | Wat is een Bahá´í?: gives a brief run down of some basic beliefs supported with short quotations from the Bahá´í writings. The same website has pages on: Bahá´u´lláh, The Báb, Bahá´í Scripture, Bahá´í Activities, as well as some Facts and Figures
- Bahá'í Rants, a blog run by Baquia where I often make comments and occasionally write a column. Anyone can add comments. Search for me there using "sonja".
- Sen McGlinn's Blog Sen's blogs tend towards the theological / metaphysical. He also has some postings on various topics indexed here and since 2008 he has rua a blog here: senmclinn.wordpress.com.
Bahá´ís believe in God.
My personal interpretation: some sort of supreme intelligence, not male! and more akin to the idea of the forces of nature rather than something human-like.
The Bahá´í; writings refer to religion as a tool for aiding spiritual development (in the here and now) rather than as an end in itself.
Bahá´ís come in all shapes and sizes.
In terms of my own approach as a Bahá´í I am at the liberal end of the scale, most likely having more in common with humanists than even fellow Bahá´ís on many topics.
The Bahá´í Faith aims to be global, celebrates diversity and the use of the intellect, and like any religion or system, nothing is static nor perfect. And as a tool, being a Bahá´í pushes me to stretch myself in various ways. An area of particular concern to me is equality for LGBT Bahá´ís.
The Bahá'í Faith in relation to my own art
- A visual essay looking at various themes in my work, including the Bahá'í Teachings. Written in 1998 in connection with an exhibition on Dutch contemporary art at the Vishal, Haarlem, it covers my work between 1989-1998.
It starts: My identity as a Bahá'í and as an artist are closely tied.
I encountered the Bahá'í Faith in my first year of art school and then joined the Bahá'í community a year later when I was twenty years old in 1981.
My art has diversified a lot since then as has my understanding of what it means to call oneself a Bahá'í....
A lot of my work is influenced by my interpretations of the Bahá´í teachings, sometimes I use actual quotations from the Bahá´í writings in my work but other other works addressing inequality, injustice or the meditative are of course just much an influence due to my Bahá'í beliefs.
- Art as a Creative Process - some aspects from the Bahá´í Writings, a slideshow of my own work and some text relating this to a Bahá´í context presented since 2000 in various venues. The text here is a version from 2004. In 2009 I started also giving a talk that was more focussed on my artworks and the ideas behind them rather than using quotations.
- Virtue of the Rose | Deugd van de roos, 1993
Some artworks incorporating quotations or text from the Bahá´í writings
The Bahá´í Faith + the arts
- In 1989 I joined BAFA - the Bahá´í Association for the Arts: run by some European-based artists which organized gatherings and ran a newsletter. Arts Dialogue was a quarterly magazine I co-edited between 1991 - 2002. It evolved from 4 photocopied pages to being a printed on an off-set press three times a year with 24 pages. See the website for some back issues.
We are working on a book (Just Let the Wind) to be published soon. - The arts in an optimal society, slide presentation given at the Association Bahá´í Studies Conference: Models for an Optimal Society, Waikato University, Hamilton, July, 2000.
- Gendered categories, A multi-media presentation for the 1995 English Speaking European Bahá´í Studies special interest "Gender" conference, Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K.
- Opthalmology, various approaches to the arts in our post-modern times. A slide presentation at the 1994 / 1995 Young Professionals Forum, Landegg, Switzerland.
- A perspective on the Bahá´í Faith and the Arts, 1994, initially written for the Bahá´í Encyclopedia (which was not published). Printed in the June 1994, BAFA newsletter.
The Bahá´í related essays or presentations
- Rewriting the Script. A visual essay on gender and the Bahá´í Teachings written in 2000 for a World Order issue on gender (not published).
- Gendered categories, A multi-media presentation for the 1995 English Speaking European Bahá´í Studies special interest "Gender" conference, Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K.
- Feminism as a means towards diversity, 1994 English Speaking European Bahá´í Studies, U.K.
Some Bahá´í Related Links
- My Just a Bahai blog.
- Bahais-online A portal for a diversity of Bahá´í related activities, blogs, etc from around the globe. Run by Steve Marshall.
- Kalimat Press: lots of interesting books.