To My Readers,

           My deepest apologies for not posting these past three months.  So much was going on that the book that I have been working on was not moving forward with any speed.  So I put much on hold so that I could finish it.  It is finished, and on its way to the publisher.  With any luck it should be available from Amazon. com in a couple of weeks. 

            The book is titled, Renewing the Sacred: A New Vision of Education.  It is my model of spiritual education.  Spiritual education educes the spirit and not just trains the mind and body.  Though much of it has appeared in the blog these past 18 months, much of it is also new.  The book brings it all together in one coherent—I hope—package.  While the book is Baha’i-inspired—no surprise, there!—it is for educators of all stripes and colors, even for public school teachers and administrators anywhere, but especially here in the United States.  I will let everyone know when the book can be purchased.

            Also, to let you know, I am working on several other projects.  There are two more companion book-length studies to Renewing the Sacred in the works.  Some of the material for these studies has also appeared in the blog.  Here is a preview.  The first, tentatively titled, The Coordinated Vision: Religion, Art, Science, discusses religion, art and science as humanity’s three main ways to generate and encode knowledge, and, through the kinds of knowledge they generate, to relate to the different dimensions of the world.  An academic curriculum that wants to “educate” the whole person should have all three, for each one helps us create and interpret our experience: religion is our primary means of relating to the spiritual world; art is our primary relation with the human world; science is our primary relation with the natural world.  Of course all three—religion, art and science—are involved in all three worlds, but each has its primary relation that the other two support.

            The other study I am calling Connecting Cosmos and Consciousness: The Structured Forms of Human Spirituality.  This will be an historical examination of such levels and forms of human consciousness as religion, myth, art, poetry, philosophy, and science.  It will also have chapters on the origins of humanity's two main languages, words and numbers.  It will examine them all as the unfolding manifestations in symbolic structures of a series of great spiritual impulses.  That is, it will attempt to connect these various symbolic structures of human knowledge with divine revelation.  There will also be discussions of the relation of the unconscious to the conscious mind; the mutual influence of heart and mind, the development of human subjectivity, all built upon a notion that humanity is moving out of the realm of mind into the realm of spirit, just as, starting about 6,000 years ago with Adam, we moved out of the realm of body into the realm of mind.  This coincides with ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s statement on the three kinds of education: physical, human, and divine.  A full system of divine education is being built.  It will take centuries, of course, but a powerful start, especially with Ruhi, has been made.  

            I will also have a place on the blog where interested readers can go to download some of my other essays on various topics.  These essays will be FOR FREE!

            So, how to do this?  That is where you come in.  You will see some additions to the blog.  As an experiment, I am now running some ads.  Also there is a donations button and a place where you can go directly to Amazon.com to order your copy (ies) of Renewing the Sacred when it is available.  Friends, I am attempting to live Baha’u’llah’s statement in The Hidden Words: “The best of men are those that earn their livelihood by their calling.”

If you like Renewing the Sacred please recommend it to your friends, your children’s teachers, your school board, home-schoolers, or anyone else.  I hope that the book can be a small contribution to a new social discourse on education and that discourse can lead to some social action.  Buy it for gifts—Christmas, Ayyam-i-Ha—or get a study group going.  If you want to donate to a worthy cause, look no further than the right of the page.  It is easy to do.

Finally, my sincerest thanks for all your support until now.  I am glad to be back on the radar.  I look forward a long and happy continuation of our blog connection, especially to reading your comments

Bill