I am rereading Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler. I find it to be a beautifully written book. At one point he is talking to a Chinese movie star, Jiang Wen. After a bit of conversation about Chinese society, Jiang Wen says "Think of China as a field... The Kuomintang, the Communist Party, Lin Biao, Jiang Qing- all of them are seeds in the earth. They grow in different ways; some grow well and others do not...."



"People should spend more time looking inside themselves," he said. "A person and history are the same - by that, I mean that a personal history is enormous. An idividual can be even more complicated than a society...."



In order to change how people turn out in the society, he said "You have to change the soil,"...



This got me thinking about our attitudes about things. How people should be, how society should be structured, what we should value, what should be sacred.



About that same time I read in Gleanings From the Writings Of Baha'u'llah the following passage:



"And now, concerning thy question regarding the creation of man. Know thou that all men have been created in the nature made by God, the Guardian, the Self-Subsisting. Unto each one hath been prescribed a pre-ordained measure, as decreed in God's mighty and guarded Tablets. All that which ye potentially possess can, however, be manifested only as a result of your own volition. Your own acts testify to this truth. Consider, for instance, that which hath been forbidden, ..., unto men. God hath ..., decreed as lawful whatsoever He hath pleased to decree, and hath, through the power of His sovereign might, forbidden whatsoever He elected to forbid. ... Men, however, have wittingly broken His law. Is such a behavior to be attributed to God, or to their proper selves? Be fair in your judgment. Every good thing is of God, and every evil thing is from yourselves. Will ye not comprehend? This same truth hath been revealed in all the Scriptures, if ye be of them that understand. "


I'm not sure I can make as clear a connection for you as I can for myself for these two things seem very connected to me. I think we all need new soil, new soil in which to grow our potential. We now have the potential to unite the world into one harmonious society. Some do not recognize that that potetial now exists, some think that the potential exists somewhere else, and some think that we have the answers and others just need to look to us for the answers.

God has provided new soil. A peaceful world will only grow from that soil. Only that soil has the right mix of nutrients to allow the accomplishment of that objective. And no one knows what that world can and will look like or how it will come about. But we must first acknowledge that unity is possible before we can begin to see the possibilities. It is something that we must build together, not something that one country or one group can build without imput from others. We all have very valuable contributions to make in one way or another.
My hope in publishing these thoughts is that we will all be moved in some way to establish this world or work to change the world in some small way to make the unity of humanity a little more possible. I have no delusions that I am doing something great. I am doing a very small thing in a very small part of the world. I believe that thousands of small things can be knit together to make a large thing and that will help unite us, help us gain the sense of brotherhood that we need in this world. This may define as well as anything why I am in China.