As difficult as it is to identify a beginning in the middle of a spiderweb, I’m going to try.
A few years ago, I started taking Ruhi Book 1. (It’s the first class in a series designed to help anyone interested – Baha’i or not – to learn about the Baha’i Faith.) I had been wanting to for a long time, and the manifestation of that desire was everything I wanted it to be: A weekly dip in the ocean of God’s grace, fertilizer to grow the spiritual connections among members of my community, and a spiritual fix to help me make it through days weighed down by materialsm and ego.
I loved it so much, I looked for other ways to increase my spiritual connection to the Word. I looked for Baha’i Audiobooks, but found none. Then one day, a substitute tutor happened to mention some recorded lectures by Adib Tahirzadeh on CD. That was all I needed to know. I looked them up as soon as I arrived home and ordered a set. They were wonderful! I could (and did) listen to each of the 11 CD’s several times over, learning something new each time I did.
When I finally finished them, I looked for more. This time, I found the website that contained all the books on tape recorded many years ago by Services for the Blind, available for free download. I thought I had found heaven! I loaded Paris Talks onto my iPod and went for a long walk.
It was intensely anticlimactic.
I like to think that I’m a tolerant person, especially when it comes to individual efforts within the Baha’i Faith. It turns out that when it comes to audiobooks, I am very intolerant.
The problem with the tapes were that:
- Each track was 45 minutes long, based on the length of the side of a cassette tape
- The readers occasionally turned their head away from the mic making it impossible to hear
- When a reader stumbled on a passage, they didn’t delete and do a retake, they just kept going.
- Page numbers were read aloud
- The table of contents was read aloud
- The sound was muffled sounding
For me, that was too many strikes. Every time I tried to listen, I’d find myself chanting “I could do this better. I could do this better. I could do this so much better.”
Then one day, the chant of “I could really do this better” was answered with ”Well, why not try?” Of course, that first thought was immediately followed with “Yeah right!” But over the course of several more walks on several more days, the same sequence repeated itself. Then one day, I stopped walking, looked at the sky and asked flat out, “Wait, are you saying you want me to try to do this?” I was immediately filled with such an overwhelming feeling of joy that I fairly floated home.
And that was the very beginning. Or one of them. So once again, Darrel was correct. Verdanta was created for one purpose: to create professional quality recordings of the Baha’i writings and make them available to as many people throughout the world as is possible.
It’s been an exciting journey so far, but lonely at times. I created this blog so I wouldn’t have to walk that journey alone. If you are, like me, always searching for more ways to incorporate the Word into your life, then perhaps you will accompany me, and together we can administer the healing prescription of Baha’u'llah throughout the world.
