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Tanya at Petaluma County Fair 2007 (Tomasito photo)

Bahai's to the Rescue

My experience of Penngrove began years ago when I got my very first teaching job.

I was hired to teach sixth grade at the Penngrove Elementary School and the reason for that job was that I had just migrated from Hawaii back to the mainland United States as a sort of missionary (though they don’t have missionaries) for a fledgling religion: the Baha’i Faith-- and I really needed money.

One of the Big Ideas of the Baha’is of those days (and I don’t know what they are up to now) was that they should have a functioning council of nine adult believers in every judicial district in every country on earth so that when the existing political, social and religious systems crashed, which they expected momentarily, the Baha’i councils, as the only functioning political/religious system left standing, would assume local, national and world leadership..

For the Baha’is of those days, the best form of government was a theocracy and there was no doubt in the minds of the believers of those days that a Baha’i state would be a vast improvement on the existing government of the USA as invented by the Founding Fathers of the republic—or any other form of government, invented by mere human beings, anywhere. They also had no doubt that each council would be directly guided in their deliberations by God Itself, so their laws and judgments would be not only good, but the absolutely and unquestionably Best for Everybody Concerned, They also anticipated that an international group of nine Baha’i men and women, soon to be chosen from among their membership and by themselves--- using democratic processes (minus electioneering)---which would have ultimate absolute political and spiritual authority over everybody, everywhere--since that body would represent in their decisions the absolute and literal Will of God for all humanity.

Being young, enthusiastic and eager to change the world for the better, I had returned from Hawaii, where I had discovered the Baha’i Faith, to the mainland USA to act upon what I conceived of as my part in saving said world and, of course, to be a leader in the new world order. After all, it was only a little bit self- flattering to believe that, as a functioning member of a local spiritual assembly, I would be one of the mouthpieces of God when we made our decisions--but obviously somebody had to do it—so why not an exceptionally clever young fool like me?

I had a just received a BA degree in English from the University of Hawaii (quite a long way from London!) and had no idea at the time what a totally worthless document that was. I had been earning a pretty good living as a rock band drummer in Honolulu and had some idea that I could continue in that nebulous line of work stateside, as they used to call the mainland USA.

I left Honolulu with a great desire to live and work on the Hopi Indian Reservation in Arizona, one of the places in the states which had several resident Baha’is, but no adult quorum at that time-- but when I drove into desolate Tuba City in northern Arizona on a freezing winter day even I realized that with all my cleverness and enthusiasm I would not find work or enjoyment of any kind in such an extreme (for me) place. So I continued traveling, with my then wife and child, to another American township which “needed” a couple more adult Baha’is like us and soon came to roost in pleasant, green, (it was spring) Novato, California, only a twenty minute freeway drive south from the as yet unknown to me, Penngrove..

Tomasito, 2009


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