Pioneering Over Four Epochs: An Autobiographical Study

[Ron Price]

I have been associated with the Baha'i Faith for 50 years(1954-2004). Recently, I have taken an interest in autobiography, autobiography of any kind: those of people with commitments to organized religion, causes of various kinds, experiences in various fields, contemporary and historical. Only recently my 800 page autobiography has been put in a hard cover at the Baha'i World Centre Library. Inevitably, my autobiography is of interest to Baha'is but I think it is also of interest to people of all backgrounds. My work is as much a study of the process of autobiographical writing and about the context for belief in the last half century, as it is about my life. I'll place a few installments here in the months ahead. This is, if you like, an advertisement and a note to the moderator of this site.

[I, Brian]

It's probably not a good idea to simply paste i on the forums, as this is not particularly inviting discussion.

However, as research piece there could certainly be room for it in our articles section, which, frankly, I could do well with expanding.

PM me with some more details, if you would like to put it up on the internet ni general.

[arthra]

Originally Posted by Ron Price

I have been associated with the Baha'i Faith for 50 years(1954-2004). Recently, I have taken an interest in autobiography, autobiography of any kind: those of people with commitments to organized religion, causes of various kinds, experiences in various fields, contemporary and historical. Only recently my 800 page autobiography has been put in a hard cover at the Baha'i World Centre Library. Inevitably, my autobiography is of interest to Baha'is but I think it is also of interest to people of all backgrounds. My work is as much a study of the process of autobiographical writing and about the context for belief in the last half century, as it is about my life. I'll place a few installments here in the months ahead. This is, if you like, an advertisement and a note to the moderator of this site.

Good to hear from you Ron and very good top hear that your autobiography is in the Baha'i World Centre Library! Where did you pioneer to?

- Art

[Ron Price]

Thanks, Art,
I'll put a little of my background here to respond to your question--you might find over-the-top. But so as not to reinvent the wheel and give you a more comprehensive picture, a picture that often feels like a mural large enough to fill a proverbail building. The story is long and getting longer with age...and tedious in the telling, the repeating. I suppose that is why, among other reasons, so many people hide their light under a bushel. Thank god for a few clicks to save repeating it all a million times...also I think our stories are worth telling, as Baha'is. What's the point in living them if there is nothing worth saying about it all...enough...

A short SUMMARY OF RON PRICE'S BAHA'I EXPERIENCE

A. Ascribed Roles(in my life): grandson, son, father, step-father, uncle, step-grandfather, husband, male: late adulthood, cousin.

B. Achieved Roles(in my life): writer, poet, essayist, author, journalist, teacher, lecturer, student, see section 4 of my secular-resume(not included here) for a range of additions at different times since my birth in 1944.

1. LOCAL ASSEMBLY SERVICE:



LSA of the Baha’is of Windsor: 1966/7: vice-chairman

LSA of the Baha’is of Toronto: 1969

LSA of the Baha’is of Whyalla: 1972: secretary

LSA of the Baha’is of Gawler: 1973: chairman

LSA of the Baha’is of Ballarat: 1976-78: chairman/secretary

LSA of the Baha’is of Launceston: 1979: publicity officer

LSA of the Baha’is of Stirling: 1988: secretary

LSA of the Baha’is of Belmont: 1989-1999: chairman/secretary for 7 of these years

2. REGISTERED GROUP/ISOLATED BELIEVER SERVICE

Frobisher Bay NWT: 1967-68

King City Ontario : 1969

Picton Ontaro : 1970-71

Whyalla South Aust : 1971

Launceston Tasmania 1974

Kew Victoria : 1975

Smithton Tasmania : 1979

Zeehan Tasmania : 1980-82

Katherine NT : 1982-86

South Hedland WA : 1986-87

George Town Tas : 1999-2004

[Ron Price]

It's been about six weeks since I made this posting. "I,Brian" suggested I contact him with a proposal on submitting my autobiography as a series of articles. So, for starters, can I suggest we post it in a series of chapters. I have thirty in my book. I'm happy to follow any pattern or idea you have, "I, Brian." I look forward to hearing from you in the days ahead. I'll try to get back here sooner than later to see what you've suggested.-Ron Price, Tasmania

[kiwimac]

Ah Ron!

Hello again!

Kiwimac

[I, Brian]

Hi Ron - I'm currently coming back to this site in a rather circular manner to re-develop at least certain parts of it. Work has held myself up a lot, but I should hope that I'll be able to do more for adding content in August - ask me then.

[Ron Price]

Brian,

There is no rush; when you have time let me know (if and when) where you'd like me to put pieces of autobiographical study. Happy to not put any of it anywhere, if you decide to go that way in the end. Yours, Ron Price, Tasmania.

[smkolins]

Originally Posted by Ron Price

I have been associated with the Baha'i Faith for 50 years(1954-2004). Recently, I have taken an interest in autobiography, autobiography of any kind: those of people with commitments to organized religion, causes of various kinds, experiences in various fields, contemporary and historical. Only recently my 800 page autobiography has been put in a hard cover at the Baha'i World Centre Library. Inevitably, my autobiography is of interest to Baha'is but I think it is also of interest to people of all backgrounds. My work is as much a study of the process of autobiographical writing and about the context for belief in the last half century, as it is about my life. I'll place a few installments here in the months ahead. This is, if you like, an advertisement and a note to the moderator of this site.

It might also be good to share experiences. I've been a Baha'i since 1986 and homefront pioneered for some 13 years in a semi-rural area of North Carolina, USA. This region's Baha'i presence seems to stretch back into the 1960's for sure but has had only transient Baha'i population until the mid 1980's. After a decade of fluctuating population we reached Assembly status but our population continues to change a large percentage of our community.

The region has also been undergoing changes. The county's history reaches back to the 1700's and slavery and was at one point the place where white and Native cultures met (though of course that started out on the coast a couple hundred years earlier.) Our local school system here was integrated only in 1972 and there remain plenty of challenges - plus new ones as a sizable percentage of Latino's have moved into the area. Alas our neck of the woods has had some national level exposure for doing things wrong in these challenges while the role of the Baha'is while measurably positive and known in some circules has been only a small impact on the overall picture.

Even internet access is somewhat problematic out here - dialup is poor, and cable and dsl only in a few places. Indeed my own access has occasionally been completely cut off over the last month or so....

I'm sure some of these kinds of challenges are faced in pioneering other places in the world.

[Ron Price]

It has been over two years since I was last at this thread and so, belatedly, I will make a response to "the sharing of ideas and experiences." I have just finished a four volume 2500 page opus called 'Pioneeirng Over Four Epochs.' You can buy it for $2.98 at eBookMall. I won't post any of it here for it is far too long. I will post a short 1 to 2 page piece from the epilogue:
_____________________

PIONEERING OVER FOUR EPOCHS

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME THREE

Anyone who has actually read the first two volumes deserves a prize for having come this far. If it is any comfort, you persistent few have got through more than half of the conceptual space where identity and meaning meet around the three themes of my life, my society and my religion. If you have read this far, I’m confident that you have gained some pleasure in the read and I am happy for you. Indeed, the very raison d’etre for this autobiography can be found in the pleasure, the understandings, you have found thusfar.


For many years when I was a teacher I compiled reading material for my students around an eclectic mix of book chapters, journal articles, historical documents, extracts from literary texts, journalism, inter alia. Now, in this autobiographical work, I have followed a similar pattern but put a pot pourri into one work. I give to readers a single-authored, multidisciplinary sourcebook for the field of autobiography.


You will find here in the following part of this work an epilogue and some thoughts on letter writing, history, poetry and essays some of the genres I have used in this work. I will say no more in this introduction other than to leave you with a prose-poem I wrote at the age of 56, a year after I arrived in Tasmania to begin my retirement and a daily-life devoted to writing.


A MIND LIVELY AND AT EASE

It is said that an artist’s work is the sum total of his experience. The artist does not create from a tabula rasa, but from a rich menu of specific and unspecific experience, grey and vague and highly and variously coloured. The artist drafts his own destiny as he drafts his music, his art, his sculpture or his poetry, at least in part. And he is never sure, as Stephen Spender puts it, however confident he may be, whether he has misdirected his energy, or whether his poetry is insignificant and irrelevant or great and important.
-Ron Price, Pioneering Over Three Epochs, 8 August 2000.


A mind lively and at ease
is a gift of fortune
and gives meaning and value
to perceived experience,1
to the deep and rich
satisfaction of my own writing
and to the slow charting of the
progress toward our destiny.
The unperturbed mind
is quickest and can deal
with the vanity of vanities, life,
which we must both accept and
reject, which pierces us with its
nonsense and its strange relations.
1 Jane Austen, Emma.
Ron Price
8 August 2000
_________________
Leave it with you!

[arthra]

Congratulations Ron...sounds like a major contribution!

- Art