Daily Frameworks for 23 June 2023

Istiqlál, 19 Núr (Light), 180 B.E.

One Planet, One Habitation

11.0 Proposals for Exploration

11.3 Within current structures, strengthening the legal framework related to the natural world would lend coherence to the biodiversity, climate, and environmental regimes, and provide stronger foundations for common stewardship of the planet. Integrating governance structures in this way is well within the capacity of the international community, and past experiences—advances and setbacks alike—provide valuable foundations which can be drawn upon. Efforts to increase coherence between engagement in areas of peacekeeping, mediation, human rights, reconstruction, and long-term development, for example—from the establishment of the United Nations’ Peacebuilding Architecture to the proposed new agenda for peace—hold initial lessons about what a process of harmonization of related efforts ¹ could look like. ²

Some Answered Questions

But education is of three kinds: material, human, and spiritual. Material education aims at the growth and development of the body, and consists in securing its sustenance and obtaining the means of its ease and comfort. This education is common to both man and animal.

Human education, however, consists in civilization and progress, that is, sound governance, social order, human welfare, commerce and industry, arts and sciences, momentous discoveries, and great undertakings, which are the central features distinguishing man from the animal.

As to divine education, it is the education of the Kingdom and consists in acquiring divine perfections. This is indeed true education, for by its virtue man becomes the focal centre of divine blessings and the embodiment of the verse “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness.”(Gen. 1:26) This is the ultimate goal of the world of humanity. ³

1. “Give ear, O peoples of the earth, unto that which the Pen of the Lord of all nations commandeth you. Know ye of a certainty that the Dispensations of the past have attained their highest, their final consummation in the Law that hath branched out from this Most Great Ocean. Haste ye thereunto at Our behest. We, verily, ordain as We please. Regard ye the world as a man’s body, which is afflicted with divers ailments, and the recovery of which dependeth upon the harmonizing of all of its component elements. Gather ye around that which We have prescribed unto you, and walk not in the ways of such as create dissension.”
   Baháʼuʼlláh. The Summons of the Lord of Hosts : Tablets. Translated by Shoghi Effendi. 1st ed. Haifa: Baháʼí World Centre, 2002, 79-80. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/summons-lord-hosts/5#516098430. ↩
2. Bahá’í International Community Staff. “One Planet, One Habitation.” International Environment Forum, June 1, 2022. https://www.iefworld.org/2022bic_OPOH. ↩
3. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Some Answered Questions. Translated by Laura Clifford Barney. Wilmette, Ill: Baháʾí Publishing Trust, 1981, 8. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/abdul-baha/some-answered-questions/4#803129223 ↩