Susan Maneck wrote:
> We don't wait for them to take the initiative. We call them and ask
> for a convenient time where we might meet with them.
In Australia in my experience it would really be socially obligatory
to invite them to your home rather than the reverse if you take the
initiative.
> The point is that
>> Ruhi book 2 totally ducks the issues of in what cir***stances and and
>> how one seeks such invitations.
>
> That varies from place to place. Most of us here in the United States
> just get on the phone. With people in my neighborhood it's even
> easier. On a nice day people are sitting in their yards. I come
> walking by with my dog and just ask them when it would be a good time
> for us to get together.
Mmmm, people in my village tend to live on five acres block with the
few sheep or a cow or a horse or two in the 'yard' and the houses set
back from the road.. You could walk a dog for weeks here and not meet
people sitting in their yard.
>
> It may be that it was
>> written for societies where it is much more acceptable to just pop in
>> unannounced (China for example was like that) or it may be that they
>> deliberately avoided the issue as they recognised it would be
>> different in different cultures. If you happen to have one of those
>> tutors who insist on keeping the study circle to the narrow context of
>> the book (as seems to be recommended in the introductions) the
>> participants are left with no skills I can see for conducting home
>> visits.
>
> What makes you think the "narrow context of the book" recommends going
> to people's houses unannounced?
I didn't say that. I said it doesn't provide the skills needed.
> Have you done Book 7 that you know
> what tutors are trained to do? It seems to me that you are making an
> awful lot of assumptions here.
If you lived in Australia you wouldn't have done book 7 either - at
least not unless you went back and did book 3 first. I did my Ruhi a
long time ago (I was in the first study circle in Scotland). The
feature you were talking about where tutors are encouraged to
accompany their students on the practical exercises (is it called
'walking together on the path of service or something similar'?) was
introduced later specifically, as I understand it, to address the fact
I am pointing out - that the books were not leading to the predicted
acts of service. The problem I see is that while the increasing
pressure to do the devotional meeting, home visits, children's cl*****
etc is certainly resulting in increases in these activities there is
still no statistical evidence that links them with the books that are
supposed to give the skills needed. To be specific, in my cluster
(and I am the cluster statistical officer):
(a) devotional meetings are primarly organised by either people who,
having looked at the core activities described by the House, chose to
contribute to devotional meetings rather than Ruhi; or by dedicated
folk who have done the whole sequence and started organising
devotional meetings not when they completed book 1 but much more
recently.
(b) Home visits are claimed to be done by almost everybody in the
cluster but as yet there is no real evidence that more than a tiny
handful, if any, are doing them as defined here.
(c) Childrens cl***** are being run by the same people who always ran
children's cl***** whether or not they have done book 3. Australia is
perhaps a special case here as the local laws allowed an opening for
Baha'i cl***** in state schools which is enormously successful (6000
children I think the great majority from non-Baha'i families). BESS
uses locally produced material which predates the use of Ruhi in this
country.
(d) Junior Youth is being done by people who haven't done book 5 but
that is irrelevant because for some reason the roll-out of book 5 is
taking ages.
As a final example, consider the case of Anna's Presentation or, as I
prefer to call it, the presentation to Emilia. This is a component
part of book 6 which is supposed to impart teaching skills. Yet here
(not yet in my small cluster) there are follow up cl***** of, I think,
two intensive weekends on 'How to use Anna's Presentation'.
What skills are the Ruhi books actually, demonstratably imparting?
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