Born in 1890(plus or minus a few years), the son of a former slave, my father, Rodger Heath, was a hard man. A tell it like he saw it person regardless of who it might upset. He came to be a Baptist preacher, as were two of his brothers.
I am the youngest of his children having been born in 1948. Conversation with him was mostly yes sir, no sir. I now lovingly, refer to him as a benevolent dictator in our home. There was one way, his way. And church was one of those ways. Often, we were at church 3 and 4 times each Sunday, and several days during the week.
I was not always happy with that church schedule, but I did develop very young, a deep love of God. In fact while at church I usually enjoyed it. The sermons, the singing, studying Bible verses, the prayer meetings, formed my spiritual conscious. I was baptized at age 12. Even after I became a member of another church as a teenager, I continued my church life until I moved to California in 1968.
All that church life and learning prepared me for my encounter with the Bahá’í Faith (www.bahai.us/) several months after my arrival. Thinking I was going to a party, it turned out to be an informational meeting. The speaker talked about the Bahá’í history, its teachings and its central figures, the Báb and Baha’u’llah. I found it very stimulating. The teachings appealed to my inner self. Especially the ones that spoke about the oneness of religion, the oneness of mankind, and the oneness of God. The theme of unity for all the people of earth resonated in me. After several weeks of constant reading and talking to many people, I embraced the Bahá’í Faith as my own. Based on my background and my individual investigation, I saw Bahá’í as the fulfillment, not a denial, of my Christian faith. It allowed me to see religion as one book of God with many chapters, progressively revealed to man according to our needs and capacity. Abraham, Moses, Zoroaster, Krishna, Buddha, Christ, Mohammed, and now the Báb and Baha’u’llah, all are Divine Authors of these chapters. Divine unity personified.
Months went by before I told my family. My father took me aside and asked me did I still believe in God. I told him even more so than before. He then said that he had always tried to teach his children that we were the only ones who could save our own souls. I was blown away with his reaction. Not once did he show me any disapproval. My mother was the same way, as were my brothers and sisters. True Christian love. That’s where I come from.
Peace,
Walter
This is a great story. The way you told it I could visualize the church and your conversation with your father about finding the Baha’i Faith. Beautiful!! Please give us more stories like this!
Walter, I wish I could say the same…I was not the son of a preacher man, but the son of Sunday School teacher, whose father, my grandfather, used to sit at the Sunday dinner table and tell of how he mistreated his employees on the lumber yard, apparently black and white alike, even pistol whipping was described with humor…humor to him but not to me. I saw that we lived in a largely segregated world, with black on one side of the railroad tracks that divided our lumberyard and cotton gin town in the foothills of NC, and white on the other side. It was not until high school that I experienced a black and white experience, the integration of our county schools sometime in the late ’60s, long after Brown vs. the Board of Education had passed. Black and white did not mix, churches did not mix, and the only place I could learn of the world was on television, where I discovered the old CBS program about religion around the world, the title of which I cannot accurately remember (either A Lamp unto My Feet, or A Light unto My Path). Now I learned much later that the Baha’is were included in a broadcast of this program, but I don’t recall having ever seen it.
But, having grown up in the Baptist Church, joining the church because a group of my friends decided to go forward during a revival (I am hearing impaired and didn’t quite know what was going on until after the fact), I heard much too often that the only folks with the right answer to the problems of the world were the Baptists. Everyone else was bound for hell, including the other denominations of Christians and all those who did not believe in Christ!
I couldn’t for the life of me understand how other denominations should be bound for hell. I had friends who attended other churches, and was aware of the Catholic church in the next town. One of my high school mate’s father worked there (I know that doesn’t fit in with the norm, but his dad was the reverend there…perhaps who joined the Catholic church after marriage or something, or maybe the church was small enough that the “real” reverend or father did not come by every Sunday for Mass. I also knew of a Quaker friend who was closely affiliated with the American Friends Service Committee, a group of Quakers opposed to the war in Vietnam at the time. I even joined up with the American Friends Service Committe, not as a Quaker, but as a like minded person. I also started attending the Methodist church in the next town, seeking answers as to why God seemed to so different in place to place, in one breathing the fires of Hell, and in the other, the rewards of Heaven.
It was in college at UNC-Chapel Hill that I came across the Baha’i Faith not too long after having attended a Campus Crusade for Christ gathering that showed a Hal Lindsay movie called “The Late Great Planet Earth,” a doomsday movie of some note then, depicting the rapture and all things unscientific that are believed by many Christians regarding how Christ would return to Earth one day to take up those who believed in Him and deliver them to God the Father, leaving the unbelievers behind to perish on the earth.
A fireside to which I had been long invited by a college friend captured my interest in that the information shared answered many of the questions I had about race, religion, and God. Inside, though I grew up in a town and a family that largely supported segregation, I knew that God created us from one source, that God did not hold one religion above another because He was a just God, and that God Himself was One – One in the Spirit, One in Religion, and One in the Human Family. These three things kept me going back to the firesides from February of 1974 through June of the same year, and I declared my belief in Baha’u'llah on June 24, 1974.
I hesitated at first to share with my parents, though I shared with my older brother and was initially rejected. My mom, when I shared with her, said she knew something was going on because I had been writing home on Baha’i postcards (you may remember these, with pictures of Baha’i youth at Green Acre and the like), and my dad…well he threatened to disown me, but my mom stopped him. Years later he asked me why I had turned away from the church in which I had grown up, why I had turned away from Jesus, and I told him I had not turned away from Christ. I told him I understood more about Him and His work than ever before and loved Him even more, but he just didn’t get it.
It has only been through my children’s Baha’i life that my parents have come to understand and accept some basic ideas about the Faith. My oldest son, Richard, now a Peace Corp volunteer in Peru, served at Green Acre for a summer of service, served for a summer with the Temple Conservation Corp, served two summers at NABI, attended NUR University after graduating from Berea College in Berea, Kentucky. My youngest son, though finding his own way through life just now, also served for a summer at NABI. Both children helped their grandparents, mine in particular, learn about the Faith of Baha’u'llah, and learn to see the good it has brought to our family.
Didn’t mean to write for so long. There is more to our story, but I will save that for another time. Keep the music coming, Walter. I’m diggin’ it every time it plays, and isn’t it wonderful that CD players have repeat buttons?
Roger
Walter I’m so glad you are writing these stories. I was even with you when you declared but I never heard this story. Keep them coming. Much love and appreciation, Susan
Walter,
Being a writer/storyteller/singer myself I truly enjoy and appreciate the value of your story beyond words. Having grown up most of my young misunderstood years in the South, North & South Carolina (in an impovished mind mentality setting) it derived a story much different from yours. I can remember my grandmother making me go to her small country Baptist church and telling me about the seperation rules. One Friday she reminded me that Friendship Day was going to be that following Sunday and to invite a friend. On Saturday she asked me had I invited anyone? I said yes…she inquired smilingly, until I announced who it was! You guessed it…a full blown surmon on why my best friend who just happened to be black couldn’t come to Her Church! That did it…I was finished with Church and its crazy rules! The church thing for me was over and the trust in religion was out the door, it was 1972…in 1987 I met my beloved Sistah, Behin White in Conway, South Carolina and the rest is history… because of her beauty I recognized Baha’u'llah and the truth that Jesus always wanted me to know and remember…God Is Good, All The Time! Behin and Truitt White became my new family and my childrens Spiritual Parents. Love the Power of Stories!
Brenda Williams
Enjoying Walter Heath’ New CD single…LOVE…to start my New Year off right!!
What a nice thing to tell me. Thank you for giving the music a good listen.
Peace,
Walter
What a compelling story. The White’s are huge blessing to all of us. I’m so happy they came into your life and you discovered Baha’u'llah!
I would love to read your stories and hear your music. How would I do that?
Peace,
Walter
This info actually helped me, I am sharing with a couple of friends. I shall be checking back frequently to appear for updates.
Greetings,
Thank you for taking time to read the blog. It’s nice to know it was useful to you.
Peace,
Walter
Walter, it’s wonderful to meet you on line. I was googling “rapture” + “Baha’i” just to see what points I can discover to help teacah about Baha’u'llah in the face of the current flap over Harold Camping’s controversial prediction that tomorrow (Saturday, May 21, 2011) will be the day all the elect rapturize into heaven.
My first impulse it to observe that on Monday morning, several million idiots will have disappeared, making it easier for common sense to prevail among those of us remaining … and that with the negative element gone, the rest of us can straighten the ol’ world out before October (when Bro. Camping sez the final destruction will happen, in his absence, of course).
Or maybe we’ll all still be here, because nobody will have made the cut for admission to Paradise.
Then I thought, no, maybe this: because of God’s infinite forgiveness and mercy to us all, every person on the planet will be transported to a Paradise that looks and feels just like this world — so much so that you can’t tell the difference. But war will spontaneously and universally evaporate as everybody sees what a dumb idea it is. Crime (including religious and other scams) will disappear as people become instantly kind and considerate.
President Obama will fly to Tel Aviv airport, as I did on pilgrimage, and then to Haifa, where all the world’s leaders will walk up the terraces to the Shrine of the Bab to pray — each in his or her own way — then gather to hear what the Universal House of Justice has to say. As soon as the House has set in motion the NSA elections in Iran, Mr. Obama and the members of the House of Justice will form up two five-man teams for a fast pick-up basketball game before the leaders all head back home to put the teachings of Baha’u'llah into practice in their own countries.
The President, refreshed fro a few minutes shooting baskets, will direct Air Force One to fly to O’Hare Field in Chcago, where he will drive to Wilmette and sit down with the hastily-convened USNSA and plan the next moves for this country.
Well, why not?
Warmest to you……………………..
Bill
Visionarily written! Why not indeed.
Hi Walter,
Haven’t disappeared from the earth, not yet anyway, and am still here in Wilmington, NC. Not on Facebook, though, since we picked up a nasty computer virus from there and took our tech’s advice not to go back on. Hope all is well with you and your family in California. I still enjoy your CD and hope that you are still making beautiful music for those of us in this contingent world.
Regards,
Roger
Hi Roger,
Thank you for thinking of me. I pray your family is thriving in spirit and health as mine is. Sorry about the computer virus and if you feel you are more safe from viruses, Facebook would worry you too much.
Do you know that I released CDs entitled “Prayers and Passages”? They were fundraises for the Shrine of the Bab’s renovation. I’ve discontinued the webpage for that project since the work has been completed. If you want to hear some samples you can do that on CDBaby.com.
Again, thank you for staying in touch.
Peace,
Walter