BahaiConnect

09/07/2026

In the time of sleep this body is as though dead... but the spirit lives and subsists. Nay, its pe*******on is increased, its flight is higher, and its intelligence is greater.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá

There is something remarkable about the world of dreams.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá taught that while the physical senses rest, the human spirit is not necessarily confined by the same limitations that govern our waking life. In dreams we may travel great distances, rediscover memories, solve problems, encounter powerful images, and sometimes awaken with an understanding we did not possess before.

This thought came to mind as I worked with my friend Susan Lewis Wright on a new musical version of her song In Dreams.

Susan’s song begins with the imagination of a child lying in the summer grass, watching clouds drift through a blue sky. Those clouds become a cotton boat, the sky becomes an endless sea, and the imagination carries her far beyond the troubles of the moment.

As the song moves through childhood and into adult life, dreams remain a place of refuge, creativity, renewal, and hope.

Dreams give me wings to fly.

Those words seem especially meaningful beside ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s description of the spirit in sleep, when its flight is higher.

The Bahá’í writings also remind us to approach dreams with balance and wisdom. Not every dream carries spiritual meaning. Yet they remind us that the human spirit is far more mysterious, perceptive, and expansive than our ordinary physical experience might suggest.

Perhaps that is one reason dreams have inspired poets, artists, musicians, prophets, and seekers throughout human history.

I am very grateful to Susan Lewis Wright for allowing me to collaborate with her in bringing In Dreams into a new musical form.

I hope you enjoy the song and perhaps allow yourself, for a few moments, to follow where its dreams may lead.

09/05/2026

O God, my God! Thou seest how black darkness is enshrouding all regions, how all countries are burning with the flame of dissension, and the fire of war and carnage is blazing throughout the East and the West.

O Lord! Draw up the people from the abyss of the ocean of hatred and enmity, and deliver them from this impenetrable darkness. Unite their hearts, and brighten their eyes with the light of peace and reconciliation.

— ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Tablets of the Divine Plan ([Bahá’í Faith][1])

Wave of Destruction

This morning I completed a new music video, Wave of Destruction.

The song grew in part from an earlier poem I wrote titled After the Storm. As I returned to that poem and began working with its imagery through music and visual art, I found myself thinking increasingly about the condition of humanity and about these extraordinary words of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.

Written more than a century ago during the First World War, His description of black darkness, dissension, war, hatred and enmity seems painfully familiar today. Yet the prayer does not surrender to despair. It turns toward forgiveness, reconciliation, unity, love and peace. ([Baha'i Reference Library][2])

That same movement became central to Wave of Destruction.

The video begins in darkness and unrest. Barking dogs, troubled skies, walls, weapons, barbed wire, displaced people and shattered cities become symbols of a humanity increasingly divided against itself. The human figures are intentionally reduced largely to shadows. They are not one race, nation, religion or people. They are humanity.

Then comes the wave.

It descends upon everything, leaving destruction and an awful silence behind.

But After the Storm was never intended to be a poem of hopelessness, and Wave of Destruction does not end there either.

In the silence there is prayer.

In the darkness there is light.

Among the ruins there is still the possibility of love.

And eventually there comes a messenger of joy.

Another passage from the same prayer beautifully expresses what I hoped the final images of the video might convey:

O Lord! Dispel the darkness of these corrupt desires, and illumine the hearts with the lamp of Thy love through which all countries will erelong be enlightened. ([Bahá’í Faith][1])

Perhaps this is one of the great spiritual challenges of our time: not simply to recognize the darkness, but to become a source of light within it.

Not simply to condemn hatred, but to build unity.

Not simply to mourn a fractured world, but to help heal it.

After the storm, we begin again.

[1]: https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/abdul-baha/tablets-divine-plan/tablets-divine-plan.pdf?68ab66d1=&utm_source=chatgpt.com "Tablets of the Divine Plan"
[2]: https://reference.bahai.org/en/t/ab/TDP/tdp-8.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Bahá'í Reference Library - Tablets of the Divine Plan, Pages 49-58"

09/04/2026

O CHILDREN OF DUST!

Tell the rich of the midnight sighing of the poor, lest heedlessness lead them into the path of destruction, and deprive them of the Tree of Wealth. To give and to be generous are attributes of Mine; well is it with him that adorneth himself with My virtues.

Bahá’u’lláh
The Hidden Words, Persian No. 49

Sometimes a creative work comes together in a way that neither Susan Lewis Wright or I could have planned.

For many years, poverty, hunger, homelessness, and the suffering of children have been recurring subjects in my photography, writing, and creative work. Years ago, that concern became part of my photographic book Children of Dust, The Midnight Sighing of the Poor.

Recently, events in Nepal brought those thoughts back to me with renewed urgency. I began looking more deeply at poverty and deprivation in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and other places where families live every day with hunger, inadequate shelter, illness, displacement, and circumstances that most of us can scarcely imagine.

Out of that work I began writing a new song, Midnight Sighing of the Poor.

Then something remarkable happened.

At precisely the same time, my dear friend and creative collaborator Susan Lewis Wright was independently writing words about the poor, the lonely, and those whom the world so easily passes by. We had not discussed what I was writing. Susan did not know that I was already working on this song.

Then her words arrived.

Look not away from the sad and lonely
Turn not away from the broken and poor
Look not away from any man

We are family, headed
for the same and distant shore

We need to see with eyes
that forgive with kindness

We need to touch
each heart we meet

We are only here
for a little while

I read them and immediately knew where they belonged.

Susan's words slipped almost seamlessly into the song I was already writing, as though the two pieces had somehow been waiting for one another. Her words became the emotional heart of Midnight Sighing of the Poor.

The title and spiritual foundation of the song come from words of Bahá’u’lláh that have remained with me for many years:

Tell the rich of the midnight sighing of the poor...

And:

The poor in your midst are My trust; guard ye My trust...

The song tells the story of one mother and one child, but they represent millions. The woman sleeping beside the street, the hungry child, the refugee, the forgotten elderly person, the family living beneath scraps of metal and plastic, and the person we pass without allowing ourselves to see.

There is a line near the end of the song that, for me, asks the question at the heart of the entire work:

If we can see
and still walk past her
Who among us
bears no shame?

Midnight Sighing of the Poor is the latest collaboration between Susan Lewis Wright and me. But in another sense, neither of us feels that this song is about us.

It belongs to those whose voices are seldom heard.

Listen for them.

Look not away.

Open your heart to the midnight sighing of the poor.

08/27/2026

"On the appearance of fearful natural events call ye to mind the might and majesty of your Lord, He Who heareth and seeth all, and say:

Dominion is God’s, the Lord of the seen and the unseen, the Lord of creation."

Bahá’u’lláh, The Kitáb-i-Aqdas

The disaster unfolding along the Nepal-Tibet border makes the poem especially fitting. Current reports describe catastrophic flooding and mudslides following a massive collapse of glacial ice and rock high in the Himalayas. Hundreds are confirmed dead, more than a thousand remain missing across Nepal and Tibet, and entire communities, roads, bridges, homes, businesses, and livelihoods have been destroyed. Rescue efforts are continuing, so I would avoid putting a specific death toll in the post because the numbers are changing rapidly. ([Al Jazeera][1])

If the catastrophe you remember was the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, then you wrote the original poem about fifteen years ago. I think that is probably the event you are remembering.

I would also retain the full passage you provided. Its power is precisely that it moves us away from statistics and reminds us that every number represents an individual human life.

Today my thoughts are with the people of Nepal and Tibet, and with all those whose lives have been forever changed by the terrible catastrophe unfolding along the Nepal-China border.

The images of destruction are difficult to comprehend. Entire communities have been devastated. Homes, roads, bridges, businesses, farms, and livelihoods have disappeared beneath water, mud, and debris. Hundreds of people have died, many more remain missing, and countless families are waiting for news of those they love.

But the suffering caused by a catastrophe such as this cannot be measured only by the number of dead and missing.

It will continue long after the floodwaters recede.

There will be families without homes, parents without children, children without parents, communities without livelihoods, and people who must somehow begin again surrounded by the physical and emotional remnants of everything they have lost.

About fifteen years ago, following another terrible natural catastrophe, I wrote a poem about our tendency to measure tragedy with numbers. That poem eventually became this song, All the Dead.

Over the years, whenever another great human tragedy has occurred, I have returned to these words.

Today, I return to them again.

How can we know
the measure of this loss?

By the count of corpses,
by the missing and the lost,
by the path of destruction,
by the uncounted tears that
fall from our eyes?

All the dead, they have names,
and are known by loved ones
as mother and father,
grandmother and grandfather,
brother and sister,
aunt and uncle,
they are cousins and relations all.

Each one is a family
recalled by treasured moments
and memories of love.

Remembered by a touch on soft skin,
remembered by a kiss on sweet lips,
remembered by the scent of musky hair,
remembered by touch, by smell, by
taste, by sight, remembered…

All the dead they have names,
and the tears of our despair will fall
like rain on the soil of violent revenge.

Angry barbs and thorns of terror
will needle at the tender flesh
and rend the limbs asunder.

There is an empty chamber in our hearts
that is reserved for the innocent victims
of tragic consequences.

All the dead, they have names,
and as we speak their names from
the deep sorrow of our hearts,

the sky will weep,
and the rain will fall…

Today, may we remember that behind every number is a name, behind every name is a human life, and around every human life is a circle of people who loved them.

May our hearts be with the dead, the missing, the injured, the displaced, the rescuers searching through the devastation, and all those who must somehow rebuild their lives in the days, months, and years ahead.

All the dead, they have names.

[1]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/27/more-than-1300-missing-in-nepal-and-china-after-deadly-himalayan-flood?utm_source=chatgpt.com "More than 360 dead, 1,400 missing in Nepal and Tibet after Himalayan flood | Environment News | Al Jazeera"

08/27/2026

Heartfelt concern must prompt sustained effort to build communities that offer hope in place of despair, unity in place of conflict.

The Universal House of Justice, Riḍván 2024

For five decades, through the Blue Heron Academy of Healing Arts and Sciences and American Health Source, we have been learning what it means to build a healing community.

Our work began with education and service, particularly among women in transition whose lives had been affected by abuse, violence, and difficult circumstances. Over the years, thousands of students have carried their knowledge into clinics, families, workplaces, neighborhoods, and communities. We gradually came to understand that healing reaches far beyond the relationship between a practitioner and a patient. When people are given knowledge, opportunity, encouragement, and the capacity to serve, healing can radiate outward from one person into the lives of many others.

We have come to call this continuing effort Building Healing Communities.

At its heart is unconditional service: meeting people where they are, without judgment, condition, or expectation of reward, and responding compassionately to the human need before us. It means educating people so that knowledge can be shared, strengthening people so that they can strengthen others, creating relationships where isolation has taken hold, and developing communities in which people know that they are valued, needed, and capable of contributing.

The recent guidance of the Universal House of Justice has given this work renewed meaning. In its message of 28 November 2023, the House of Justice explained that the present series of Plans seeks the release of ever-increasing measures of the society-building power of the Faith. It specifically identifies greater coherence among community building, social action, and participation in the discourses of society as areas of focus. ([Bahá’í Faith][2])

At Riḍván 2025, the House of Justice offered an image that I find particularly meaningful:

Even as the tempest rages in the world, the havens that will shelter humanity are being built in countries, regions, and clusters.

The House describes a global process of learning that creates connections and dynamic relationships among families, neighbors, youth, and others who are ready to work together for human betterment. ([Bahá’í Faith][3])

Perhaps this is one way to understand the work before us.

A haven does not have to be a building. It can begin wherever people create relationships of trust and mutual support, share useful knowledge, reduce suffering, strengthen one another's capacity, welcome those who are isolated, and learn to serve together.

Building Healing Communities is not an official Bahá’í program. It is an initiative born from decades of experience in education, healing, and service that we hope can contribute, in its own modest way, to this larger process of learning and society building.

We cannot know all that humanity will face in the years ahead. But we can decide how we will respond.

We can create connection where there is isolation.
We can cultivate cooperation where there is division.
We can make useful knowledge accessible.
We can respond to suffering with service.
We can strengthen families and neighborhoods.
We can help people discover their own capacity to help others.

And together, we can build havens of hope.

One humanity. One community. One future.

Building Healing Communities

Official Universal House of Justice messages:

[28 November 2023 message](https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/the-universal-house-of-justice/messages/20231128_001/1?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

[Riḍván 2024 message](https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/the-universal-house-of-justice/messages/20240419_001/1?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

[Riḍván 2025 message](https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/the-universal-house-of-justice/messages/20250420_001/1?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

[1]: https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/the-universal-house-of-justice/messages/20240419_001/1?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Riḍván 2024 – To the Bahá’ís of the World | Bahá’í Reference Library"
[2]: https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/the-universal-house-of-justice/messages/20231128_001/1?utm_source=chatgpt.com "28 November 2023 - To the Bahá’ís of the World | Bahá’í Reference Library"
[3]: https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/the-universal-house-of-justice/messages/20250420_001/1?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Riḍván 2025 – To the Bahá’ís of the World | Bahá’í Reference Library"

08/23/2026

There are times in every life when the light seems to disappear.

We experience loss, disappointment, illness, grief, loneliness, failure, or simply the accumulated weight of living. We may look back upon our lives and grieve not only for what we have lost, but for what might have been. Yet healing asks us not to remain forever facing the darkness. It asks us to turn toward the possibility of light.

Facing East is a new song about that turning.

The symbolism is simple. East is where the sun rises. It represents awakening, renewal, hope, and another beginning. The night may have been long, but somewhere beyond the horizon morning is already coming.

One of the central thoughts in the song is:

"It is not how far we fall
That matters most
But rather how high we soar."

Healing does not require us to deny our wounds. We can acknowledge grief, regret, pain, and the parts of ourselves that have been lost along the way. But those experiences do not have to become the final definition of who we are.

Sometimes the deepest well brings up the sweetest water.

Sometimes the person who has known darkness develops the greatest compassion for another person struggling to find the light.

That is an important part of Building a Healing Community. Healing is not simply something that happens in a treatment room. It happens whenever one human being helps another rediscover hope. It happens through kindness, listening, touch, friendship, creativity, service, forgiveness, and the simple willingness to remain beside someone while they find their way home.

Perhaps we cannot erase every wound. Perhaps we cannot recover everything that has been lost. But we can choose which direction we face.

"Facing east, facing east,
Where the Sun greets the soul.
Facing east, facing east,
Where the wounded become whole.
If I fall into darkness,
If I wander in the night,
Let my heart remember sunrise,
Let my soul face the light."

Wherever you are today, and whatever night you may have traveled through, remember the sunrise.

Turn toward the light.

And when you can, help someone else turn toward it too.

That is how we build a healing community.

08/23/2026

“I was heedless, Thou didst awaken me. I had turned back from Thee, Thou didst graciously aid me to turn towards Thee.”
— Bahá’u’lláh

Some of my poems and songs arise from experiences in my life. Others were originally written as prayers. "Facing East" is both, and its central image reaches back more than fifty years to the evening when I first recognized the truth of the Bahá’í Faith.

My journey into the Faith began with a single fireside at the home of Carol Handy in St. Joseph, Michigan. I can still remember exactly where I was sitting when that moment of recognition came. I was seated on a stone bench in front of her fireplace.

And I was facing east.

Across the years, that simple detail became deeply symbolic to me. East is the direction of sunrise, the place where darkness first gives way to light. It became a metaphor for awakening, for turning toward God, and for the possibility that however dark our night may become, we can turn again toward the Light.

"Facing East" grew from an earlier poem that was, in many ways, a prayer about my own spiritual journey. It does not describe a straight or easy path. It speaks of innocence and awakening, but also of falling, grief, despair and the struggle to polish the heart until it might once again reflect the Divine.

One image in the song expresses this struggle:

"I am a beggar in the shadows
Kneeling on poisoned ground
Who has rubbed his hands raw
Trying to polish a heart of stone
To the luster of a mirror."

Yet despair is not where the song ends. The deeper message is one of spiritual renewal. Sometimes it is from the deepest well that we draw the sweetest water. Sometimes our failures teach us to turn toward God with a humility we might never otherwise have known.

"It is not how far we fall
That matters most
But rather how high we soar."

Near the culmination of the song, another prayer of Bahá’u’lláh becomes the plea of the soul:

“Create in me a pure heart, O my God, and renew a tranquil conscience within me, O my Hope!”

For me, "Facing East" is ultimately about turning and returning. It is about remembering that the sun continues to shine even when clouds conceal it from our sight. It is about discovering that our wounds, losses and failures need not have the final word.

More than half a century has passed since that fireside. Yet I can still see the stone bench, the fireplace, and the young man sitting there listening, not yet knowing how profoundly his life was about to change.

He was facing east.

And, by the grace of God, he was awakening.

"Facing east, facing east,
Where the Sun greets the soul.
Facing east, facing east,
Where the wounded become whole.
If I fall into darkness,
If I wander in the night,
Let my heart remember sunrise,
Let my soul face the light."

"Facing East."

08/19/2026

“Unmoor it, then, that it may sail upon the ocean of glory…”

— Bahá’u’lláh, *Tablet of the Holy Mariner*

I am pleased to share a new song, Sailing, created from the original writing of my dear friend Susan Lewis Wright.

Susan’s original song gave us the harbor, the sea, the wind, and the invitation to sail. As we reworked and expanded the lyrics, the imagery began to take on a deeper meaning for me: leaving the safety of the familiar shore, listening for the deeper call of the heart, and trusting the winds that carry us toward horizons we cannot yet see.

Leave the safety of the shore
Heed the deeper waters’ call
Let the wind fill the sails
And the ocean fill your heart.

The imagery brings to mind Bahá’u’lláh’s Tablet of the Holy Mariner, with its ark, its ancient sea, its sacred shore, and its extraordinary invitation to sail upon the “ocean of glory.”

Perhaps much of the spiritual life is like sailing. We cannot always see what lies beyond the horizon. We raise the sails, trust the wind, leave behind what has held us to the shore, and continue the journey.

The song eventually becomes a shared voyage:

We'll build a boat
That will carry me and you.

And finally:

Out beyond the harbor
Out beneath the open sky
Where the wind will lift us higher
And our dreams learn to fly.

My heartfelt thanks to Susan Lewis Wright for the original song, its beautiful imagery, and the creative foundation from which this new version grew. It has been a joy and a privilege to continue our musical collaboration.

Sailing
Original song and lyrics by Susan Lewis Wright
Reworked, arranged, and produced in collaboration with Gregory T. Lawton

08/14/2026

“O CHILDREN OF DUST! Tell the rich of the midnight sighing of the poor, lest heedlessness lead them into the path of destruction, and deprive them of the Tree of Wealth.”

Bahá’u’lláh, The Hidden Words, Persian no. 49 ([Bahá’í Faith][1])

These words of Bahá’u’lláh gave both the language and much of the spiritual inspiration for my photography book, Children of Dust: Midnight Sighing of the Poor.

I first began this photographic project many years ago, walking the streets of Grand Rapids, Chicago, and St. Louis and photographing homelessness, poverty, abandoned buildings, wounded neighborhoods, and the often startling contrast between great wealth and human deprivation. The newly expanded Second Edition returns to those photographs with the perspective that comes from the passing of time.

Looking at these images again, I see more than a record of poverty. I see signs of something larger: the erosion of community, the deterioration of our cities, the loneliness and alienation of modern life, and the consequences that follow when a society becomes accustomed to walking past suffering.

Bahá’u’lláh also writes:

“O YE RICH ONES ON EARTH! The poor in your midst are My trust; guard ye My trust, and be not intent only on your own ease.”

Bahá’u’lláh, The Hidden Words, Persian no. 54 ([Bahá’í Faith][2])

That word, trust, has always struck me deeply. The poor are not strangers to be avoided, statistics to be counted, or inconvenient reminders of social problems we would rather not see. They are entrusted to the human family.

The Second Edition of Children of Dust: Midnight Sighing of the Poor expands the original photographic work with carefully selected passages on poverty, justice, compassion, the decline of cities, moral responsibility, and the condition of society. Some are from the Bahá’í Writings, while others come from scripture, poets, philosophers, historians, and voices of social conscience.

The photographs ask us simply to look.

To look at the faces.

To look at the streets.

To look at what we have built and what we have abandoned.

And perhaps, finally, to look at ourselves.

Children of Dust: Midnight Sighing of the Poor, Second Edition

Photography and compilation by Gregory T. Lawton

Children of Dust: Midnight Sighing of the Poor, Second Edition is a documentary and contemplative photography book exploring homelessness, poverty, urban decay, and social decline through photographs

08/13/2026

THERE IS A CRY!

Today I completed a new song and music video, "There Is a Cry". Sung in a deep male baritone, almost as a mantra or sacred chant, it was inspired by a poem I wrote many years ago about the extraordinary courage and suffering of the early Bábís of Persia.

"Mothers tell your children this story,
That wherever the People of Glory assemble,
There is a cry that will make men tremble."

In nineteenth-century Persia, the followers of the Báb endured terrible persecution. Influential members of the Islamic clergy denounced them as heretics and helped inflame opposition that erupted into mob violence, siege and massacre. Bábís were dispossessed, imprisoned, starved, tortured and killed. At Shaykh Tabarsí, Nayríz and Zanján, entire communities came under attack. The Báb Himself was executed by firing squad in Tabríz in 1850.

During the siege of Zanján, the Báb instructed His followers to repeat nineteen times each night five invocations:

"God the Great,
God the Most Great,
God the Most Beauteous,
God the Most Glorious,
God the Most Pure."

According to The Dawn-Breakers, when the defenders raised these words together for the first time, their tremendous cry awakened the opposing forces, who abandoned their camp in terror and sought shelter. A considerable number of the inhabitants of Zanján also fled panic-stricken to neighboring villages. Some believed the sound heralded the Day of Judgment.

That extraordinary historical moment lies at the heart of this song.

"Scatter then upon the winds,
And carry this Gospel to the cities of men,
That the hater may become thy trusted friend."

The song ultimately carries us beyond persecution and suffering:

"The Beloved awaits you behind the veil,
With a love no man has beheld,
That from this fire…
to His heart,
your heart may meld."

This history is not an indictment of Islam or Muslims. The Bábís themselves arose from an Islamic society and tradition. Rather, their story is a warning of what can happen when religious authority, political power, fear and fanaticism become joined together and directed against those whose beliefs are different.

There Is a Cry remembers those who suffered and died, but it is ultimately about something persecution could not destroy: faith, courage, transformation, and a cry that continued long after the voices that first raised it had been silenced.