Glenn Franco Simmons: The Opinionater

Excerpt © Bahá’í International Community. Used with permission. Images courtesy of NASA.

In 2007, a column I penned for a daily newspaper I co-founded brought much mockery and contempt for my views. I was made fun of in an acid-tongued response: “Glenn Franco Simmons: The Opinionator.”

It’s a badge I proudly wear, despite being crowned with a dunce cap by the ever-so-clever anonymous blogger. Yeah, a snarky and condescending sort who hides behind a cowardly veil, too afraid to show herself to the world but all too willing to succumb to the infamy of anonymity. It’s so easy to criticize hidden beneath the rocks like a venomous viper; it’s quite another to make a case for something you believe in while knowing you will be ridiculed beyond belief.

My column was about a tragic police shooting of an armed woman. Officers said they were forced to use lethal force, which I believed.

If I recall correctly (my newspaper’s archives for this column cannot be found in the Wayback Machine and my former website is no long active), I wrote about the shooting as a symptom of the spiritual disconnect in America. The woman was mentally ill and had abused drugs in the past. I asked what could make society so lose touch that such tragedies occurred.

For my views concerning a lack of spirituality, a lack of prayer and a turning away from God in American society, I was mocked as a self-aggrandized editor. Cowardly and malicious comments followed in the depressed punditry that is so common on the alcohol-, marijuana- and meth-fueled North Coast of California, although I remember one person saying the column was well-written.

My intent was not to be pompous. As the managing editor who co-founded the daily newspaper where I worked, it was my job to write about current events in the community ~ a job I had been doing for many years at several local newspapers.

Recently, I came across a brief analysis regarding a lack of spirituality that was written many decades ago by Shoghi Effendi, Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith. It reminded me of that column penned in 2007. Had I known of it at the time, I would have referred to Shoghi Effendi’s unparalleled mastery of the English language.

“The chief reason for the evils now rampant in society is the lack of spirituality,” Shoghi Effendi wrote. “The materialistic civilization of our age has so much absorbed the energy and interest of mankind that people in general do no longer feel the necessity of raising themselves above the forces and conditions of their daily material existence. There is not sufficient demand for things that we call spiritual to differentiate them from the needs and requirements of our physical existence.

“The universal crisis affecting mankind is, therefore, essentially spiritual in its causes. The spirit of the age, taken on the whole, is irreligious. Man’s outlook on life is too crude and materialistic to enable him to elevate himself into the higher realms of the spirit.

“It is this condition, so sadly morbid, into which society has fallen, that religion seeks to improve and transform. For the core of religious faith is that mystic feeling which unites Man with God. This state of spiritual communion can be brought about and maintained by means of meditation and prayer. And this is the reason why Bahá’u’lláh has so much stressed the importance of worship. It is not sufficient for a believer merely to accept and observe the teachings. He should, in addition, cultivate the sense of spirituality which he can acquire chiefly by means of prayer. The Bahá’í Faith, like all other Divine Religions, is thus fundamentally mystic in character. Its chief goal is the development of the individual and society, through the acquisition of spiritual virtues and powers. It is the soul of man which has first to be fed. And this spiritual nourishment prayer can best provide. …”

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