“GO HOME!” I heard shouted by a biker as he sped past. I was bewildered. I was north of Chicago, visiting the continental Bahá’í House of Worship for North America in Wilmette, Illinois. Located on a ridge of land beside Lake Michigan, it can be seen from some distance. With its ribbed dome rising over the tree tops, it is a distinctive feature of the North Shore. It is a unique structure which attracts visitors from all over the world. All are welcome.
It is my spiritual home and has been for over half a century. I was not raised Bahá’í, no one is automatically Bahá’í. That is a choice each person must make for themselves. It was my choice as a young man out of high school on my own. I had been raised in a conventional Christian church in an unconventional family. My father’s mother was devout, so much so that, living on the farm next to ours, she began to come to our place every Sunday morning as soon as I was old enough to go, and would take me to Sunday School, then the church service afterwards. I was too young to put on my own pants, Dad had to hold them for me to step into, so I may have been just two or three. The sermons were long and boring, so Granma entertained me with quiet games. I eventually learned to sit still. As more children came into the family, they were added in the car too. Sunday mornings were the only times our parents had alone.
Granma taught Sunday School while we attended our classes. She had been a founding member of the church. Actually, I should say, her husband, son and brothers had been founding members, women were not allowed to vote or serve on the church board. Granma was one of the most active members of that church, yet she regretted that never once in her ninety-seven years of life had she been elected to head any of the many organizations or committees she belonged to there. She belonged to lots of community neighborhood organizations and had been elected president of them all at one time or another, more often than once, but not at her church.
Even though I was recruited for the ministry, I had my own reasons for finding another spiritual home. I never accepted the idea that everyone other than members of that church were going to Hell. I always thought God was bigger than that. Bahá’í scriptures teach that the Creator of the Universe (God) has provided Messengers/Saviors to all peoples, so none is left out. No one is condemned due to geography or time of birth. When I found the Bahá’í Faith, I embraced it immediately.
The Bahá’í Faith is as different from the belief system of that church, as the church building is from a Bahá’í House of Worship. For one thing, in a Bahá’í House of Worship, no preaching or weddings or funerals are undertaken. There is nothing in the edifice to separate people: no images, items or symbols – there are none at all. In this one, but not all, there are some brief quotations from Bahá’í scriptures around the top of the walls, in English because that is the dominant language in North America. No rituals or ceremonies are performed in this house of worship, because Bahá’ís have none to perform. With none of that, there is no altar to perform in front of. Likewise, there is no pulpit for preaching, because preaching is forbidden, as is collection of money. With no rituals, ceremonies or preaching, there is no clergy, no priest to perform these actions. There are brief worship services consisting of readings from the world’s religious scriptures, not just Bahá’í. There is no commentary on the scripture. The purpose of the building is for meditation and prayer. Though it is five hundred miles from my home, I try to go once a year just to keep in touch. There are few of them around the world because more effort, and money, has gone into providing schools in places where governments can’t. There are close to a thousand of them.
Not only is the building open to the public, but Bahá’ís consider each House of Worship they build as a gift to mankind. These structures are places where people can take a break from the world around them and pray and meditate. Anyone may enter as long as they are quietly respectful of others. It is a peaceful, quiet place for meditation and prayer for each soul.
Bahá’ís have erected Houses of Worship on each continent and more are being built. All are similar with no distractions for the worshiper, yet each is very different regarding the style of its construction. Some, in tropical climates, are open to the air. All reflect in some way the culture in which they are built. The one in New Delhi, India is in the form of a lotus blossom, often referred to as the Lotus Temple, and has been used by others to represent the entire country.
Gardens surround the nine-sided buildings (they all have nine sides, in a circular shape, that is the major architectural requirement). The gardens serve as a transition space before entering for worship. In Wilmette, a circling bench is a feature of each of the nine gardens. One does not have to go inside to pray. Each garden has a fountain in a pool to help mask surrounding noises, but they cannot obscure them all. Some of these gardens are next to a major street that nearly encircles the structure. I was in one of those gardens when a motorcycle passed by and words were shouted into the air.
“BAHÁ’ÍS GO HOME!”
The biker had rapidly passed before I could process the words. They were not words I had expected to hear. I had actually never heard them before in my presence. Then I reflected.
‘Yes, in a few days I’ll be going home, back to Kansas, but I’m sure that’s not what he meant. I could conceivably ‘go home’ to the home of my ancestors. Several came from Germany, some came from Ireland, but one of those was really Scottish, yet there are others. But part of me IS home! My Native American ancestry IS home!’
That led to a new train of thought.
‘You sir, are more likely the invader. My Native people have been here since some last ice age. Your people may well have come since then; why don’t YOU go ‘home?’
Of course, I couldn’t say any of it, and what would have been the point if I had?
Is this a slight bit of the rejection my German ancestors felt when they settled in the part of Kansas where I grew up and now live, when they tried to build a new life here in the 1860s? They were resented because they tried to make a living by the way they knew from home – making apple cider. They made two kinds: hard and soft. It was the hard cider that was objectionable, associated with drunkeness and unseemly behavior. I don’t know what all else.
After a century here, my family is well respected here (someone must have liked the cider), so this rejection was a bit startling and slightly amusing. He drove on past with no more than venting whatever he needed to express.
I thought what an impossibility it is to send people “home” when our only true “home” is planet Earth – and we are ALL home, wherever on Earth we happen to live. And, some people have little choice where that may be.
The shouter undoubtedly assumed that members of the Bahá’í Faith had come to this country from somewhere else, when that’s only partially true. The first Bahá’ís in America were born here before they knew of the religion. In fact, most Bahá’ís at this time in every country are people who were born there and learned about the religion, then adopted it as adults. The shouter was unaware that one is not born a Bahá’í. A person can be born into a Bahá’í family, with Bahá’í parents, but to be a member of the Bahá’í community must be a conscious choice sometime later in life, usually after age fifteen. One can’t make that decision for anyone else. Parents can’t make that decision for their children.
The Bahá’í Faith is based on the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh, a member of nineteenth century Persian aristocracy who spent the last forty years of His life as an exile and prisoner due to His teaching such things as there being a Messenger of God after Muhammad, the equality of women and men, and that the human race is one race. He gained nothing for His efforts. He lost all of his possessions and all worldly status. His entire family were prisoners and two sons died under those conditions. He gained nothing and lost everything, but He did not give up.
Today, millions of people around the planet read and study His words and use them to improve their lives, their families and their communities. They are demonstrating His teachings that: “The earth is one country, and mankind its citizens.” The human race is at “home” on planet Earth. We are ALL home; we ALL belong HERE, on Earth!
Elisabetta Bonaparte is an Italian poet, writer, lawyer and teacher. Her passion for poetry has materialized in a significant literary production, characterized by a profound sensitivity to existential and natural themes and by a refined, intimate and meditative language, rich in symbolism and metaphors. Elisabetta Bonaparte has participated in national and international literary competitions, obtaining First Prizes, Medals, Plaques, Special Prizes, as well as numerous other literary awards. Her compositions, translated into several languages have been selected and included in literary anthologies and published in national and international specialized journals, both in print and online, in many countries.
GRACIELA NOEMI VILLAVERDE is a writer and poet from Concepción del Uruguay (Entre Rios) Argentina, based in Buenos Aires She graduated in letters and is the author of seven books of poetry, awarded several times worldwide. She works as the World Manager of Educational and Social Projects of the Hispanic World Union of Writers and is the UHE World Honorary President of the same institution Activa de la Sade, Argentine Society of Writers. She is the Commissioner of Honor in the executive cabinet IN THE EDUCATIONAL AND SOCIAL RELATIONS DIVISION, of the UNACCC SOUTH AMERICA ARGENTINA CHAPTER.
Caleb Levin, Odin Vega, Lyla Randall in Fun Home; directed by Logan Ellis; photo by Marc J Franklin
Serious Playtime at Huntington Theater’s “Fun Home” November 14 – December 14, 2025
A serious yet playful reimagining of parental memory through surreal childhood dreams conflating with the imposition of adult reality
The winner of five Tony Awards including Best Musical, Fun Home is a beloved, groundbreaking, and soulful story of conceiving your parents by way of adult point of views. Constructed from Alison Bechdel’s best-selling graphic memoir, the musical unearths Alison through childhood, college, and adulthood as she decrypts her coming-out story, and her compounded relationship with an astute, labile, and closeted father. How have the mysteries of her father’s life shaped her own discernment of love and integration of her lesbian identity? With a lofty score by Jeanine Tesori and a terse, emotionally charged book by Lisa Kron, Fun Home is a mesmerizing, must-see theatrical experience, directed by Logan Ellis.
Among the multifarious thematic spirits of the unfeigned theatrical biographical missive ‘Fun Home’ (inspired by the popular comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For), which is a play on words meaning ‘Funeral Home’, is a rip roaring song and dance journey into a childhood past to come out soaring into the greater understanding of present day adulthood. It explores how we perceive our parents from our childhood perspectives and how we come to understand them better through adult introspection. Through the plays’ use of the musical genre, it was able to achieve magical dreamlike moments that may have otherwise proved to be a challenge. The main characters’ understanding of her mysterious complex and brilliant father left me feeling a need to understand his obscure sense of aloofness myself. His perhaps deliberately vague characterization left me with a queer desire to learn more about his enigma, much like the way some of us feel about our own fathers.
Amidst all the adult complexities of parental woes and domestic tensions, growing up, navigating college life while discovering her budding sexuality, the main characters constant presence on stage to explain in a literal sense the multitudinal stages of her life effectively kept the audience in on her private thoughts and youthful perspectives that kept spectators engaged and invested. I, for one, was really rooting for her and symbolically rooting for my own childhood self remembering the mysteries of my own parents and homelife. “Fun Home” alleviated the tense moments of the production with a hot handyman in tight seventies short shorts, awkward first dates and sexual encounters that conceivably made some uncomfortable, albeit in a “fun” sexy way.
This play speaks to the phenomena of children wanting to understand their parents better through childhood dreamlike imaginations, wishful thinking and adult realistic reflections conflating to give us a serious study of childhood understanding of adult relationships but in a “fun” way; thus consequently that’s a five out of five stars for me!
