Bahá'í Gardens

Today, I encountered something extremely frightening. It appears to be an open-minded, sensible, and very reasonable religion. It is the Bahá’í faith. They are most renown for growing fabulous gardens that remind me more than a little of what the Hanging Gardens of Babylon must have been like.

This particular garden was nestled on the slope of Haifa, a city that climbs up along a mountain in Israel. From the very bottom, you can see the swirls and symmetrical paths of 700 stairs, gravel paths, and 18 levels of hedges, green plants, and flowers. Stairs with running water, fountains, and little decorative statuettes that served no symbolic purposes but only existed to make it look pretty.

Did you hear me? A religion that has statues just because they look pretty! Wow. No pretentious symbols or ominous portents of dooooom. Just.. pretty stuff.

My first impression was, “I want to go there!” And the gardens are open to everyone, as long as they phone ahead and book a tour. The tours, incidentally, are completely free. They only ask that you dress modestly (no cleavage, no sleeveless shirts, no miniskirts, etc), behave yourself, don’t litter, and mute your cell phones as is appropriate for a religious location.

The guided tour was in English, but the sweet-looking, slightly quiet tour guide spoke Hebrew as well. She wore a touristy floppy panama hat, and a flowery outfit which while flattering fell under the category of “modest dress”. She guided the confused tourist-snake of which I was a part of down the 700 stairs, answering questions and enlightening us on the origins of the garden. But she made no attempt to bombard us with information about the religion or convert us. In fact, she only gave us the bare basics until people started to ask about more details.

Wow. A religion that doesn’t actively try to convert you? What is this!?

Apparently they are a monotheistic religion that accepts the prophets of many other religions (like Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad), believes in equality and education for all (boys AND girls), and accept science alongside faith. They have Persian and Ottoman origins, a history of persecution (especially in Iran), and accept no donations from outside their own believers.

WTF? An open-minded religion that doesn’t grovel for money?

Don’t get me wrong. Apparently they expect all believers to donate $1 / day all year… which is incredibly sensible when you compare it to certain other crazy relitions. All people who work at the gardens are volunteers, and their leaders consist of democratically elected individuals that work together as two bodies of councils.. Or something like that.

DEMOCRATIC religion?! That doesn’t suck all your money? WHAT?? Scary!!!

All the workers at the garden are volunteers. The water is recycled whenever possible, all pesticides used are biological, and even the plants are chosen together with experts from the University of Haifa to be drought-resistant.

An environmentally aware religion (that doesn’t take it over the top)?!

Ok. I like it. I have to find out more. And at the same time I am prepared to be very disappointed, and remain slightly creeped out. No, I’m not going to convert - I’m quite happy being the atheist I am, but I have to find out if it’s really what it seems to be or super-evil disguised behind a naive, innocent-looking surface.

Note to self: I really have to get a photo of the gardens at night - they look amazing.