This document introduces a booklet of poems written by the author over 30 years as an international pioneer in Australia from Canada. It discusses the author's experience with bipolar disorder in the late 1970s and receiving prayers and support from the Universal House of Justice. It provides context for the poems in the booklet, which celebrate 30 years of pioneering in Australia from 1971 to 2001, as well as recent developments in the Baha'i Faith. The document outlines the author's extensive body of poetic work exploring their life, the Cause, and the emerging global civilization, written with the goal of creating a historical record of this time period.

1. INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOKLET
'THIRTY YEARS OF INTERNATIONAL PIONEERING'
In the sixteen months before the opening of the Seven Year Plan(1979 to 1986), I
experienced a recurrence, a debilitating manifestation, of my bi-polar tendencies. At
the time I had been an international pioneer to Australia from Canada for seven years.
In March 1979 I wrote to the Universal House of Justice requesting their prayers.
About a year after receiving their letter informing me of their prayers I was finally
treated for this disabling illness.
And so in the first two years of the Seven Year Plan I received the assurances of the
House of Justice, their prayers for my 'serene happiness' and eventual healing of my
illness. Sixteen months later, in May 1980, I wrote what was to become the first of a
series of thousands of poems of which those contained in this booklet are but a few.
Writing poetry was to become an important, a major, source of whatever serene
happiness I was to achieve.
My poetry from 1980 to 1995 I now see as my juvenilia, an early developmental stage
of fifteen years, a warm-up period. I have divided this stage into three sub-stages
named after three phases of the construction of the Shrine of the Bab: The Tomb's
Chambers(August 1980 to April 1987), The Arcade(May 1988 to August 1992) and
The Golden Dome(September 1992 to June1995). This slow and gradual
developmental phase led to what I now see as a more mature poetry which, for
convenvience as much as anything, I see as beginning in July 1995. I have called
these last six years(July 1995 to July 2001) The Terraces.
There are now some 46 booklets of poetry, of between five and six thousand poems
and two to three million words in the entire opus. In February of 1997 I sent to you a
booklet of poetry entitled Canada's Glorious Mission Overseas. I also sent a
booklet of poetry to you in April 2001: Fifty Years From F.O.G. Somehow it was
misplaced and for that reason I forward to you this third booklet. This third booklet,
Thirty Years of Pioneering, celebrates thirty years of my international pioneering
here in Australia from Canada(1971-2001). It also celebrates the opening of the
terraces, the Arc Project, in May of this year and the beginning of the Five Year
Plan(2001-2006), the first Plan of this new millennium.
These three booklets could be seen as a report to you written during the 26th
to 30th
years of my pioneering in Australia from Canada. I have also sent two different
booklets of poetry to the NSA of the Baha'is of Canada during this same period, partly
to serve as a report to them. There are now an additional 42 booklets in the Baha'i
World Centre Library sent from 1992 to 2000. Together, all these volumes serve as a
poetic expression of nearly forty years of service and experience in the Cause. They
may be useful one day as an interesting historical record for a period which, if one
draws on the Guardian's ten stage model of history, covers the last years of the ninth
and the early decades of the tenth stages of history.
Generally, what I try to do in my poetry is to play with three interrelated themes or
topics: my own life, the life of the Cause and the experience of society, the global
civilization that is emerging and its history and future. I have found poetry to be more
suitable to my literary aims and goals than essays, novels, or indeed other genres of

2. written expression, although I have an extensive personal archive of these other forms
and one day they may be useful as historical documents that speak of our time and
age.
With six months gone in this the Fifth Epoch I send to you another expression of the
spirit of that exaltation with which the Universal House of Justice opened the Fifth
Epoch. May your services to the Cause in these opening years of this new millennium
be rewarded with His abundant blessings and may we all continue to observe this
Faith going from strength to strength in the years ahead. I hope, too, as I point out in
the introduction to that first booklet of poetry I sent to the NSA of the Baha'is of
Australia in 1997, that future generations of international pioneers,1
generations that
will see many more individuals come to Australia's shores, will enjoy the richness of
experience this pioneer has enjoyed. and come to win, as Shoghi Effendi encouraged
Australian Baha'is back in 1954, "a still greater measure of fame in the service"2
of the
Cause.
1
I have defined a generation as 25 years and the four generations thus far are: 1921-
1946, 1946-1971, 1971-1996 and 1996-2021.
2
Shoghi Effendi in Letters from the Guardian to Australia and New Zealand:
1923-1957, NSA of the Baha'is of Australia, 1970, p.122.
Ron Price
12 July 2001