Cary Enoch Reinstein
Fort Valley, Georgia
Baha'i since 1963

If I hadn’t offered a pretty girl a can of beer at a 1963 Fourth of July party in the Berkeley Hills of northern California, I probably wouldn’t have come across the Baha'i Faith quite so soon.

 

Cary Enoch ReinsteinHer name was Sandra. She stood out because she was the only one not drinking alcohol. I asked her why. She said she was a Baha'i, and Baha’is aren’t permitted to drink. She later told me she was a fifth-generation Baha’i raised in Japan, where her mother was on the National Spiritual Assembly.

Sandra’s great-great-grandmother attended Abdul-Baha’s talk at Stanford University in 1912, where He presented her with a Baha’i ring of orange jade and gold. Sandra was wearing that ring when I met her.

I asked her what Baha'i meant. Being raised Jewish, it sounded to me like the name of a Jewish organization – B’nai B’rith. As she was explaining the Baha'i Faith, I put down my just-opened beer can and haven’t picked one up since.

Hours later we walked to the Berkeley Rose Garden, a stunningly beautiful hanging garden carved out of a steep hill. As we stood under a redwood arch, Sandra told me more about the Baha'i Faith.

We watched the sun rise and then parted -- but not before I asked her out on a date. She accepted, and I went to her house that afternoon. When I got there, I told Sandra I wanted to believe in God and only needed incontrovertible proof.

I had grown up in a kosher but otherwise nonreligious Jewish immigrant family. I had been spiritually seeking since my teen years. I was intuitively sure there was such a thing as the human soul.

Sandra said I had to pray, and I told her I had no idea how to do that. So she read the prayer that begins, "Create in me a pure heart, O my God, and renew a tranquil conscience within me, O my Hope! Through the spirit of power confirm Thou me in Thy Cause, O my Best-Beloved, and by the light of Thy glory reveal unto me Thy path.”

While she was praying, I closed my eyes and visualized a golden eagle with outspread wings and heavy cleansing rain coming at me from all directions. Sandra showed me the Hidden Words, and I read the first page. At that point I spontaneously declared my belief in the Baha’i Faith, overwhelmed by the beauty and authority of Baha’u'llah’s words.

This was the proof I needed that God existed and that He had a new Messenger. I could not conceive how anyone could write words of such power and authority without direct revelation from the Creator. I have never had a single doubt since. My grown sons, Nicholas and Benjamin, have followed in my path. Both are Baha’is.

When Sandra and I met again in Seattle 30 years later, she gave me the same prayer book she had read from the day I decided to become a Baha’i. She had saved it all those years for me. There are now seven generations of Baha’is in Sandra’s family.

My becoming a Baha’i resulted from one rejected can of beer. Who could have imagined the transformative power that would follow.