We woke to a day on which my daughter, Meadow, would say 'The fairies have come out to play." Hoar frost on all the trees, and misty grey everywhere. It was a lazy day for me. I read part of a romance novel, dozed off and then got up to take my dog, Sushi, for a good long walk. I had also trimmed Sushi's eyebrows and did a little operation on her ingrown toenail. I knew her paw was bothering her but didn't figure out that I could fix it without taking her to the vet until today. After the walk, I made a healthy supper, emphasis on the vegetables, with a little Honduran meat dish as a treat for my husband.

I'm Sylvia Nablo de Vasquez. I was born in Hull, Quebec, on March 2, 1970. I speak only very little French as we moved to Saskatchewan when I was four, and then down to Belize, Central America when I was eight. Over then next 28 years I've traveled back and forth between Canada and Belize, staying mostly in Belize. Now I'm back in Canada, living in a tiny hamlet in Northern Alberta. I am married to Jovani Vasquez of Honduras, and we have three delightful daughters, Aislinn, Jessamine and Meadow, ages 13, 10 and 7 respectively. My parents, Ron and Edna Nablo, also live with us. After we moved down to Belize they remained there for all but three years, until recently.

We are all members of the Baha'i Faith. My dear friend, David Moody, who suggested I start this blog, suggested that I offer this letter to anyone who wonders why I am a Baha'i:

16"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. John 3:15-17

Funny how one can be so familiar with a passage, that it becomes something we take for granted, along with the understanding that usually goes with it. I honestly didn't think I would have an answer to your question any time soon. After all, it was fairly specific - what about my faith could I not live without. And remembering this is a heart question, not a head question. And wanting to be totally honest about it, not frame an answer intended to convince you, since it is a question about me, and knowing that there are many things about my faith that I love, but that being a specific one - what could I not live without. There are lots of things that excite me, motivate me, help me, things for which I am grateful, but what could I not live without? Throughout the day my mind wandered back to it periodically. The answer came to me rather suddenly, and it was a little more literal than I expected - "The Promise of World Peace". It can be found here: http://info.bahai.org/article-1-7-2-1.html. It is a statement put out by the Universal House of Justice in 1985, addressed to the Peoples of the World. Without the understanding and vision that this statement offers me, combined with many of Shoghi Effendi's writings explaining what world peace will look like and how we will achieve it, I expect, given my tendencies to depression, my compassion toward all the peoples of the world and our suffering, I would likely, quite literally, be suicidal. If my own salvation and inner peace was all I had to live for, I'd probably decide to take a short cut out of this world and let God help me through the sin of having taken my own life. There's some brutal honesty for you.

It goes a bit further than that, though. I had never thought about it quite in this context before, but that passage from John is very limited if we understand it to mean that Jesus gave His life only for personal salvation. He didn't, He gave it to "save the world through him". Finding everlasting spiritual life is an individual thing. The world is a collective, and His sacrifice would be wasted if the world is not saved through the creation of His Kingdom on earth. Why? Because the two thousand years and ever-increasing personal suffering in the world is pointless if Christ didn't come to eventually end that suffering. I have to believe there is a better future than the agony and personal hell through which the world is going through right now would suggest. Being satisfied that I and a few other Christians are saved spiritually is small recompense for enduring the widespread suffering of innocents in the world, regardless of Faith. Yes, the purpose of the suffering is to bring the world closer to God. But so that we all come to believe in Jesus? No. So that His promised Kingdom can find reality in the world, literally and spiritually.

When 9/11 happened, I stood watching the second airplane fly into the second tower and knew that, if my children had not already been born, I would not choose to have children. I had my children already though, so I have had to find something that gave me purpose and hope for their future, and my grandchildren's future, and the future of all the children of the world. A hope that they remain faithful to Christ so that they might find eternal life, while ardent, would not have been enough for me to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Baha'u'llah, may my entire life be a sacrifice to Him, has given me the understanding of why we must endure hell on earth, for now. There is a purpose to it. Baha'u'llah explains it. Shoghi Effendi explains it. The Universal House of Justice, in letters to the Baha'is of the world every year, explains it. The Promise of World Peace explains it. We are undergoing the growth pains of a world on the threshold of maturity. It will get worse before it gets better. But it WILL get better. And if I didn't have that understanding and hope to cling to, with a clear idea of why it has to happen before it does get better, and something concrete that I can do to help the process along, well, I don't think I could live.

I was not going to take David's suggestion and share this letter with anyone else. It was from me to him, a very dear, close friend, but if I'm going to be blogging my life out to the universe, I might as well be honest about who I am and the purpose of my life. The rest can come later.