Baha’is and Blue Men

Wednesday was an interesting day with a couple of activities that allowed us to see different parts of the city.

Our first adventure of the day took us to the very last stop on the purple line of the L’train to the Linden Avenue station. Our mission was to see the Baha’i temple.

This may not be the top of many to-do lists for visitors to Chicago, but for us, it was definitely a must-see! Our main reason for wanting to visit was that my brother works for the architecture firm that designed the new welcome center (One World Architecture), and he even had a hand in the project!

Unfortunately, the welcome center is not quite finished, so we were not able to see the inside just yet (we found out too late that my brother could have arranged for someone to meet us there and give us a tour of its progress. Oh well, I guess we just need to plan a return trip!). However, it should be completed soon, and from what we could tell, it looks much better than the current welcome center (located in the basement of the temple, and a bit dark and musty).

While we were there, we also learned a lot about the Baha’i faith, which I found really interesting. The gist I got was that the Baha’i are really focused on peace and unity, and are a very inclusive religion. They recognize Moses, Abraham, Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, Krishna, and Zoroaster all as prophets of God with Bahá’u’lláh (the founder of the Baha’i faith) as the most recent prophet. I love how it seems they see religion as a unifying concept across the world, rather as something to divide us. This unification is very evident in the architecture of the temple. One example is the columns around the outside of the temple are decorated with important symbols from each religion, including the cross, Star of David, the Islamic star and crescent, and the Buddhist/Hindu swastika (not to be confused with the Nazi swastika, which points the other way and means something totally different!).

After a very peaceful morning, we had a much more lively afternoon planned with tickets to a matinee performance by the Blue Man Group at Briar Street Theater! The show was fun and impressive. It is definitely family friendly, although it can be a bit loud at some points, and some younger children could potentially find the Blue Men scary. Also, there are various lighting effects at different points of the show, including strobe lights.

And now to let the teacher geek in me out again, I can see this as a great learning experience if teaching about how a story can be told without dialogue. It could hit some of the drama/humanities standards for elementary definitely, and I’m sure for middle and high school as well. It sure would be a fun field trip, if your school could find a way to fund it! We did see some groups in attendance, and they had a blast!

But the most memorable moment? We were getting ready to leave when I spotted a painting in the lobby that reminded me of an Edward Hopper, but with Blue Men in it. I was showing it to my mom, and turned around just in time to say, “Oh look! There’s a real Blue Man behind you!” After the show, you can get photos with the Blue Men, which I did! The slightly awkward part is they still stay in character, so they won’t talk to you at all, but I think it’s better that way!

Oh, and yes, as an Arrested Development fan, I did continuously think of Tobias’s attempts to become a part of the Blue Man Group.