The new Councils, serving, in most cases, a somewhat more limited number of clusters will thus be in a better position to work more closely with the friends laboring at the grassroots.
The U.S. Baha'i National Assembly announced an expansion in the number of regional councils, citing the reason above. This fits so closely my personal experience.
Big picture is good, but the work is at the grassroots. In my Baha'i community the teaching is now so robust, I cannot keep up with it. And so I focus on the area I have carved out, with the encouragement of the Area Teaching Committee, my social space. Just today I learn my son has been tapped to animate a junior youth group at the Swan Creek Apartments on the Eastside. Didn't know that. He didn't tell me. That's the way it is today. So much happening I can't possibly intimately assimilate it all as I felt I once did.
Baha'i Views, the family of blogs that have been a focus of my energy since January of 2006, has undergone a slow transformation from a vehicle looking broadly at the world to a blog reflecting primarily the activities within my personal space, including the social space I have adopted within which to expand the core activities. It has, too, become more focused at the grassroots. -gw
Cooking food outside can be an exquisite pleasure, Who needs McDonald's when you've got this set up. -gw
One day, in the course of one of His riding excursions into the country, Bahá’u’lláh, accompanied by His companions, saw, seated by Me roadside, a lonely youth. His hair was dishevelled, and he wore the dress of a dervish. By the side of a brook he had kindled a fire, and was cooking his food and eating it.
Those familiar with the Baha'i-inspired Junior Youth Spiritual Empowerment Program know about its use of math story problems that illustrate the principle of justice. Did you also know that mathematics is a focus of Head Start and even Early Head Start (for kids birth to 3). Here our dear presenter to the Peninsulas Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation group can hardly hold his enthusiasm describing a challenge for kids. Math isn't a problem if that problem is presented to a group of children to solve and pizza is a part of it. -gw
"Where's the moon?" Bonita said at dusk. Just as we were ready to go to the tent, after having watched the fire forever, there it was. The biggest moon of the year. Coming up over the rise behind the van. -gw
THE acts of Him Whom God shall make manifest are like unto the sun, while the works of men, provided they conform to the good-pleasure of God, resemble the stars or the moon…
With help, Matt & Christy are excellent animators, Christy went to the Dollar Store and bought a poster to keep attendance from week to week. She also got some items for a treasure box. There were nine junior youth there Friday at 5 p.m. NINE! -gw
Everybody could use a here today dog. Christy and Lisa walk a dog that chose to hang around for a while, until its owners showed up and said, "Hey, that's our dog." -gw
‘Abdu’l-Bahá said: “Even the most developed dog has not the immortal soul of the man; yet thedog is perfect in its own place. You do not quarrel with a rose-tree because it cannot sing!”
So Bonita is out on the neighbors porch for a while after we got back from the garden this evening. I hear animated discussion. Everybody has a story of being burglarized to share. We're not alone. Happens in every neighborhood. -gw
Divine civilization, however, so traineth every member of society that no one, with the exception of a negligible few, will undertake to commit a crime. There is thus a great difference between the prevention of crime through measures that are violent and retaliatory, and so training the people, and enlightening them, and spiritualizing them, that without any fear of punishment or vengeance to come, they will shun all criminal acts. They will, indeed, look upon the very commission of a crime as a great disgrace and in itself the harshest of punishments. They will become enamoured of human perfections, and will consecrate their lives to whatever will bring light to the world and will further those qualities which are acceptable at the Holy Threshold of God.
I will plumb the depths of the early childhood conference I attended last week for the next year, there was so much to contemplate. Here is a start. -gw
Our Hawaii is this part of Eastern Washington. Bonita and I go there whenever we are free to go forth. We say our prayers from there. -gw
The year was 1913, and Miss Alexander recalls: “My only desire was to serve His Cause. The words of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá rang in my ears: ‘I have a lamp in My Hand searching through the lands and seas to find souls who can become heralds of the Cause. Day and night I am engaged in this work.’
Bonita and I will be going east of the mountains for our first camping experience of the year. I was in Yakima taking pics for the Tacoma Invaders football team the end of March and felt the warm sun that Saturday. Temperatures may not be as warm as they were then, but no matter. We're going. There will be full sun on Sunday. We'll bask in it with our winter coats on if we have to. -gw
We must recognize the sun, no matter from what dawning point it may shine forth, be it Mosaic, Abrahamic or any personal point of orientation whatever, for we are lovers of sunlight and not of orientation. We are lovers of illumination and not of lamps and candles. We are seekers for water, no matter from what rock it may gush forth. We are in need of fruit in whatsoever orchard it may be ripened. We long for rain; it matters not which cloud pours it down. We must not be fettered. If we renounce these fetters, we shall agree, for all are seekers of reality.
Abdu'l-Baha, 28 May 1912
Talk at Reception at Metropolitan Temple Seventh Avenue and Fourteenth Street, New York
