Posts from — January 2006

I am sitting in Helsinki airport waiting for a flight to London.

I’ve been at the Finnish Baha’i winter school in Espoo since Thursday as the main speaker. My presentations were intended as an introduction to One Common Faith and consisted of 4 lectures:

• ‘The world is in travail’
• ‘A world-devouring fire’
• ‘Entering the garden of search’
• ‘Healing the world’

Each 90-minute lecture was followed by a one-hour workshop session (although they were billed as seminars in the programme). I made a lot of use of Keynote presentations and tried to address some of the main themes in One Common Faith. In preparing my presentations I found it quite difficult to think in terms of such long periods - in the UK we just don’t go in for long lectures - but half the time was taken up by translation into Finnish by Partow Izadi, who did a really great job and responded in kind to my teasing. (It is a while since I have spoken with an interpreter and I had forgotten how easy it is to lose ones rhythm and train of thought while waiting for the interpreter to do his work.)

About 180 Baha’is (out of a community of some 600) attended the school - though not all were there at the same time. They had come from all over Finland, from Helsinki in the south to the Arctic Circle in the north. It was wonderful to meet a community that I hardly knew and to engage in some really stimulating conversations. There are some wonderful Baha’i youth in the Finnish community and everyone was tremendously welcoming.

Helsinki is on latitude 60N, the same as Lerwick. I had forgotten just how short the hours of daylight are so far north. It was snowing when I arrived, it rained yesterday, and it began to snow quite heavily again today. Henrik drove me to the airport through a snow storm that would have entirely stopped the traffic in the UK. Things are tremendously well organized as far as snow is concerned in Finland. Life goes on at pretty much the normal pace unless the snow fall is unusually heavy.

Henrik and Laura Jansson were my hosts for the four nights I was in Finland. I’ve known Henrik, who’s an architect, for some years through the annual external affairs conferences at Acuto, so it was lovely to see him with his family (Patrick, 20, and Maria Patricia, 12) in his own really beautiful home in the forest to the north west of Helsinki.

So, back home to the UK for a week before I set out on my next trip.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Finland, Helsinki