Auditorium of the Baha’i Temple at Wilmette, Ill. ©Baha’i International Community

NBC News in the USA last night began a series of reports on Faith in America. Watch the report just after the advert at the beginning of the clip.

During the report Joyce Litoff (sp?) is interviewed about being a Baha’i. She’s speaking at the Baha’i House of Worship at in Wilmette (near Chicago), Illinois.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, NBC, faith, America

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You can read more about the new Edinburgh Baha’i Centre here.

There’s a page on the Centre’s website about the building’s history. This includes some information about the mysterious window pane:

The Milne family resided in the building from about 1850-1870. John Milne was on the Board of Examination for Schools, and there are notices of birth in the Scotsman for three sons. It is most likely one of these children who engraved his own name and date in old, curly handwriting upon a window of the upper floor (see photo below):

J M James Milne
2nd May
1863

Extraordinary as this may seem, we therefore have etched on the upper floor window arguably the most pivotal date in Baha’i History, being when Baha’u'llah left the Garden of Ridvan into exile and began on a journey of public proclamation.

Presumably only a teenager would have scratched his name on a window in such a way, from which given the dates of the three births it may be concluded that James was born in 1852, a couple of months before Baha’u'llah was sent down into the Siyah-Chal, where the Faith was born.

You can find a clearer picture of the window pane on that page than the one I put up in the previous post about the Baha’i Centre.

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Princes Street, Edinburgh

I flew to Edinburgh yesterday for a meeting at the new Baha’i Centre on Albany Street - and returned the same evening. The centre is a lovely Georgian house which needs a great deal of internal refurbishment before it can be suitable as a place to receive distinguished visitors. I was part of a group meeting with the architects who will be drawing up the plans for the refurbishment.

There’s a curiosity for Baha’is in a window on the top floor at the back.

Unfortunately my picture only faintly shows the letters and words scratched into the pane of glass. The inscription reads:

JRN
2nd May
1863

I’ve no idea who JRN was, but 1863 was the year in which Baha’u'llah declared His mission, and 2nd May was the last day of a 12-day period Baha’u'llah and His companions spent camping in a garden on the banks of the River Tigris just before leaving Baghdad for Istanbul. Baha’is worldwide now celebrate this period (21st April to 2 May) as the Festival of Ridvan, the greatest festival of the Baha’i year, marking the exact days on which Baha’u'llah declared His mission.

It’s a curious coincidence that JRN should have scratched his or her initials in the window of the house that was to eventually become Edinburgh’s Baha’i Centre on that very day in 1863.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Baha’u'llah, Bahaullah, Ridvan, Baghdad, Tigris, Edinburgh

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