Posts from — July 2008

Effects of arson attack on a Bahá'í home

CNN have posted the story of the violent arson attacks on Bahá’ís in Iran on their website.

Read it here.

Picture © 2008 Bahá’í International Community

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Iran, arson, persecution, CNN

The Mousavi family of Fars province narrowly escaped injury when an arsonist poured gasoline and caused an explosion and fire that destroyed a hut near where the family was sleeping outside their home.

The Bahá’í World News Service reports that Bahá’ís in Iran are being subjected to increased levels of violence. Homes and cars belonging to Bahá’ís have been torched in arson attacks.

The home of the family Mehran Shaaker of Kerman, Iran, was gutted by fire on 18 July. Family members had received theatening phone calls, and their car had been the target of a recent arson attempt.

The fire at the Shaaker home in Kerman was one of at least a dozen fires or arson attempts affecting the property of Iranian Baha’is in the past year or so.

The Bahá’í World News Service story quotes Bani Dugal, the Bahá’í International Community’s Principal Representative at the UN:

As Bahá’ís worldwide watch with alarm this escalation in violence, their fears that a sinister plan of persecution is unfolding become increasingly confirmed. Their only hope is that enough voices of protests are raised around the world to compel the government in Iran to put an end to this violence.

This is a deeply disturbing development in the persecution of the Bahá’ís in Iran and is reminiscent of all too many previous episodes which led to concerted pogroms against the Bahá’ís.

Do read the whole story here.

Pictures © 2008 Bahá’í International Community.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Iran, persecution, arson, violence, Baha’i World News Service

Bishops line up for the Walk of Witness

Yesterday was the hottest day of the year in London so far in 2008 and we lined up to for the “Walk of Witness” for the Millennium Development Goals. Bishops as far as the eye could see! Purple cassocks combined oddly with sun hats - no mitres here - and the bishops’ wives’ dresses and millinery.

And, of course, the “usual suspects” from the inter-faith world: the Chief Rabbi, Indarjit Singh, Iqbal Sacranie and other representatives of non-Christian faiths, from Baha’i to Zoroastrian.

We set out along Whitehall just after 10.30 a.m., probably around a thousand people in all, walking in solidarity for the Millennium Development Goals.

The Walk of Witness passes along Whitehall

I fell into conversation with a bishop or two as we walked. By the time we reached Parliament Square and were passing the Houses of Parliament I was talking to the wife of an Irish bishop about the Bahá’í Faith and about inter-faith relations. We were surrounded by Anglicans from all over the world. Some clearly had never been in London before and greedily snapped the famous buildings that we were passing: the Palace of Westminster, Westminster Abbey, St Margaret’s church, Big Ben…

One man stood on the pavement in Parliament Street with a placard that read “Jesus did not ordain sodomites’. One bishop dismissed this with the comment that Jesus never ordained anybody.

And TV new teams and tourists filmed and photographed and recorded this extraordinary ecclesiastical demonstration.

The Walk of Witness crossing Lambeth Bridge

The Walk of Witness enters Lambeth Palace

We crossed Lambeth Bridge and entered Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s official London residence, for a rally and a speech by Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The bishops take a rest in Lambeth Palace courtyard

Speeches

The ecclesiastical ladies and gentlemen (there was a noticeable presence of women bishops amongst the gathering) took their ease under the trees in the courtyard of Lambeth Palace before listening to the Archbishop of Canterbury -reiterating the Micah Challenge (…what does the LORD require of you? To do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God. [Micah 6:8]) - call for increased commitment to the Millennium Development Goals and hearing Prime Minister Gordon Brown give an impassioned speech about the evils of poverty and disease. The Prime Minister spoke very well, he spoke from the heart, and he spoke with genuine emotion about his experience of meeting AIDs orphans in Africa and about the longing of poor African children to go to school.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown with the Archbishop of Canterbury and other religious leaders

Lunch

After the speeches we repaired to a vast marquee in the Lambeth Palace gardens for lunch. I was amongst those invited to sit at one of the tables reserved for special guests of the Archbishop of Canterbury and found myself next to Dr Harriet Crabtree, Director of the Inter Faith Network for the UK. Harriet’s other neighbour at lunch was Henry Grunwald QC, President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

Lunch seemed like organized chaos,but was good. I have to say I did wonder about the propriety of eating such a good lunch after hearing speeches calling for the halving of poverty by 2015.

The bishops digest their lunch in Lambeth Palace gardens

Buckingham Palace Garden Party

Lunch done, it was time to make our way to Buckingham Palace for the Garden Party given by Her Majesty The Queen for those attending the Lambeth Conference.

One is not supposed to take photos inside Buckingham Palace, so I didn’t, but I can tell you that the Queen has a very large garden. At 16 hectares (40 acres) it’s the size of a small farm and very much bigger than my back garden. In fact, my back garden would fit many times over into the Queen’s patio (although I’m sure she doesn’t call it a patio) at the back of the palace.

Needless to say, we had to pass through the now obligatory security checks and show a couple of bits of ID before getting into the magic garden. Ten years ago Erica and I were at the Buckingham Palace Garden Party and all we had to do then was to show our invitation card at the bobby on the gate. Now you can’t get in to to see the Queen without flashing your passport and a gas bill.

After getting through security, we walked through one of the two arches in the front façade of the palace, through the main quadrangle, up the red-carpeted steps and handed our entrance cards to the uniformed flunky at the top.

Another flunky removed the by-now empty bottle of water that I had carried over from Lambeth Palace.

Through a large ground-floor room and out onto the West Terrace (the Queen’s patio), down the steps and into the bishop-strewn gardens.

Hold ground, see friends - and drink tea

These garden parties follow a set pattern. Gates open at 3.00 p.m. Tea is served in the tea tent from 3.30 p.m. until 5.00 p.m. At 3.40 p.m. the Yeoman of the Guard “hold ground” - in other words, they march out and form a large rectangle into which only the chosen are admitted. At 4.00 p.m. one of the two bands strikes up the National Anthem and the Queen and Prince Philip (in morning coat and topper) appear, as if by magic, on the terrace.

Equerries (is that what they are called?), dressed in morning coat, top hat and tightly furled umbrella, marshal errant bishops and line up selected bishops and other ecclesiastics and their spouses. The Archbishop of Canterbury then presents the chosen ones to Her Majesty for around 30 minutes, after which the Queen and the Prince and various invited guests proceed to the Royal tea tent for tea.

The class system is alive and well. The equerries are gentleman, retired military officers, and are to be distinguished at all times from the servants. (Ten years ago the servants all seemed to drawn either from a senior citizen’s care home or from the GCSE year of the local comprehensive school, and the elderly flunky who took our admission cards had a hole in his glove. This time, however, there was a more even distribution of ages and no holy gloves.)

(Have a look at this list of positions within the Royal Household. You will be amazed.)

While this was going on it was a pleasure to take a turn with Paurushasp Jila,  President of the Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe, around the lake and the gardens. It is difficult to believe that one is in the middle of London when one is in this 40-acre haven of peace.

I caught up with various ecclesiastical and Church of England friends. I also talked to a senior Buddhist monk who was full of praise for the Bahá’í temple in Delhi, as well as Hindu, Jain, Muslim and Sikh friends.

I must say that the Queen serves a nice tea - it was a light afternoon blend - and (of course) cucumber sandwiches, rich chocolate cubes, small tarts with strawberries and cream, and other goodies. All served on china - none of your paper plates for the Royal tea party.

Sadly I didn’t get to shake hands with Her Majesty.

Paradox

All this is wonderful stuff and great fun - but I wonder if Jesus would recognize all or any of this as being what He intended?

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Archbishop of Canterbury, Lambeth Conference, Walk of Witness, UN, Millennium Development Goals, MDGs, Lambeth Palace, Buckingham Palace, Queen Elizabeth II, garden party

In introducing Face to Face and Side by Side: A Framework for Partnership in Our Multi Faith Society, Communities Secretary, Hazel Blears MP, spoke of the practical contribution made by faith communities to life in the UK and said she was proud to live in a country where faith groups were free to do this.

The new policy is not prescriptive, but is intended to facilitate and support the work of regional and local inter-faith bodies.

Three core principles

The document makes it clear that there are three core principles that underpin this new framework.

• Partnership: valuing the contributions made by partners
• Empowerment: people and government working together to make life better
• Choice: local communities deciding what’s best for them

Four building blocks of the Framework

• Developing the confidence and skills to “bridge” and “link”
• Share space for interaction
• Structures and processes which support dialogue and social action
• Opportunities for learning which build understanding

Faiths in Action fund

A new three-year fund of £7.5m has been launched to support local initiatives linked to one of the four building blocks. National, regional or local organizations in England will be able to apply.

Exciting new development

There’s no doubt that this is an exciting and valuable development in the relationship between our government and the faith communities in England. (I should explain that relationships between government and faith communities in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are handled by their respective devolved governments.)

Risks

There are risks. The smell of money and the imbalance of power between government and religious organizations - particularly the smallish organizations at local and regional level - may distort the work of the faith organizations. these bodies may allow themselves to be driven entirely by the government’s agenda and run the risk of losing their critical independence.

One person with long and widely respected inter-faith experience has referred to this as the “governmentalization” of religion. Of course, one of the government’s major concerns is community cohesion, and faiths can either make a huge contribution to cohesion or they can seriously damage it. So it is understandable that the government would wish to encourage faith communities to work together. And so much the better if government and faith communities can understand and respect each other’s priorities. Neither should become assimilated in the other.

Having said that, I really must complement the team of officials in Communities and Local Government who handle faith issues on having produced a policy document that will open up all sorts of possibilities for faith communities and inter-faith bodies to contribute to the good of society. This is something of which the Bahá’í community can wholeheartedly approve.

Unity in diversity

One of the great thrills of being part of the audience of over 300 at the launch was the sense of being part of a diverse body of people who were united in welcoming the Government’s determination to build a good working relationship with the faith communities.

When I arrived at the launch I immediately found myself amongst many of my friends in the inter-faith world. One of the great bounties of being engaged in inter-faith work is the genuine fellowship that grows through working and dialoguing together. I always look forward to seeing my Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jain, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and Zoroastrian friends.

Download it here

You can download Face to Face and Side by Side here.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, inter-faith, dialogue, Face to Face, government, Blears, Communities and Local Government

Consider this. You’re standing at the end of a street of more than a hundred houses. It looks like it’s going to rain - in fact, you just felt a few drops on your head. There’s a noisy gang of lads working on a white van in front of a house on the other side of the road. You’re about to open a gate and walk through the manicured front garden up to a house with a new front door and double glazing. Through the windows you can see a neat room with new-looking furniture.

You take a deep breath to try and calm your thumping heart and you reach your finger out to poke at the doorbell.

Inside the house a dog barks. A few moments elapse and a figure, vaguely seen through the front door’s reeded glass, reaches for the latch.

What are you feeling?

I know what I felt the first time I did this. Scared! Anxious about how the person who opened the door would react to my intrusion into their privacy.

Knocking on doors out of the blue - cold calling - is not something I would normally do. But then intensive teaching projects are not ‘normal’.

Preparation

A group of us got together for some hours with the project coordinator a few days before the project began. We prayed and we studied the presentation of the Bahá’í Faith that Bahá’ís the world over refer to as “Anna’s Presentation” - from the example presentation that appears in Book 6 of the Ruhi Institute.

As I understand it, the point is not to learn this presentation off by heart, as some have been trying to do, but to become familiar with the concepts in the presentation so that we can present them in right order.

I say “right order”. That doesn’t mean one can only present the ideas and teachings of the Bahá’í Faith in a particular order, but there is a logic to the presentation that seems to work.

Teaching booklet

We also pick up a copy each of the spiral-bound teaching booklet that we are going to use to help us to make the presentation.

Teaching booklet

Prayer - and lots of it

On the days we went out, we gathered in a Bahá’í home at 8 a.m. for 30 minutes of private prayer, followed by an hour of collective prayer.

Now, I usually find it difficult to stay focused for 20 minutes of prayer, so an hour and a half of the spiritual stuff is pretty daunting.

So I was amazed to find that praying together for so long added a dimension and an intensity to my prayers that I’ve only rarely  experienced before. I could hardly get through the Fire Tablet and kept thinking of the small room in the House of Aboud where Bahá’u'lláh revealed the tablet. (He also completed the Aqdas in that room.)

Study

After prayer, breakfast. And then study of passages from the Bahá’í sacred writings about the sacred duty of teaching. And it’s then that we focus on what it is we are setting out to do.

We’re not selling double glazing. We’re not trying to sign people up for a club. We’re seeking a response from the soul of the person we’re talking to.

Consort with all men, O people of Bahá, in a spirit of friendliness and fellowship. If ye be aware of a certain truth, if ye possess a jewel, of which others are deprived, share it with them in a language of utmost kindliness and good-will. If it be accepted, if it fulfil its purpose, your object is attained. IF any one should refuse it, leave him unto himself, and beseech God to guide him. [Bahá'u'lláh]

Hit the streets

Lunch follows study, and walking the streets follows lunch.

We decide to start knocking on doors at 1.30 p.m. and to stop just before 8.00 p.m. It’s a long time!

First door. Deep breath. Smile. Ring the bell. No reply.

Second door. Deep breath. Smile. Knock. No reply.

Third door. Deep breath. Smile. Ring. A short delay. The door opens. A face looks out, enquiring. “Hello, I’m Barney and this is Niamh. We’re visiting homes in the street to offer people the opportunity to learn about the Bahá’í Faith. Have you heard of the Bahá’í Faith?”

Yes? No? What will the person say? Most say no at this point. “I’m not interested.” Or “We have our own faith, thank you.” Or “My partner’s father is a vicar.” This brush-off from a smiling young mother. My partner’s father is a vicar? What’s that got to do with anything?

Time to regroup. Time for a prayer. And on to the next door.

This is the house of a group of Latvian migrants. They invite us in. We begin the presentation and they listen for a time. They ask questions and we work our way around their relatively poor English and our non-existent Latvian. But in the end they don’t want to take the discussion any further and we bid them farewell.

Break

I’m desperate for a cup of tea. The various teams meet up in the coffee shop in Asda to refresh themselves and plan the next section of the day. It’s about 5.30 p.m.

Tea break in Asda

Back to the streets

After our break , we reform into new teaching teams and move on to different parts of town.

My partner and I find ourselves on a street of 1960s terraced houses. A young Indian girl of about 7 or 8 opens the second door we knock at.

“Is your mum or dad in?”

She fetches her mum, who looks to be in her early 30s and who listens to the opening of the presentation before motioning us to enter.

We learn that her name is Madhu, she has a wonderful smile, and she’s from Gujarat. Her English is not strong, but she listens very carefully to the presentation.

The air is full of the wonderful spicy aroma of Indian cooking. The living room looks like it has not been redecorated for many years. The brown wallpaper is torn in places and the furnishings are very simple. But the house has a welcoming spirit. It is a true home. The little girl who opened the door and her younger brother dash in and out as Talieh and I talk to their mother.

Madhu finds a point too difficult to understand and sends the little girl upstairs. A few moments later, the girl returns with a young guy, who turns out to be one of Madhu’s cousins. He looks like he’s just woken up, but he listens as Talieh repeats what she wants to say to Madhu. The cousin says something very brief in Gujurati and Madhu nods.

Shortly he has to leave and go to work. As he goes a young woman comes into the house. She’s another cousin, just returned from her shift at Tesco in St Albans. She listens intently to the presentation and, as she does, the house begins to fill up with cousins returning from work at various supermarkets in Hatfield and St Albans. In the end there are about six cousins in the living room, listening with varying degrees of attention to the presentation.

As each one comes in, he or she greets us as if we are old friends of the family. Is this just politeness? Or are we being genuinely welcomed? It feels genuine, but we don’t want to presume on their hospitality.

After a couple of hours, we’ve repeated the main points of the presentation I don’t know how many times and we’ve arranged to return the next day.

We take our leave. Outside, as we head for the car, another cousin, Parag, comes up and greets us. We introduce ourselves and our purpose in being here. It seems that he will be around when we come back the following day, so we reserve the presentation for then.

Dinner and debrief

We all gather at Niamh and Martin’s for dinner and a debrief. We share stories and try to draw out “the learning” from our experiences. Pretty much everyone has had a similar mixture of joy and disappointment. It is clear that some streets were not at all receptive to this direct approach by Bahá’ís. Others, though, were definitely promising. Nobody had experienced outright rudeness. Those who had turned us away from their doors had generally done so reasonably politely.

Everyone had been apprehensive about knocking on doors; everyone had experienced varying degrees of stress. On the other hand, everyone reported that things went best when they felt able to let go of their fears and to rely on Bahá’u'lláh as they talked to people. And everyone had experienced at least one encounter that they had thought would end in rejection but which turned out to lead to some very interesting and propitious conversations.

Mostly what we learned about was ourselves, our capacity to persevere when we felt discouraged,  and about the importance of prayer and preparation before and during our time on the streetgs.

Is this the right thing to do?

I had my doubts about involving myself in the teaching project in Hatfield. I’m not all that fond of having religious characters knocking on my door to tell me about their particular beliefs or, even worse, to try to persuade me to adopt their faith.

So why would I go knocking on other people’s doors to tell them about my faith? Am I guilty of hypocrisy by doing what I don’t want others to do to me? Am I being a religious imperialist in trying to find those who will respond positively to Bahá’u'lláh’s teachings? After all, in the inter-faith world in which I spend so much of my time, this would be considered poor form. These questions nagged at me every time I approached a front door.

However, as Bill pointed out in his comment on my first post about teaching at people’s door, the answer to this question may have something to do with justice. Bahá’u'lláh’s teachings for the future of the world are strong on social justice, based on a deep realization of human oneness and the reduction of inequality. But those teachings aren’t going to make a whole heap of difference to the world if the majority of people don’t at least have a chance to consider them.

We would never, in the proverbial month of Sundays, meet some of the people we encountered unless we knocked on their doors. They don’t belong to the clubs and associations we might belong to. We’re not part of their family or ethnic networks. They work long hours. And they certainly don’t go to the public meetings we used to organize as our way of meeting people. We have to go to them.

If we believe, as Bahá’ís do, that the teachings and actions of our faith are essential to the transformation of the world from its present troubled state into a civilization in which every individual can develop his or her potential and put that potential to use in service to all our fellow human beings, then we have a pressing obligation to share our message.

Seeking the knowledge of God - deeds and words in harmony

I find the answer to my questions in the message that the Universal House of Justice, the Bahá’í community’s world governing council, addressed to the community at Ridván this year:

Humanity is battered by forces of oppression, whether generated from the depths of religious prejudice or the pinnacles of rampant materialism. Bahá’ís are able to discern the causes of this affliction. “What ‘oppression’ is more grievous,” Bahá’u'lláh asks, “than that a soul seeking the truth, and wishing to attain unto the knowledge of God should not know where to go for it and from whom to seek it?”

Well, if people are going to find what their souls yearn for in the teachings of Bahá’u'lláh, those of us who claim to follow Bahá’u'lláh have to strive for a very high standard of conduct. As the Universal House of Justice says:

So free must be your thoughts and actions of any trace of prejudice - racial, religious, economic, national, tribal, class, or cultural - that even the stranger sees in you loving friends. So high must be your standard of excellence and so pure and chaste your lives that the moral influence you exert penetrates the consciousness of the wider community. Only if you demonstrate the rectitude of conduct to which the writings of the Faith call every soul will you be able to struggle against the myriad forms of corruption, overt and subtle, eating at the vitals of society.

And I find this admonition particularly inspiring:

Only if you perceive honour and nobility in every human being - this independent of wealth or poverty - will you be able to champion the cause of justice.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, teaching, Hatfield, unity, justice, truth, honour, nobility, prayer, study, prejudice

Sorry to bore you with wedding photos, but once I’d got the album out and started to scan, it seemed a pity not to show what things looked like when Erica and I got wed on 18 July 1970.

Barney and Erica with David Hofman

Meherangiz, Eruch and Jyoti Munsiff

A contingent of Baha'is from South Wales, including Carl and Joyce Card, Rita Bridge (now Bartlett) and Viv Bartlett

Cutting the cake

Going away

Technorati Tags: Barney Leith, Erica Leith, wedding, David Hofman, Meherangiz Munsiff, Jyoti Munsiff, Carl Card, Joyce Card, Rita Bartlett, Viv Bartlett, Baha’i, Bahai

Oh well, Erica and I failed to celebrate our 38th wedding anniversary! Not, of course, that we forgot our anniversary - although we have done so in previous years - we were just too tired to drag ourselves out to one of the local hostelries for dinner.

Barney and Erica - a happy couple

But here we are 38 years ago. Aren’t we sweet? Haven’t changed a bit!

And here’s the wedding ceremony in the mediaeval Pilgrims’ Hall, behind the cathedral in Winchester (UK) on 18th July 1970. The late David Hofman, at that time a member of the Universal House of Justice, was the MC. I think at this point he was speaking about the significance of marriage for Bahá’ís and the nature of the Bahá’í ceremony.

Barney and Erica's wedding ceremony. David Hofman is standing. Jyoti Munsiff and Marion Hofman at right

Those were our days of innocence. Now we have three children and four grandchildren’s-worth of learning and we do look ever so slightly older.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Barney Leith, Erica Leith, wedding, marriage, Winchester, David Hofman, Marion Hofman, Jyoti Munsiff

Norman White

“So, do you work for Biddles full time?” I asked the chap with the bottle of wine in his hand.

“Actually I own the company,” he replied, and smiled.

Covered in confusion, I said, “That’s a conversation stopper.” But, of course, it wasn’t. And the boat kept on sailing down river.

Erica and I were guests at Norman White’s retirement party on a Salters boat on the Thames yesterday evening. Norman is a long-standing and excellent rep for Biddles, one of the UK’s leading book manufacturers, and George Ronald Publisher Ltd was one of his accounts for many years.

Norman is “old school” in all the right ways: dedicated to service, with many years of hands-on experience in different aspects of print and publishing, warm-hearted and very helpful.

Even though it was Erica who was dealing with Norman, I always used to look forward to his visits to our home in Abingdon, which doubled as George Ronald’s office until we moved to Welwyn. A cup of coffee, some banter, and discussion about developments in print and publishing lightened the day.

And Norman was also very fond of Emma (our late-lamented Border Collie), as she was of him.

So last evening we floated down the Thames from Folly Bridge in Oxford as far as the Radley School boat houses to the sound of a trad jazz band (with a Sousaphone) to celebrate Norman’s years with Biddles.

It was a lovely evening - and there was a great spirit amongst the Biddles current and former staff.

Technorati Tags: Biddles, Thames, Salters, retirement

If you want to catch a glimpse of the Bahá’í vision of the future, you could do worse that look at the Global Mindshift website, whose aim is:

Our purpose is to “contribute to the emerging global community,” and our mission is to “help make the emergence of global community unstoppable.”

(And perhaps you could join the Global Mindshift community - as I have just done).

Mindshifting memes

I want to recommend two mindshifting memes from Global Mindshift.

Adolescence of human race

Growing Up. In this video, futurist Duane Elgin has some very interesting things to say about the maturation of the human race. It seems that 75% of the people he asks about which stage of collective development (infancy, adolescence, adulthood, senior years) they think the human race has reached say “adolescence”

The human journey

The Human Journey uses the three stages of the mythological Hero’s Journey as a lens through which to trace the path of human development and the challenges we humans have to face right now if we and the planet are to survive.

Bahá’í teachings on world future

If you watch these videos you will get a sense of why Bahá’ís are so desperate to share the teachings of Bahá’u'lláh with all and sundry. The videos resonate very closely with the Bahá’í belief that it is time to build a new global civilization and that Bahá’u'lláh’s teachings are exactly the basis for this new civilization, based on unity and justice.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Global Mindshift, Hero’s Journey, global civilization, collective maturity

I’ve been hoping to find time to share some stories and thoughts about my experience last weekend on the streets of Hatfield talking to people about the Baha’i Faith.

Unfortunately time has shot past and I’ve been tied up with meetings or urgent things to do and unable to make time to write here. What’s more, times in the coming days when I’d hope to write some posts have now been lost to more meetings!

Intense experiences

Anyway, I will say that the weekend’s experiences were intense: lots of prayer, study, consultation, and then talking to all sorts of people, some receptive to hearing new things, others not. There were times of elation and times of desperation, especially towards the end of a long day on the stump and facing a street of obdurate doors.

There were also some very tender moments. One Gujurati family (all Hindus), whom we would never had met had we not knocked on their door and asked if they would like to learn about the Bahá’í Faith, were open-hearted and welcoming. We met them on Friday, and returned (at their invitation) on Saturday to continue our conversation. Language was a difficulty. Their English needs working on. I am completely ignorant of Gujurati and Hindi. And yet we managed to communicate

Sharing the Baha’i Faith in Gujurati

Last night I sat for a couple of hours in this lovely family’s home and listened to a Bahá’í from London who speaks Gujurati talking with Madhu, one of the family, about the Bahá’í Faith. Madhu read out the introduction to a Gujurati translation of the Hidden Words and had plenty to say in her own language about what she was reading. (Madhu is a person of some capacity, with an LLB and having worked in Gujurat as a counsellor, but she is stuck in a relatively poor household with two young children, and unable to develop and use her potential largely because of the limitations of her language; she is desperate to learn English.)

Learning

What have I learned? It takes me a lot of spiritual preparation to step so far outside my comfort zone - and even then I found knocking on doors and inviting people to take a bit of time to learn about my Faith really quite stressful.

But, doing this brought me (and other Bahá’ís) into contact with people I’d never have met in a month of Sundays in any other way. Many didn’t want to know - and we did not push anything on anyone - but a significant number were very happy to learn about the Bahá’í Faith and have asked to continue these conversations and to find out more.

And I am now committed to working with Madhu and her family as they continue to study the Bahá’í  teachings.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, Bahai, Hindu, Gujurati, prayer, teaching, religion, Hatfield