So, it would seem that over the past month I have managed to lock myself out of my own blog and then managed, in the process of getting back in, to completely gum up the works. So, assuming you can still read this, please bear with me until I can get things back up and running.
update: well, it seems I’m getting there. I have a new theme up, and things are looking more blog-y, thought I still seem to be missing the sidebar and all the the photos besides… I’ll keep working on it.
update: ok, things are looking pretty good. Photos are back, sidebar is almost there. There are still a few nips and tucks to be done, but I think we might be back in business. Thanks for your patience.
Right, so the Olympics have been over for days, but just a heads up that Nelson Évora, a triple jumper from Portugal, won gold. His coach Joao Ganco was the one that introduced Évora to the Baha’i Faith. Here he is jumping at the world championships in Osaka last year. If anyone knows of video of his winning jump that may have slipped through the NBC net, do let us know.
This whole blogging-from-the-road thing is much rougher than I thought it would be. Especially for someone who gets car-sick just looking at the map, so blogging from the passenger seat is out of the question (that’s my mom doing some of the driving).
Anyway, after leaving Edmonton, we sped through Saskatoon and Winnipeg fairly quickly and did a marathon 26 hour drive from Winnipeg into Toronto where we spent a day documenting a community outreach project that’s being carried out almost entirely by youth aged 11-15.
The coordinators of the project are older, but the youth are the ones going out, talking to people, teaching the classes for kids, talking to people about the Baha’i Faith. It’s all pretty amazing.
After Toronto, we continued our eastward journey heading into Quebec for a Baha’i family camp. The focus of these camps is really about training and education, so they’re normally referred to as ’summer schools’ (or ‘winter schools’ depending on the season).
I was told that the topics they were studying here in Quebec are the same that are being studied at other camps that are going on all summer across the country. So if anyone out there was at the summer school in Silvan Lake, Alberta; or Shawnigan Lake, BC; or Winnipeg, Manitoba; you were probably studying the same thing that they were studying in Quebec. But you were probably doing it in english.
Sadly, despite 11 years of studying it in school, my french skills are rather meagre, so I can’t really tell you much more than that, but there was a lot of french study, a lot of french singing and a lot of french laugher.
We’re now in Halifax and, having gone almost as far East as we can, we’ll be turning around tomorrow and heading back to Montreal, where they’re doing more community outreach. I just hope someone there can help with translation…
While we’re on the topic of Rainn Wilson, everyone’s favorite crazy sea mammal has just launched Soul Pancake, a site for those who are “sick of spirituality having to be hippy-dippy, airy-fairy and uber-precious,” that seeks to “de-lamify talking about God & Religion.” And all that with a side of Pancakes? Rainn Wilson is a man after my own heart.
I’m not doing a great job of keeping up, seeing as how I left Edmonton two days ago and am just getting around to posting about it now, but they did keep me pretty busy while I was there. Here’s a quick rundown of a typical day: The community outreach team meets in the morning for prayers and reflection on the previous day’s activities. The size of the team varies in size from 20 to almost 40 from day to day, with some members there all day every day and others coming in on their days off or when they finished work in the afternoon. There are also participants that had come in from other cities just to assist with Edmonton’s community outreach, some staying for the full 9 days, others just for one or two. The team is conducting outreach in 4 different neighbourhoods, so after a group reflection, everyone splits up into their neighbourhood teams and continues to plan their activities and study materials that would assist them with their outreach (how to conduct effective classes for children for example, or ways to initiate conversations about religion in a society that would really rather talk about anything but.)
After a quick break for lunch, the separate neighbourhood teams head out to their respective communities where they break into pairs and set off into the neighbourhoods. Some pairs would visit parks or community centres, some pairs would visit with parents to further explain the classes for children and youth, some pairs would visit with people to do more detailed presentations about the Baha’i Faith, and some pairs would just go door to door in the community to tell people about the programs that the Baha’is were organizing in the community as well as just raise awareness about the Baha’i Faith.
Another quick break for dinner and then the teams in each neighbourhood prepare for their activities, which can include classes for children, classes for youth, study groups or devotional meetings. In all of the places that I’ve seen in the past few weeks, the children’s class has been the most popular. Usually held in a park somewhere in the neighbourhood, the classes are composed of children of families that the teams have met during the afternoon but often attract children who just happen to be in the park while the classes are going on as well. Sometimes the kids are the ones dragging their parents over to check out the class and sometimes it’s the parents that are dragging the kids, but either way the kids usually don’t want to leave at the end.
After the classes are over, all of the teams meet back at the community outreach HQ (in Edmonton it was the home of one of the Baha’is) to share experiences from the day, reflect on what they had learned and consult on how to use that learning to improve their outreach the next day. These projects usually continue for 9-14 days, 12 hours a day. It’s a very intense experience and, between the regular prayer and spirit of service, one that creates tight bonds among the participants.
Still here in Edmonton, still documenting community outreach. To get an idea of the kinds of activities that are coming out of these outreach projects, have a listen to this report from WMNF radio in Tampa, FL. (direct link to the mp3 here.)
I arrived in Edmonton yesterday and will be here through the weekend covering another community outreach project, but first I wanted to put up an update about the on-going persecution of the Baha’i community in Iran.
Back on May 14th, 6 Baha’i leaders were arrested in Tehran and taken to Evin prison where they have been held since then. From a BBC story on May 19:
A Foreign Ministry spokesman said the arrests were a judicial matter and he did not give any further details.
The Bahai International Community says a senior member was arrested in March and six more last week; together they make up the entire leadership in Iran.
It says it has about 300,000 members in Iran, where the faith originated.
Relatives said the six senior members were taken to Evin Prison in Tehran on 14 May, after Intelligence Ministry officers raided their homes in the middle of the night.
“This is government-sponsored persecution,” said Rep. Mark Kirk (IL-10), who introduced the resolution. “And we in the Congress should not be silent as Iran sets up the mechanism to ethnically cleanse its Baha’i minority, totaling over 250,000 human beings.”
“It sends a strong signal that Congress will continue to watch closely the treatment of the Baha’i people in Iran,” said Rep Howard L. Berman (CA-28), who is the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and co-sponsored the resolution.
And then on August third, a report in an Iranian newspaper claimed that the detained Baha’is had confessed to “setting up an illegal organisation with connections to a number of countries including Israel and they have received orders from them to undertake measures against the Islamic system.”
The international Baha’i community was quick to deny the report, saying:
“We deny in the strongest possible terms the suggestion that Baha’is in Iran have engaged in any subversive activity,” said Bani Dugal, principal representative of the Baha’i International Community to the United Nations. “The Baha’i community is not involved in political affairs. Their only ‘crime’ is the practice of their religion.”
“The seriousness of the allegations makes us fear for the lives of these seven individuals,” she said.
She was responding to Iranian newspaper reports of statements by Hasan Haddad, deputy prosecutor general for security at the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran.
Left Ottawa, flew across the country, spent the weekend in Vancouver with a group doing community outreach in 9 different neighbourhoods across the city. It’s pretty much the same thing here as it was in Ottawa (though on a larger scale), classes for children, devotional meetings, and generally talking to people about religion, about spirituality and about the Baha’i Faith. Here people are prepping for a children’s class, making arrangements to go and pick up the kids in a neighbourhood called Skeena.
Again, the classes here are virtually identical to the classes in Ottawa (and, in fact, classes that are going on allaroundtheworld) consisting of prayers, songs, stories, crafts and games designed to foster virtues and unity in the community.
I first heard about musical firesides when I was in Kuala Lumpur last year, and though I didn’t have a chance to go to one until I got to Ottawa, I had heard about them being used in India, the US, the UK, France and all across Canada. And I’m sure they’re being used in another dozen countries as well, but it’s just so hard to keep up these days.
Anyway, a ‘musical fireside’ is simply a presentation about the basics of the Baha’i Faith that incorporates video, photos, songs and prayers. It’s an opportunity for Baha’is to invite their friends and neighbours to find out what Baha’is actually believe. These days, religion having the reputation that it does, people are often hesitant to talk about spirituality and belief (whether it’s your own or someone else’s) even when others are genuinely interested in it. So this way, people can get together, eat some food, watch a presentation, sing some songs and have a discussion about religion and spirituality. The singing, as you can see, is key.
After the songs, more food and some discussion. Time to drink tea and ask questions and get to know your friends and neighbours. Because, after all, isn’t understanding a fairly key step on the way to unity?
I’ve been in Ottawa for a couple of days now hanging out with a group of about 20 Baha’is who are doing community outreach in a neighbourhood called Bayshore. They’ve been organizing devotional meetings, study groups and classes for children. Here a few of the participants take an opportunity to reflect on the people that they’d talked to that day as well as plan for the evening children’s class.
The children’s classes teach morals and virtues (like love, patience, honesty, unity and justice) using songs, stories, games and crafts. They’ve had 15-20 kids there the past couple of days, and while the kids laughed and played, the parents would come and chat with the organizers. Here michel goes through a book with a young boy. Because this is Ottawa, there is a real mix of english and french among both the organizers and the participants. This evening’s class was conducted in english and this young boy spoke only french, so Michel was taking a moment to translate this book for him.
At the devotional meetings, members of the community are invited to come together and say prayers and read holy writings from any of the world’s religions. This one was pretty chill, and after praying and meditating together, people hung out and had tea and chatted for a while. Nothing like praying together to build unity in a community, no matter what religious background we all come from.
Life never really works out the way that I plan (which is why I’ve largely given up on planning altogether). The last time I dropped a post on this blog, I was about to hit the road for what turned into an 14 month global tour of fun and adventure that included 18 countries, 78 separate flights, 79 different beds and approximately 125,000 photos. I know I had promised that I would blog as much as I could, but, sadly reality is rarely as easy I imagine and the prospect of getting a post up from Carracollo, Bolivia; Preah Vihear, Cambodia or Mulanje, Malawi was a little more than I could handle while trying to keep up with booking tickets, finding translators, trying to keep airport security goons from confiscating my cameras and securing a steady flow of delicious cups of tea (it’s all about the priorities).
But I do have some fun stories about a radio station in Soloy, Panama; a community bank run by pre-teens outside of Kathmandu, Nepal; youth building community gardens in Kiribati; and the village of Billimbing Besi in Sarawak where 90% of the residents are Baha’is. I’ll try to make real posts out of these and more, but in the mean time, after a couple of months of recuperating on my couch, I’m back on the road. This time I’m keeping the wanderings confined to my homeland of Canada, from Vancouver to Halifax and numerous ports in between. Given that I rarely do things in anything close to a logical manner, I’m starting in Ottawa. Which, I suppose is actually logical, given it’s the capital and all.
Happy New Year everyone. I’m sure you’ve all noticed that this blog has been quiet for quite some time now, and I certainly do apologize, but exciting things have been in the works.
I’m going to be taking a bit of a sabbatical from… whatever it is that I do, and hitting the road. I’ll be travelling to a bunch of locales and checking out the Baha’i scene while I’m there. The trip is really just getting started now, and the plan is that I’ll be keeping this site updated as I go, with news and photos and whatnot from my travels. And while I do have my list of destinations, I still don’t have an itinerary to go with it, so you’ll all have to keep guessing for now…
Oh, and as a side-note, comments will stay turned off while I’m gone both because I’m still drowning in comment spam and because I really won’t have time to keep an eye on what’s going on down there in comment-land. So, as per usual, just drop me an email instead.
The decision upholds current government policy, a policy which forces the Baha’is either to lie about their religious beliefs or give up their state identification cards. The policy effectively deprives Egyptian Baha’is of access to most rights of citizenship, including education, financial services, and even medical care.
“We deplore the Court’s ruling in this case, which violates an extensive body of international law on human rights and religious freedom to which Egypt has long been a party,” said Bani Dugal, the principal representative of the Baha’i International Community to the United Nations.
“Since this was the last avenue of appeal in this particular case, the Court’s decision threatens to make non-citizens of an entire religious community, solely on the basis of religious belief,” said Ms. Dugal.
So now, after a nine-month trip through the courts, the rights of the Baha’is in Egypt are right back where they were before this all started. Of course, the one bright side to all of this is the incredible amount of media coverage that the story has recieved. The issue has been debated in magazines and newspapers as well as on television both inside Egypt and around the world. And I’m sure it will only intensify after this ruling.
For a much more complete picture of the situation of the Baha’is in Egypt, head over to Baha’i Faith in Egypt, a blog all about, well, the Baha’i Faith in Egypt.
(Update: The story is starting to show up everywhere now. Here are articles from Reuters and AFP, as well as this commentary (and more links) from Egyptian blog The Arabist, and finally this post by Hossam el-Hamalawy, who was at the courthouse when the verdict was delivered.)
Czech it out all (oh the bad puns), the Changing Times conference starts in two weeks and it seems that I have managed to sneak myself onto the bill (they’re under the impression that I’m some sort of “internet specialist”, the suckers). So, for anyone heading to the czech republic, I’ll see you there. I’ll be the one wandering around, trying to think of something intelligent and internet-related to say. Anyone have any ideas?
Why, oh why do I always find out about these things at the last minute? Seattle Baha’is and hip hop super-stars Common Market are in Albuquerque Tuesday night playing with Dan the Automator. So, if you’re luckier than I am and happen to be in the area, can you head down and check it out for me? Look, here’s a map to the venue, and the show is $20. I’ll reimburse anyone who can get down there and give me decent review of the show.
For those of us who won’t be making it, we can at least check out thesetwo little pieces from SPIN.com.
Of course, you could always head over to their myspace page, where you can find out about more of their upcoming shows.
A story today in Uganda’s New Vision is highlighting how the Baha’is in that country are urging their government not to forget the need for a spiritual componant in the fight against poverty:
The Baha’i community director, Daisy Bamuno, said, “There is need to have the spiritual ingredient in the fight against poverty if it is going to be successful.”
Bamuno was yesterday addressing Baha’i members at their temple at Kikaya during prayers in commemoration of the Human Rights Day.
The function was organised to foster ways of fighting poverty as the main cause of human rights abuses in Uganda.
Bamuno said, “There are other persistent ills obstructing the peaceful development of people and the nation. Marginalisation of girls and women, failing states, lack of political freedoms and the HIV/AIDS scourge are some of the aspects. This has led to serious human rights abuses in turn.”
The relief state minister, Musa Ecweru, said, “The Baha’i community’s belief in the spiritual aspect of fighting poverty should be upheld. “The human virtue of trustworthiness is so vital in the social development process that if lacking, no progress can be attained.
For more on the Baha’i perspective on the need for the elimination of poverty, check here and here.
“I used to be quite notorious,” said Jia Chin, who is now in his late teens. “I was involved in cheating and fighting.”
But Jia Chin decided to give up on his life of crime after participating in a moral education program sponsored by the local Baha’i community here. “One day I was attending a Baha’i-inspired program with my friend and I saw that I can live differently,” said Jia Chin. “I decided to join the classes. Now my life is different. I am happy and glad now because I have transformed.”
[...]
Now 28 years old, Mr. Lim was recently honored for this work in a ceremony on 4 November 2006, when he was named the Young Outstanding Malaysian for Moral or Religious Leadership by the Junior Chamber Kuala Lumpur Mandarin, a community service organization affiliated with Junior Chamber International.
And check out this little doco all about Mr. Lim (thanks Amy):
It’s that holiday season again, and you all know what that means right? That’s right, it’s winter school time (well, for those of you in the northern hemisphere anyway). Unfortunately, because of my little absence, lead time for some of these is a little tight, but here we go:
The Swiss Winter School (linked page is german) is running from December 25th to the 30th at the Boldern Centre near Zurich. The theme this year is “One Common Faith” and there will be afternoon workshops in film-making, learning Arabic, singing, deepening and much more. All talks and workshops will be held in or translated into French, German and English.
Register here or write to tracyshoe@bluewin.ch for more info.
The registration for Japan’s winter school ended on December 2nd, but you may be able to sneak in if you’re going to be Takamatsu City between the 23rd and 25th of December
And instead of me listing every winter school out there, check the list here for details about winter schools in Ireland, Slovakia, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Scotland, New Caledonia & The Loyalty Islands and New Zealand (astute readers will note that these last two are technically summer schools, but let’s not split hairs shall we?)
(Update: An astute reader who, no doubt, noticed that New Zealand is having its summer school now, aslo noticed that if you go to this page of the Swiss summer school site, you can read all about the program en francais)
Just a few quick housekeeping things: I’m getting to the backlog of emails, so if you wrote to me any time in the past few months and still haven’t heard back, please bear with me, I’ll get there eventually. Also, given the huge amount of comment spam that I’m still getting, comments will effectively be turned off. You can try to leave them, but they’re all just going to be deleted until I can work it out. Of course, you can always drop me an email if there’s something on your mind.
Right then, carry on.
The hushed Baha’i pilgrimage to the Holy Land focuses on personal prayer and meditation, and is like no other in a region long torn between religions struggling — often noisily and sometimes violently — for hearts, minds and land.
“It was a spiritual journey for me,” said Mutale Salimu Hobbs, 30, from Zambia in southern Africa.
“It was a great experience, with people coming together as one,” she said on Mount Carmel, the world headquarters of the Baha’i movement above the busy Israeli port city of Haifa.
I was lucky enough to go on pilgrimage back in January and, at risk of sounding cliche, it really was a life changing experience. So if you haven’t yet, be sure to get yourselves signed up.
So let’s just pretend that I put up the following post up a few weeks ago:
I’m going to be dropping off-line for a few weeks owing to a change of job, change of house and change of continent. Then I’m goign to go on vacation, and then my computer is going to die and I’m going to have to get it fixed… And by the time all of that is over, I’m sure I’ll hardly even remember how to blog. So bear with me. Be back soon.
Yeah, so anyway, I’m back now and I’ve got a whole pile of stuff to catch up on.
Heads up all, this year’s Changing Times conference is starting in a mere 67 days [gratuitous exclamation point]. The annual conference takes place at the Townshend International School in the Czech Republic, this year running from the 25th of December until the 1st of January. It also happens to be, by all accounts, the hottest place to rock the holiday season for all you mid-20’s Baha’i movers and shakers (though how that can be true when I have yet to attend, I have no idea).
But if spending a week in the scenic central Europe, mingling with young Baha’i professionals from 30-odd countries and attending sessions on the construct of race, conflict resolution, and ethics and morality sounds like a good time to you, you’d better get yourselves registered right quick as there is always a huge waiting list of eager folks just like you scrambling to attend (rumors are 300-400 poor souls get left out in the cold every year, so great is the demand; check the registration policies here).
And once you’ve got your lucky self all signed up, keep an eye on the Changing Times blog to stay abreast of the latest developments.
Ferraby Lionheart, long a favorite of ours here at Baha’i blog, is now, it seems, a favorite of everyone. Interweb music hipsters Stereogum, after naming him an artist to watch, was all a-gush over his show a few days ago; and his first solo release “self-titled EP” has been getting some wonderfullyglowyreviews.
So do yourselves a favor and head over here, here and here to download some tracks and then here to watch him serenade an old lady (such a nice boy) and after all that, when you’re as completely in love with him as I am, head over here to buy your own copy of “self-titled EP”. Now excuse me while I go back to listening to “Tickets to Crickets” for the fiftieth time in a row.
Ok, so while I was gone, Jerome sent me an email about a music industry weekend at Bosch Baha’i School and, as it’s going on this weekend (starts on Thursday evening), I wanted to make sure to let you know about it right away:
Dear Friends,
We want to invite you to a special event for Baha’i musicians like no other:
The 4th Annual Baha’i “Music Development Weekend” at Bosch Baha’i School in Santa Cruz California.
It starts Thursday evening October 5th and runs through Sunday, October 8th.
If you are a Baha’i, and a musician or producer, and music is important to you,
THIS MAY BE THE MOST REWARDING WEEKEND YOU WILL EXPERIENCE THIS YEAR!
YOU WILL NOT WANT TO MISS THIS CHANCE TO BUILD THE FUTURE OF MUSIC IN THE BAHA’I COMMUNITY
We’ll plan future collaborations, and share some lessons learned about performing, recording, producing and promoting our musical art.
We’ll explore not only how to make money with our craft, but also how to be more effective as musicians in the Baha’i community. And of course, we’ll jam a bit too, and perform!
Call or email the school today to reserve your place at this wonderful event.
If you can’t stay the whole weekend, come for the concert on Saturday evening!
Bosch Baha’i School, 500 Comstock Lane, Santa Cruz, CA 95060-9615
On the web at:
Any sites linked to or opinions expressed are only those of the editors of the blog and are not necessarily those of the worldwide Baha'i community. If you want those, go to www.bahai.org
thankyouverymuch
Furthermore: Baha'i Blog may be a personal initiative, but we're always looking for a little aid and assistance. To send us your input, ideas or just encouragement, please drop some electronic mail to: info[at]bahaiblog.net
For those of us who came into the Baha'i Faith through the ever popular Kubaya flavored route, the Dawnbreaker collective comes flying out of left field and knocks us on our asses. And while more and more artists are pushing "Baha'i Music" to new areas, the Dawnbreaker Collective were still the first to toss out the Baha'i folk songbook. Grab their music direct from them, from Amazon, or on itunes.
While he's been profiled here already, Ferraby Lionheart certainly deserves all the praise that this meager blog can heap upon him as he's released an absolute gem of an album with his 'Catch the Brass Ring'.
You could say the duo connected through a higher power. "We're both Baha'i; that's how I heard of Sabzi in the first place," explains Scion. "So being involved with the Baha'i community and doing music, people kept asking me, 'Do you know Saba?'"
"Yeah, people would just be like, there's another Baha'i in town that 'does hiphop,'" Sabzi laughs. Once connected, Sabzi spun records at the release party for RA's debut EP Apostrophe—and the pair found that musically, they were on the same page.
An invigorating blend of various Polynesian dances, rhythms and sounds fused with pop, MANA is a Baha'i music and cultural performance group based in Sydney, Australia. The members of MANA are predominately youth, most of them still attending high school, and though they are all residents of Sydney, their roots are traced back to Samoa, Tonga and the Cook Islands.
To date, MANA has released 2 albums: Reflections on the Life of the Spirit and Arising To Serve. All lyrics have been taken from the Baha'i Writings found in the sequence of courses known as Ruhi Books, developed by the Ruhi Institute. There is currently a total of seven books in the sequence.
The Baha'is Magazine
A new version of a glossy 80-page magazine profiling the Baha'i Faith and its worldwide community has just been published. It features sections on Baha'u'llah, the spiritual and moral teachings of the Baha'i Faith, the Faith's history and administration, and its programs of social and economic development. It also has profiles of individual Baha'is and examples of community activities.
So, it would seem that over the past month I have managed to lock myself out of my own blog and then managed, in the process of getting back in, to completely gum up the works. So, assuming you can still read this, please bear with me until I can get things back up and running.
This whole blogging-from-the-road thing is much rougher than I thought it would be. Especially for someone who gets car-sick just looking at the map, so blogging from the passenger seat is out of the question (that’s my mom doing some of the driving).
Anyway, after leaving Edmonton, we sped through Saskatoon and Winnipeg fairly quickly and did a marathon 26 hour drive from Winnipeg into Toronto where we spent a day documenting a community outreach project that’s being carried out almost entirely by youth aged 11-15.
The coordinators of the project are older, but the youth are the ones going out, talking to people, teaching the classes for kids, talking to people about the Baha’i Faith. It’s all pretty amazing.
After Toronto, we continued our eastward journey heading into Quebec for a Baha’i family camp. The focus of these camps is really about training and education, so they’re normally referred to as ’summer schools’ (or ‘winter schools’ depending on the season). 
I was told that the topics they were studying here in Quebec are the same that are being studied at other camps that are going on all summer across the country. So if anyone out there was at the summer school in Silvan Lake, Alberta; or Shawnigan Lake, BC; or Winnipeg, Manitoba; you were probably studying the same thing that they were studying in Quebec. But you were probably doing it in english.
Sadly, despite 11 years of studying it in school, my french skills are rather meagre, so I can’t really tell you much more than that, but there was a lot of french study, a lot of french singing and a lot of french laugher.
The community outreach team meets in the morning for prayers and reflection on the previous day’s activities. The size of the team varies in size from 20 to almost 40 from day to day, with some members there all day every day and others coming in on their days off or when they finished work in the afternoon. There are also participants that had come in from other cities just to assist with Edmonton’s community outreach, some staying for the full 9 days, others just for one or two. The team is conducting outreach in 4 different neighbourhoods, so after a group reflection, everyone splits up into their neighbourhood teams and continues to plan their activities and study materials that would assist them with their outreach (how to conduct effective classes for children for example, or ways to initiate conversations about religion in a society that would really rather talk about anything but.)
After a quick break for lunch, the separate neighbourhood teams head out to their respective communities where they break into pairs and set off into the neighbourhoods. Some pairs would visit parks or community centres, some pairs would visit with parents to further explain the classes for children and youth, some pairs would visit with people to do more detailed presentations about the Baha’i Faith, and some pairs would just go door to door in the community to tell people about the programs that the Baha’is were organizing in the community as well as just raise awareness about the Baha’i Faith.
Another quick break for dinner and then the teams in each neighbourhood prepare for their activities, which can include classes for children, classes for youth, study groups or devotional meetings. In all of the places that I’ve seen in the past few weeks, the children’s class has been the most popular. Usually held in a park somewhere in the neighbourhood, the classes are composed of children of families that the teams have met during the afternoon but often attract children who just happen to be in the park while the classes are going on as well. Sometimes the kids are the ones dragging their parents over to check out the class and sometimes it’s the parents that are dragging the kids, but either way the kids usually don’t want to leave at the end.
After the classes are over, all of the teams meet back at the community outreach HQ (in Edmonton it was the home of one of the Baha’is) to share experiences from the day, reflect on what they had learned and consult on how to use that learning to improve their outreach the next day. These projects usually continue for 9-14 days, 12 hours a day. It’s a very intense experience and, between the regular prayer and spirit of service, one that creates tight bonds among the participants.
I arrived in Edmonton yesterday and will be here through the weekend covering another community outreach project, but first I wanted to put up an update about the on-going persecution of the Baha’i community in Iran.
Left Ottawa, flew across the country, spent the weekend in Vancouver with a group doing community outreach in 9 different neighbourhoods across the city. It’s pretty much the same thing here as it was in Ottawa (though on a larger scale), classes for children, devotional meetings, and generally talking to people about religion, about spirituality and about the Baha’i Faith. Here people are prepping for a 
Again, the classes here are virtually identical to the classes in Ottawa (and, in fact, classes that are going on 
I first heard about musical firesides when I was in Kuala Lumpur last year, and though I didn’t have a chance to go to one until I got to Ottawa, I had heard about them being used in India, the US, the UK, France and all across Canada. And I’m sure they’re being used in another dozen countries as well, but it’s just so hard to keep up these days.
Anyway, a ‘musical fireside’ is simply a presentation about the basics of the Baha’i Faith that incorporates video, photos, songs and prayers. It’s an opportunity for Baha’is to invite their friends and neighbours to find out what Baha’is actually believe. These days, religion having the reputation that it does, people are often hesitant to talk about spirituality and belief (whether it’s your own or someone else’s) even when others are genuinely interested in it. So this way, people can get together, eat some food, watch a presentation, sing some songs and have a discussion about religion and spirituality. The singing, as you can see, is key.
After the songs, more food and some discussion. Time to drink tea and ask questions and get to know your friends and neighbours. Because, after all, isn’t understanding a fairly key step on the way to unity?
I’ve been in Ottawa for a couple of days now hanging out with a group of about 20 Baha’is who are doing community outreach in a neighbourhood called Bayshore. They’ve been organizing devotional meetings, study groups and classes for children. Here a few of the participants take an opportunity to reflect on the people that they’d talked to that day as well as plan for the evening children’s class.
The children’s classes teach morals and virtues (like love, patience, honesty, unity and justice) using songs, stories, games and crafts. They’ve had 15-20 kids there the past couple of days, and while the kids laughed and played, the parents would come and chat with the organizers. Here michel goes through a book with a young boy. Because this is Ottawa, there is a real mix of english and french among both the organizers and the participants. This evening’s class was conducted in english and this young boy spoke only french, so Michel was taking a moment to translate this book for him.
At the devotional meetings, members of the community are invited to come together and say prayers and read holy writings from any of the world’s religions. This one was pretty chill, and after praying and meditating together, people hung out and had tea and chatted for a while. Nothing like praying together to build unity in a community, no matter what religious background we all come from.
Life never really works out the way that I plan (which is why I’ve largely given up on planning altogether). The last time I dropped a post on this blog, I was about to hit the road for what turned into an 14 month global tour of fun and adventure that included 18 countries, 78 separate flights, 79 different beds and approximately 125,000 photos. I know I had promised that I would blog as much as I could, but, sadly reality is rarely as easy I imagine and the prospect of getting a post up from Carracollo, Bolivia; Preah Vihear, Cambodia or Mulanje, Malawi was a little more than I could handle while trying to keep up with booking tickets, finding translators, trying to keep airport security goons from confiscating my cameras and securing a steady flow of delicious cups of tea (it’s all about the priorities).
Happy New Year everyone. I’m sure you’ve all noticed that this blog has been quiet for quite some time now, and I certainly do apologize, but exciting things have been in the works.
The nine-month battle to give Egyptian Baha’is the right to list their religion on their national ID cards 
Czech it out all (oh the bad puns), the 
The Baha’i World News Service put up a story a few days ago about a Baha’i who was named 
It’s that holiday season again, and you all know what that means right? That’s right, it’s winter school time (well, for those of you in the northern hemisphere anyway). Unfortunately, because of my little absence, lead time for some of these is a little tight, but here we go:
Just a few quick housekeeping things: I’m getting to the backlog of emails, so if you wrote to me any time in the past few months and still haven’t heard back, please bear with me, I’ll get there eventually. Also, given the huge amount of comment spam that I’m still getting, comments will effectively be turned off. You can try to leave them, but they’re all just going to be deleted until I can work it out. Of course, you can always 
So surprise surprise, a lot happened while I was out. For example: 
For those of us who came into the Baha'i Faith through the ever popular 
