It’s been a month; let’s write a blog post! In the rhythm of community life, the time approaches for reflecting and planning. We take look back at the experiences garnered over the last few months. In the interest of brevity, here’s three of them:
- Thinking in terms of process rather than events
- Wedding study to action
- Accompaniment and empowerment
Thinking in terms of process rather than events
Striving to expand the junior youth program in our neighborhood, I was struck by the degree to which I was trying to make events happen. I had fallen into “a mindset that derives satisfaction from the sense of expectation and excitement [events] generate.” The proper place for events or short term projects is when they occur as natural outgrowths of an ongoing process for education and transformation. So if we are regularly engaged in teaching children, and reflecting on those actions, then at a certain moment in time it may be appropriate to invite the parents together for a play performed by the children. But if we are not involved in that regular process, and attempt to make a play happen as an impetus for other actions, it may prove difficult.
Wedding study to action
We’ve had a number of occasions to explore “an approach to study of the [Baha'i] writings that is wedded to action.” For example:
- Studying the text of Glimmerings of Hope with a potential animator, which yielded truly wonderful conversations, and then going to visit one of the parents to discuss some of the ideas raised in that book.
- Studying the purpose of prayer, and the relationship between our existence as spiritual and material beings, and then going to visit our neighbors. One of them invited us in and it turned out she had been asking God to send someone for her to pray with.
- Studying the joy inherent in walking a path of service, and then experiencing that joy by walking across the street and spending some time with a lovely couple who recently lost the husband’s grandmother.
Accompaniment and empowerment
In each of these experiences, we have learned to quiet “the urge to overinstruct.” By patiently allowing others to do things themselves, perhaps in ways we would not have done, we practice a form of generosity in which we “[delight] not so much in [our] own accomplishments but in the progress and services of others.”
