doberman pizza. a baha'i (bahai, bahá'í) blog.

From the Canadian Baha’i News Service (CBNS), about the Canadian National Convention:

Iranian situation of deep concern to Bahá’ís at Canadian convention

TORONTO, ON, 27 April 2006 (CBNS) — Bahá’í delegates from across Canada will gather on Friday morning in Toronto for the 57th annual Bahá’í National Convention. The convention runs until Sunday, April 30th. Elected by their fellow believers across Canada, now numbering more than 30,000, the delegates will begin the convention with prayers for the safety of Iran’s Bahá’í community, that country’s largest religious minority.

Read the entire article.

So the twelve-day festival of Ridván, “…the holiest and most significant of all Bahá’í festivals”, continues. Check out some pictures from Ottawa’s celebration of the 1st day of Ridván. Spiritual Assemblies – building blocks of Bahá’í administration – were elected across the country on that day, in a rarefied atmosphere of spirituality that provides a refreshing contrast to the crassness and ego-mongering that too often characterizes our familiar democratic process. The Bahá’í National Convention happens this weekend in Toronto; there, representatives nationwide will gather to elect the nine members of the Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Canada. Offer your prayers for smooth and productive deliberations at the convention, so that we may enter the new Five-Year Plan running and more united and resolute than ever.

As usual, if anything in this post doesn’t make sense to you—drop me a line!

photo by deb5376 (creative commons)

Best wishes on this first day of Ridván, the King of all Festivals.

From John Walbridge’s Two Articles on Ridván:

Ridvan, Festival of. The twelve day period commemorating Baha’u'llah’s announcement of his claim to prophethood and his departure from Baghdad in 1863, observed from sunset 20 April to sunset, 2 May. The first, ninth and twelfth days of Ridvan are major Baha’i holy days on which work should be suspended. Baha’i elections are normally held during Ridvan. The name derives from the Najibiyyih Garden in Baghdad where Baha’u'llah stayed during this period and to which he gave the name Ridvan (Paradise).

See also the BBC’s fact file on Ridván.

View a Ridván-themed Flash presentation hosted by the Bahá’ís of New York City.

Easter weekend went well. I did some cleaning up in my room on Friday, helped out at the Ottawa Baha’i Centre on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, sanding the walls. The renovations are going along well, but there is a definite need for more people so the whole process can go faster. If you’ve got some time in the next little while, consider coming in and helping out — help get the centre up and running sooner.

Saturday I popped into the Howden Fireside down the street from our place, for a warm and cozy talk given by Louise Profeit-Leblanc. Lots of wisdom there. She’s a great storyteller with a lot of amazing stories to tell. She talked a fair bit about how she came to know the Baha’i Faith in her early days living in the Yukon, and tied her stories in with the virtue of courage — what it means to have courage, and so on. It was a good combination. Becoming a Baha’i is as much an act of courage for some people as it is an act of faith. Perhaps it would be easier if becoming a Baha’i wasn’t seen so much as “changing religions” as acknowledging the oneness of all religions. You know — rather than thinking of it as “switching from one family to another”, realizing that we’re all part of a much bigger family — the human family — that includes us all. Anyway, I digress. We had some good conversation that night, and we inexplicably ended up listening to Vaudeville Follies records. We started the evening listening to Hair, so it was definitely a weird night for music.

Tonight was a relaxing day; I made some phone calls and caught up with faraway friends, and tagged along with mom, sister and niece as they went shopping at Wal-Mart and Ikea. Then I joined up with a few members of the Baha’i choir for a mini-rehearsal; some of us will be performing at the celebration of the 1st day of Ridván. Don’t forget to join us at the St. Elias Banquet Hall — the Ridván elections start at 8 PM on Thursday evening, and continue the next day from 1 PM on; the celebration itself begins at 3 PM. Don’t forget to come and vote, or, if you can’t be there, vote in advance and get someone to bring it in! Read a little about Ridván and Bahá’í elections to put yourself in the spirit, or peruse a compilation on Bahá’í elections.

One last thing – it’s time for another patented movie devotional at Vafa’s place! Go check out his website for more details.

[Note: This post was recently blogged on Baha'i Views. Neat, huh?]

For desire is a flame that has reduced to ashes uncounted lifetime harvests of the learned, a devouring fire that even the vast sea of their accumulated knowledge could never quench. How often has it happened that an individual who was graced with every attribute of humanity and wore the jewel of true understanding, nevertheless followed after his passions until his excellent qualities passed beyond moderation and he was forced into excess. His pure intentions changed to evil ones, his attributes were no longer put to uses worthy of them, and the power of his desires turned him aside from righteousness and its rewards into ways that were dangerous and dark. A good character is in the sight of God and His chosen ones and the possessors of insight, the most excellent and praiseworthy of all things, but always on condition that its center of emanation should be reason and knowledge and its base should be true moderation.

j’aimerais tout simplement souligner quelques-uns de mes expressions francophones préférées:

most hilarious thing ever:
I was just watching a documentary about Beijing’s preparations for the 2008 Olympics… besides the ground-breaking ceremonies and the construction of venues, they also had a whole bunch of people learn English. This is apparently a real big image thing for China – they want to appear more open to the world and all that. So they had this big old press conference with a bunch of people all dressed up in fancy suits and speaking English, soldiers in uniform sounding off in English, and so on. And how do they end the spot? With a musical number, naturally – everyone singing Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On“.

hilarious.

long-time readers of doberman pizza will remember an intermittent feature called “interesting search terms” where I would post a list of recent phrases that people have used to find my website, intentionally or not, via major search engines like google, yahoo, and so on. I’ve taken the time to collect those phrases (along with a whack of new ones), sort them alphabetically, and give them their own space on this site. ladies and gentlemen, I give you interesting search terms.

Some personal favourites of mine:

• wills of san francisco potato salad
• project challenge sandwich illinois
• all i want is a photo of a pizza
• being trampled by women in cleats
• crazy doberman eating self
• what in the hell do i want to do with my life

And probably my all-time favourite:

• do Bahais eat babies?

The Montreal Gazette just ran a story about the Multicultural Society at Laurier Macdonald High School, quoting a Montreal Baha’i youth, Mona Ghadirian, in the process. The quote is at the bottom of the first page, regarding her participation at the school’s recent commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Racism. Mona is cool. Read the story!