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

guess what? I’m going to Vietnam. No, I wasn’t drafted. I’ve hooked up with the Baha’i community over there and, if everything goes as planned, I’m going to be helping them create a website for their newly recognized community. I should be leaving in the spring (mid-March?) and coming back to Canada for Labour Day—basically spending the summer there. It’s not exactly a snowbird trip is it? Oh well. It’s not so much about having a vacation as it is about service (although it will be nice to skip out a little early from the Ottawa winter this year). There aren’t many details to share right now, because they’re presently under discussion; I’ll be posting more as I know more. Suffice to say, though, that this blog should start getting more and more interesting in the next few months as I prepare.

now here’s a rather eye-popping addition to your Favourites bar: Baha’i Explorer is a Baha’i content aggregator—a clean, concise website that offers an overview of the latest Baha’i-related content to appear on the Internet, including listings from prominent Baha’i blogs, news headlines, Youtube videos, music, flash presentations and more. It’s an individual initiative, and is by all appearances 100% legit. Seriously, you need to bookmark it now, and maybe spread it on Digg and del.icio.us and Facebook and all those other sites. Do it. Go already!

Baha’i artist Devon Gundry (who I met at Bosch Baha’i School, and whose music I’ve featured here in the past), comes out with a brilliantly moving, profoundly touching new music video for a song based on one of my favourite passages from the Baha’i Writings. See the video below, or in full force on Vimeo thanks to Director Justin Baldoni. Thanks to Praveen for the link!

Armed with the power of Thy name nothing can ever hurt me, and with Thy love in my heart all the world’s afflictions can in no wise alarm me.

From a prayer by Bahá’u'lláh

hindsight is 20/20, right? the past few months of the Five Year Plan in Ottawa have brought a lot of powerful insight, beginning with the reflection meeting at the beginning of October, through a two-week expansion phase, and into a phase of consolidation where contacts, who have most probably been taught about the Baha’i Faith through direct methods such as Anna’s presentation, are nurtured through participation in Institute courses (aka study circles) that not only impart knowledge, but also – if properly facilitated – confer the vital spiritual skills required for a Baha’i to carry out those spiritual duties that make up his or her part in the Eternal Covenant of God. at the start of the reflection meeting, our local cluster institutions took us through a retrospective of past efforts, giving us a brief overview of how far we had come since beginning our intensive program of growth several years ago. the interesting twist on the current cycle’s goals was that, after several cycles of focusing on different elements – musical firesides, Anna’s presentation, neighbourhood teaching, and so on – the focus came back to teaching teams and their individual plans, much the same way as we had started many cycles ago. the reasoning? since we’ve had the time to experiment with all the different elements of an intensive program of growth – see how musical firesides work, how they use Anna’s presentation, and how Anna’s presentation in its turn gives seekers all they need to know to begin the sequence of institute courses. I’m enjoying watching this change in culture of the Baha’i community from the inside out. Stay tuned for more reports from the community!