New Centre News

The Bahá’ís in and around Edinburgh are blessed to be witnessing the developments taking place in the heart of our city. The news reached us of the successful bid for 44 Albany Street, a beautiful property in the New Town area of the city, just days after securing the sale of the existing Bahá’í centre. This means that there will be a timely transition from the old to the new centre later on this summer. Keep checking the website bci.org/edinburgh/centreindex.htm for the latest news. There has been quite a spirit generated here knowing that prayers said at our Feast for the success of this goal, joined with those offered in the Holy Shrines by the Universal House of Justice and many of the friends around the world. We are full of enthusiasm that this spirit will in turn fuel all our efforts for the last year of the Five year plan.

Fireside Evenings

These evenings have been started with great success on the 1st and 3rd Thursdays of the month in the home of Nancy Warren-Crook in response to the growing interest in the Faith being generated by our activities.

Chairing Workshops

Houman Javedan has initiated evening workshops exploring consultation, how to chair Feasts and other meetings. This course will develop with shared learning and is already in demand to run again.

Ruhi Circles

Some of those attending the animators’ course.

We are pleased to share that our new Area Coordinator for the Training Institute is Nasrin Khosravi, who can be contacted through the Edinburgh website. As books are continually starting and being completed it is hard to keep current. At this time there is a Book 1 running (four Bahá’ ís and four enqui rers attending), with another about to start; a Book 2 is underway and a Book 4 is in progress. We are also very excited to have the training of Junior Youth ‘animators’ taking place in Edinburgh, which will lead to some very creative experiences for our junior youth and friends in the near future. Much emphasis is being placed on the previously underexplored service aspect of the books. We are hoping to run intensive training here in the summer, please do get in touch if you would like to help out.

A String of Holy Days

A whole series of events took place over the festival of Ridván including: hearing, from Nicholas and June Sanders, fascinating stories of the eventful history here in Edinburgh, Barra and other places; a fantastic study of this year’s Ridván Message (aided by the consumption of chocolate cake); a beautiful sunny day walking in the Glen of Roslin; devotional meetings and, of course, the largest community participation so far for the election of the Local Spiritual Assembly.

A-Riding to Serve

On the 29th of May the courageous Chris Oaks arrived in Edinburgh after completing a remarkable journey from Rutland Gate in London by bicycle, yes you read that correctly – an inspirational idea to raise funds for the New Bahá’í Centre. He has raised some £1500 in pledges so far – well done. (See report on pages 12-15.)

Celebration

Some of the Bahá’ís and friends helped generate interest to start up an interfaith choir in Edinburgh, which meets every two weeks in St George’s West Church. The choir has received support from an initiative called ‘Creative Space’ which has kindly offered free rehearsal space and help with any future publicity. The choir has started off by learning music from each others’ tradi tions wi th everyone contributing material and sharing the job of teaching the songs.

Arts Project

The Edinburgh Bahá’í Community are currently embarking on an exciting Arts Project to engage people’s creative skills in a coherent, long-term and sustainable way. The project would allow everyone involved to flourish together through the expression of their unique talents and in the process help provide some form of income for the new centre through a website, where things such as Edinburgh tours, visual arts, photography, jewellery, music and audio narrative would be marketed to a wider audience. Various teams have been researching each specialised area and at this moment it is very much at the detailed consultative stage.

Visitors

There is always a constant stream of visitors to the community, and recently we have had Bahá’ís visiting from New Zealand, South Africa, Minnesota, Norway and Kurdistan. It’s sometimes easy to forget the diversity of our experience as Bahá’ís, and that is something people notice when they visit our communities.

The Aberdeen community has been throwing it’s energies into taking on board the goals of the Five Year Plan , reinvigorated by the passing of Ridván and an enhanced appreciation of the urgency of our task.

To this end the community has been studying Ruhi Book 4 intensively over the past few weeks, tutored by Annabel Pee and Lynne Roberts, spending one whole day out of the weekend working together. There has been a wonderful spirit generated by this and a spirit of sacrifice is becoming increasingly evident.

We have been meeting in the home of Morag and Sana Donald.

They have three young children and to enable us to meet there and have a very pleasant space in which to work, Sana has been taking the children out of their home to

A much-needed energiser sees all smiling!

enable Morag and the rest of us to hold our study circle. This is also a wonderful sacrifice by the children themselves and we are all extremely grateful to the Donald family for this sacrifice.

The youth themselves are showing a great deal of sacrifice to achieve this goal of finishing Book 4 before the coming summer vacation, especially as we are now into the study and exam period and have even requested that an impromptu Book 5 be organised on an intensive basis, over the course of five days, utilising days before many embark on a summer of hectic activity, no stopping and resting on our laurels!

One youth is considering staying in Aberdeen for the summer with the intention of forming a Book 1 study circle, finding enough enquirers to fill it and perhaps with a few others form a teaching team and see where that takes us.

The spirit of creativity and enterprise encouraged by engaging in the Ruhi process has seen a change of culture at the heart of our community , with an increase in the arts being seen in all our activities and all sorts of individual initiatives being taken.

There are now two children’s classes happening in the Aberdeenshire area, one at the Fozdar’s home in Fyvie and one at the home of David and Parivash Lumsdon in Torphins. Our goal now will be to have children’s classes in the City of Aberdeen itself and of course to find a way to reach the Local Junior Youth.

A very successful event was organised by the Fyvie branch of the Association of Bahá’í Women to raise money for the education of women in India, a goal adopted by the ABW in Acuto, Italy. The meal, attended by over forty people was a huge success and raised several hundred pounds.