Aberdeen community continues apace with it's commitment to the core activities of the Five Year Plan. A large group are embarking on Book 6, on a semi intensive basis, with the aim of having a large number of people through the sequence by Rid. ván 2006.

The recent cluster meeting (the first with the new reorganised clusters) was very successful and a number of personal pledges were made. The Spiritual Assembly of Aberdeen is looking to spearhead that movement by initiating a campaign of home visits in the hope that it will inspire others to do the same. New devotional meetings are planned but the most challenging task is to find a way to reach the younger sections of the community, children and youth.

Speaking of our wonderful youth, a couple of memorable youth weekends have been held at the home of Ross and Nahid Donald in Keig; they and their septic tank sacrificing much to ensure a good time was had by all – perhaps the youth will write a report for the next issue! [They already did; see page 8 – Ed.]

The Aberdeen youth recently got together and consulted on ways in which the local Assembly could serve them. This was a wonderful initiative and a number of mature suggestions came out of it which will form the basis for consultation, not least of which is a youth weekend for the youth of the North East Cluster to be held over the weekend of the 27th to the 29th of January in Findhorn Bay. The local village committee have gratefully accepted our offer to undertake an act of service. Watch this space.

The Aberdeen Bahá’í community was invited to contribute to an interfaith service and celebration on Saturday the 3rd of December and, of course, accepted that invite. They look forwards to further strengthening the bonds between us and other local faith Communities.

In short everyone is geared up for an intensification of energy and activity and looking forwards to the future and the challenges of the next Five Year Plan. Love to all of you from the Furry Boots City.

We’ve been having a good time recently with the celebrations of the Birth of Bahá’u’lláh. We actually had two dinner parties in the area – one in Aberdeen, and one out-of-town in Fyvie. Each had slightly over 40 people attending, of whom half were friends of the community (the rest being Bahá’ís).

The celebration in Aberdeen was held at the Helmy family’s home on the Friday, initially with all of us squeezed into the living room, and some of us reading short stories about the lives of various prophets (getting a little mixed-up in the middle somewhere – but we recovered). This was then followed by a game, abruptly abandoned by virtually everyone when it was announced that food was on the table! The atmosphere was great, with everyone socialising and chatting and playing cards. And reading coffee-cups in all the rooms and corridors on the ground-floor.

The Saturday celebration in Fyvie was held in the Fozdars’ home. Lorrie was holding her “Some like it hot” weekend-school on how to organise and cater-for, ambitious community activities. So those attending had the task (“trial by fire”) of setting things up for some 40 plus people coming to the Holy Day celebrations. They managed excellently, with enormous amounts of very good food laid on. As wi th the Aberdeen celebrations, the social part flowed wonderfully too, with some of our friends staying on chatting until very late. Entertainment came courtesy of several children acting out the story of a puppet show which Bahá’u’lláh had described seeing as a child. (We had children, rather than puppets, acting out the parts.) While not as rehearsed, or true to life, as some other productions you may have maybe seen, we managed to carry it off!

I suppose we’ve been fairly good at holding celebrations for quite a while; almost everyone always seems to enjoy themselves. But what has become even better in the last year or so is what happens before and after the celebrations. There’s been a large increase in regular activities here, with many of us, and our friends, personally organising (or attending) devotional meetings, study circles, children’s classes, women’s meetings, etc. Many of those now coming to our Holy Day celebrations, etc., are also involved in our other regular activities and, inversely, many others who initially attend our celebrations also then show an interest joining us in other smaller, regular get-togethers (or meeting socially). So both activity-types very naturally complement each other, and these last celebrations sit in an overall pattern of concentrated and sustained activity. We’re very excited (I think it’s fair to say on behalf of the rest of the community) by how things are going and, despite some hiccups along the way (which I haven’t dwelt on here), are looking to having more good things happen in the year(s) ahead.

The Bahá’í Faith has appeared on the formal academic curricula of various UK universities in the field of religious studies and theology over the past ten years. For the first time, however, a topic directly relating to the Faith has been included as part of a linguistics' course at a UK university.

On 10th November a Bahá’í was invited to present a one hour lecture, including time for questions and answers, at the University of Edinburgh on the theme "The use of Language within Religious Traditions". This was one of a series of lectures examining sociolinguistic dimensions within various faith communities. The theme ran over five weeks and other speakers represented the Jewish, Roman Catholic, Church of Scotland and Islamic traditions within Edinburgh.

The presentation focused on:

Twenty students attended but most of the questions raised following the initial presentation related more to theological than sociolinguistic issues! A particular area of interest was the concept of a Manifestation of God.

The course had been organised by Dr Aaliya Rajah-Carrim, a Muslim, of the university's Linguistic Department. She felt moved to include a Bahá’í lecture after witnessing the significant development of the Bahá’í community in her native Mauritius over the past fifteen years – especially in terms of bringing together traditionally hostile ethnic and linguistic minorities. In an email to the speaker after the lecture she commented that, "the students found it very informative and relevant to the course. They felt that they had learnt much more than sociolinguistics from the lecture."

Inclusion of the topic in such an academic course represents a new level of recognition for the Faith not only in Scotland but in the UK as a whole. What was especially noticeable was that the Bahá’í Faith was included whereas other numerically larger religions were not. Dr Rajah-Carrim has indicated her intention to include the theme in future years.

or how the friends, on completing the Ruhi sequence, and being transformed through the Creative Word of God, are seizing opportunities in the arena of service.

A storytelling afternoon was an initiative of the tutors and participants of a Book 4 study circle. The study circle invited the neighbouring communities to an afternoon of storytelling and afternoon tea, open to all. The well organized programme started with a devotional session followed by an introduction to the guests explaining that this was an outcome from one of the Ruhi books studied by Bahá’ís and their friends globally, this being book 4 about the Twin Manifestations of this Dispensation. A PowerPoint presentation on the Birthday of Bahá’u’lláh was shown with a choir singing about the greatness of this day. Some people narrated sections of Book 4 and others acted out parts of the book.

Guests were invited to share in the story telling and one (the neighbour of one of the friends) wanted to share her insight "You know friends Bahá’u’lláh might be the second coming of Jesus Christ that people are waiting for." Truly this was the bag of gold at the end of the rainbow and opened up an opportunity for some profound spiritual discussion between the friends present at the gathering.

This is one type of home visit, where the friends are invited to come together and share inspiring stories and the Word of God.

This storytelling event was an inspiring event, discussed at the Aberdeen Nineteen Day Feast, and emphasised the practices of the Ruhi books and the important role of encouragement played by the tutors in this unfolding institute process. Someone commented about how they were so moved by Naysun Carew’s storytelling at Scarborough that the community decided to invite him up and have a workshop on storytelling.

Inviting seekers to embrace the Faith – It takes great courage to seize opportunities to openly invite seekers to accept Bahá’u’lláh and into the Bahá’í community, to help them take this important step in their spiritual journey.

At our last Feast a seeker came with some young adult Bahá’ís. Normally the Assembly would have turned the Feast into a unity feast. However, one courageous Bahá’í who had tasted the joy of inviting friends to embrace the Faith through attending workshops on advanced teaching and being on the cutting edge of learning, having lived in an A cluster for at least a year and participated in intensive programmes of growth, seized the opportunity looked for a UK declaration card, couldn't find one, used the American declaration card and asked the seeker "So you believe in Bahá’u’lláh?" to which the seeker replied "Yes" then the Bahá’í said "Well here is a declaration card for you, if you feel you are ready to join the Bahá’í Faith, here you can sign it, do not waste time." The seeker replied "I will do it right now."

The eyes of the new Bahá’í were ablaze with a fire that no earthly power could extinguish – Ya Bahá’u’lláh Abha. The newly declared Bahá’í joined the Feast, was welcomed, and all the time was smiling, radiant and very contented.

It is so easy to invite our friends to join us; do not worry whether we think they are ready, "A premise underlying our current teaching efforts is the realization that all humanity is moving towards Bahá’u’lláh." (Building Momentum)

So you see how one small action can create a rippling effect on everything we do.