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Hello again
I have presented to you some traits in the Bahai Faith over a few months.. Recently, prescriptions of living, commands and teachings, types of scriptures, some of the history of the Faith, the martyred Herald the Bab, the Founder of the Bahai Faith, Bahaullah, His journeys as a banished prisoner of the state, prophesies of the Bible predicting His arrival to the Holy Land and His proclamation in 1863 as well as the Babs in 1844 and miscelleanneous things. I have mentioned the administration on local, national and international levels.
I'll now turn to this particular side of this Faith.
"The functioning of Spiritual Assemblies
The Spiritual Assemblies are divine institutions created by Bahaullah. Upon those who serve on them He has bestowed an inestimable bounty, enabling them to take part in the erection of the framwork of His World Order, now in its embryonic form. Great as this priviledge is, members of these institutions are faced with staggering responsibilities for they can either, by means of applying the spiritual principles enshrined in the Administrative Order, establish strong and healthy Assemblies, firmly grounded and harmoniously functioning, or alternatively degenerate t into a mere body without spirit, well organized yet full of tension, problems, frictions and misunderstandings.
The Bahais in the early days, those who lived and laboured in the Heroic Age," (like Tahirih and her companions)" did not have these responsibilities or problems. Having come in direct contact with the Supreme Manifestation of God and the Centre of His Covenant" (Abdu'l-Baha)", they had become a new creation endowed with divine qualities, utterly oblivious of themselves and wholly attracted to Bahaullah. Intoxicated by the wine of His utterances and completely devoted to Him, these holy souls, like plants in the spring season, were refreshed by the vernal showers of His Revelation. They drew their strength and sustenance directly and independently fron the Centre of the Cause. These early believers had direct communication with Bahaullah and Abdu'l-Baha and a great many of the Tablets we have today were revealed in answer to their letters seeking guidance or asking various questions. In that age there were no grounds for ill-feeling or misunderstanding, tension or friction among the believers for they had no community life; it was then that the Cause produced its spiritual giants.
However, in the Formative Age the followers of Bahaullah must work together in Bahai communities. The vernal showers of Bahaullahs Revelation have ceased and the spirit of the Cause of God, that Water of Life which animated a band of God intoxicated Heroes in an earlier Age, can today reach and refresh the believers only through the institutions of a divinely ordained Order. The Guardian, Shoghi Effendi, who laid the foundations of this Order and whose spirit will undoubtedly dominate the entire period of the Formative Age of the Faith, in speaking of the birth of the Administrative Order has summarized this process in these words:
'The moment had now arrived for that undying, that world-vitalizing Spirit that was born in Shiraz (The Bab, who was born in Shiraz), that had been rekindled in Tihran,(by Bahaullah) that had been fanned into flame in Baghdad and Adrianople, (by Bahaullah) that had been carried to the West, and was now illuminating the fringes of five continents, to incarnate itself in institutions designed to canalize its outspreading energies and stimulate its growth.' The Spiritual Assemblies, "the chief sinews of Bahai Society" which in the future will evolve into national and local Houses of Justice are indeed channels through which the life-giving spirit of the Faith flows.
The Spiritual Assembly is not merely a meeting of nine members, it is rather a divine institution in which man becomes an instrument for the flow of the spirit. Members of the Spiritual Assemblies often come from backgrounds which are socially, intellectually, and spiritually different. Young and old, rich and poor, litterate and illiterate, veteran and newly enrolled, all may sit together as members of a Spiritual Assembly. This diversity of thought, of culture, of customs and background, which could give rise to such incompatibility as would cripple the working of an organization in the outside world, becomes the source of strength and blessing in the Spiritual Assembly whose members, far from dwelling on their differencies in education, capacity and ability, can work together in accordance with the spirit of Bahaullahs Administrative Order to create a loving and harmonious body pulsating with the spirit of the Cause and demonstrating thereby the dynamism of its cohesive power."
This is "unity on diversity". When I first met with this idea I came to think of the artists work, a painters painting, to be more precise. It is all about harmonizing different colours, uniting different units, making contrasts and all this within a frame. The Painter is God and the colours are people.
Kind regards
Bye for now
I'll soon continue
Laila Falck
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