From the National Spiritual Assembly to the Bahá’ís of Canada

A message from the National Spiritual Assembly to the Bahá’ís of Canada, which will be the subject of consultation at this year’s unit conventions (25 January 2016):

Dear Bahá’í Friends,

As believers around the world gather to study the 29 December 2015 message of the Universal House of Justice to the Conference of the Continental Boards of Counsellors, they stand at the shore of an ocean of guidance and insight, the fruit of 20 years’ labour. “In the Five Year Plan now ending, the task facing the believers has been to apply all that had been learned from previous Plans to the work of extending the process of growth to thousands of new clusters.” Looking beyond those two decades to a more distant horizon, we see the figure of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, pacing in the gardens next to the Shrine of Bahá’u’lláh, seated in His small room at Bahjí, in His house in Haifa or the House of ‘Abbúd in ‘Akká, revealing Tablets that would shape a Divine Plan that guides our steps to this day. Indeed, as we enter a new stage in that Plan at Ridván, the one hundredth anniversary of the period of the revelation of the Tablets of the Divine Plan will have begun.

In late December, the National Assembly expressed a hope that a wave of homefront pioneers would arise by that anniversary, and the response was electric, immediate. As of the writing of this message, 14 of the 19 pioneers called for in this Plan have arisen and several more are working towards arriving before Ridván. Each story of friends arising in this way has been an inspiring demonstration of how the spirit of the Tablets of the Divine Plan continues to run through the veins of a community in which their Author placed such a precious trust.

Today, 106 of the 107 programmes of growth in Canada aimed for in this Plan have been established, an increase of 49 since Ridván 2011. These are clusters where, in the words of the House of Justice, a process for building capacity has been initiated “through which its inhabitants, prompted by a wish to contribute to the spiritual and material well-being of their communities, are enabled to begin offering acts of service.” Some 50 clusters have passed the second milestone on this journey of growth and of those, six clusters are hosting more than 100 core activities involving over 7000 participants. These numbers represent an army committed to building strong and vibrant communities. And behind each one, we see a home that is opened to all, a family committed to raising strong and selfless children, a youth bending to support a junior youth, a seeker learning about the mission and purpose of Bahá’u’lláh and growing numbers brought into contact with the transforming Word of God.

The delegates to this year’s National Convention will be consulting about the pressing needs of this stage of the Divine Plan and exploring the nature of the “herculean labour” required on the part of the individual, the community and the institutions of the Cause. Among them will be the following:

• Each cluster must continue to advance along the continuum of growth, eventually finding a pocket of receptivity in which to learn to focus on a population.  Where such smaller centres have already been found, they must be multiplied.  What is needed to do this in both urban and rural clusters?
• The rekindled spirit of pioneering must become a blaze of movement that in turn lights the candle of faith in the hearts of Canada’s diverse populations, whether through visits between clusters to encourage each other and share learning, pioneering to open or reinforce a neighbourhood or moving to a different region entirely.  How will this happen?
• Youth must continue in the vanguard, arising to serve and empower their younger peers, while attention is given to the material and spiritual dimensions of their lives.  What conditions in a community allow this
• The institute process — this “instrument of limitless potentiality” — must continue to strengthen, with new souls beginning a lifelong study and others advancing through the sequence.
• To further develop the local and National Funds that support all this work, we invite the friends “to consider afresh the responsibility of all believers to support the work of the Faith through their own means and, further, to manage their financial affairs in the light of the teachings.” What are the implications for the individual, the community and the institutions?

Above all, a culture must deepen where initiative is nurtured, where the nature of the work that needs to be done becomes clearer and more effective through study of guidance, action, reflection and consultation. In such a culture, every believer both extends and can rely on encouragement and practical assistance as they apply new skills in a path of service. Every soul encountered on that path is invited to participate and faith is placed in their capacity to serve.

Says the House of Justice: “In this coming Plan, which will conclude at the threshold of the second century of the Formative Age of the Faith, we will call the believers everywhere to the immense exertion necessary to bring to fruition the seeds that have been so lovingly and assiduously sown and watered in the five Plans that preceded it.” The spiritual forces on which the community will draw in these next five years are also immense. In its 29 December 2015 and 2 January 2016 messages, the House of Justice points to a series of anniversaries, beginning with the revelation of the Tablets of the Divine Plan, embracing the sacred commemoration of the Twin Holy Birthdays and “concluding with the Centenary of the Ascension of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in November 2021, which will close the first century of the Formative Age.” Further, the world’s desperate condition will allow no delay in applying in the present hour “the gifts of strength and hard-won experience that come from two decades of unremitting effort focused on a common aim:  a significant advance in the process of entry by troops.”

Your consultation on these matters at this unit convention is a crucial part of the wondrous system Bahá’u’lláh has given us. The insights you share and the questions you ask help to stimulate and inform the delegates, shaping their contributions to the National Convention. In this way, they penetrate the chambers of the National Assembly’s meeting and inspire its decisions. In gratitude for these gifts of thought, we offer our prayers.