Spring/Summer 2025 issue of Bahá’í Canada
The title of this issue is Building a haven. In its Ridván 2024 message, the House of Justice called to mind the Guardian’s description of the parallel processes of disintegration and integration in human affairs, assuring us that through the latter, society’s “ultimate haven” is being built up.
The House of Justice sees this haven “[I]n every account of a heart being enkindled with the love of God, a family opening up its home to new friends, collaborators drawing on Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings to address a social problem, a community strengthening a culture of mutual support, a neighbourhood or village learning to initiate and sustain the actions necessary for its own spiritual and material progress, a locality being blessed with the emergence of a new Spiritual Assembly.”[i]
The National Assembly also spoke to this theme in its annual report, writing, “The havens that will shelter humanity, far from being environments for retreat from the world through relaxation and rest, are places of meaningful, collaborative, purposeful, sustained action. They are havens from confusion and despair, from sorrow and paralysis in the face of powerful forces assailing the planet.” In this issue, we illustrate some of the ways these havens are being built across Canada.
Of course, we build these havens with others, not for them. Our feature article for this issue, “Kipps Lane, London, Ont.: Transformation at the level of culture,” draws on conversations with Bhutanese-Nepali youth, many of whom have crossed the threshold and declared their Faith in Bahá’u’lláh. These youth describe how applying His Teachings individually and collectively has transformed their thoughts and behaviour.
At this year’s National Convention, delegates shared stories about how, through the educational process, safe spaces are being created where noble aspirations are freely voiced and acted upon. And again, in its annual report, the National Assembly affirmed that the “physical haven” of Canada’s House of Worship “could not rise but for the foundation of the spiritual havens the lovers of Bahá’u’lláh have created and are extending in every possible setting.” A story on the Convention is included in this issue, which also appeared on the Bahá’í Canada website, along with a larger selection of photos than printed here.
The Canadian Bahá’í community is rising to greater heights both spiritually and materially and must continue to soar. The role of deputization was recently highlighted by the National Assembly.[ii] Contributions of this kind are ordained by Bahá’u’lláh as acts of teaching and, among other purposes, support pioneers, youth service volunteers, and institute personnel. The story “Roy Wilhelm deputizes Martha Root to teach the Cause” is a moving account of two close friends and Hands of the Cause of God, and a reminder that even Martha Root, “that archetype of Bahá’í itinerant teachers and the foremost Hand raised by Bahá’u’lláh since ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s passing,”[iii] had a safety net and was not left alone.
The article “The moral dimension of material means” continues in this vein, exploring the implications of several passages from the Bahá’í Writings on the topic of economic life, for the individual, family, and community. These Writings challenge us to break away from prevalent notions of material progress and highlight how, though we do not have clarity on what any future economic system will be, the Laws of the Faith are a safeguard and can be applied now. We hope to continue generating content on this topic with more concrete examples from the community.
Learning around the youth movement in Canada continues to deepen. The article “A seamless educational experience: from junior youth to youth” shares how graduates of the junior youth spiritual empowerment program in two neighbourhoods in Toronto, Ont., are being supported to arise to serve and transition to studying the main sequence of courses, requiring flexibility and a nuanced understanding of this unique time in the life of an individual.
Increasingly, youth are also bringing their entire family into the process. The Universal House of Justice’s recent message on family life and marriage has opened many points of reflection for the Bahá’í community. As this message states, “May your families and homes, dear friends, increasingly become a haven and pillar to sustain all humanity.”[iv]
[i] From the Universal House of Justice to the Bahá’ís of the World, Ridván 2024.
[ii] From the National Spiritual Assembly to all those gathered at Canada’s unit conventions, 30 January 2025.
[iii] Effendi, Shoghi. God Passes By, U.S. Bahá’í Publishing Trust (1979), p. 379.
[iv] From the Universal House of Justice to the Bahá’ís of the World, 19 March 2025.
