Coming to a Neighborhood Near You

Baha'is went out in the rain and sunshine Saturday and Sunday to meet people in the neighborhoods and facilitate involvement in community-building activities such as devotional meetings, holding children's classes in their homes, and assisting middle-school age youth to devote their energies to their communities.

Personally I was never receptive to having religious people approach me at my house because experience has proven that they are almost never receptive to hearing what I truly think and feel, their agenda is to change me and save my soul, and they are never receptive to the message of Baha'u'llah.

On the other hand, when I meet people in their home or on their porch, I am interested in them, and I have no interest in changing them.

Surprisingly the people in the neighborhood of Hilltop in Tacoma which we visited were friendly, approachable, and receptive to having people stop by. Whether or not they were interested in what we had to say, they didn't seem hostile or alienated in any way to have us in their neighborhood, and many people were very receptive to meeting us.

The Teaching Song

Cluster Reflection Meeting tomorrow, ushering in a new Intensive Period of Growth in the Illustrious Cluster Nineteen. Leafing through my notebook the other day I came across where I had recorded my impromptu teaching song the last time I stood on the porch with the Prayer Team last summer, ushering out the teaching teams with prayer and songs, and drumming them back in with enrollment cards in their hands: new Baha'is who were not proseletyzed, or converted from one thing to another, but merely found; connected with their Lord at last.

The Teaching Song*

Ch: None have I sought, nor any will I seek save Thee,
No path have I trodden, nor any will I tread
But the path of Thy love.

1] There go my friends, they're heading out the door; There go my friends, they're teaching more and more.

2] There go my friends, they're teaching 'cross the lands; Here come my friends with signed cards in their hands.

3] Baha'u'llah says go out there and teach; If we do as He says, there's no goal we can't reach.

*Chorus quotes from a prayer by 'Abdu'l-Baha printed in the copyrighted "Baha'i Prayers," published by the US Publishing Trust.