Tumblr is an online service that lets you create a very trendy minimal sort of blog where you can post up quotes, images, links, video, audio and longer form posts. The service is free to use and wildly popular. In fact if you’ve ever wanted to start your own blog, then a Tumblog is a pretty cool way to do so.

There are already lots of Baha’is on Tumblr, so I went looking for a few Tumblogs to showcase. Much to my delight, I found lots of interesting blogs and became totally engrossed and lost reading them all. Eventually I managed to pull myself back out to finish this post, so I’m happy to present six of the best I came across.

If you’re a Tumblr user you can choose to ‘follow’ these and other Tumblogs, and if you’re just a casual browser like myself, then you can just bookmark them! Either ways I highly recommend supporting them, and if you know of more please do leave a comment and link! Continue Reading

100 years ago, ‘Abdu’l-Baha arrived in America. It was a turbulent time in American history – an election, the struggle for civil rights, American soldiers on foreign soil.

When ‘Abdul-Baha arrived in America, newspapers called him the “Apostle of Peace.”

He “will surely unite the East and West,” the president of Stanford University remarked, “for he treads the mystic way with practical feet.” “There is no doubt, among thinking people,” a famous columnist wrote, “that this man represents, in great degree, the growing and evolving spirit of our times.” “Let him visit any bank, factory, office building, church, and everything is laid aside, and eyes bulge and ears listen until he takes his departure.” 239 Days in America

239 Days in America follows ’Abdu’l-Baha’s 1912 journey across North America in real time (but exactly 100 years later), essentially reconstructing this little-known period in history hour-by-hour, for the entire 239 days of ‘Abdu’l Baha’s travels in America. It describes how ‘Abdu’l-Baha reached across political, religious, racial, class and gender divisions within American society with a bold vision of unity. Continue Reading

As the proud parent of a very active, very cute, and rather loud one year old, I’m all of a sudden much more interested in everything to do with raising children. So I was particularly excited to see a wonderful new Baha’i blog that’s been running for the last few months now called Enable Me to Grow. It’s run by two Baha’i mums collecting resources for other mothers to ‘intentionally cultivate their own spiritual growth as well as nourish the spirits of their little ones’.

There are already quite a lot of posts on the site as the pair have been blogging with a vengeance. My personal favourite so far is the activity based “Write Your Spiritual Bucket List” which is super pertinent with Baha’i new year just past! Definitely a time to use your new fast-induced spiritual powers to map out new year’s resolutions! Continue Reading

Photo courtesy: Morris Salahifar

As most of you already know, Bahá’ís and their friends around the world participate in what is known as study circles, and these study circles use a sequence of books which are mainly based on the Bahá’í Writings, and they were developed by the Ruhi Institute in Colombia, so the books are often referred to as Ruhi books.

I often get asked by a lot of friends about different ideas or resources they can use for their study circle, and there’s no doubt that there are a bunch of great initiatives and resources out there for us all to use.

Image by Camdiluv (Flickr)

Every year, between February 26 and March 1, Baha’is celebrate Ayyam-i-Ha. These four days (or five, during leap years) are known as the Intercalary Days, beginning at the end of the 18th month of the Baha’i calendar, and ending right before the start of the 19th month of the Baha’i calendar, which is also the month of the Fast.

The Intercalary Days (or Ayyam-i-Ha, meaning “Days of Ha”) are days of preparation for the Fast; days of hospitality, enjoyment, charity, paying special attention to the plight of the poor and sick, and giving presents. They do not mark any particular event, but the way they are celebrated is, in some ways, similar to the way Christmas is observed worldwide. Continue Reading

“Everyone has the right to education”, says article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Unfortunately, the reality is very different: many young people in Iran today are being denied this right. They might have gotten the grades to pursue higher education – they might even be among the top students in the country. Yet, when they submit their application forms, they are told that their files are incomplete, that they do not fulfil the necessary entry requirements; in short: that they cannot attend higher education.

The reason why they are denied this basic human right, in spite of their academic ability, is that they are members of political opposition groups, human rights or women’s rights activists or members of religious minorities, such as the Bahá’ís. In the case of the Bahá’ís, even the community’s attempt to educate their youth by setting up the Bahá’í Institute for Higher Education (BIHE) has been criminalised, and many of the educators supporting the project have been imprisoned.

The world, however, is not going to simply watch as many young people’s dreams of serving society are being destroyed, with the mere education of many young people being declared a crime in Iran. Continue Reading

The more time you spend online, the more you realize just how much content is out there. Social news sites like Reddit let users share and vote on links to help surface interesting content in a democratic manner.

If you’ve never been to Reddit before, it’s a bit of a nerdy blend of social news and community forums where you can go to different subreddits, which are sort of like channels, to find content you are interested in. Subreddits range from the mainstream to quirky and niche. Continue Reading

Devotional Gathering by John Marmaras

Getting together to share prayers and writings from the Baha’i faith, other scriptures and enlightened souls, is a staple of Baha’i life. These devotional gatherings are one of our core activities and all Baha’is are encouraged to not only attend, but to host them.

There is no set format or formula for running a devotional, and they run the gamut from organized public events through to informal sharing of prayers and readings around a coffee table. And since there is no particular way that a devotional should be held, it’s open for creativity and inventiveness! Continue Reading

What Baha’i TV show has been running for over 12 years now and boasts over 200 episodes? “Baha’i On Air”, that’s what!

Since 1998, “Baha’i On Air” has been broadcasting every week in Auckland, on New Zealand’s community TV station. The show not only reaches Auckland’s population of one million people, but also broadcasts to the nation’s four million, and to other countries in the Pacific such as The Cook Islands, The Solomon Islands, and American Samoa.

Baha’i On Air is headed up by award winning Hollywood filmmaker Ken Zemke, who’s someone I’ve known and admired for a long time now and whom I’ve had the pleasure of working with on a couple of video projects over the years.

Ken has to be one of the hardest working people I know. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him without a camera in his hand, working on a project for the Faith.

I finally managed to catch up with Ken and asked him to talk to us about Baha’i On Air. Continue Reading

Photo by Halilgokdal

Over the years, I’ve lived in a lot of different Baha’i communities and every one is different. My current community is especially interesting to me because it’s quite tech-savvy. In particular, we use Google’s Apps services to organize a variety of administration and activity. So I thought I would share some ideas on how to do this for your own community.

As you may know, Google offers a ton of different free services beyond its core search engine product. There’s a whole suite of products which are useful to Baha’i community administration and organization. In particular Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Sites. Here’s how you can use them: Continue Reading