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Baha’i Blog Turns 3 and the Top 10 Articles of the Year are…

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Trio of cupcakes decorated with frosting and candles

Baha’i Blog is celebrating its third year of blogging about ‘everything Baha’i’, and we’d like to say a very special THANK YOU to everyone for your constant support and encouragement over the last few years!

Baha’i Blog’s popularity has continued to soar, and although we’re an English language blog, our readership has truly been global, as we continue to get tons of great feedback and encouragement from people all over the world with more-and-more people getting engaged with the site and finding Baha’i Blog a great resource. (In fact, we’re being read in 193 countries out of the 196 that exist in the world – so that ain’t bad!)

We’ve also just redesigned Baha’i Blog making it mobile and tablet friendly, and there’s an awesome new video section as well, so be sure to check that out!

Over the last three years Baha’i Blog has served up nearly 300 awesome articles (296 to be exact), and every year on Baha’i Blog’s birthday we showcase the top 10 blog posts of the year, so without further ado, we’re happy to count down to you our 10 most popular posts of the year: Continue reading →

Naw-Ruz: The Baha’i New Year

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The Baha’i New Year, or Naw-Ruz, which means “new day” in Persian, is celebrated by Baha’is around the world each year on the date of the Spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere.

Naw-Ruz marks the end of the 19 day month of fasting, and it’s a joyous time of celebration. It’s also one of the Baha’i Holy Days on which work is to be suspended.

Naw-Ruz is also celebrated by Zoroastrians and often in parts of countries where branches of Shiite Islam can be found – though there’s a difference between the Baha’i Holy Day of Naw-Ruz and the the Persian holiday of Naw-Ruz, the theme of celebrating a new day remains the same. The Jewish festival of Purim is also said to have been adopted from the Persian New Year, and Naw-Ruz is celebrated a lot like the Christian Easter, with many symbols indicating spring and renewal.

The Bab called the first day of His new 19 day calendar “the Day of God”. The remaining eighteen days of the first month were associated with the eighteen Letters of the Living (the first 18 individuals who recognized the station of the Bab), hence the Bab’s apostles imagined a celebration that would last nineteen days. Baha’u’llah adopted the new calendar proposed by the Bab, and the use of Naw-Ruz as a festival for those who observed the fast. Continue reading →

Visionaries: An Interview with JB Eckl of Badasht

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Badasht-Visionaries-864x362
Many of you may have already heard the music of The Badasht Project, (or more commonly known as Badasht). Their debut album While The City Sleeps and thier second album release Raise Me Up have been hugely popluar in the world-wide Baha’i community, and now The Badasht Project returns with a new album called Visonaries, which is a 2-CD set of 21 songs dedicated to the youth, featuring an ever-greater circle of collaborators spanning every genre from electronica to bluegrass to hip-hop. The new album features young artists, some already well along their path, others recorded for the first time, creating music ranging from the purely devotional, using passages from the Baha’i Writings to the personal and introspective, in the inspired language of the heart.

The Badasht Project is spearheaded by musicians JB Eckl and Eric Dozier, and it’s expanded into a collective benefiting from many voices and perspectives. The project was originally conceived as a response to the Baha’i Writings regarding the true purpose and station of the arts and by combining the talents and experience of artists, producers, scholars and entrepreneurs, and the project aims to bring to bear the full power of the arts towards the fostering of a more dynamic, spiritual and vibrant community.

It’s been over two years that I’ve wanted to do an interview with JB Eckl and Eric Dozier about The Badasht Project, and so now, three albums later, I was finally able to catch up with JB Eckl to find out more about this wonderful initiative and their latest album. Continue reading →

A Talk by Mr. Paul Lample on the Current Plan and the Community-building Process

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Paul Lample TalkHere at Baha’i Blog we’re always looking for good resources for the Baha’i world community to use, so we’re happy to share with you a recent talk by Mr. Paul Lample called ‘The Current Plan and the Community-building Process’.

Mr. Lample gave the talk in August last year at the Baha’i House of Worship in Wilmette, USA, and he covers a number of topics including his personal thoughts on the current Plan and the activities propelling the community-building process forward.

The talk is available on the US Baha’i website, but the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States have also given Baha’i Blog permission to share the talk with our readers, so you can either stream or download the talk below. Continue reading →

Meet the New Look Baha’i Blog!

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placeit-(1)It was three Fasts ago that we first launched Baha’i Blog to the world. With our third birthday right around the corner, we’ve been preparing for a big update to the site’s look and feel. And today we’re very excited to announce it to our community of readers!

Thanks to our relentlessly committed editor Naysan, and our talented group of contributors, we have some of the best Baha’i content on the web. The new design is designed to emphasize that great content. We’ve simplified the interface right down, and put the focus on our articles.

The new site is mobile friendly, providing a beautiful reading experience from your phone or tablet. In the years since we launched Baha’i Blog, mobile reading has really taken off and now represents about 40% of our readership. With the change to a mobile friendly experience we’re aiming to take that number even higher in the months to come. Continue reading →

SoulPancake’s ‘Have a Little Faith’ does an Episode on the Baha’i Faith

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I’ve been meaning to post about this for a while now, but there’s a great show I watch on SoulPancake’s Youtube channel called Have a Little Faith, and basically the show follows Zach Anner (the show’s creator and host) in his quest to learn more about faith and different religions.

In this particular episode called ‘Baha’i How Are You Doing?’, Zach visits Justin Baldoni, a Baha’i, an actor and a director (and the creator of My Last Days, another great show on SoulPancake), to learn more about the Baha’i Faith. The episode is both accurate and heartwarming, and Zach’s humor is awesome – so check it out! Continue reading →

10 Great Articles About the Baha’i Fast for You to Read

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10 Great Articles for You to Use About the Baha’i Fast
The Baha’i Fast is always a time when we get a lot of questions from our friends and colleagues about why we fast and what the Baha’i Fast is all about, so I thought it would be useful to put together a list of 10 articles available online, each related to the Baha’i Fast in some way, which may help you in your personal deepening and discussions, and which you can share with others who may be interested.

So here’s the list of 10 articles in no particular order: Continue reading →

‘Happy Ayyam-i-Ha’ Album by William Sears and the Ayyam-i-Ha Kids Available Again

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Ayyam-i-Ha Album Cover 350x350A lot of my friends are always telling me that we really need more resources to support our Baha’i holy days and celebrations.

So, to help with your Ayyam-i-Ha celebrations, I am absolutely delighted to let everyone know about the digitally restored and remastered re-release of the Happy Ayyam-i-Ha album by William Sears and the Ayyam-i-Ha Kids!

For those of you who have never heard of it – the Happy Ayyam-i-Ha album is simply a classic. It blends the wonderful storytelling of Hand of the Cause of God Mr. William Sears with sing-a-long songs performed by children.

Released in 1979, the album received the 1979 Christian Angel Award for the ‘Best Children’s Album of the Year’, and it was the first time in the association’s history that the Angel Award had been given to a non-Christian group. Continue reading →

Awesome Ayyam-i-Ha Ideas on Pinterest

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Awesome Ayyam-i-Ha IdeasAyyam-i-Ha is coming up, and it’s important to make our holy days special. Luckily, there’s a lot of fun ideas out there online which can help us celebrate the intercalary days, and one of the places worth checking out online if you’re short of ideas or need some inspiration is Pinterest.

Pinterest is an online group board and it’s a great place for people to share their ideas, recipes, images, gifts and decorations for pretty much anything! Users not only submit (or rather ‘pin’) photos of what interests them onto their pinboards, but they can browse other pinboards and ‘re-pin’ the photos to their own page.

A few Baha’is have uploaded their own Ayyam-i-Ha ideas to their pin-boards which are really worth checking out, so here are some examples: Continue reading →

‘To Serve Humanity’: A New Series of Short Videos from the Baha’i World Centre

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To Serve Humanity screenshot 620x347The Baha’i World Centre has just released a series of 11 short videos commissioned by the Universal House of Justice which are collectively called To Serve Humanity.

The Baha’i World News Service (BWNS) explained that “To Serve Humanity explores, through the diverse voices of a few of the 80,000 young people who participated in the 114 gatherings, the ways in which young people can contribute to the spiritual and material well-being of their communities. As the young participants articulate insights on themes covered at each conference, what it means for their generation to be dedicated to the service of humanity is brought to life. Continue reading →

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