Friends forge ahead with centenary initiatives
Throughout the country, plans are beginning to flourish as the special days associated with the beloved Master come closer. Momentum is building towards a radiant commemoration of the centenary of His Ascension.
Our goal as a country is to generate meaningful encounters among 30,000 souls. Such encounters may happen through core activities, Holy Day observances, children’s festivals, arts activities, and others. They may happen informally in conversations with family, friends, and colleagues — online or in person.
Friends are being inspired by the challenge, as can be seen in examples of initiatives on the National Spiritual Assembly’s “Arising for the Master” website. The Arts Examples page, especially, is being enriched with contributions.
In the spirit of global learning, an initiative from a study circle in Singapore has been shared on the site. A lovely booklet, “Walking in the Footsteps of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá”, presents a few of the Master’s attributes. The booklet is designed for the reader to each week select one of the attributes, meditate on the included quotation and story, and put into practice some of the suggested actions. On the Arts Examples page, look for “Inspirational booklet” in the list of page contents.
Of course, there needs to be a means for tracking whether the goal of 30,000 people engaging with the centenary is achieved. For this purpose, a “People Engaging with the Centenary” form has been set up, for use by anyone with news to share of centenary encounters or activities. Besides helping to build a statistical picture, your reports also will help to build a picture of experiences and potential learning for our future efforts to reach out to wider society. Information from the reports may be collated for stories to be shared back with the community (if permitted by the report submitters).
As mentioned in a previous article, the “Arising for the Master” site has two main sections: Centenary Resources (useful publications, videos and other media) and Centenary Projects (endeavours by communities and individuals). Please keep your submissions rolling in, to help enrich the Centenary Projects section. It includes these pages:
Activity Reporting (The “People Engaging with the Centenary” form is available on this page as well as via the independent link given above.)
Please also browse the booklets, web pages, audio-visual materials, and conversation craft suggestions in the Centenary Resources section. And the Site Purpose page offers a valuable overview of what “meaningful engagement” means and the many situations where it can happen.
