Plenary, 18 Jan 2006

Meeting date: Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Official Report 407KB pdf

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Time for Reflection

Good afternoon. Our first item of business today, as it is every Wednesday, is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader today is Mrs Carrie Varjavandi, who represents the Bahá'i Council for Scotland.

Today I would like to tell you a little of one of the great untold stories of our time.

Baha'u'llah, the founder of the Bahá'i faith, was born into a noble family in Iran more than 180 years ago. He forsook his life of wealth and comfort for one of imprisonment, torture and exile in order to share with those around him his unique insights into the condition of the world. His life and teachings are the inspiration for the 5 million Bahá'is in the world today.

Baha'u'llah did not bring an ideology or found a political movement; instead, his teachings transformed people's hearts. He also had much to say about society and about those who govern. I would like to share some of his insights with you.

Baha'u'llah linked the transformation of the individual to the development of society. He said:

"All men have been created to carry forward an ever-advancing civilisation".

He identified the present era as the time of the coming of age of humanity—a time that would be distinguished not only by unprecedented turmoil and difficulties, but by the promise of a much brighter future.

The world today faces apparently intractable problems, which governments and peoples are striving courageously to solve, such as climate change, poverty and religious fanaticism, to name but a few. Baha'u'llah identified the underlying cause of the world's sickness in these words:

"The well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established".

The experience of the Bahá'is across the world, in their families, neighbourhoods and countries is that the first step in healing the world's ills is to establish unity. We humbly commend this principle to everyone.

While he was a prisoner of the Ottoman empire, Baha'u'llah wrote a series of letters to the kings and rulers of his time. In his epistle to Queen Victoria, he praised Britain for its development of parliamentary democracy and expressed the hope that the members of its Parliament would endeavour, in his words,

"to be trustworthy among His servants, and to regard themselves as the representatives of all that dwell on earth."

Scotland has always been an outward-looking nation with a great tradition of helping others. Our contribution to the world is far out of proportion to our size. I hope that reflection on Baha'u'llah's words will help us all to continue that practice in ways that will help the world's people to transform our lives on this planet.