Messages to Canada

  • Author:

  • Shoghi Effendi

  • Source:
  • Bahá’í Canada Publications
  • Pages:
  • 276
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Pages 32-33

Letter of 20 September 1929

20 September 1929

To an individual believer

My dear Mrs. ...,
I am directed by our Guardian to thank you for your letter of July 9th.
He has read your letter with great interest and pleasure and he admires its spirit—so frank, so thoughtful and as regards the Cause, with such abounding hopefulness.
In connection with your dear husband, Shoghi Effendi would consider it in full and happy accord with the expressed desire of the Master that every man should have some permanent work. Much as he desires to see you both devote your entire energies to a well thought out, progressive and attractive presentation of the Cause—a thing he feels we lack lamentably—he would be very pleased to see your husband follow what the Master often repeated even to His own immediate family, namely the necessity of a profession. Of course you know that He always said His had been mat-making.
As to your entrance to Reed College as an undergraduate, he also feels that it would be a very nice idea if it is possible and if it meets with the wishes of your husband. No one could think more than the Master did of the great need for capacity, knowledge and a broad scientific outlook in the service of the Cause, but as against the hard and dry intellectuals, he wished such knowledge to be coupled with an intense love for the welfare of humanity. Perhaps the enlightened world already suffers because it has too much of the former and very little of the latter, but could it be that we suffer a bit because we have too much of the latter and too little of the former?
I am also asked to express Shoghi Effendi’s deep appreciation of your kind sentiments and of your husband’s and your own burning desire to devote your hearts and thoughts to the progress of the Cause.

With warm regards and greetings to you both.

Sincerely yours,

Soheil Afnan

[From the Guardian:]

With the assurance of my best wishes and prayers for you at the Shrine of Bahá’u’lláh,

Your true brother,

Shoghi