With warm Bahá’í love,
R. Rabbani
P.S.—Regarding your question concerning St. John’s, Newfoundland
and the believers living outside the town limits: no exception
to the general rule can be made in this case.
[From the Guardian:]
Dear and valued co-workers:
The Plan, with which the immediate destinies of the valiant,
newly emerged, independent, highly promising Canadian
Bahá’í Community are linked is, as it approaches its closing
stage, passing through a very critical period in its unfoldment.
Proclaiming as it does the formal association of the second
Bahá’í community to attain an independent status in the Western
Hemisphere with its sister communities who, in various
parts of the Bahá’í world, are prosecuting specific Plans designed
to foster their organic development, signalizing the
alignment of this community as the sole ally of the Chief Executors
of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Master Plan, this collective fate-laden
enterprise upon which this youthful and virile member of the
World Bahá’í Family has so whole-heartedly and enthusiastically
launched—an enterprise on the successful consummation
of which the effective initiation of its glorious mission,
far beyond the borders of the Dominion of Canada, must ultimately
depend—such an enterprise, however vast the field in
which it operates, and no matter how circumscribed the resources
of the small band of stalwart pioneers engaged in its
prosecution—must, under no circumstances, be allowed to
register a failure.
In Newfoundland, in Greenland, among the Eskimos and
Indians, through the incorporation of its National Assembly,
the immediate objectives have been practically attained. The
attention of the entire community must, in the remaining
months ahead, be focused on the dire necessity of multiplying,
at whatever cost, the number of pioneers, the rapid formation
of groups, and the conversion of groups into Assemblies, so
that the complete and total success of the Plan may be assured,
and a triumphant community may step forward, confident
and unencumbered by any liabilities, into a vast arena of service,
prosecute a still more glorious mission, and win still
mightier victories.
While the energy of this community is being expended on
the conduct of this fateful undertaking, marking the baptism
of this community, a collateral effort must, owing to unforeseen
circumstances, be exerted for the establishment of an
institution which, though not an integral part of the Plan formulated
for that community, is nonetheless regarded as indispensable
owing to its emergence into an independent existence,
and the necessity of its following the lead of its sister-communities
in East and West, which have, at various stages
in their development, adopted this vital measure for the consolidation
of their national institutions and the raising of the
prestige of the Faith in their respective countries. The selection
of the city to serve as the seat of the national Hazíratu’l-Quds
in the Dominion of Canada; the purchase of either a plot
to serve as a site for the construction of this Edifice, or, preferably,
of a building to serve as a provisional national administrative
headquarters for a rising, steadily expanding community;
the association of all other National Assemblies throughout
the Bahá’í world in contributing towards this highly meritorious
enterprise; my own association with The Bahá’ís the
world over in providing for the early emergence of such a Centre
towards which the manifold activities initiated throughout
the length and breadth of a vast Dominion must converge,
and from which the impulses generated by a rapidly evolving,
divinely appointed Administrative Order must radiate—these
constitute the imperative needs of the present hour. The consummation
of this added undertaking, the prompt discharge
of this additional responsibility will, no doubt, constitute a
befitting contribution by one of the youngest national communities
in the Bahá’í world to the world-wide celebrations
that are to commemorate the centenary of the birth of
Bahá’u’lláh’s Mission, and which will parallel the termination
of the fifty-year-old enterprise of the first Mashriqu’l-Adhkár
of the West and its official opening for public Bahá’í worship.
In conjunction with the various National Administrative
Headquarters purchased or constructed, in the course of the
last three decades, in five continents of the globe, and for the
most part in the capital cities of several countries in the Eastern
Hemisphere, this latest Edifice in the chain of Bahá’í national
institutions linking five continents will, no doubt, serve
to enhance the growing prestige of a world-wide Faith and consolidate
the foundations of its administrative Structure. From
far-off Sydney, on the shores of the South Pacific Ocean, and
successively through New Delhi in the heart of the Indian subcontinent,
Tihran, the capital of Bahá’u’lláh’s native land,
Baghdad, the Iraqi capital enshrining His most holy House,
Cairo, the Egyptian capital, the admitted centre of both the
Arab and Muslim worlds, the city of Frankfurt in the heart of
both Germany and of the European continent, and as far as
the heart of the North American continent and in the neighborhood
of the first Bahá’í centre established in the Western
Hemisphere, this chain of Bahá’í bastions of a world-encircling
Order, must be further extended through an additional
link to be forged in the northern part of the Western Hemisphere,
and its subsequent prolongation into Latin America as
far as the Republics of South America.
One more word in conclusion. The passing, at this juncture,
of one who, through a long career of distinguished service
to the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh, not only since the birth of this
community but in more recent years in the heart and centre
of the Bahá’í world, has left an indelible mark on the annals of
the Faith, has evoked not only the deepest sorrow but the utmost
regret at a time when this community is beginning to
reap at long last the first fruits of its stewardship to the Cause
of God, and the whole Bahá’í world is on the eve of celebrating
one of its greatest Jubilees. By reason of his own saintly life,
his self-effacement, gentleness, loving kindness and nobility
of soul; by virtue of his remarkable endowments which he so
devotedly consecrated to both the embellishment of the slopes
of God’s holy mountain and the creation of a befitting design
for the second most holy Bahá’í Edifice embosomed in its very
heart; and because of his kinship, on the one hand, with a
wife
whom posterity will regard, not only as
the mother both
of the Canadian Bahá’í Community and of the first Bahá’í centre
established on the European continent but also as one of
the foremost pioneers and martyrs of the Faith, and, on the
other with a daughter,
whose unfailing support to me as my
helpmate, in the darkest days of my life, has earned her the
title already conferred on her father—Sutherland Maxwell
has
left a legacy, and achieved a position excelled by only a
few among the supporters of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh throughout
the eleven decades of its existence.
Inspired by the example and the accomplishments of those
of its members who have distinguished themselves in the Holy
Land, on the European continent and in both the northern
and southern continents of the Western Hemisphere, this community
must forge on, with added determination, with increasing
dedication, with thanksgiving and redoubled zeal, on
the road leading it to a still more glorious destiny in the years
immediately ahead. That it may press forward, conquer still
greater heights, plumb greater depths of consecration, spread
wider and wider the fame of the Cause of God is the cherished
desire of my heart and the object of my constant supplication.
Shoghi
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