Ridvan 2012, Part 4

What a weekend.

I had the incredible bounty of being able to go to the Canadian National Convention and hear the marvelous consultation going on. What an experience.

Throughout the weekend, a few points kept coming up, a few themes, as it were. The first, as you can imagine, was the Mashriqu'l-Adhkar, the Temple. Another theme that kept coming up was roses, but more on that in a later post, I'm sure. The third theme was the inter-connectedness of worship and service, which is exemplified by the Temple, so we're back at the Temple again.

But, for right now, given that I'm still fairly wiped out after the weekend, there's a cat on my lap, and she's biting my wrist, I might as well get straight to the point I wanted to touch on today, a single word in this year's Ridvan message: "weds".

Way down in paragraph 8, we find the line, "The Mashriqu'l-Adhkar... weds two essential, inseparable aspects of Baha'i life: worship and service."

I find this a very interesting verb choice. It's so intimate, so close. They are so intertwined, and they bring me back to the heart. Remember all those posts I did a while ago about the heart, and how it all begins with it. "Unite the hearts of the servants..." "Possess a pure, kindly and radiant heart..." Even Sadr'-Sudr, the first teacher, so named by 'Abdul-Baha; his very name means "heart of hearts". It all goes back to the heart.

And here, in this description of the Temple it seems that we are reminded of that, yet again.

It is very interesting to go through this message and look for words that are tied to the heart, or relationships. The whole message is just chock-full for them. I'm not going to go into it here, due to this cat really wanting my attention, and my brain becoming fuzzier every passing minute, but I just wanted to bring that to mind, this whole idea of relationships and our close relationship with the greater community, being so important a theme in this message.

Happy Ridvan, all.