On Home Visiting: An Element of Baha'i Community Life

On a recent post I described the signficance of study circles for Baha'is. Study circles constitute one of the core activities of Baha'i community life, the others being devotional meetings and children's classes. A focus of one of the books of the study circle series is on the practice of homevisiting. In the evolving culture of the Baha'i Faith, visiting people in their homes to discuss signficant spiritual issues is fast becoming common-place. One can gain a sense of the outward-looking nature of the Baha'i community that home-visiting exemplifies by scrolling through the postings of an absolutely delightful new blog from Vancouver, Canada, that describes a home-visiting experience as part of Baha'i community life. Here is an excerpt from a recent entry:

Our Book 1 study circle had the joy of visiting, this last Saturday, the home of one of the friends who joined the community of Bahá less than a year ago. Although the concept of home visits had been briefly explained to the participants, most of whom are not Bahá’ís yet, we took a few minutes before our departure to review some of the Writings we had been exploring in our study circle and to come up with a few questions we wished to delve into during our visit.

Once we arrived at their home, we were warmly welcomed and served tea and goodies. After the initial pleasantries, Tao gently encouraged us to share what we had come to do. Before long we were exploring, among others, such things as the difference between spirit, soul and mind and the purpose of tests and difficulties. All had an opportunity to share their insights and, if you could have been a fly on the wall, you would not have been able to tell who was a Bahá’í and who was not, who was teaching and who was being taught. This perhaps becomes more significant if you take into consideration that some of the participants have only known of the Faith for less than a month!

Well we were not finished yet! We rounded out our visit by having dinner at a nice Persian Restaurant and then headed off to our regular devotional gathering where we spent more time exploring the spiritual reality of man. By the end we were all tired but extremely happy!

Vancouver-UBC IPG, "Home Visit to a New Believer"