Little by Little, Day by Day

One day a woman came to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá with her sorrows. As she told her story,‘Abdu’l-Bahá tried to calm her and said, “Don’t be sad now, don’t be sad.” The Woman said, “My brother has been in prison for three years. He should not have been imprisoned because it was not his fault. He was weak [...]

This post is a response to this story: Reading this story about Abdu’l-Baha was wonderful, and easy. Trying to listen to others the way that Abdu’l-Baha did, was (and is?) challenging. With an imagination that runs wild, I sometimes find it hard to focus on the “here and now”, or, as some people refer to [...]

I’ve come to realize that I often pray to God to ask for something, whether it be for myself, my family or friends, or humanity in general. I hardly ever prayed, just to pray. I was always asking for something, needing something more.  

I was saying one of Bahá’u’lláh’s long Fast Prayers (Baha’i Prayers, p. 236-244) this morning, and I was struck by two things: each paragraph of the prayer tells us who God is; and then what our prayer is to him. Once I stripped away the former, I was able to see what I was actually [...]

Prayer and Parenting Enter a father and 3-year-old daughter preparing for bedtime. The little girl is visibly tired, dangling her body like a marionette while her equally exhausted daddy tries to remain composed as he encourages her to get dressed. After 20-minutes of wrestling on a one-piece, pink, butterfly pajama, the tuckered tag-team jump into [...]

Emotional ailments are a common occurrence in our society but appear to have less significance and more stigma than physical ailments. The Writings describe the human frame as having a physical and spiritual self, and it is important to look after both of these interdependent parts. Some people live with emotional wounds that are decades [...]