Bahá'í Service Fellowship at Tahirih Justice Center

promised to post this, hopefully someone is interested? make sure to spread it :)

Tahirih Justice Center - Bahá’í Service Fellowship
August 2008 – August 2009/10

The Tahirih Justice Center is currently accepting applications from Bahá’ís interested in serving for the duration of a year to two years as the Tahirih Justice Center’s 2008 – 2009/10 Bahá’í Service Fellow. This is a full-time fellowship, offered to one or two individuals annually. The fellowship was created to enable the recipient to engage in service and learn from the work of a renowned Bahá’í-inspired non-profit organization whilst also dedicating time during the year to a personal plan of spiritual development and deepening.

The Fellow(s) will work most closely with the Legal Department and take on the role of a paralegal. This is a service position and is unpaid. Medical insurance and a small stipend ($1000/month) to help cover personal expenses will be provided. We will also assist in finding a local Bahá’í host family to provide room and partial board for the duration of the year.

Basic qualifications: Undergraduate degree, strong writing and communication skills, foreign language proficiency, informed interest in international women’s rights, experience living abroad or working with immigrant communities.

For more information and application materials, e-mail: Negin Avaregan at negin@tahirih.org. Deadline: April 1st, 2008.

The Tahirih Justice Center is a Bahá’í-inspired 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that seeks to enable women and girls who face gender-based violence to access justice, with a particular emphasis on immigrant women. The Tahirih Justice Center engages in pro bono legal representation, social services referrals and advocacy in cases that champion the rights of women and protect them from international human rights abuses. Our legal advocacy includes both direct service to individual women and larger efforts to transform policies, develop regulations, and set precedent so that systemic change will ensure the long-term protection of women from violence. The Center is founded on the belief that the achievement of equality between women and men is necessary if society is to progress and is inspired by the principles of the Bahá’í Faith.

“And the honor and distinction of the individual consists in this, that he among all the world's multitudes should become a source of social good. Is a larger bounty conceivable than this, that an individual, looking within himself, should find that by the confirming grace of God, he has become the cause of peace and well-being, of happiness and advantage to his fellow men? No, by the one true God, there is no greater bliss, no more complete delight.”

~ 'Abdu'l- Bahá

www.tahirih.org

turtle on the terraces!

I had a really calm weekend. on friday we had to be out of the office at noon, so I decided to go out on the terraces and read. I was out there for more than two hours, reading, thinking, and enjoying the view:


two interesting things happened while I was sitting there. first of all, I saw a turtle (tortoise?) in the bushes right next to me:


I even managed to get a short video of it walking away, which you can see on facebook...

I also very randomly bumped into two finnish pilgrims that I didn't know from before, but had been told by a friend that I had to send her love to them. well, God works in His own way and suddenly they're walking up the terraces. spent a nice 15-20 minutes talking to them, and saw them again in the evening. lovely couple! :)

see the rest of my shots here.

3. O SON OF MAN!

Veiled in My immemorial being and in the ancient eternity of My essence, I knew My love for thee; therefore I created thee, have engraved on thee Mine image and revealed to thee My beauty.

I will add another quotation first:

To every discerning and illumined heart it is evident that God, the unknowable Essence, the divine Being, is immensely exalted beyond every human attribute, such as corporeal existence, ascent and descent, egress and regress. Far be it from His glory that human tongue should adequately recount His praise, or that human heart comprehend His fathomless mystery. He is and hath ever been veiled in the ancient eternity of His Essence, and will remain in His Reality everlastingly hidden from the sight of men.

so God is unknowable, we cannot possibly get to know His essence. however, through His love for us, we are created and have acquired the ability to get to know Him and reflect His glory. God has "engraved on us His image"; we are able to acquire the qualities of God and show them forth as virtues, such as patience, tolerance, discipline, justice, kindness, and, of course, love. here's a beautiful extract of the qualities of God's love for man:

... the love that flows from God to man; it consists of the inexhaustible graces, the Divine effulgence and heavenly illumination. Through this love the world of being receives life. Through this love man is endowed with physical existence, until, through the breath of the Holy Spirit -- this same love -- he receives eternal life and becomes the image of the Living God. This love is the origin of all the love in the world of creation.

also read this compilation on the concept of spiritual beauty.

gems

a continuation of yesterday's roses and thorns:

Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom.

- Bahá'u'lláh

roses and thorns

I got this sent to me from a friend, and I think it's really beautiful, worth thinking of:

A certain man planted a rose and watered it faithfully, and before it blossomed, he examined it. He saw the bud that would soon blossom and also the thorns. And he thought, "How can any beautiful flower come from a plant burdened with so many sharp thorns?" Saddened by this thought, he neglected to water the rose, and before it was ready to bloom, it died.

So it is with many people. Within every soul there is a rose. The God-like qualities planted in us at birth grow amid the thorns of our faults. Many of us look at ourselves and see only the thorns, the defects. We despair, thinking that nothing good can possibly come from us. We neglect to water the good within us, and eventually it dies. We never realize our potential.

Some people do not see the rose within themselves; someone else must show it to them. One of the greatest gifts a person can possess is to be able to reach past the thorns and find the rose within others. This is the characteristic of love, to look at a person, and knowing his faults, recognize the nobility in his soul, and help him realize that he can overcome his faults. If we show him the rose, he will conquer the thorns.

Our duty in this world is to help others by showing them their roses and not their thorns. Only then can we achieve the love we should feel for each other; only then can we bloom in our own garden.

-- Author Unknown


I'd like to think of it in connection to this quotation:

“Be generous in prosperity, and thankful in adversity. Be worthy of the trust of thy neighbor, and look upon him with a bright and friendly face. Be a treasure to the poor, an admonisher to the rich, an answerer of the cry of the needy, a preserver of the sanctity of thy pledge. Be fair in thy judgment, and guarded in thy speech. Be unjust to no man, and show all meekness to all men. Be as a lamp unto them that walk in darkness, a joy to the sorrowful, a sea for the thirsty, a haven for the distressed, an upholder and defender of the victim of oppression. Let integrity and uprightness distinguish all thine acts. Be a home for the stranger, a balm to the suffering, a tower of strength for the fugitive. Be eyes to the blind, and a guiding light unto the feet of the erring. Be an ornament to the countenance of truth, a crown to the brow of fidelity, a pillar of the temple of righteousness, a breath of life to the body of mankind, an ensign of the hosts of justice, a luminary above the horizon of virtue, a dew to the soil of the human heart, an ark on the ocean of knowledge, a sun in the heaven of bounty, a gem on the diadem of wisdom, a shining light in the firmament of thy generation, a fruit upon the tree of humility.”

- Bahá'u'lláh

tip of the day

Always code as if the person who will maintain your code is a maniac serial killer that knows where you live.

william, I dreamt of you

I hope you're doing well and enjoying life. I heard you might be coming over here soon, is that true?

(to everyone else: yes, this post does make perfect sense if you're aware of the circumstances. feel free to ignore it :))

ratatouille!

ratatouille is a cute movie about a rat that happens to have a fascination for cooking. with a bit of luck, both good and bad, he gets lost from the rest of his rat friends and family, and ends up helping a garbage collector cooking at the most famous restaurant in paris, gusteau's.


we get to follow their adventures together, a bit of rough times and then a happy ending (what did you expect, it's a kids' movie :-P). I suppose one could have the moral of the story to be that honesty always is the best solution. even though it might not work out the way you expected it to, it always does in the end.

it's gotten good reviews on imdb (8.3/10), and I'd say it's worth watching. cute and funny at times, and then a little bit of sadness here and there. leaves you with a smile :)

roses

we had some awesome roses growing up in our garden over the past month. some we have kept, some have been delivered to appreciative friends. here's a pic from one we kept in our kitchen:


I also brought one up to my office and took pictures of it every two hours, to see how it unfolded. the coolest thing was to hear the petals when the rose opened. will try to create some sort of animated thingie of it...

album here

fasting time

tomorrow marks the first day of the month of fasting. it's going to be special this time around again, being in the Holy Land and fasting together with 700 other people. I've fasted together with my family, by myself last year, and this time around it will be special again. I have decided to try to read God Passes By during this time, which is an historical account of the first 100 years of the Bahá'í Faith, from 1844-1944. an average of 20 pages a day should be more than possible. I'm not sure what I'll be doing in the evenings, as things will be a bit more free during this time. maybe some more reading there too...

and to fill up a bit from the quotations from last year, here are three short ones:

"Blessed is the one who through the heat generated by the Fast increaseth his love, and who, with joy and radiance, ariseth to perform worthy deeds."

"Fasting and obligatory prayer are as two wings to man's life. Blesed be the one who soareth with their aid in the heaven of the love of God, the Lord of all worlds."

"Verily, I say, fasting is the supreme remedy and the most great healing for the disease of self and passion."

Here are the provisions in the Aqdas on the Fast, and article on bahai.org about the Fast