November 11

The outpouring of love and esteem for Baha'u'llah witnessed around the world at His bicentenary has moved us greatly. In settings of all kinds, from homes to stadiums, His life was celebrated with the utmost devotion and remarkable creativity. At many a gathering, guests outnumbered the Baha'is several times over; in some island nations, participation may be measured as a proportion of all the inhabitants. Truly, we confess our astonishment at the flood of grace Baha'u'llah has poured forth. And in every precious effort made to honour Him, we recognize the wholehearted striving of each believer to attain a full share. 

- The Universal House of Justice  (From a message dated 31 October 2017)

November 10

Regarding the Summer-Schools in general; although there is no objection to their being under the direct management of a special Committee elected for that purpose, they must be generally supervised by the N.S.A. in respect to policy, etc. In other words they must be considered as a national and not a purely local institution. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (From a letter dated 18 April, 1942, written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi; ‘Letters from the Guardian to Australia and New Zealand’)

November 9

Central to Bahá’u’lláh’s writings is an exposition of the great themes which have preoccupied religious thinkers throughout the ages: God, the role of Revelation in history, the relationship of the world’s religious systems to one another, the meaning of faith, and the basis of moral authority in the organization of human society. Passages in these texts speak intimately of His own spiritual experience, of His response to the Divine summons, and of the dialogue with the “Spirit of God” which lay at the heart of His mission. Religious history has never before offered the inquirer the opportunity for so candid an encounter with the phenomenon of Divine Revelation. 

(From ‘Baha’u’llah’, A statement prepared by the Bahá'í International Community Office of Public Information, at the request of the Universal House of Justice and published in 1992; The Compilation of Compilations, vol. II, Women)

November 8

It has been objected by some that woman is not equally capable with man and that she is deficient by creation. This is pure imagination. The difference in capability between man and woman is due entirely to opportunity and education. Heretofore woman has been denied the right and privilege of equal development. If equal opportunity be granted her, there is no doubt she would be the peer of man. History will evidence this. In past ages noted women have arisen in the affairs of nations and surpassed men in their accomplishments.... 

- ‘Abdu’l-Baha  (From a talk, ‘The Promulgation of Universal Peace: Talks Delivered by 'Abdu'l-Bahá during His Visit to the United States and Canada in 1912’; The Compilation of Compilations, vol. II, Women)

November 7

Surely in this very critical period of human history when old institutions are beginning to crumble down or being considerably modified, there is a certain amount of maladjustments and unfortunate happenings; but such a condition is not permanent. The Cause and its institutions will gradually take their place and with its virile spirit secure the full obedience of its followers and of the people of the world as a whole. So we need not be too pessimistic as to the future or take passing conditions too seriously. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (From a letter dated 26 October 1932 written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi published in "Bahá'í News" 443, February 1968; The Compilation of Compilations, vol. II, Youth)

November 6

…the education of woman is more necessary and important than that of man, for woman is the trainer of the child from its infancy. If she be defective and imperfect herself, the child will necessarily be deficient; therefore, imperfection of woman implies a condition of imperfection in all mankind, for it is the mother who rears, nurtures and guides the growth of the child. 

- ‘Abdu’l-Baha  (From a talk, ‘The Promulgation of Universal Peace: Talks Delivered by 'Abdu'l-Bahá during His Visit to the United States and Canada in 1912’)

November 5

The welfare of any segment of humanity is inextricably bound up with the welfare of the whole. Humanity’s collective life suffers when any one group thinks of its own well-being in isolation from that of its neighbours or pursues economic gain without regard for how the natural environment, which provides sustenance for all, is affected. A stubborn obstruction, then, stands in the way of meaningful social progress: time and again, avarice and self-interest prevail at the expense of the common good. Unconscionable quantities of wealth are being amassed, and the instability this creates is made worse by how income and opportunity are spread so unevenly both between nations and within nations. But it need not be so. However much such conditions are the outcome of history, they do not have to define the future, and even if current approaches to economic life satisfied humanity’s stage of adolescence, they are certainly inadequate for its dawning age of maturity. 

- The Universal House of Justice  (From a letter dated 1 Match 2017)

November 4

Whether peace is to be reached only after unimaginable horrors precipitated by humanity’s stubborn clinging to old patterns of behavior, or is to be embraced now by an act of consultative will, is the choice before all who inhabit the earth. At this critical juncture when the intractable problems confronting nations have been fused into one common concern for the whole world, failure to stem the tide of conflict and disorder would be unconscionably irresponsible. 

- The Universal House of Justice  (‘The Promise of World Peace, October 1985)

November 3

The Great Peace towards which people of goodwill throughout the centuries have inclined their hearts, of which seers and poets for countless generations have expressed their vision, and for which from age to age the sacred scriptures of mankind have constantly held the promise, is now at long last within the reach of the nations. For the first time in history it is possible for everyone to view the entire planet, with all its myriad diversified peoples, in one perspective. World peace is not only possible but inevitable. It is the next stage in the evolution of this planet—in the words of one great thinker, “the planetization of mankind.” 

- The Universal House of Justice  (‘The Promise of World Peace, October 1985)

November 2

Because of His prominence in the defense of the Báb’s cause, Bahá’u’lláh was arrested and brought, in chains and on foot, to Teheran. Protected in some measure by an impressive personal reputation and the social position of His family, as well as by protests which the Bábí pogroms had evoked from Western embassies, He was not sentenced to death, as influential figures at the royal court were urging. Instead, He was cast into the notorious Síyáh-Chál, the “Black Pit”, a deep, vermin-infested dungeon which had been created in one of the city’s abandoned reservoirs. No charges were laid but He and some thirty companions were, without appeal, kept immured in the darkness and filth of this pit, surrounded by hardened criminals, many of them under sentence of death. Around Bahá’u’lláh’s neck was clamped a heavy chain, so notorious in penal circles as to have been given its own name. When He did not quickly perish, as had been expected, an attempt was made to poison Him. The marks of the chain were to remain on His body for the rest of His life. 

(From ‘Baha’u’llah’, A statement prepared by the Bahá'í International Community Office of Public Information, at the request of the Universal House of Justice and published in 1992)

November 1

Concerning individual Bahá’ís’ letters to the Guardian and his replies; the friends are free to write to the Guardian when they feel the urge to do so. However, for the believers to suppose that the Guardian’s letters to them, however full of loving encouragement they may be, give them any special powers or authority to go against or ignore the wishes of their local or national assembly, is to grossly misinterpret his true meaning. The Guardian has been at great pains to build up the administrative order and teach the friends how to use it. How could he possibly himself act in such a way as to ignore or belittle the functions of these bodies? He often encourages believers to work, to teach, to pursue some plan they propose in their letters to him but this does not mean a veto of the assembly’s rights, or that the individual thus becomes free to ignore its authority. He trusts this will make the matter quite plain to the friends. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (From a letter dated 18 April, 1942, written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi; ‘Letters from the Guardian to Australia and New Zealand’)

October 31

'Abdu'l-Bahá, Who incarnates an institution for which we can find no parallel whatsoever in any of the world's recognized religious systems, may be said to have closed the Age to which He Himself belonged and opened the one in which we are now labouring. His Will and Testament should thus be regarded as the perpetual, the indissoluble link which the mind of Him Who is the Mystery of God has conceived in order to insure the continuity of the three ages that constitute the component parts of the Bahá'í Dispensation. The period in which the seed of the Faith had been slowly germinating is thus intertwined both with the one which must witness its efflorescence and the subsequent age in which that seed will have finally yielded its golden fruit. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (From a letter dated 8 February 1934, printed as ‘The Dispensation of Bahá'u'lláh’ in ‘The World Order of Bahá'u'lláh’)

October 30

The intercalary days are specially set aside for hospitality, the giving of gifts, etc. Bahá’u’lláh Himself specified that they be used this way, but gave no explanation for it. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (From a letter dated 26 December, 1941, written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual believer; ‘Letters from the Guardian to Australia and New Zealand’)

October 29

The truly remarkable services of Hyde Dunn will never be forgotten. They have added a golden page to the history of the Formative Period of our Faith. The whole-hearted response to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s call, raised more than twenty years ago, which he and Mother Dunn made; their quiet and unassuming sacrifices for the Cause; the wisdom and permanence with which he laid the foundations of the work in Australia and New-Zealand; and the faithful love with which both of these noble souls tended the growing institutions of the Faith—all constitute a landmark in the victorious progress of the Faith. He is indeed the spiritual conqueror of that continent! 

- Shoghi Effendi  (From a letter dated 19 April 1941, written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi; ‘Letters from the Guardian to Australia and New Zealand’)

October 28

The first sign of the coming of age of humanity referred to in the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh is the emergence of a science which is described as that “divine philosophy” which will include the discovery of a radical approach to the transmutation of elements. This is an indication of the splendours of the future stupendous expansion of knowledge.

Concerning the “second” sign which Bahá’u’lláh indicates to have been revealed in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, Shoghi Effendi states that Bahá’u’lláh, “...in His Most Holy Book, has enjoined the selection of a single language and the adoption of a common script for all on earth to use, an injunction which, when carried out, would, as He Himself affirms in that Book, be one of the signs of the ‘coming of age of the human race’”. 

- The Universal House of Justice  (The ‘Notes’ section of the ‘Kitab-i-Aqdas’)

October 27

We now call upon all National Spiritual Assemblies to formulate and implement plans designed to educate the friends everywhere in their understanding of the significance of the Formative Age of our Faith. As an aid to this programme we attach extracts from the writings of the beloved Guardian on this general theme, and we suggest that these and similar excerpts from the Writings be studied and expounded at the forthcoming Summer Schools, at special sessions of Teaching Institutes, at conferences of the friends, and indeed on any occasions which you may deem suitable. 

- The Universal House of Justice  (From a message dated 15 April 1971; ‘Messages from the Universal House of Justice 1963-1986’)

October 26

Born [‘Abdu’l-Baha] in the very year that witnessed the inception of the Bábí Revelation; baptized with the initial fires of persecution that raged around that nascent Cause; an eyewitness, when a boy of eight, of the violent upheavals that rocked the Faith which His Father had espoused; sharing with Him, the ignominy, the perils, and rigors consequent upon the successive banishments from His native-land to countries far beyond its confines; arrested and forced to support, in a dark cell, the indignity of imprisonment soon after His arrival in Akká; the object of repeated investigations and the target of continual assaults and insults under the despotic rule of Sultán ‘Abdu’l-Hamíd, and later under the ruthless military dictatorship of the suspicious and merciless Jamál Páshá—He, too, the Center and Pivot of Bahá’u’lláh’s peerless Covenant and the perfect Exemplar of His teachings, was made to taste, at the hands of potentates, ecclesiastics, governments and peoples, the cup of woe which the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh, as well as so many of their followers, had drained. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (From a letter dated March 28, 1941, published as: ‘The Promised One Is Come’)

October 25

To the mounting tide of trials which laid low the Báb, to the long-drawn-out calamities which rained on Bahá’u’lláh, to the warnings sounded by both the Herald and the Author of the Bahá’í Revelation, must be added the sufferings which, for no less than seventy years, were endured by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, as well as His pleas, and entreaties, uttered in the evening of His life, in connection with the dangers that increasingly threatened the whole of mankind. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (From a letter dated March 28, 1941, published as: ‘The Promised One Is Come’)

October 24

Dear friends! Alas, a thousand times alas, that a Revelation so incomparably great, so infinitely precious, so mightily potent, so manifestly innocent, should have received, at the hands of a generation so blind and so perverse, so infamous a treatment! “O My servants!” Bahá’u’lláh Himself testifies, “The one true God is My witness! This most great, this fathomless and surging ocean is near, astonishingly near, unto you. Behold it is closer to you than your life vein! Swift as the twinkling of an eye ye can, if ye but wish it, reach and partake of this imperishable favor, this God-given grace, this incorruptible gift, this most potent and unspeakably glorious bounty.” 

- Shoghi Effendi  (From a letter dated March 28, 1941, published as: ‘The Promised One Is Come’)