11 February 2022

Istiqlál, 06 Mulk (Dominion), 178 B.E.

Seen

Caught the corncob thief making its move …

And off it goes!

Done

Participated in a Zoom meeting with core team members for the “How’s the Weather?” letter campaign. We took the opportunity to examine the original charter for the group and compare it with items on our agenda that we considered important and urgent. In the end, team members concluded that we suffered from “mission creep.” The team had met its original goals but unwittingly added others because they flowed logically from our earlier successes. Unfortunately, the capacity of the team to do more did not match its newfound ambition resulting in overwhelm and a feeling of failure when reality was just the opposite.

To get back on track, we resorted once again to using the tried and true “ripple effect” to explain what we originally tasked ourselves to do—make waves. Each email sent, each post on social media, each public announcement is like a pebble tossed into the pond. Our challenge is to remember that our role is to throw our pebbles, not control what happens with the ripples afterward.

I need to repeat that lesson all too often. Guess that means I haven’t really learned ;-)

Noted

Astral Prospecting on Instagram and Astral Prospecting on Facebook

Marc Bosserman on Instagram Marc Bosserman on Facebook, and Marc Bosserman Music and Musings on YouTube

Tab’s Galaxy on YouTube

Quoted

The importance of education to a Bahá’í conception of spiritual and social transformation can hardly be overestimated. “Consider”, Bahá’u’lláh states, “the revelation of the light of the Name of God, the Educator. Behold, how in all things the evidences of such a revelation are manifest, how the betterment of all beings dependeth upon it.” The significance of education in the work of community building is unmistakable, and in the field of social action the provision of education remains the signature contribution of Bahá’ís in most parts of the world. Pre-eminent among the structures and agencies created by the Bahá’í world to offer education is, of course, the training institute. Indeed, the network of national and regional training institutes operating with such proficiency around the globe is among the choicest fruits of the previous series of global Plans. Building capacity for service within communities by enabling ever-increasing numbers of individuals to benefit from the institute process will continue to be a central feature of the Plans in the present series. The capacity for community development that has already emerged, represented by hundreds of thousands of individuals who are able to serve as tutors, animators, or children’s class teachers, is a resource of historic consequence. ¹