The monthly gathering Meeting of the Minds will resume on September 15. These wonderful and inspiring nights start with a buffet dinner at 6.30, with the talk and discussion following right after desert, at 8.00 p.m. After the short talk, smaller groups explore the topic while enjoying some more deserts! Don't hesitate to bring your friend if you feel they would really enjoy it.  Please come and enjoy these nights of fellowship and unity in diversity!

The meetings will be held at the Kvalheim residence, 4225 Province Line Road, Princeton, New Jersey 08540. Please call Wendy at (609)683-8929 if you have any questions or if you need directions.

Until January 2008, the next Meetings of the Minds are:

Saturday September 15, 2007
The rights and freedoms of the individual in the world order of Bahá'u'lláh - by Wendy Kvalheim

Saturday, October 20, 2007
Celebration of the birth of the Bab: an introduction to the Baha’i Faith - by Rodney Richards

Saturday, November 17, 2007
Youth and young adults program with musical performance.  All young–at-heart are welcome.

Saturday, December 15, 2006
Who is Bahá'u'lláh and what is his claim - by Tod Rutstein

New: sign up for email invitations! Email This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it with your email address and she'll send you periodic reminders and invitations by email!

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- 19 August 2007 (BWNS)
Two professional filmmakers have finished an hourlong documentary about three Baha'is and how they practice their faith, and the film is being aired on television in South Africa and neighboring countries.

"Baha'i Faith: A Way Forward" was produced by Ryan and Leyla Haidarian at the request of the South African Broadcasting Corporation, which has licensed rights to the documentary for two years.

"We created this film to show what the Baha'i Faith has to offer on a practical level for the world," Mrs. Haidarian said.

The film gives an introduction to the Baha'i Faith and focuses on three individuals in South Africa and how their faith is reflected in service to others:

-- Eunice Mabaso turned her home into an orphanage after her brother and his wife died and she took in their four children. Over the years, hundreds of other orphans - many of them living in poverty in the streets - came to her home for shelter, love, and protection. "We can change the poverty and crime of this earth," she says. "The future of South Africa will become brighter."

-- Iraj Abedian, an economist and policy adviser to the government, tries to address problems resulting from extremes of wealth and poverty. One of his projects is a collective home-financing program that helps low-income working people save money and invest, but he is careful to emphasize that his work is based on principles from what he believes is a divine plan. He says you can look at the world as a construction site, "full of dust and mud and rubbish, and yet see in it the (new) edifice that is rising. ... To be at work on the construction site - it's exciting."

Leyla and Ryan Haidarian made the documentary for the South African Broadcasting Corporation.

-- Tahirih Matthee helps provide training programs for people with no experience using computers and the Internet. Her course includes education about gender equality - she points out that equality of women and men is an explicit teaching of the Baha'i Faith - and also information about HIV/AIDS prevention. "For something to be successful, you need vision," she says. "Every person can be happy when things are ideal, but our true nobility lies in the journey of being happy precisely when things are not ideal."

The new film includes historical photos of the Baha'i community of South Africa, including its founding during the time of apartheid.

"In those days, the Baha'is stuck to the letter of the law, but they didn't really stick to the spirit of the law," says the film. A fundamental principle of the Baha'i Faith is the unity of the races and the elimination of prejudice.

"We created this film to show what the Baha'i Faith has to offer on a practical level for the world," said Leyla Haidarian.

Great precaution was taken for the first election of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of South Africa. It was held in a farmhouse, and whites entered through the front door, black Africans through the back door.

"If the security police approached, the African Baha'is began cleaning and cooking. The white Baha'is played cards and socialized," the narrator relates.

The Haidarians produced and financed the documentary through their company, Race Productions, in South Africa. The film can be seen on the Web at www.doubletake.tv/cms/way-forward-english. The Web site also gives information for ordering a DVD.

Ryan Haidarian heads up development and production at the National Film and Video Foundation of South Africa, the organization that produced the Academy Award-winning film "Tsotsi." A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin in the United States, Mr. Haidarian won several awards for a documentary about famed American football coach Darrell Royal.

Leyla Haidarian has worked as a journalist, actress, and filmmaker in Europe, North America and Africa, and can currently be seen playing a supporting role in a South African drama series.

To: All Website Users
Re: 1969 Calendar Issue 

The servers hosting centraljerseybahai.org were recently upgraded by the hosting provider. Since then, the calendaring application displays 1969 as default date. Clearly this is not by design, and all efforts are being made to resolve this as soon as possible.

Data entered into the calendar is preserved, so please continue to enter your public and restricted (Bahai-only) events as before. As soon as the webserver has been fixed, your entered data will reappear.

Thank you for your patience.

Panel members at a discussion of moral questions resulting from climate change included, from left, Don Brown of the Collaborate Program on the Ethical Dimensions of Climate Change, Arthur Lyon Dahl of the International Environment Forum, and Rabbi Lawrence Troster of GreenFaith.

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UNITED NATIONS, 9 May 2007 (BWNS) -- As the scientific consensus on global warming grows, it's time to look more closely at how to share the economic, social, and humanitarian burdens that climate change will likely bring.

That was the main message of a panel discussion on "The Ethical Dimension of Climate Change," organized by the Baha'i International Community and held here on 30 April 2007 during this year's UN Commission on Sustainable Development.

"If sea levels rise at the rates they are predicting, we may see hundreds of millions of refugees," said Arthur Lyon Dahl, president of the International Environment Forum, a Baha'i-inspired organization.

"Where will they go? Who will take them in? What does it mean about immigration regulations?" asked Dr. Dahl, noting that these were only some of the moral and ethical questions that are being posed by the looming effects of climate change.

Sponsored by the nations of Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands, with assistance from the UN Office of the High Representative for Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (UN-OHRLLS), the event became one of the most talked-about side events at the Commission this year, said Tahirih Naylor, a representative of the Baha'i International Community to the United Nations.

One of the most distinctive aspects of the worldwide Bahá'í community is the hopeful and yet pragmatic way in which its members face the future. Far from fearing it, Bahá'ís the world over are dedicated to creating a new and peaceful world civilization based on principles of justice, prosperity, and continuing advancement.

This vision reflects not only an appreciation for humanity's historic longing for peace and collective well-being, but also our understanding that humanity as a whole has now reached a new level of maturity. That it is possible to create societies founded upon cooperation, trust, and genuine concern for others is at the heart of Bahá'í belief and action. Indeed, Bahá'ís believe that humanity is on the verge of an evolutionary leap that will carry humankind to a future where "world peace is not only possible but inevitable."

Bonus: video/reading of a selection from Pale Blue Dot, Dr. Carl Sagan's introduction to astronomy, actually being read aloud by himself! The excerpt was inspired by an image taken, at Sagan's suggestion, by Voyager 1 on February 14, 1990. As the spacecraft left our planetary neighborhood for the fringes of the solar system, engineers turned it around for one last look at its home planet. Voyager 1 was about 6.4 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away, and approximately 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane, when it captured this portrait of our world. Caught in the center of scattered light rays (a result of taking the picture so close to the Sun), Earth appears as a tiny point of light, a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size.

Calvin Martin and Bill Anderson say they enjoy their group, for both learning and for recreation.

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PERTH, Australia, 9 April 2007 (BWNS) -- Like young teens everywhere, Jani Song often feels social pressure to conform - even when the things that are fashionable may also be harmful.

"When you're in high school, you see the popular, or cool, group and they often take drugs," said Jani, who is 14 and in 10th grade. "You see people drinking or doing other sorts of stuff. And you kind of just want to do it because you want to follow the crowd."

A program established by the Bahá’í community here for youths aged 12 to 15 is helping Jani and others like her develop tools to resist such influences and establish their own values.

Some 160 young people, about half of them members of the Bahá’í Faith, belong to small groups that follow a specially developed curriculum, part of which involves learning to avoid harmful behavior. (...) 

Huub Mombers, left, receives a gilded tile from the Shrine of the Bab for his museum in Alem, in Holland. Offering the tile on permanent loan, on behalf of the Baha'is of the Netherlands, are Elaheh Verhey-Shahgholi, center, and Jelle de Vries. The ceremony was on 3 February 2007.

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ALEM, Netherlands, 20 March 2007 (BWNS) -- The Baha'i community of the Netherlands has given a golden tile from one of its sacred shrines to a museum that specializes in roof tiles.

In a ceremony last month, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the Netherlands gave the tile on permanent loan to the Dutch Roof Tile Museum in Alem, a small riverside village in the heart of Holland.

Museum owner Huub Mombers said the tile - from the Shrine of the Bab in Haifa, Israel - is the only one among the 3,000 tiles in his collection that is gilded - covered with a glaze made with real gold.

"I have never seen one like this before," Mr. Mombers said, explaining that most "gold" tiles are simply painted a gold color.

The tile given to the museum was actually created more than 50 years ago, one of more than 12,000 golden tiles custom-made to cover the dome of the Baha'i shrine on Mount Carmel overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.

Mr. Mombers opened the museum two years ago to showcase a collection of tiles from around the world that he had amassed over 20 years.

"We are familiar with gold roof tiles," he said, "but they are all paint. With this tile, it is pure gold. ... I have seen a factory in Germany that has made gold roof tiles for rich people in Saudi Arabia, but they are all paint."

HLUBOKA, Czech Republic, 19 January 2007 (BWNS) -- Joseph Fradella is a civil engineer from the United States. Joanna Portillo is a recent college graduate from El Salvador. Ndiitah Nghipondoka is an agricultural development consultant from Namibia.

From 25 to 31 December 2006, these three and 247 other young professionals from 33 countries chose to spend their precious December holiday in a sleepy medieval village in the Czech Republic. Their aim was to explore ways to pursue careers in a world dominated by material concerns and still have spiritual authenticity and balance in their lives.

"I wanted to find a way to be a Baha'i in all that I do," said Ms. Nghipondoka. "There is no time to retreat into a cave to try and be spiritual. And there is no time to neglect my spirituality to find ways to meet the material demands of modern living. I had to find balance -- this is why I came."

The village of Hluboka was the venue for the fifth year running of a conference called Changing Times. The gathering has become a highlight in the year for many young adults who are members of the Baha'i Faith.

Organizers said the idea behind the conference is to provide interaction between up-and-coming professionals and people who are established in careers and still maintaining spiritually rewarding lives.

Fariborz Sahba, giving a presentation at Changing Times 2006.

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Translating religious issues from theory to practice was a focus, said Ms. Nghipondoka - "real life issues like economics, practical emotional issues like how to have a healthy marriage and even issues like how one can use the Internet for the betterment of mankind."

Ms. Portillo added: "The conference showed me how people can live spiritually powerful lives while doing everyday careers."

Giuseppe Robiati, managing director of an industrial group based in Milan, Italy, who made a presentation at the gathering, said the event addresses a wide range of issues to help young people.

"This year the participants were able to look into the relationships between spirituality, psychology and the modern economy," he said.

A major goal was to empower participants to go back to their own communities and be of service to others.

"I get so much inspiration from seeing the people that are successful because of their dedication to their Faith," said Ms. Nghipondoka. "And that encourages me to be as excellent as I can be -- both in my work and in the Faith. I have seen that it can be done and I know that I can do it, too. But to do it, means to do it. ...At the end of the day it comes down to me implementing these ideas in my own life."

Participants engaging each other in conversation between sessions.

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Participants also said they gained a better appreciation for their religion.

"I feel that Changing Times helped me in my general understanding of spiritual truths - and in particular the Baha'i spiritual teachings of our time," said Mr. Fradella. "The conference helped me to gain a very broad understanding of how to apply Baha'i principles to activities as diverse as being a fine artist to working in a board room."

Some of the speakers at the conference included:

- Mary K. Radpour, a licensed clinical social worker in private practice who said she believed most mental health problems could be resolved through taking care of one's spiritual needs.

- Fariborz Sahba, an architect who designed and built what CNN has called one of the most visited buildings in the world - the Baha'i House of Worship in New Delhi, India. In a presentation titled "The Architecture of Life," he compared life to water, saying that one can view water in different ways -- from something that simply takes the form of its container to something as lofty as a beautiful rainbow. He asked his listeners to look at life through their higher vision and see the rainbows that exist everywhere.

- Mark Bamford, an award-winning film writer and director whose first short film, "Hero," played at international film festivals and was sold worldwide for television use. He pointed out that people in the entertainment world often can offer lessons to those seeking to balance spiritual and material needs.

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