Ottawa Baha'i scholar Jack McLean occasionally writes as a guest for a regular religious column by faith leaders answering a general question about faith. The latest question is:
"Do religious studies sometimes make students question their faith?"
Published: Saturday, September 13, 2008
Jack McLean, Ottawa Citizen Special
Baha'i Celebs
Every once in a while another article about or interview with Baha'i actor Rainn Wilson turns up. Here are a couple:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/arts/chi-rainn-wilson-0817aug17,0,7582857.story
It is the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Carol Lombard, a Baha'i star of the first order in Hollywood. An article is in one of the Baha'i Worlds about her, and this just appeared in her hometown newspaper.
Fort Wayne's brightest star: Carole Lombard
News Sentinel - Fort Wayne,IN,USA
Her mother, Bess Peters, was a member of the Baha’i faith, and Lombard formally declared in 1938.
http://www.news-sentinel.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080926/LIVING/809260298
My Comments on Children's Classes
I wrote this a month or so ago about our almost daily children's study session,
"I must say, I had no idea teaching a Baha'i class would be such an intense intellectual challenge. I feel like I am on a game show firing line every minute of every class; these two whippersnappers shoot out the most difficult and imaginative questions one after the other, non-stop, and I barely have one handled before another, tougher one comes at me. I liberally use answers like, "I do not know," and "What can I say? I had never thought of that." I have been studying the Faith and the principles with all my might for over thirty five years, and I had no idea how little I really knew about it. I respect, and pity, all these new Baha'is who are so bold as to teach Baha'i children's classes. How they handle more than two at a time is beyond me."
Since then they have gone back to school and things have settled down a little. We started a few new Baha'i books written for children; this batch did not turn out as interesting as I had hoped. I was starting to lose them, not to mention boring myself, so I turned to the talks of the Master, specifically Paris Talks and sometimes some of the talks in Promulgation. We have been doing a talk a day for a few weeks and it has been reasonably successful.
One thing that really got them enthusiastic was a Christian book of skits from which we read together, dividing up the reading parts among each of us. Each play is written for a youth group and combines humor with a moral lesson. Over the summer they began fighting with one another over everything. For a while the question of who got which role was a bone of contention. Finally I settled on this compromise: one picks the skit to read while the other kid gets to choose the first role. Now we have read through these skits so often that I am getting bored and have been desperately searching the net for Baha'i skits. I found two, one the "drama of the Kingdom," written by the Master Himself in London, and the other a play about Sherlock Holmes written by a Baha'i youth. If you are a Baha'i writer looking for something to write a book about, please, please write a book of skits...
Baha'i Prayers In Many Languages
The following site is an aggregator for Baha'i Prayers in many languages, as compiled by believers around the globe. These devotional sites feature a selection of Baha'i Prayers in the indicated language.
http://www.bahaiprayers.org/languages.htm
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