Bahá'ís of Albany, NY

03/05/2017

02/07/2017

A small tribute to John Vincent Rafalak

02/05/2017

In the Baha'i Faith there is no place for partisanship of any kind: political, religious, gender, class, racial or national.

"Though loyal to their respective governments, though profoundly interested in anything that affects their security and welfare, though anxious to share in whatever promotes their best interests, the Faith with which the followers of Bahá’u’lláh stand identified is one which they firmly believe God has raised high above the storms, the divisions, and controversies of the political arena. Their Faith they conceive to be essentially non-political, supra-national in character, rigidly non-partisan, and entirely dissociated from nationalistic ambitions, pursuits, and purposes. Such a Faith knows no division of class or of party. It subordinates, without hesitation or equivocation, every particularistic interest, be it personal, regional, or national, to the paramount interests of humanity, firmly convinced that in a world of inter-dependent peoples and nations the advantage of the part is best to be reached by the advantage of the whole, and that no abiding benefit can be conferred upon the component parts if the general interests of the entity itself are ignored or neglected."
(The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, pg. 198)

01/31/2017

It has been said that Unity requires only two things - diversity and a common purpose. We have the former, now must come the latter.

10/28/2016

What a nice idea.

"This is what me and my daughter have started doing....We are keeping a "Blessing bag" in our car in case we find someone in need. You can make these up with items from the Dollar Tree such as gloves, thermal socks, beef sticks, crackers, candy bars, toothpaste, toothbrush, wipes, deodorant, snacks and other items that may help someone who is homeless or in a bad way. It is just a thoughtful, inspiring thing to do. This is something we are going to start doing from now on. Thank you to the ones that did this long before us, for being such a giving, loving, caring person! Random acts of kindness take very little to change the life of just one person."

To support our mission, pre-order the Love What Matters book in time for Mother's Day: http://amzn.to/2nPuTrP



Photo courtesy of Amy Verder

10/20/2016

This photo, and others like it, brought to mind the following excerpt from The Promise of World Peace - a letter from the Baha'i Universal House of Justice to "The Peoples of the World" also sometimes known as the "Peace Statement":

"The winds of despair”, Bahá’u’lláh wrote, “are, alas, blowing from every direction, and the strife that divides and afflicts the human race is daily increasing. The signs of impending convulsions and chaos can now be discerned, inasmuch as the prevailing order appears to be lamentably defective.” This prophetic judgement has been amply confirmed by the common experience of humanity. Flaws in the prevailing order are conspicuous in the inability of sovereign states organized as United Nations to exorcize the spectre of war, the threatened collapse of the international economic order, the spread of anarchy and terrorism, and the intense suffering which these and other afflictions are causing to increasing millions. Indeed, so much have aggression and conflict come to characterize our social, economic and religious systems, that many have succumbed to the view that such behaviour is intrinsic to human nature and therefore ineradicable.

The Promise of World Peace (http://www.bahai.org/documents/the-universal-house-of-justice/promise-world-peace)

07/15/2016

A short and interesting video highlighting, as it's title says, the roots of the Baha'i Faith.

07/02/2016

 “It’s very simple,” tweeted journalist Mahsa Amrabadi on May 16. “When you live for so many months with somebody, you are not just going to miss her, you are going to miss her terribly — especially if that person is Fariba K**alabadi.” On May 10, prison authorities granted Baha’i leader Fariba K**a...

06/11/2016

Very well done, I think. What do you think?

05/04/2016

By all standards of justice, the seven imprisoned Iranian Baha’i leaders should be immediately released

03/20/2016

03/20/2016

Happy Naw-Ruz from the Baha'is of Albany, New York USA and neighboring communities.