The NI Youth Facilitators want to share this short personal article from Mary-Rose Chauhan in Australia:
The most recent Ridvan message sent by the Universal House of Justice has explicitly said that “…junior youth (are) the future champions of the Cause of God and builders of His civilisation”.
This is of course true, but I, at that stage in my life, didn’t really feel like much of a ‘champion’… Let me explain: I was a gangly twelve year old with camel toe and a moustache. It’s a harsh critique, I know, but all too true. Making matters worse, I lived two hours away from already the worlds most isolated major city (Perth… it’s in that other place, Western Australia) and thus was unable to regularly mingle with the similarly afflicted moustache-stricken pre-youth of the city who I discovered, on my sporadic visits up there, found safety in numbers. This made my life as an impressionable younger member of a moderate, peace-loving religion a little difficult, and if you’d told me that I was a builder of Gods civilisation – a future champion of His Cause – I would only have looked at you in utter bewilderment.
Enter a group of “illumined youth” who didn’t mind travelling a few hours to hang out with four or five 11-14 year olds (provided there was a fast food pit stop guaranteed). Needless to say, they became our idols. We relished the few hours they spent with us playing sport, doing art activities, and having discussions on topics such as back-biting, truthfulness, and chastity (*giggles*).
We were their posse, their adoring fans, ever-forgiving, no matter how late they turned up. The monthly visits spawned a few camps: friends from the wider community were invited and the Faith became better established in our town.
It turned out that, essentially, a few visits from some “cool” youth was all it took for me to initially conclude that the Bahá’í Faith was something that I definitely wanted to be a part of. It was these people that made me proud to be a Bahá’í. I can’t say everything turned round after their visits but what it did do was give me the warm-fuzzy feeling of inclusion and an inspired glimpse at what I could be like if I really kept chipping away at my spiritual “mine” that was filled with “gems of inestimable value”.
A few months ago I found myself dancing in a club next to one of the “cool Perth guys” that used to visit us frumpy juniors. For a bizarre second I felt like the gangly twelve year old I used to be all those years ago. It was only after the sensation passed that it dawned on me, the profound effect those fun-loving, radiant youth had on my life and how it is now my turn to gather up the little ones and show them how it’s done.
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