CommuNIqué - Newsletter of the Bahá'í Community in Northern Ireland
Issue 95 - 8 Rahmat 161 BE - 1 July 2004 CE

 

AN INTERESTING EXPERIENCE ON PILGRIMAGE

Pat Irvine writes:

Having returned recently from pilgrimage, which I was fortunate enough to have shared with The Coyle Family and Qudrat and Yvonne Jamshidi. I just wanted to relate some wonderful moments. The gardens and terraces were looking their very best, in glorious Technicolor it seemed!

To be there for Ridván on 21 April, arriving at Bahji on a lovely sunny day and being greeted by the staff with refreshments all beautifully laid out on tables just outside the wonderful new Pilgrim Reception was a real bounty. Following a very moving devotional we, and all the staff working at the World Centre along with visitors on three day visits (about 1000 in all) circumambulated the shrine of Baha’u’llah led by the members of the Universal House of Justice and their wives. It made this holy day so special and gave us a glimpse of the way our holy days could be in the future.

The talks in the evening were so enlightening and we were very fortunate to have the only remaining Hand of the Cause Dr Varqa, who is now 94 years old, talk to the pilgrims on two occasions.

One particular memory for me was a chance meeting with a German lady, Dorothy, also on pilgrimage, who came and sat beside me one day. She had an amazing story to recount. Dorothy told me she was third generation Bahá'í and that her grandfather had met Abdul'-Bahá. She then went on to tell me that their son Gerhard (her father) also became a Bahá'í but in name only, as at that time in Germany the Faith was not allowed to be practised and there was no administration.

It was the time of the Second World War and Gerhard was taken as a prisoner of war by the British and then handed over to the Americans where he remained for 4 years. He was then handed back to Britain and held in a prison in England. At this time the Bahá'ís in Germany contacted the British Bahá'í Community to let them know that there was a German Bahá'í being held a prisoner.

At this stage I was feeling that this story was sounding very familiar to me! Then I remembered that just a few weeks previously at our Feast in Belfast, Betty Reed had told us this wonderful story of how Phillip Hainsworth who was then in the British Army had come across a German POW who was a Bahá'í.

Dorothy explained that it was the love, trust and kindness that this Bahá'í showed to her father in seeking permission from his seniors to bring her father to Feasts etc, which confirmed him in the Faith. After all, as she said, her father would have been seen as ‘the enemy’ yet this person was willing to take a stranger completely on trust, putting his own job on the line. Gerhard had never had any experience of Bahá'í life and this was the final proof he needed. Because of this incident in her father’s life, Dorothy and her family are all Bahá'ís.

Dorothy did not know at this stage that I knew Phillip and other member of the family! These amazing coincidences do happen for a purpose and I hope that maybe meeting Dorothy was so that I could share this story with the community

   

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