Monthly Reflection: Mulk (Dominion) – On Ayyam-i-Ha & the Arts

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Hi friends!

Excitement is brewing! After hosting the Great Big Ayyama-i-Ha Bake Off for a couple of years in which we shared so many of your delicious treats, this year we’ve decided to do something different. Introducing… Baha’i Blog’s Ayyam-i-Ha Community Creativity Showcase!

For one, we wanted to expand our showcase of creative expressions beyond the culinary arts. Secondly, we’re really curious about what happens when we’re creative together and when creativity becomes increasingly integral to community life. For example, we can see from this touching video, how friends from the Torres Strait share how the arts are used in traditional islander culture “from womb to tomb” and are woven into everyday life across the community. What might that look like for each and every community? What might it look like during the special days of Ayyam-i-Ha?

In its 30 December 2021 message, the Universal House of Justice said:

Indeed the arts as a whole, so integral a part of the development of a community from the start, stand out in such settings as an important means of generating joy, strengthening bonds of unity, disseminating knowledge, and consolidating understanding, as well as of acquainting those in the wider society with the principles of the Cause.

And you may recall this passage from the 2023 Ridvan Message:

In this new series of Plans, increasing attention needs to be given to other processes that seek to enhance the life of a community—for example, by improving public health, protecting the environment, or drawing more effectively on the power of the arts.

Our hope is that you’ll send us photos to [email protected] of how you’re getting creative together in your community during Ayyam-i-Ha; whether it’s a drumming circle, a singalong, a dance, a mural, a collage, a poem, or (of course) cookies and cakes! We’d love to receive your photos so that we can share them during the Fast. We’re looking forward to seeing how this experiment unfolds!

As anticipation builds, Cherie has created a countdown calendar of activities that can be done together in the lead up to Ayyam-i-Ha.

As always, this template and SO MANY MORE are available on our downloadable content page. And if you’re looking for more Ayyam-i-Ha-related content, we’ve got a special collection dedicated to that very purpose.

I will be honest with you: almost every newsletter, I am tempted to preface the resources shared with a caveat saying that I understand that our content can seem incongruent with what is occurring in the world. I have felt this way for years as tragedy after tragedy and unspeakable horrors have unfolded before our eyes on the very same platforms where we share bright images and colourful ideas. However, it is precisely because of the suffering that is occurring that I think it’s all the more pressing and vital that we strengthen the bonds of friendship in our communities and that we strive to show love and deal kindly with all who are on earth. I don’t think there’s a more fitting way to close this newsletter than with these words of Abdu’l-Baha:

Sending you much love this Month of Mulk!

Posted by

Sonjel Vreeland

In her innermost heart, Sonjel is a stay-at-home parent and a bookworm with a maxed out library card but professionally she is a museologist with a background in English Literature. She currently lives on Prince Edward Island, an isle in the shape of a smile on the eastern Canadian coast. Sonjel is a writer who loves to listen to jazz when she's driving at night.