Highlights:
  • All Faiths Public Gathering for Prayer and Devotions ~ February 4th, 5th, 19th.
  • Informational Talks ~ February 24th
  •  Issues of Women’s Equality and Education - February 13th
 
Oxnard-Ventura   Bahá'í Newsletter of the Oxnard and Ventura Bahá’í Communities

February 2006
 
“Beautify your tongues, O people, with truthfulness, and adorn your souls with the ornament of honesty.”

~ Bahá’u’llah

The purpose of the Oxnard-Ventura Bahá'í News is to provide information about the Bahá'í Faith and activities of the Bahá'í’s to those who wish to learn more or attend Bahá'í devotional gatherings. If you have comments or do not want to receive the Bahá'í News, write PO Box 7344, Oxnard, CA 93031, call 648-1222. No donations requested or accepted.

Informational Talks

A brief talk on a general topic about the Bahá'í Faith is followed by discussion. A time to bring up any question in your heart about spiritual topics.

Friday, February 24th, 7:30 PM

Tuman Residence, 984-1222

Annual Ayyám-i-Há Progressive Dinner – Celebrate Unity!

You are invited to our annual progressive dinner Saturday, February 25, starting with a salad bar at 5:30  pm  at the Okuma home, 312 Redwood Ave, Ventura 642-0822.  Addresses and maps to the next course will be available there.

“Reflections on the Life

of the Spirit”,

A discussion based course centered on morals, virtues, prayers, and life after death, is starting Friday February 3 in Oxnard.  Call Jan 642-0822 or Jill 524-1941 for time and directions.

Issues of Women’s Equality

and Education

Monday February 13th, 7 pm; Java Lu Coffee shop at Petit and Telephone in the shopping center.

Arnold Stein will discuss his recent travels to China and his work with a school there sponsored by WIPA, Women for International Peace and Arbitration, with relation to issues of women’s equality and education.

The Bahá'í Calendar

By Dale E. Lehman

I'm always curious to learn what aspects of the Bahá'í Faith attract people's interest. The statistics for Planet Bahá'í and its precursor at About.com have rather consistently indicated a strong interest in the Bahá'í calendar.

Indeed, our Calendar link library section is always among the most popular, as is our section on the Bahá'í calendar in our introduction to the Bahá'í Faith. I don't know why this subject is so fascinating to people, but at the start of a new Bahá'í year it is certainly appropriate to offer a more detailed look at this calendar.

What we usually call the Bahá'í calendar is technically called the Badi calendar. I have not been able to determine where this name comes from. The word "Badi" means "Wonderful" and was the name of several people of importance in Bahá'í history, most notably the youth who volunteered to carry a Tablet from Bahá’u’llah to Násiri’d-Dín Sháh and was upon its delivery tortured and killed. An alternate translation of the word, used in the calendar itself, is "Beginning".

But regardless of how the calendar came to be called the Badi calendar, it was created by the Báb, and Bahá’u’llah specified a few of the details that His Forerunner had not provided.

 So what does the Badi calendar look like? It is a solar calendar, like the Gregorian calendar used by most countries today, which means it consists of 365 days (or, more precisely, 365 days, 5 hours, and 50-odd minutes). The year is divided into nineteen months of nineteen days each, with the four extra days (or five in leap years) falling as "intercalary days" between the eighteenth and nineteenth months.

Each month is named after an attribute of God. Taherzadeh describes the origins of the system thus:

"There is a beautiful prayer in Shí'ah Islam, usually said during the period of fasting in the month of Ramadan, which invokes God through His names. There are nineteen invocations in this prayer and each revolves around one of His names, the first being Baha (Glory). The Báb has taken these names in the same order and given them to the nineteen months of His calendar, each month having nineteen days. This calendar is the basis of the Badi' Calendar, which is the one in use in this Dispensation."

(Adib Taherzadeh, The Revelation of Bahá’u’llah, v1, p116)

The number nineteen has a special significance for Bahá’í’s. It was common in Persian mystical writings to utilize a system of numerical values to convey meanings beyond what mere words could impart. Within this system, words are assigned numerical values, and relationships between words can be implied based upon these values.

The word "vahid", meaning unity, has the numerical value of nineteen, and is often used by the Báb and Bahá’u’llah when specifying the quantity nineteen. So the number nineteen, in addition to being a quantity, also is evocative of the central teaching of the Bahá'í Faith, unity.

It forms the basis not only of the calendar, but also was integral to the structure of the Persian Bayan (the Báb's Book of laws); is found in Bahá’u’llah’s laws concerning dowries, the payment of Huquq'u'lláh, certain fines, and various prayers; and is even seen in the history of the Faith, as Bahá’u’llah’s public declaration of His mission took place nineteen years after the Báb's declaration.

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