Baha'i Community of Maidenhead

The Bahá’í community of the Royal Borough was honoured to be invited to contribute the opening prayer at the Council meeting yesterday evening.

The Bahá’í Sacred Writings have much to say about good governance.

Bahá’u’lláh, the Prophet Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, spent most of his life in captivity and exile on account of His teachings. He was banished from his native Persia and incarcerated in Akka, the prison city of the Ottoman Empire. But during this time, even from His prison cell, Bahá’u’lláh wrote to the world’s most powerful rulers of that time – Napoleon III, Emperor Franz Joseph, Pope Pius IX – and of course Queen Victoria.
He laid out a framework for collective security, and urged each of them to recognise their responsibilities in establishing peace and justice.

Good governance is about institutions and laws, about principles and frameworks. But its true foundation lies in the human heart, in the individual conscience, and in purity of motive, one of the themes of the Bahá’í prayer recited yesterday evening.

He is the Compassionate, the All-Bountiful! O God, my God! Thou seest me, Thou knowest me; Thou art my Haven and my Refuge. None have I sought nor any will I seek save Thee; no path have I trodden nor any will I tread but the path of Thy love. In the darksome night of despair, my eye turneth expectant and full of hope to the morn of Thy boundless favour and at the hour of dawn my drooping soul is refreshed and strengthened in remembrance of Thy beauty and perfection. He whom the grace of Thy mercy aideth, though he be but a drop, shall become the boundless ocean, and the merest atom which the outpouring of Thy loving-kindness assisteth, shall shine even as the radiant star.
Shelter under Thy protection, O Thou Spirit of purity, Thou Who art the All-Bountiful Provider, this enthralled, enkindled servant of Thine. Aid him in this world of being to remain steadfast and firm in Thy love and grant that this broken-winged bird attain a refuge and shelter in Thy divine nest that abideth upon the celestial tree.

– ‘Abdu’l-Bahá

The Council Meeting on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/live/aSLlIs-RpBI?si=FV6oSCgsg6vj7iRf&t=27