Moments that Matter

Moments that Matter

Sometimes when we momentarily halt the hands of time and bear witness to remarkable milestones along our path, we turn ordinary moments to extraordinary points in time.  

At these times, we share experiences of significance, shape meaning and mark occasions worthy of celebration.  We honour ‘Moments that Matter’

“Children are the bridge to heaven.”

-Persian saying 

“These children are the plants of Thine orchard, the flowers of Thy meadow, the roses of Thy garden.  Let Thy rain fall upon them; let the Sun of Reality shine upon them with Thy love.  Let Thy breeze refresh them in order that they may be trained, grow and develop, and appear in the utmost beauty.”-Abdu’l-Bahá  

“The jewel of the sky is the sun, the jewel of the house is the child. “-Chinese saying 

“Give the ones you love wings to fly, roots to come back and reasons to stay.”-Dalai Lama  

“O God, guide me, protect me, make of me a shining lamp and a brilliant star.  Thou art the Mighty and the Powerful.”-Abdu’l-Baha 

“It is vital that when educating our children’s brains that we do not neglect to educate their hearts.”-Dalai Lama 

“Whatever the intellectual quality of the education given our children, it is vital that it include elements of love and compassion, for nothing guarantees that knowledge alone will be truly useful to human beings.”-Dalai Lama 

"The soul is healed by being with children." -Fyodor Dostoyevsky 

“O Friend, in the garden of thy heart plant naught but the rose of love.”-Baha’u’llah  “Live so when your children think of fairness and integrity they think of you.”-Dalai Lama  

“Children are happy because they don't have a file in their minds called "All the Things That Could Go Wrong.”-Marianne Williamson 

“I want you to to be happy… to laugh, smile and rejoice in order that others may be made happy by you.”  -Abdu’l-Baha 

“Be happy for no reason, like a child. If you are happy for a reason, you’re in trouble, because that reason can be taken from you.”-Deepak Chopra  

“If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.”-the Buddha 

“Bestow upon me a pure heart, like unto a pearl.”‘Abdu’l-Bahá 

“A child can ask a thousand questions that the wisest man cannot answer.”-Jacob Abbot 

“Every child is a thought in the mind of God, and our task is to recognize this thought and help it toward completion.”-E. Arnold 

“Possess a pure, kindly and radiant heart.”-Baha’u’llah 

“Children are the hands by which we take hold of Heaven.”-Henry W. Beecher “

Being considerate of others will take your children further in life than any college degree.”-M. Edelman 

‘We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.”-Ralph Waldo 
Emerson  

“The most powerful teaching is not what you say or do to them, but your state of consciousness at home. That’s the very foundation for teaching your children. It has nothing to do with teaching, the foundation for transmitting consciousness is not even wanting to transmit consciousness to them, but to hold the space of presence as you interact with them at home.”-Eckhart Tolle  

O God!  These children are pearls, cause them to be nurtured within the shell of Thy loving-kindness. -Abdu’l-Bahá  

“The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.”-Aldous Huxley  

“Education in the true sense is helping the individual to be mature and free, to flower greatly in love and goodness. That is what we should be interested in, and not in shaping the child according to some idealistic pattern.”- Krishnamurti 

“Rain a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.”-Proverbs 22:6 

“O God!  Protect these children, graciously assist them to be educated and enable them to render service to the world of humanity.”-Abdu’l-Bahá  

“It is no small thing, when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.”-Charles Dickens  

“The littlest feet make the biggest footprints in our hearts.”-unknown “

These lovely children are the handiwork of the fingers of Thy might and the wondrous signs of Thy greatness.”-Abdu’l-Bahá 

“Mothers hold their children's hands for a short while, but their hearts forever.”-unknown  

“Your children are not your children.They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.They come through you but not from you,And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts.You may house their bodies but not their souls,For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.You are the bows from which your childrenas living arrows are sent forth.The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.”-Khalil Gibran

InterCalary -Days of Hospitality & Charity

Thanks to the diversity of traditions and backgrounds, we can connect, create community and celebrate around various holiday celebrations.  One of these is a period of hospitality, charity and gift-giving in the Baha’i calendar that is celebrated from February 25-28 each year. Although acts of charity and hospitality happen year round, this is a special period to remind us of its importance. 

Unlike popular belief, giving does not have to be monetary, although that is certainly one form of it.  Consider ideas such as volunteering time, listening to someone in need, being hospitable, taking care of the sick, helping an elder with their gardening, donating phones or old devices, contributing talent & resources to various organizations, making blankets or clothing for the needy, donating hair for cancer patients, mentoring someone, giving blood, taking stuff to good will, forming a ‘giving circle’ to work on projects year around, donating and serving food at a food bank, donating credit card rewards or reward miles, becoming an organ donor, raising awareness on charity via social media, providing a needed service to recent refugees, etc.

"Be generous in prosperity, and thankful in adversity…. 

Be a treasure to the poor, an admonisher to the rich, an answerer of the cry of the needy…. 

Be as a lamp unto them that walk in darkness, a joy to the sorrowful, a sea for the thirsty, a haven for the distressed…

Be a home for the stranger, a balm to the suffering, a tower of strength for the fugitive."  

–Baha’u’llah

Keys to Happiness

Keys to Happiness

Happiness - is it having loving and compassionate relationships?  Or a caring community?  Is it a manner of worship?  Or having a sense of meaning?  Some say we are at our happiest when we are learning and are challenged.  Others believe happiness comes from fulfillment of personal needs.  Still others argue that happiness lies in forsaking our own self-interest to serve others.  

Happiness is an attribute of love. It cannot be apart from it. Nor can it be experienced where love is not.  Love has no limits, being everywhere.

-A Course in Miracles

‘Abdu’l-Bahá wisheth no one’s heart to feel hurt, nor will he be a source of grief to any one; for there is no greater satisfaction than being a source of joy to the hearts. I ask God that ye may become like angels of heaven, sources of happiness to souls.

-‘Abdu’l-Bahá

He that is discontented in one place, will seldom be happy in another. 

-Aesop

Happiness does not depend on what you have or who you are...  It solely relies on what you think.

-Buddha

Success, wealth, good health and nurturing relationships are by-products of happiness, not the cause.

-Deepak Chopr

I slept and dreamt that life was joy.

I awoke and saw that life was service

I acted and behold, service was joy.

-Tagore

A man living with his thoughts in this Kingdom knows perpetual joy. The ills all flesh is heir to do not pass him by, but they only touch the surface of his life, the depths are calm and serene. 

- ‘Abdu’l-Bahá

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts, with our thoughts we make the world. Speak or act with a pure mind and happiness will follow you as your shadow, unshakeable.

-The Dhammapada

The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are...  goodness, beauty and truth.

-Albert Einstein

Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Anyone can be happy in the state of comfort, ease, health, success, pleasure and joy; but if one be happy and contented in the time of trouble, hardship and prevailing disease, that is the proof of nobility. 

-‘Abdu’l-Bahá,

Happiness consists more in small conveniences or pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom to a man in the course of his life.

-Benjamin Franklin

There is no way to happiness... Happiness is the way.

-Buddha

Happiness is when... what you think, what you say and what you do are in harmony

-Mahatma Ghandi

Go deep into thy heart. There is a realm in your heart. There it will spring up with the water of joy, a constant stream of joy will be flowing from your own heart. Nothing will stop it and nothing will be able to give it except yourselves. This is done by spiritual exercise.  

- Faizi

When I planted my pain in the field of patience, it bore fruit of happiness.

-Kahil Gibran

He is truly happy who makes others happy.  Those who face that which is actually before them, unburdened by the past, undistracted by the future, these are those who live, who make the best use of their lives, these are those who have found the secret of contentment.

-Alban Goodier

Happy is the lover that hath inhaled the divine fragrance of his Best-Beloved from these words, laden with the perfume of a grace which no tongue can describe. 

-Bahá’u’lláh,

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

-Nathaniel Hawthorne

Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the Light.

-Albus Dumbledore

He who has reached the state of self-sacrifice has true joy.

-‘Abdu’l-Bahá,

Things and conditions can give you pleasure, but they cannot give you joy, joy arises from within.

-Eckart Tolle

If you possess happiness you possess everything:  To be happy is to be in tune with God.

-Paramahansa Yogananda

The purpose of life is...the expansion of happiness.

-Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

If you wish the joy, happiness and the composure of the spirit and the peace of the conscience of Abdul Bahá, strengthen the bonds of union and harmony amongst yourselves so that all of you may become the waves of one sea, the drops of one river, the flowers of one garden, the links of one cuirass, soaring in the atmosphere and breaking forth into one glad song. 

-‘Abdu’l-Bahá

You pray in your distress and in your need, would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.

-Kahil Gibran

Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you.

-Hafez

Material progress insures the happiness of the human world. Spiritual progress insures the happiness and eternal continuance of the soul … In accordance with these principles and actions and by the assistance of the Holy Spirit, both material and spiritual happiness shall become realized. 

-‘Abdu’l-Bahá,

As a blind man feels when he finds a pearl in a dustbin, so am I amazed by the miracles of awakening rising in my consciousness. It is the nectar of immortality that delivers us from death, the treasure that lifts us from death, the treasure that lifts us above poverty into the wealth of giving to life, the tree that gives shade to us when we roam about scorched by life, the bridge that takes us across the stormy river of life, the cool moon of compassion that calms our mind when it is agitated, the fun that dispels darkness, the butter made from the milk of kindness by churning it with the dharma. It is a feast of joy to which all are invited.

-Shantideva

What is the difference

Between your experience of Existence

And that of a saint?

The saint knows

That the spiritual path

Is a sublime chess game with God

And that the Beloved

Has just made such a Fantastic Move

That the saint is now continually

Tripping over Joy

And bursting out in Laughter

And saying, “I Surrender!”

Whereas, my dear,

I am afraid you still think

You have a thousand serious moves.

-Hafez

Through suffering he will attain to an eternal happiness which nothing can take from him. 

-‘Abdu’l-Bahá,

Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.

-Aristotle

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.

-Buddha

Man is, in reality, a spiritual being, and only when he lives in the spirit is he truly happy.

-‘Abdu’l-Bahá,

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. 

Some of you say, "Joy is greater thar sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."

But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

Together they come, and when one sits, alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed. 

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.

Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.

When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

-  Kahlil Gibran

Reflection Questions

1. In what way are spirituality any happiness intertwined?
2. Considering world events, what is there to be happy about in the world today?
3. In what ways can happiness be defined to reflect spiritual principles?
4. Forgiveness is a pervasive spiritual principal.  How does this relate to happiness? 
5. In what ways is happiness a universal path of enlightenment?
6. Is the pursuit of happiness virtuous? 
7. What role does happiness play in being successful? 
8. Share your special message of inspiration on Happiness? 
9. When are people happy enough?
10. How does gratitude play into spirituality and happiness?
11. If joy became the national currency, what kind of activity would make us wealthy in the currency of joy? 
12. How is ego a barrier to spirituality? Is it also a barrier to happiness?
13. How can living in a spiritual world bring perpetual joy? 
14. If our reality is spiritual can we be happy in the ephemeral world? 
15. What may be the relationship of sacrifice to joy and happiness?
16. How is our happiness impacted by being a source of joy to hearts of others?  
17. How do bonds of union and harmony contribute to happiness?
18. What role does material progress play in happiness?
19. What role does human suffering play in happiness?