As my Instagram feed can testify, I love me a good cup of coffee. I think that there is a great culture around coffee, such as the Swedish fika or the tendency for college students to get together in coffee shops. I have made friends with not just the staff at Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue’s TWIGS café, but… Read More Coffee: From Crutch to Companion
The transformation of the world from its current state to a place where every individual can participate actively in their personal material and spiritual development as well as contribute to the progress of humankind as a whole is going to need the upending of a lot of things—and I mean, a lot. This means that… Read More Petitions and Boycotts: Why I Am Boycotting Nestlé Products
My blogging journey—an incredible, fulfilling one that has given me so much—started almost nine and a half years ago right here in Sahar’s Blog. I never intended to stop blogging—that is, until I had a baby. I had always intended to take a short hiatus when each of my children was born. When my first… Read More Why I Decided To Take Precious Time Away From My Baby To Start Blogging Again
A friend of mine who is from a specific part of the world decided recently to organize a get together only for people from that area, kind of like a missing-home get together. I thought it was a great idea, until another friend of mine, from another part of the world, pointed out that it… Read More Perceiving Disunity: Just as Dangerous as Disunity Itself?
Just a couple of weeks ago, Bahá’í communities around the world elected their national administrative bodies in a unique electoral process. One of its aspects is, as I personally understand it, that each elector has to make the effort to get to know all the members of one’s community. I also understand that to build… Read More How to Make the Time to Nurture Deep Friendships while Having the Time to get to Know All Community Members: Some Thoughts
The way the conversation around success seems to be going, it remains a broad, complex, and subjective concept. For example, I can define success as something you will consider completely unimportant. But even if we don’t agree with a certain definition of success, some of them still generate in us behaviours indicating that we just… Read More The Insistent Self: Dealing with Desire For Success
Quite unfortunately, community-building doesn’t just happen when a group of good-willed individuals come together. Not that good-will doesn’t help! But it’s not enough. All the good-will in the world cannot be properly channeled unless there is unity. If we think of the community-building process as rowing, it becomes clear that we can have a lot… Read More The Real Meaning of Unity: Removing Obstacles to Fulfilling our True Purpose in Life
I recently posted reflections about the importance of learning the skills related to consultation in the context of a family, so that we can apply said skills in the context of society. The world is becoming smaller and smaller through increasingly efficient travel and exchange of information. This means two things: different people end up… Read More Unity Amidst Increasing Diversity in Smaller and Smaller Spaces: The Vital Importance of Respect
Do you remember your organic chemistry? Do you remember those little H-bonds, who were not in themselves strong enough to hold a molecular structure together, but were strong enough to change properties of, say, water? The ones that make a molecule wrap itself differently, and/or make it a little stronger? I have always had an… Read More Pleasantries: the Hydrogen Bond of Community Building?
As discussed last week, a pregnancy is a very intimate affair and yet has a certain community-oriented side which I have been very lucky to experience both as a non-pregnant and pregnant community member. There are still, however, many boundaries that need to be respected. Learning how to identify and respect these boundaries is further… Read More Three Things I Wish People Would Stop Doing and Saying to Pregnant Parents {and what they could do instead}