March 21st has yet again rolled around, the Fast is over, and we are entering a new season, physically and spiritually.
Each new year offers a special time to reflect on past events and think about how you would like to shape the future. In case you are a new follower of our website, here are two resources we published last year that may help in these endeavors:
- Dream and Scheme is an 8-page booklet designed for helping you reflect, envision, and plan goals for the coming year.
- The Feast Journal has a short set of questions for you to reflect on at the beginning of each month over the coming year. You can also use it to plan ahead for Holy Days and other important dates.
The coming of Naw Ruz 2013 also means a year has passed since our request for you to share your Spiritual Bucket List for Naw Ruz 2012. This was basically an invitation for readers to share their spiritual goals for the coming year, so that we could do our best to offer ideas and resources to help. Take a look at the original post for details in case you are interested in making your own Spiritual Bucket List for the upcoming year!
Below is a list of pages and posts that relate to each goal that was shared by our readers, split up into the categories of Being and Doing.
Being
“To say my obligatory prayer with more intention.”
We posted some ideas and practical suggestions for this which you can find here.
“To remember to say my 95 Allah’u’Abha’s daily.”
Find our three steps about fulfilling this obligation here.
“To pray more often with my husband.”
Our first post in the Daddy Tool Box series was about creating intimacy in marriage through praying.
Here is another post which we really liked from another website, which also suggests praying in marriage.
“To memorize more quotes and prayers.”
Our CD set “At First Light” offers 20 quotations and prayers put to simple music, which can be very useful for memorizing more quotations and prayers. Find information on the CDs here.
“To memorize the Tablet of Ahmad.”
Find nine ideas for using the Tablet of Ahmad in every day life, all of which will contribute to memorization, on this post.
“To memorize the Long Obligatory Prayer.”
In this post we share quotations from the Writings about the Long Obligatory Prayer, some thoughts from moms about saying it, and some tips for memorization.
“To learn to recognize my own needs – and tend to them – instead of pushing them all to the bottom of the priority list.”
Life Coach and mother Laura Harley shared an inspiring post on our blog about practicing self awareness and balancing sacrifice which you can read here.
“To practice patience with my children!”
We shared a long list of ideas for utilizing the period of the Fast for spiritualizing your life and the role of motherhood, which will definitely contribute to practicing patience with children. Find the post here.
Doing
“To pray with my children every morning or night.”
We shared eight fun and hands-on activities for teaching prayerfulness in this post.
Furthermore the Radiant Hearts program, which offers a prayer put to music for every Baha’i month plus Ayyam-i-Ha, can be useful for integrating a routine of praying and memorizing prayers with children.
“To share stories of the Faith with my children.”
If you want to find resources and ideas for sharing stories from the Faith with your children, check out this post.
“To share the Faith more often.”
Here are five ideas for simple, easy, and fun ways for busy mothers to share the Faith.
“To teach children’s classes.”
We wrote a post about five tips for teaching children’s classes which you can find here.
“To get more children from receptive families to join our children class.”
We have included examples of how you might invite people to children’s classes on our Baha’i Preschool and Baha’i Playgroup pages.
We also published two guest posts sharing the stories of how children’s classes were started, which offer ideas about inviting friends to children’s class and how the process of class building often works organically. Find Katie Esquivel’s post here and Julie Iraninejad’s here.
“To start a Junior Youth Group and to tutor at least one Ruhi book.”
This year our blog has focused mostly on the core activities of children’s classes and devotional gatherings, however we have also created two pages for moms to share their own ideas about animating Junior Youth Groups and tutoring Study Circles. You can find the pages here: Junior Youth Groups and Study Circles. We hope you will share your ideas on the pages, so when people come to search our site about these topics they can also learn from your experiences!
“To visit all the children classes in our sector and offer the teachers support, ideas and resources and fulfill my role as children class coordinator with more diligence and efficiency.”
We have created a page for coordinators to share experiences and will hopefully post more about these topics in the coming year.
A final note:
As always we hope the posts and resources on our website may help you in your daily lives as well as your unique paths of service. Although we cannot make the same promise this year (to post about all the requests we receive) we would still love to hear about your Spiritual Bucket List items and what you would like to see on our blog during the upcoming year. Feel free to post questions, suggestions for topics, or resources you wish to share in the comments below.
We very much appreciate your feedback and comments, and enjoy receiving the stories and experiences you share here on the website or by email (feel free to post pictures and comments on our Facebook page as well!). Thank you to everyone who has contributed to our website, in any way, over the past year. We look forward to learning together over the coming months.
Happy Naw Ruz and best wishes to you and everyone around the world!
