Blissfulness and a bunch of amazing kids!

This week I taught children's classes, ages 7-10. Classes would begin at 915am and go until lunch with a 30 min break. We balanced the time with outdoor games (mostly tag which they all loved) and art projects such as making invitations to neighborhood children's classes that they could give to their friends. After lunch there was free time which I spent either watching/playing with the kids or planning other activities. We planned a scavenger hunt that went amazingly! Everyone really loved it.

Bosch Academy, a session which has high school grads intensively study Baha'i Writing together, was also going on and I got to know some of the youth involved in it. It is really inspiring to see such active and enthused young people who are on fire with the Love of God and who want to make a difference in this world.

During a conversation last night with Angie, the director of Bosch Academy, the topic of women's role as a mother came up. Angie talked about how Baha'ullah has elevated the station of motherhood and about how we are implored to regard the role a mother plays as equally as important as any of other occupation on the planet. When she was saying this I was reminded of a passage by Abdul-Baha (the son of Baha'ullah) I had read earlier this year about mothers. It states that:

"Women have equal rights with men upon earth; in religion and society they are a very important element. As long as women are prevented from attaining their highest possibilities, so long will men be unable to achieve the greatness which might be theirs."

I love the idea that as long as we favor the male gender in our society, neither sex is capable of becoming the shining stars that they are destined to become. Another law that Baha'ullah ordains is that if we have a choice we must first educate the girl children, because it they who will rear and raise their own children some day. It is the Baha'i belief that these laws will eventually cause all war to cease because when we finally reach the day when mother's have the right to choose if their child is sent to war or not, they will assuredly say no! to allowing the child they have raised to walk onto the battlefield.

"The most momentous question of this day is international peace and arbitration, and universal peace is impossible without universal suffrage. Children are educated by the women. The mother bears the troubles and anxieties of rearing the child, undergoes the ordeal of its birth and training. Therefore, it is most difficult for mothers to send to the battlefield those upon whom they have lavished such love and care. Consider a son reared and trained twenty years by a devoted mother. What sleepless nights and restless, anxious days she has spent! Having brought him through dangers and difficulties to the age of maturity, how agonizing then to sacrifice him upon the battlefield! Therefore, the mothers will not sanction war nor be satisfied with it. So it will come to pass that when women participate fully and equally in the affairs of the world, when they enter confidently and capably the great arena of laws and politics, war will cease; for woman will be the obstacle and hindrance to it. This is true and without doubt."