Beaverton Neighborhood
Beaverton youth
This is one of a series of articles about what is happening in neighborhoods around the Portland Metro area. Contact us to find out what is happening in your neighborhood.
Beaverton Baha’is: Tying It All Together
By Venustiano Olguín and Anita Cleven
Photos by Aref Heyrani
Beaverton Baha’is, along with Baha’is around the world, are working with our neighbors to build spiritual neighborhoods in which people of all faiths, races, ethnic groups and socioeconomic groups work together in unity to take charge of their own spiritual, social and intellectual development. We invite people to join us in doing this through neighborhood devotional meetings in which we worship together and build friendships. We work together to develop the spiritual development of the emerging generations through children’s classes and channeling the energy of our junior youth towards lives of service to humanity through our Junior Youth Spiritual Empowerment Program.
As part of this commitment to build spiritual communities, every fourth Nineteen-Day Feast, is celebrated in four different major areas of Beaverton rather than only at the Beaverton Baha’i Center in order to help us develop a more neighborhood-centered outlook. This approach is inspiring Baha’is to reach out to their neighbors to start up interfaith devotional gatherings at the neighborhood level. These devotional gatherings are made possible through the generosity of individuals, whether Baha’is or not, who volunteer their homes for this purpose and are held at different times during the week on a rotating basis. The devotional gatherings are a combination of worshiping together and getting to know one another.
Sometimes these devotional meetings give rise to an interest in children’s classes and junior youth groups. In other cases, the process starts with an interest in starting up children’s classes, which then creates an interest in having neighborhood devotional meetings. At the present time, there are ongoing children’s classes in the Highland Park, Sexton Mountain, and Vose neighborhoods. And new efforts are now being carried out in the Ecole Apartments neighborhood.
As the children’s classes have a successful spiritual impact, interest then develops in providing the children, who have become junior youth, the guidance they need during the crucial developmental years from 11 through 15 years of age. In Beaverton, there are four ongoing youth groups in the Junior Youth Spiritual Empowerment Program: Cooper Mountain, Kemmer/171st; South Beaverton, Sterling Pointe Apartments; Highland Park, Hart/140th; and Denney-Whitford, Denney/104th.
The Beaverton Baha’i Junior Youth Spiritual Empowerment Program is already becoming known at the state level. At the Youth Peace Summit at Concordia University in September, the program was one of seven Oregon programs awarded the Harold Schnitzer Spirit of Unity Award in recognition for its work with junior youth.
For Beaverton Baha’is, we are entering an exciting new period of development in which we are taking up the call to help create spiritual neighborhoods by reaching out in a systematic way to our neighbors. This means tying it all together: devotional gatherings, children’s classes and work with junior youth. We also reach out to the people of Beaverton as a whole through such activities as participation in the annual Beaverton Parade and interfaith service projects. And finally, as we work together to help change the world, many individuals are becoming interested in joining Baha’i study groups in which they can learn even more about the teachings of Baha’u’llah.
Baha’is around the world are working with their neighbors to build spiritual neighborhoods, to strengthen these communities to take charge of their own spiritual, social and intellectual development. We invite everyone interested to help build a healthy rhythm of community life:
Building friendships
Getting together for devotional gatherings
Channeling the energy of the junior youth into positive action
Studying together to develop our individual and collective capacities
Applying principles in service to humanity
Contact us to learn more.