23 May ~ Declaration of the Bab

Today we celebrate the Declaration of the Bab. The Bab (Whose title means The Door or The Gate) declared in 1844 that he was the Promised One that many people were expecting to appear at that time. His Mission was to prepare the way for Him Whom God Will Make Manifest, Baha'u'llah. The Bab and Baha'u'llah are known sometimes as The Twin Messengers.

We read the story of "Mulla Husayn and the Bab" from Children's Stories from the Dawn-Breakers. Mulla Husayn was a man who had been studying the propheses and preparing himself to find the Promised One, the Bab. He found the Bab in the Persian city of Shiraz.

"It was about two hours after sunset when the Bab, with great love and joy, told Mulla Husayn Who He was. Mulla Husayn was so astonished that at first he could not belive the good news. But as the Bab went on talking, Mulla Husayn knew that no one else could be so wise."

"This night," the Bab said, "this very hour, will, in the days to come, be celebrated as one of the greatest and most significant of all festivals."

Mulla Husayn was the first to believe in the Bab. "Later eighteen souls would find the Bab, just as Mulla Husayn had done. But Mulla Husayn was to tell no one about the Bab, for each person had to find Him without any help. When all eighteen had learned the great Secret, the Bab would send them out to tell the whole world that a new Teacher had come."

Before reading the story we talked about one of the prayers revealed by the Bab. I was surprised to find out that my 3-year-old son had it memorized! So we talked about the meaning of it.

Is there any remover of difficulties save God? Say: praised be God, He is God. All are His servants and all abide by His bidding.

After reading the story we made some pretty nine-pointed star "stained-glass windows." The night before I used the 9-point star cookie cutters from Special Ideas as a pattern to cut out the frames from construction paper, and I cut up a bunch of little pieces of colored tissue paper. (From gift bags!)

To make them, I glued a star to one side of a piece of waxed paper and then turned the paper over. I covered the space inside the frame with glue and the kids stuck the bits of tissue paper to that. When they were done, I put some more glue on and covered it with another piece of waxed paper. Then I cut the waxed paper away from the frames and wrote Declaration of the Bab in the middle with a Sharpie pen.