The term “summer school” is often used to refer to those long summer days of university or secondary school classes which some students find, usually to their regret, that they have to take to catch up on courses they should have completed during the regular school year. For Baha’is, however, the term refers to much happier community events for their families and friends. Baha’i “summer schools” are a time to make friends while studying the principles and teachings of the Baha’i Faith and how they apply to their own lives.
This year hundreds of Baha’i families across Canada took part in a series of summer schools around the country that explored the “Majestic Process” through which the Baha’i community has grown from a small group of believers in Persia in the nineteenth century to an increasingly influential agent of social change, now established around the world, that has attracted more than five million adherents.
A lodge set on a lake two hours outside of Quebec City provided the venue for Quebec’s annual Baha’i summer school. The “Majestic Process” was studied over a series of sessions attended by 125 adults, junior youth and children from August 21-24 at Lac en Coeur, Hervey Jonction, Quebec.
“The summer schools are essential,” says Mitra Javanmardi, a regular participant at summer schools in Quebec for the past 40 years. “One thing that I find makes these summer schools unique is that we get together to exchange ideas using the consultative process, which means that no set of ideas from any person are put before anyone else’s.”
While adults were engaged in talks and workshops on the theme of the school, the junior youth in attendance participated in a program that put what they were learning into immediate practice by giving them the opportunity to facilitate sessions for the children. This interaction culminated in a musical performance on the last night of the school that was followed by the children and junior youth dispersing into the audience to serve as experts for questions asked by the adults.
The arts were featured throughout the weekend as participants created a choir and performed skits.
Artistic performances were not limited to the Quebec summer school. They were also a highlight for participants at the Mid-Island Summer School in Nanoose Bay, British Columbia when jam sessions that began a drumming devotional on the first night stretched into breaks and mealtimes and finally evolved into country jigs and reels that got the whole school involved.
Over 230 people from around the Maritimes attended a summer school in Berwick, Nova Scotia. They took advantage of impromptu evening music sessions, outdoor recreational activities and afternoon craft sessions to forge new friendships and strengthen old ones during breaks from study. Periods for socializing provided a necessary balance to the intensive courses on Baha’i elections, the Central Figures of the Bahá’í Faith, and the historical evolution of their religion, the “Majestic Process.”
“The aim of every Baha’i summer school,” wrote Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Baha’i Faith, is “to create, maintain and enforce, namely: the close association and fellowship, both social and spiritual, among the attendants, intellectual training in the history, principles and teachings of the [Baha’i] Cause, and the application to one’s life of the principles of moral conduct.”