Lesson 23 : Humility

We started our class today with prayers as usual. While doing so, we tried to take on a humble posture, as if we would be approaching a king. The children did very well!

Book 3 has a beautiful little song for this lesson called ‘Be like the Earth’. I’ve just found this great wikisite with all the lesson’s songs here. The imagery created by the words of the song, inspired our art activity for today – gorgeous and lush collages of trees, gardens and everything on the earth…

We were all quite addicted to making collages, letting it take up most of our lesson time 🙂 We did have time for a quick story about how ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was a perfect example of humility. You’ll find it on page 32 of Ruhi Book 3.

To finish off today’s lesson, we started learning a new prayer – which has been put to music most beautifully by Tara Ellis. It is a prayer by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and goes like this:

O God!  Refresh and gladden my spirit.  Purify my heart.  Illumine my powers.  I lay all my affairs in Thy hand.  Thou art my Guide and my Refuge.  I will no longer be sorrowful and grieved; I will be a happy and joyful being.  O God!  I will no longer be full of anxiety, nor will I let trouble harass me.  I will not dwell on the unpleasant things of life.

O God!  Thou art more friend to me than I am to myself.  I dedicate myself to Thee, O Lord.

You’ll find all details for this lesson on the ‘lesson‘ page. See you all next week – where we learn more about Compassion.

Lesson 4 : Love, love, love

What a fabulous class we had today! We learnt about love – and how it is always better to show love towards other people, even if they are not treating us kindly. To memorise the quote for the lesson we used a series of pictures. Amazing how quickly all the children picked it up and new it off by heart within a few minutes!

Picture 1 : “In the garden”   Picture 2: “of thy heart”   Picture 3: “plant naught”  Picture 4: “but the rose”    Picture 5: “of love”

We then made some ‘roses of love’ out of crepe, tissue paper and pipecleaners, and scented them with essence (it was frangipani, I was fresh out of rose :)…)

We finished the class with a story about ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Akka and some colouring in.

Todays class went so quickly. We can’t wait for next week! See you all then 🙂

Lesson of today in pdf format – 4_Love

Oh and of course, the song we learnt today – Love Love Love – Lyrics and Have a listen to the song