Dearly loved
friends,
With eager hearts we
hail the convocation of this first of the twin Arctic Conferences inaugurating
the series of eight International Bahá'í Conferences to be held during the
middle part of the Five Year Plan. The northern regions of the world were alluded
to by Bahá'u'lláh in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the Mother Book of this Revelation.
Their names were recorded in the Tablets of the Divine Plan by the pen of
'Abdu'l-Bahá, Who, in one of His other Tablets, supplicated God to "raise
up sanctified, pure and spiritual souls in the countries of the West and the
territories of the North, and make them signs of His guidance, ensigns of the
Concourse on High and angels of the Abha Kingdom." These lands received
the constant attention of Shoghi Effendi, who repeatedly urged the friends to
carry the Faith to their uttermost inhabited areas, and who joyfully announced
every advance of the Bahá'ís that established a centre closer to the North
Pole.
Already touched by
the morning light of God's Cause by the nineteen-twenties, the lands of the
North were blessed by visits from the indomitable Martha Root, whose love
warmed and encouraged the hearts of the handful of believers then labouring in
a few scattered centres in Scandinavia and illumined the soul of Holmfridur Arnadottir, Iceland's first Bahá'í. Bursting into blossom under the impact of
the rays of the second Seven Year Plan, these communities received a major
impetus from the Ten Year Crusade, of which the European campaign was launched
at the never-to-be-forgotten conference in Stockholm in 1953, and which
established centres as far north as Thule in Greenland and Sassen in the
islands of Spitzbergen. Yet another stage of growth was reached with the Nine
Year Plan and the convocation of the North Atlantic Conference in Reykjavik,
which marked the opening of a new phase in the collaboration between the
northern communities on both sides of that ocean.
Only thirty-eight years have passed since Vaeinoe Rissanen, the first Bahá'í in Finland, accepted with radiant heart the life-giving message brought to him by Josephine Kruka, the "Mother of Finland," in July 1938, and now the city of Helsinki, the seat of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of Finland, is the scene of an International Bahá'í Conference whose deliberations are focused on the diffusion of the light of God's Faith throughout the entire arctic and sub-arctic regions of the world.
The followers of the
Blessed Perfection gathered in Helsinki must direct their attention to the
urgent tasks of the second half of the Five Year Plan: to the reopening of
Spitzbergen; the winning of the 34 Local Spiritual Assemblies still to be
formed in Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland; the
acceleration of the translation and publication of Bahá'í literature; the
forging of still closer links of collaboration with the Bahá'í communities of
Alaska, Canada and in the continent of Europe; the enlistment under the banner
of Bahá'u'lláh of increasing numbers of the Eskimo, Lapp and Gypsy peoples; and
the pursuit of the vital and challenging objectives of the Plan beyond the
frontiers of their homelands.
It is our fervent
prayer at the Threshold of Bahá'u'lláh that this Conference will produce an
upsurge of Bahá'í activity throughout the northern lands and in the islands of
the North Sea and the Baltic that will outshine every achievement made in those
promising regions, and be an inspiration to your fellow-believers in every
country of the world.
The Universal House
of Justice
(Messages from the
Universal House of Justice 1963 to 1986)
