The Guardian has noted a new spirit of love and unity amongst the Australian and New Zealand Bahá’ís, which pleases him very much, as the atmosphere of harmony amongst the friends will attract the Divine Blessings and enable them to achieve a great deal more for the Faith.
He strongly feels that the time has come for the believers of Australia and New Zealand to arise as a conquering army and ensure the attainment of their goals under their Six Year Plan. They now constitute one of the strongest bodies of believers in the world, ranking with such active and well established communities as those of Canada, Great Britain and India. Their period of adolescence in the Faith has passed; they are now adults, and they must face the problems involved in fulfilling their Plan squarely and with maturity. The pleasant period of youthful irresponsibility, when they could look on the work of the American and Persian Communities as the feats of the strong, which they were not called upon to emulate, being too young, is now passed forever. They must sacrifice, concentrate on their tasks, plan their actions and carry on their pioneer work with determination, realizing they will have no one to blame for any failures, except themselves! The Guardian feels they are entirely capable of fulfilling their Plan. He is proud of the progress they have made and confident they can succeed if they really try.
He assures you all of his loving prayers for your guidance and for the success of your work, the progress of which he follows with the keenest interest.
With Bahá’í love,
R. Rabbani.
P.S. I am enclosing a receipt herein. I do not think this sum has been previously acknowledged, but if there is any duplication, please destroy it.
[From the Guardian:]
Dear and valued co-workers:
The Six-Year Plan, formulated by the elected representatives of the valiant Bahá’í communities in Australasia, is now entering its final and most critical stage. If successfully terminated it will mark the conclusion of a memorable chapter in the evolution of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh in the Antipodes, and will at the same time herald the opening of the initial phase in the establishment of the institutions of that Faith, beyond the borders of that far-off continent, in the numerous diversified and widely scattered Islands of the South Pacific Ocean. It will in fact signalize the third stage in the evolution of the Faith in that newly opened, highly promising, far-flung continent—an evolution which commenced, during the concluding decade of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Ministry and of the Heroic Age of the Faith, with the birth and rise of the Bahá’í Administrative Order, and which was subsequently accelerated through the formulation during the opening years of the Formative Age of the Bahá’í Dispensation, of two successive Plans, designed to broaden and reinforce the foundations of that nascent Order in Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania. The inauguration of the third and most glorious phase in this historic and momentous development must now depend on the consummation of the tasks willingly shouldered by this youthful, this virile and greatly beloved community, which, despite its physical remoteness from the heart and world centre of the Faith, the smallness of its size, its limited resources and the vastness of the field under the jurisdiction of its elected representatives, has made such great strides since its inception, has shown such exemplary devotion and loyalty, and has preserved and reinforced so nobly the solidity of its foundations.
This Community, which owes its birth to the revelation of the Tablets of the Divine Plan, must now brace itself, during the fleeting months that lie ahead, for a supreme, a concerted and sustained effort to ensure the attainment of the objectives of the present Plan, and thereby acquire the spiritual potentialities essential to the launching of a mighty Crusade, in collaboration with the Trustees of the Plan, conceived by the Center of Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant, and with its neighbouring sister communities in Latin America and in the Indian Sub-continent, destined to culminate in the fullness of time in the Spiritual conquest of the multitudinous islands of the South Pacific Ocean.
So exalted a mission, so strenuous a task, so weighty a responsibility call for, while the Present Preparatory Plan speeds to its end, an unprecedented demonstration on the part of young and old, or both men and women, whether administrators or teachers, veterans or neophytes, of solidarity, determination, zeal and constancy, a still greater display of self-sacrifice, a wider dispersion of forces, a more energetic discharge of duty, a clearer vision, a firmer grasp, of the requirements of the present hour, and a more complete dedication to the purposes of the present-day enterprise.