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FOREWORD
Many religious communities undergo transformative moments in their collective life. The Bah#i community of Canada is no exception. Tending the Garden exemplifies through letters, papers, and archival documents the story of Rosemary and Emeric Sala. Their love for the Baha'i Faith has transmuted their personal interests and temperaments into a long life of service to their fellow human beings and to the Baha'i Faith itself.
What the editor-and-writer Ms. Ilona Weinstein presents us is a tale mostly adorned by the Salas’ own words that inform us of both the mundane and the dramatic aspects of their lives. There is nothing that can distract the reader from anything that does not touch those transformative moments. The book has a collection of remembrances about the historic visit of ‘Abdw1-Baha to America in 1912, and we hear about the “Montreal Youth Group” of the 1930s whose members were among the first to grasp the significance of the World Order of Bah@u lah as a leaven for the world to cherish and develop.
Sometimes in greater or lesser detail, we follow the impact of the Bah@i summer schools as they provide the spiritual, social, and educational nutrients of the Bahai community. Tending the Garden encompasses the broad sweep of the Ten-Year Crusade of the Guardian of the Bahai Faith which stimulated the Canadian Bah#is to set their vision to territories beyond their familiar ones. Like a pulsating vein, the Crusade allowed the Salas to match their love and dedication for the new religion to the requirements of an age that was beginning to be unmoored from its traditional anchors. Whether in South America or Africa, the Salas bent their will to the needs of the new age: forsaking nationalism, and embracing the vision of a unified humanity.
‘The Salas recount their personal victories as evidence of the guiding
power of Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Baha’i Faith; their occasional
misfortune in the field of service as yet another way a new door has been
opened for them to render another moment of service. A blockage over here
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merely serves to divert one’s energies to a higher goal over there. Their letters,
papers, and archival documents move the reader between the routine facets of
their lives to momentous ones. Surely, contemporary Baha'is will long to learn
more of the heroism of the Salas.
—WILL C. VAN DEN HOONAARD
