The Baha'i Lake MN Cluster includes Lake and Cook counties of Northeast Minnesota.
Our neighboring Superior National Forest Cluster includes the northern half of St. Louis County and the Range cities of Chisholm, Ely, Eveleth, Gilbert, Mountain Iron, Virginia, and other communities.
The Duluth Cluster includes the southern half of St. Louis County and all of Carlton County.
Three Baha'i's reside in the Lake MN Cluster. My wife and I live on the shore of Lake Superior at Little Marais, about half way between Two Harbors and Grand Marais. One Baha'i resides in Grand Marais. Many other Baha'i friends have roots in this cluster. Still others have connections to one or more of the Communities of Interest (see that tab on this blog).
A Baha'i Cluster defines an area that has common ties by culture, environment, infrastructure, transportation links, and commerce. A Cluster maybe a neighborhood in a large city. Rural clusters often include more than one county, or a whole state. Obvious to those of us who live in Lake and Cook counties, people travel to and from our neighboring clusters, and associate with family and friends all over the region. We each have influence on the wider community in some way.
Where the population of Baha'is is larger, such as in the Twin Cities or Chicago, a Cluster can be defined as narrowly as a neighborhood.
How do you have influence spiritually? When I engage friends in conversation , volunteer in a classroom of elementary school students, or attend a church Bible Study, for example, I encourage people to think about how they influence the entire community. Whether in an art workshop, guiding a tour at a historic site, or in congregational prayer or communion, the spiritual influence extends far beyond the people immediately involved.
More specifically in a Baha'i community, we develop plans for teaching the Faith in the context of the Cluster and the Community. As individuals, we learn to teach by example, and speak of spiritual principles, the history of the Faith, and the Word of God in the normal course of conversation. When a Baha'i Community becomes large enough to elect a Local Spiritual Assembly, that administrative institution plays its own role in planning. The nine individuals elected annually to serve on an Assembly learn to distinguish their role in directing and unifying the community from their own personal planning and activities.
The Baha'i Universal House of Justice, at the Baha'i World Center in Haifa, Israel, develops and publishes the highest level Plan. Specific Plans may be laid out for continents, Nations, and Regions. An individual or a Cluster develops a plan in that context.
A new Five Year Plan announced by the Universal House of Justice began on April 21, 2011. The history of such Plans goes back to the publication of the Tablets of the Divine Plan, by Abdul-Baha, the son of the Founder of the Baha'i Faith, Baha'u'llah. The series of Plans that developed from those documents anticipates an end in 2021, the end of the Formative Age of the Baha'i Faith.
What do we do when the Baha'i population numbers thousands or millions in a community? The period of rapid change we experience now is far different than the specific plans developed fifteen years ago addressed. Those plans anticipated rapid change.
In 2011, revolutions have much of Africa and the Middle East in chaos. Powerful interests manipulate the situation to their own advantage. There is no guarantee that new, strong dicatators will not replace those that have been overthrown. The Baha'is of Egypt recently published a plan to the People of Egypt. Spiritual principles are key to new community planning and development. An opportunity is at hand to ensure gender equality, and the elimination of religious, racial, ethnic, and tribal prejudice.
The common phrase found in the highest level planning is "preparing the process for entry by troops". We expect more people to become Baha'is, with growth measured in a community by tens or hundreds a year. We expect the people we associate with in the wider community to demand better planning and more effective means for taking social action. Those "troops" can benefit by following the context of the Divine Plan.
