By Rowena Eghanian of the Bahá’i Community of Greater Dandenong
As I type this message, our country, our state, our city, communities and the residents across, appear to be aflutter with exuberance and anticipation.
Ahead of our ‘cautious re-opening’, I hear joyful banter!
Citizens sharing what they are looking forward to doing most: as businesses across Melbourne re-open their doors, or further: when our states and borders reopen.
For those of us living in Victoria, we have together endured restrictions which we could never have imagined just a year ago today.
The disintegration of our normal, to the integration of our new ‘COVID-Normal’, has reshaped how we have lived through 2020!
There is a saying, “The same boiling water that softens the potato hardens the egg.”
Certainly, many people are feeling a bit cooked!
Some will come out of this year hardened, while others might be a bit mushed!
This tremendous little leveller has affected the lives of citizens all across the world: rich, poor, young, old.
Irrespective of our gender, our status or our beliefs – be they theistic or atheistic – no one is immune to the affects this virus has wrought.
A teeny, tiny, microscopic virus has so powerfully awakened us to the ‘Oneness of our Humanity’: a root principle shared in the spiritual teachings of the Bahá’i Faith.
The warmly welcomed, long awaited zero COVID case tally in Melbourne has also illumined for us, this wonderous sense of connectedness and interdependence.
In order to reach that ‘zero’ we’ve witnessed a transforming, collective prayer, demonstrated through our service of unified action!
Invested with our attributes of patience, we courageously faced the uncertainty.
With compassion for those enduring, suffering and deeply hurting, it was enriched with our kindness to friends and strangers alike, and we honoured and sought from each other trustworthiness, reliability, self-discipline and responsibility.
We stayed calm with our steadfast determination and offered plenty of creativity to help carry us through!
Let us then each continue to strive so that our actions can be beautiful prayers.
Supporting and assisting one another as we emerge like butterflies from our lockdown cocoons, to re-open and reunite: face to (mask-covered) face once more!
With Hope, Faith and Love steering our actions, imagine what other tremendous victories might yet be won from this crisis in 2020 – the year when testing negative, gave us reason to feel just a little bit positive!
