Abdu'l-Bahá's Tablet on the Spiritual Meeting

In *Selections from the Writings of 'Abdu'l-Bahá* the Master returns repeatedly to the question of the spiritual meeting — the small private gathering of believers, in a home or in a modest rented hall, for the joint purpose of prayer and consultation. The Master holds out this small private gathering, again and again, as the true seedbed of the Bahá'í community life.

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The Tablet here reproduced sets out the proper character of such a gathering in some detail. The form, the Master writes, is unceremonious. The believers gather as friends in the home of one of their number. The host receives them with the small hospitality of tea or simple refreshment. The gathering opens with the chanting of prayers — usually the prayers given by Bahá'u'lláh and the Master, sometimes the prayers of the older dispensations where these are familiar to the gathering. The prayers are offered in turn, one believer at a time, in the language each is most comfortable with.

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After the prayers the gathering moves into consultation. Consultation, in the Master's careful definition, is the joint deliberation of the believers on whatever spiritual or practical question is before them. The character of the consultation is unhurried, candid, and warm. Each speaker is heard out before another speaks. Differences of opinion are named without acrimony. The deliberation moves toward a common understanding without the application of pressure.

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The Tablet makes the central promise that has nourished Bahá'í communities through every generation since.

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> Wherever a meeting is held in My Name, the Concourse on > High joins it in spirit.

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The phrase, lifted from the central portion of the Tablet, names the invisible companionship of the spiritual meeting. The believers gathered in the home are not, in the Master's view, alone. The unseen company of the souls who have gone before them — the great Bahá'í dead, the prophets and saints of every previous dispensation, the rank of the spiritual beings whose station the Bahá'í cosmology contemplates — is present in the room. The gathering, however small in its visible numbers, is therefore always larger in its actual spiritual composition than the visible record would suggest.

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The Tablet closes with the practical encouragement. The small home gathering is the seed of the larger Cause. The strength or weakness of the worldwide Bahá'í community will in the end depend on the steady weekly faithfulness of the small home gatherings in every city and town. The Local Spiritual Assemblies, the National Assemblies, the eventual World Centre — all these institutions of the Faith stand upon the small private home gathering as the ground floor on which everything else is raised.

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