Naw Ruz Celebration in Inverness

On Wednesday 21st March the Inverness Baha’i community met at the home of Tom and Ann Mackenzie to celebrate Naw Ruz, our 19-day Feast having been held at Rolf & Mhairi Schmidt’s the evening before.

For our Naw Ruz celebration, this year, we held an evening of music, stories, readings and poetry on the Bi-Centennial theme of Light, Illumination and Inspiration and invited nearby isolated believers and friends. Those who brought contributions to the programme, chose well and the evening became an interesting, diverse and very happy occasion. In fact it was reminiscent of a ceilidh in the true Highland tradition….of words and music…relaxed, informal and impromptu with plenty of delicious food.

There was a reading from Baha’u’llah’s ‘Seven Valleys’, a story ‘The Wonder Lamp’ by Hand of the Cause of God, Mr Faizi, one of Esop’s fables, ‘The Frogs Choose a King’ read in the Doric and giving the frogs, called the puddocks in Doric, an amusing slant. There were poetry readings including Walter de la Mare’s gentle reflection on the moon’s light at night called ‘Silver’ and one of Marvesh Sabet’s wonderfully inspirational Prison Poems ‘And This is Where I Stand Sometimes’ and a video showing Naw Ruz singing recorded from communities around the world.

In between and sometimes underlying the words throughout the evening we heard beautiful live guitar music and singing which included, very appropriately, George Harrison’s “Here comes the Sun” and a joyful reggaestyle setting composed by our own Gerry Coogan of “God Grant that the Light of Unity may envelop the whole earth……..”.

Liz Emerson