When I worked for the Bahá'í Publishing Trust in Oakham (between 1987 and 2003), I attended this event every year, often as a delegate for the regional community: Rutland (as I lived in Oakham virtually all that time) combined variously with parts of Cambridgeshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire. I remember conventions in Cheltenham, Edinburgh, Harrogate, Llandudno and Southport, among other places. I'd attended National Convention for several years before that, again, often as a delegate for Glasgow and its environs. I would also have attended other national Bahá'í events around the country, representing the Publishing Trust - maybe another two or three per year. After leaving the Bahá'í Publishing Trust in the spring of 2003, I thought I'd take some time away from these events, after fifteen years in suit and tie working in the bookshop. Amazing how time flies; this is the first national Bahá'í event I've done since 2002 (apart from a flying visit to a speak to a special interest group at a national Bahá'í conference held in Warwick University, January 2008).
The East Midlands Conference Centre is an excellent, modern, stylish facility, with the main meeting hall, food, space for exhibitions, displays and the ever-popular bookshop, rooms for children's activities and breakout meetings all under one roof, parking and overnight accommodation on site. I've visited here once before: 19 January, for the first in the series of Involvement Events with the Regional Equality and Diversity Partnership (REDP). I didn't get to see much of the centre that day, though I remember it being very cold inside - not something you could say about it today.
I'm here with Clare, on her first visit to a Bahá'í event. There are around 700 Bahá'ís here in all. We're hardly through the door and have already met half a dozen or more old friends of mine, who greet us warmly: Dickie Fuscoe, Laili Cleasby, Wendi Momen, Shahram and Karin Firoozmand, Marlyn Thoburn, Shiva Nolan, Mahzad Mazloomian, Jackie Mehrabi. They and others offer hugs, kisses and exceptionally kind words of welcome. I get to talk to all of them about my work for the Council of Faiths, leave them with my card and samples of our leaflet on Leicester's Bahá'í community. Some of them ask if I could come out to their communities to give them advice on local inter-faith work.
Half an hour or so is spent in the main hall, before the session breaks up for dinner. Not having seen this for so many years, I'm impressed all over again by how courteous, reflective, good-humoured, positive, collaborative, considered - even stately - the process of Bahá'í consultation can be. I can't help but wish more of my friends and colleagues could see this for themselves, as it's such a distinctive model of discussion and decision-making. As well as consulting together on the main issues that affect the current condition and future progress of the UK Bahá'í community, the 95 delegates have the responsibility to elect the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of the UK. Our local delegate is Minou Cortazzi, former Chair of Leicester Council of Faiths.
We don't stay very long (hardly more than three hours) and go back to Leicester before dinner. But it's enough to leave me with the sure and certain feeling that it's been good to reconnect after all this time.
