Baha'i and Butterflies

Saturday's inclement weather kept me cooped up in the kitchen for most of the day, so I changed my plans and set out on my ten mile roundtrip hike to the Baha'i temple on Sunday.  "You footed it all the way?" asked an incredulous Robert when I stopped at Kamwokya market on the way back, for a lesson in how to butcher a kid goat. Kampala is relatively quiet on a Sunday morning - everyone seems to be getting their car washed after the week's heavy rains and muddy roads, and on the hilltops you can hear music floating up from the pentecostal churches in the valleys.

The Baha'i temple in Kampala is the central temple for Africa, like the other continental centers in Chicago and Germany.  There's a smaller Baha'i temple of Uganda right next door.  The central temple is a nonagonal building built in the 1950's and set in beautiful gardens atop Kikaya Hill.  I happened to arrive in time for the weekly service at 10:30.  All nine sets of wooden doors are opened during the service so that you can look out on all of creation outside.  The inside of the dome is painted pale turquoise and the interior walls are pale green with blue and green stained glass windows.  The service consisted of a series of readings from Baha'i scriptures as well as the Koran and the Bible (Baha'i is an inclusive faith) - today's subject was meditation.  The choir sat in the center of the temple and sang in between the readings - the sound was gorgeous, their voices blending and echoing up into the dome like a human organ.

While I was waiting for the service to begin I walked in the gardens, which were full of butterflies.  Here are my best butterfly pictures for you to enjoy.

Baha'i is a relatively new religion created in the 1850's by Persian mystic Baha'u'llah.  Here's a quote from one of the readings at today's service:

'Through the meditative faculty inventions are made possible, colossal undertakings are carried out; through it governments can run smoothly...Nevertheless some thoughts are useless to man; they are like waves moving in the sea without result. But if the faculty of meditation is bathed in the inner light and characterized with divine attributes, the results will be confirmed.  The meditative faculty is akin to the mirror.  If you turn the mirror of your spirit heavenwards, the heavenly constellations and the rays of the sun of reality will be reflected in your heart, and the virtues of the Kingdom will be obtained.  May we indeed become mirrors reflecting the heavenly realities, and may we become so pure as to reflect the stars of heaven.'