First (Real) Devotional

These are updated photos of my apartment! As you can see my one little room is coming along nicely. This picture was taken right at the beginning of the devotional.

The meeting itself was wonderful with six attendees besides me, a beautiful, youthful crowd. My Buddhist friend from school came as well and is likely to come to future meetings. Apparently she told another student who just accosted me after lecture for not inviting him as well.

We started out pretty subdued, just going around the circle with prayers (somehow people are more comfortable going in a circle than skipping around when they don't know each other yet...maybe because they're less confident that they can read each other and avoid interruptions. I sang "Greater is God than everyone great one," with which the others joined in quietly, and a Swahili song from the Bab's address to the letter's of the living.

At the end we rent around the circle each saying the Fire tablet. I guess the prayer did kindle a fire in our veins because Persian Fabio was moved to volunteer his apartment for next week's meeting.

Learning:

1. Keep cell phone on my person so I can open the door unobtrusively even during a prayer instead of having to jump all over the room to let people in the building.

2. Grapes, Nutella "chips" (baked whole wheat tortillas with Nutella inside), hint of lime tostitos, raspberry lemonade and fake champagne worked well as snacks. I got small plastic cups, plates and silverware for the occasion. Turned out I didn't actually need the silverware but I can take it over with the other paper/plastic items to PF before he hosts next week's devotional.

3. I need to work on a systematic way to invite people for convenience, but inviting everyone during Feast was really effective. Feast was 48 hours before the devotional so people remembered, plus the immediate contact with each other seemed to make them more enthusiastic about getting together again.