Attention & Intention

I was sitting back, catching up on some of my favorite blogs, when I stumbled across this over at One Baha'i's Approach.
Meade talks about something that really hit home with me right about now: core activities outside the 'norm'.
As I've said here, I haven't been involved with my local community for a couple months now, though this may change shortly, with some recent improvements to communication. My local community is far more conservative than what my experience had been thus far, and, having been raised Catholic, there are some parts of conservatism that make me quite uncomfortable.
Not having children, I haven't been involved as much as I would like with children in general.
Devotionals, however, have been a rather different story.
I have been blessed to recently be able to start teaching Mr Nice Guy about the Faith, and he has been quite receptive. Being in the military, well, I talk about the Faith openly, but it is a heavily Christian sort of community, and, all too often, the most I can do is be open to questions and discussions. Perhaps this counts as a combination of devotionals and home visits? I'm not entirely sure.

My earlier reference to improved communication was not passing. I recently got a response to my email to my fellow Baha'i about his efforts and my feelings on them. He apologized, and, much to my surprise, agreed with me on several counts. He said he realized that our community needed to be more open-minded. This surprised me, but I was glad to hear it. We have a Reflections gathering tomorrow night that I think I may attend, though it's more than a little overwhelming to think about at this point.