WELCOME! خوش آمدید

Dear friends,

I welcome you all to participate in this discussion group.

My long-standing idea for this group was reinforced when in my last trip to Iran I visited the shrine of Pir-e Sabz in Yazd in the Spring of 2005. I recall that when I returned to Tehran, I called Evan, my husband, in New York and cried. I had a hard time describing my feelings, it was just like visiting a group of children who had lost their parents in a disaster and were now abandoned, waiting for the grace of God to help them. The only difference was that there had been no disaster and the orphans were not waiting, they just thought that is the way it is, life is being orphans. I did not know which caused me to cry, the orphans I met, or the orphans who thought that life means being orphans...

Last fall the article in the New York Times about the shrinking of the Zoroastrian community shrank my heart. I receive so many calls from my non-Zoroastrian friends urging us to do something! I remember when with a friend, Cyrus, we ran to Shirin Khosravi in the Asian Society, my friend pleaded with her to “please so something.”

And finally here we are, hopefully doing something which is long overdue, to find out about the religion which so many hearts throb after.

I am extremely pleased that my suggestion was met with agreement and I hope we develop and extend these discussions to those outside our community and outside our faith.

The format I have in mind is a discussion on a specific topic to take place in Arbab Rostam-e Guive Darb-e Mehr, on the second Sunday of every month at 2:00 pm (after Persian classes). I will post the content of our discussion in this blog which I have set up specifically for this purpose right after the meetings. Everyone can participate in the discussion and leave a comment on the blog. The participants can review the comments and respond to them either as a comment or as a posting on the blog.

I would like to urge the participants to forward the blog to the people on their mailing lists and help me set a mailing list for our blog.

Our blog has room for links on Zoroastrianism to which I would encourage you all to contribute.

The topics will be selected from among the tenets of the religion and of course any relevant subject would be welcomed. The first topic we will start with is “lying,” which I expect will go for a while.

Once more, I am thankful to the members of Iranian Zoroastrian Association and particularly to Shirin Khosravi , our president, who very gallantly encouraged me in this regard.