One unique thing about the Baha’i Faith is that there have been explicit instructions on the leadership of the community right from the beginning, so there are no denominations in the community. Since we don’t have much in the way of rituals, the way things look can vary from culture to culture, but the plans, the goals, and the structure are all the same.

Baha’u’llah, the Prophet and founder, was first. Then guidance of the community passed to His eldest son, ‘Abdu’l-Baha. Shoghi Effendi, ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s grandson, then served the Baha’i Faith as its Guardian until his own passing. The plans he set in motion were carried out with exactitude, culminating in the first election of the Universal House of Justice, which is elected by the Baha’is of the world every five years and continues to lead the community to this day.

That’s the short version, anyhow.

The long version, Baha’is learn over time. Through the Writings of the Faith, histories, personal anecdotes, statistics, and more, we learn more about these figures over the course of our entire lives. There is truly no end to this process.

When I was a teenager first learning about the Faith, I loved Baha’u’llah, but it was sort of abstract. It’s like loving the sun. You love the light and the warmth and all that it gives, but you can’t know it, not really.

‘Abdu’l-Baha, though, was so concrete. Not the Manifestation of God, but something closer to the rest of humanity. The exemplar of kindness, of humility, of compassion. It was easy to love ‘Abdu’l-Baha, like a saintly grandfather. His talks were so simple and illustrative, even in translation.

And then there was Shoghi Effendi.

And I understood that he was important, but here I was, 15 and longing for spiritual truth, and this man was writing procedures for the election of local assemblies. Which I wasn’t even old enough to vote for. With Baha’u’llah I felt awe and with ‘Abdu’l-Baha I felt devotion, but with this Guardian … I felt primarily respect. There just didn’t seem to be a real heart-to-heart connection.

That was 20 years ago.

Both my life and my feelings are very different now.

Part of this is that I grew to better understand what Shoghi Effendi accomplished. To take a nascent community, one that would soon be bereft (although it was unaware at the time) of hereditary guidance, and establish it, not as a social movement or vague spiritual revival, but as a world faith, was a massive undertaking. There were so many moving parts to this. Legal recognition in nations around the world. Constructing fitting resting places for the Founders of the Faith. Translating the Writings from Persian and Arabic into dozens of languages and disseminating them to communities desperate for access to their own Sacred Texts. Guarding against those political and religious leaders who had made it their aim to eradicate the Faith from the earth, or at least the corners of it over which they maintained influence and control. And above all that, the Baha’is themselves. Who had loved ‘Abdu’l-Baha, who were dedicated to the Faith, but who had little to no idea what that entailed. What does it mean to be a Baha’i in this day? There was hope, perhaps, but a unified vision, knowledge, and skill are also necessary. It is one thing to pray for a better world. It is quite another to build it with your own hands.

And it’s this process of building that taught me to love Shoghi Effendi with an intimacy that I never expected.

When I sit with my spreadsheets, extracting data from dozens of conversations, I remember Shoghi Effendi.

When I make maps showing where activity is taking place, I remember Shoghi Effendi.

When I craft an email that I know will be sent out to hundreds of people, I remember Shoghi Effendi.

When I write step-by-step instructions for a process that is structured, but no less spiritual for it, I remember Shoghi Effendi.

I feel so close to the Guardian in this service, perhaps one of the sweetest unexpected gifts that the role has brought me.

I’m currently re-reading The Priceless Pearl, the biography of Shoghi Effendi written by his widow Ruhiyyih Khanum, and it’s beautiful and heartbreaking and breathtaking all at once. You can download it as an ebook for free here.