On the Chicago Streetcar
Baha'i Stories Blog · Read original
When in Bahá'í history
Chicago (today: Chicago, Illinois, USA)
The Baha'i Stories Blog preserves a brief recollection from a Chicago Bahá'í family of an unexpected encounter on a north- side streetcar in May 1912.
The mother of the family, a long-time believer who had brought her seven-year-old daughter into the Faith from infancy, was riding the streetcar home from a downtown errand. She had heard, in the morning newspaper, that 'Abdu'l-Bahá was in Chicago and was staying at one of the city hotels. She had not expected to see Him. The streetcar was the public conveyance of ordinary citizens, not of distinguished foreign visitors who travelled by carriage.
The streetcar stopped. A man in the simple white robe and the small turban of a Persian sage stepped aboard, paid the fare to the conductor in the ordinary way, and took the empty seat opposite the mother and child.
The mother, in the recollection preserved in the blog post, did not at first look up. The child did. The child stared across the aisle for several seconds, her eyes growing wider, then tugged at her mother's sleeve and whispered, in the clear unembarrassed voice of a child: Mama, the Master is here.
The Master, hearing the small voice, smiled at the child and gave her a small bow of greeting. The mother, looking up at last, found herself face to face with 'Abdu'l-Bahá across the streetcar aisle. She greeted Him in confused delight. He greeted her in turn. He spoke briefly with the child. He blessed both. He stepped down at the next stop and walked away through the afternoon crowd.
The child saw what the adults had not been looking for.
The phrase, paraphrased in the blog's small post, gave the small lesson. The mother had not been expecting the Master on the streetcar. The child had been raised to expect Him anywhere. The recognition had gone to the eyes of the one who had been taught to look.
Source: Baha'i Stories Blog (https://bahaistories.blogspot.com/), paraphrased post about a Chicago streetcar encounter, 1912.
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