The Master and the Flowers

The bahaistories.com archive collects, from many household recollections, the small pattern of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's reception of the flowers His pilgrims brought Him.

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Western pilgrims, on first arrival in 'Akká or in the later years in Haifa, would often present a posy or small bouquet on entering the Master's reception room. They expected the flowers to be received politely and set aside. The Master, without exception, did otherwise. He would lift the bouquet to His face. He would inhale slowly. He would inspect each bloom in turn, often for a small moment longer than the visitor expected.

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He would name the variety where He knew it. Where He did not, He would ask the visitor to give Him the local name in their own language — Italian, German, English, French — and would repeat the name back, gently and correctly, before setting the bouquet in a small vase already standing ready on the side table.

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Several of the recollections preserve the brief explanation the Master would sometimes offer when a visitor remarked on the unusual care.

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> Each flower is a small word from the Creator. Let us not > lose the habit of listening.

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The word *listening,* in the paraphrase that runs through the bahaistories.com pieces, is the operative one. The Master's manner with the flowers was a small exercise in the spiritual attention He recommended to His friends in larger settings: the practice of receiving each small visible thing as a deliberate communication from the Creator, of attending to it for the moment its presence asks, and of moving on with the deeper recognition that such attention slowly accumulates.

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