The Fourth Sitting

A retelling based on The Diary of Juliet Thompson by Juliet Thompson. Short phrases in quotation marks are words preserved in that account.

In 1912, in New York, 'Abdu'l-Bahá sat six times for a portrait by the painter Juliet Thompson. The fourth sitting was on the nineteenth of June. Juliet had just begun to work, and Lua Getsinger was sitting on a couch nearby, when the Master smiled at Juliet, turned to Lua and said in Persian: "This makes Me sleepy. What shall I do?"

"Tell the Master, Lua, that if He would like to take a nap, I can work while He sleeps."

But Juliet found that she could not work. "What I saw then was too sacred, too formidable." He sat as still as a statue, His eyes closed, His head erect.

"Suddenly, with a great flash like lightning He opened His eyes and the room seemed to rock like a ship in a storm with the Power released."

Lua and Juliet sat shaking and sobbing. Then He spoke to Lua, and Juliet caught the words Munádíy-i 'Ahd, Herald of the Covenant. Lua started forward, her hand to her breast, and exclaimed, "Man?" (I?)

"Call one of the Persians. You must understand this."

Then He said: "I appoint you, Lua, the Herald of the Covenant. And I AM THE COVENANT, appointed by Bahá'u'lláh. And no one can refute His Word. This is the Testament of Bahá'u'lláh. You will find it in the Holy Book of Aqdas. Go forth and proclaim, 'This is THE COVENANT OF GOD in your midst.'"

"A great joy had lifted Lua up," Juliet wrote. "Her eyes were full of light. She looked like a winged angel."

"Oh recreate me," Lua cried, "that I may do this work for Thee!"

Juliet was now sobbing uncontrollably, and Lua, even at that moment, did not forget her. "Julie too," she said, "wants to be recreated."

The Master had veiled Himself again. He sat before them now, Juliet wrote, "in His dear humanity."

"Don't cry, Juliet," He said. "This is no time for tears. Through tears you cannot see to paint."

She tried to hold back her tears and go on, but painting that day was at an end for her. Soon the Master began to laugh, and it seemed to Juliet that with each outburst He wrapped Himself in more veils. "I am going to tell you something funny," He said, adding in English, "a joke."

They begged Him to tell it. "No. Not now. Paint." Later, walking up and down, He laughed again and said He was thinking of His joke. "No, I cannot, for every time I try to tell it I laugh so I cannot speak." They went down on their knees, laughing, and pleaded with Him. "No. Not now. After lunch."

After lunch He went upstairs to His room, and they never heard the joke. Juliet wondered whether there had been one at all. "Perhaps He had just found it necessary, after that mighty Declaration, to bring us down to earth again."

---

Early that same morning, on His way down to speak to the people gathered in the basement, He had passed Lua and Juliet in the third-floor hall. They had felt "a peculiar power in His step," and He passed them without a smile.

In the afternoon He sent Lua down to the waiting people to "proclaim the Covenant." A little later He followed her and spoke Himself on the station of the Centre of the Covenant. To them, Juliet wrote, He spoke guardedly, not as He had spoken to Lua and her.

Lua Getsinger had accepted the Faith in Chicago in April 1897, and she and her husband, Edward, were the first American-born Bahá'ís to visit 'Abdu'l-Bahá in the Holy Land, staying from November 1898 to March 1899. She gave nearly all her time to teaching.

In early July, Mírzá Mahmúd recorded, the Master had for some time been telling her repeatedly to return to California, and she had delayed and fallen ill. On 7 July He instructed her again, in words "very emphatic and clear," and sent her west with Mrs Georgia Ralston, a new believer.

Later He sent the Getsingers to teach in India. From there Lua went on to 'Akká and then to Egypt, where she died in 1916 of an illness she had contracted in India.

The portrait was finished at the sixth sitting.

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see The Diary of Juliet Thompson by Juliet Thompson.

Thompson, J.. (1983). *The Diary of Juliet Thompson*. Kalimát Press.