Many Months Too Soon

A retelling based on Portals to Freedom by Howard Colby Ives. Words in quotation marks are as he recorded them.

In August 1912 'Abdu'l-Bahá spent three weeks in Dublin, New Hampshire, a summer resort in the mountains. A friend from Washington had offered Him a large farmhouse on her estate there, but it was full of the Persian and American friends travelling with Him, so He had taken a room at the Dublin Inn. Over the weekend of August 9 He received Howard Colby Ives there as His guest.

Ives was a minister. He had first met 'Abdu'l-Bahá about four months before, and had first heard of the Faith about seven months before that. By his own account he was still almost as far as ever from understanding it. He describes himself in those months as "perpetually tossing in the turbulent Sea of Spirit," caught up for a moment into the light and then dropped back into the trough of the sea. Each time the light came he said within his heart, "This time I will not let Thee go." Each time it went, his heart answered, "The Light is gone forever. It was but a dream born of vain hopes."

It was costing him, too. One of his fellow clergymen asked him, "Are you still Bahá'-ing around?" A member of his own family told him he was a pathological case and needed a physician. The influential members of his congregation were cooling towards him.

'Abdu'l-Bahá was to speak at the Unitarian church that Sunday morning, but He had said He would talk with Ives first. At about half past nine Ives was waiting for Him in one of the private parlours of the Inn. 'Abdu'l-Bahá came in, embraced him, and asked if he were well and happy.

Ives asked Him, as he had often asked before, why he should believe in Bahá'u'lláh as the latest and most universal of God's Messengers. 'Abdu'l-Bahá looked at him long and searchingly, and smiled. After a lengthy silence He said that it was not given to everyone to speak often of Christ to men, and that Ives must thank God daily for this bounty. He told him to study the Book of Certitude carefully. Then He told him how to live: to the proud, be humble; to the humble, compassionate; to the ignorant, "as a student before his master"; to the orphan, a father; to the aged, a son; and to seek no earthly reward.

Then He fell silent and closed His eyes. Ives thought He was weary. Only later did it seem plain to him that 'Abdu'l-Bahá had been praying for him. Ives, too, was still, and for those moments it seemed possible to do what he had been asked. When 'Abdu'l-Bahá opened His eyes, He smiled again and said that all who truly seek find, and that the door to the World of Reality was never closed to those who patiently knock.

A message came that it was time to go to the church.

Ives could not afterwards recall the subject or a single word of the address. He remembered the crowded pews, the cream-coloured robe, the white hair and beard, the upward swing of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's hands, and His voice. As he left the church he said to one of the New York friends:

"At last I know. Never again will I doubt or question."

When he wrote his book, published in 1937, he added: "Alas, I spoke too soon. Many months too soon. My scholastic training had gone too deep." The habits of a lifetime of depending on book learning, he wrote, were not to be so quickly broken.

That evening his heart was too full to let him rest, and he waited at the Inn for 'Abdu'l-Bahá to come back. It was quite late when he saw Him slowly climbing the stairs to His room. Ives followed. The door was already closed. He could not say afterwards what gave him the courage, but he knocked, and 'Abdu'l-Bahá opened the door Himself.

Ives did not know what to say. 'Abdu'l-Bahá beckoned him in and looked at him gravely.

Ives stammered: "Will you please pray with me?"

'Abdu'l-Bahá motioned to him, and Ives knelt. 'Abdu'l-Bahá put His hands on his head and chanted a brief prayer in Persian.

"It was all over within three minutes. But those moments brought to me a peace I had never known."

A few days after leaving Dublin, Ives wrote to 'Abdu'l-Bahá to thank Him for His kindness. He had not thought his letter needed an answer, but soon there came his first Tablet. It told him that his letter had brought great joy, and it said: "A hundred thousand ministers have come and gone: they left behind no trace nor fruit, nor were their lives productive." Near its close He wrote:

"I have become hopeful, and prayed that thou mayest attain to another Bounty; seek another Life; ask for another World; draw nearer unto God; become informed of the Mysteries of the Kingdom; attain to Life Eternal and become encircled with the Glory Everlasting."

"It was to me then simply a beautiful letter, couched in Oriental imagery," Ives wrote. That its last words were an actual summons to a new and higher life, to be entered "while on this little planet," he added, "all this did not dawn upon me for years." In time he came to see that these words described the station in which 'Abdu'l-Bahá Himself lived, and that the great aim of His life's work was to summon people as close to that station as their capacity would allow.

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see Portals to Freedom by Howard Colby Ives.

Ives, H. C.. *Portals to Freedom*.