Your Heart Teaches

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

In Washington in the spring of 1912 Juliet Thompson went every day to the meetings with 'Abdu'l-Bahá at Mrs Parsons' house. One afternoon she stayed on to visit with Edna, and while they were talking the Master suddenly entered the room. "I am going out for a drive," He said, "but wait till I return, Edna, and you too, Juliet, wait. I will see you in a short time."

So she waited. Half-past six came, then seven. Juliet was to dine at half-past seven with the Elkinses, whose house was a long way off, rather indirect on the car-line. "Go, Juliet," Edna urged. "I will explain."

"But how could I?" Juliet wrote. "My Lord had told me to stay."

A little after seven He came back. "Ah, Juliet! For your sake I returned. Mrs Hemmick wanted to keep Me, but I had asked you to wait; therefore I returned." After a pause He added: "Would you like to come up and paint Me tomorrow?"

As a girl of ten she had prayed that one day she might paint the Christ, and she never lost that hope until she saw the Master; then she knew that no one could paint the Christ. Yet the night before He landed in New York, her friend Mrs Gibbons had received a Tablet from Him that said: "On My arrival in America Miss Juliet Thompson shall paint a wonderful portrait of Me." Now He had asked her Himself. "So I learned the reward of obedience," she wrote.

At the daily meetings Juliet found many friends of her childhood. One of them was Lee McClung, the Treasurer of the United States, who had been one of her idols in her early teens. When she saw him the winter before, for the first time in about ten years, he had made all sorts of fun of her for her "conversion to Bahaism." "It made me laugh out of one eye and cry out of the other," he said.

Yet to her great surprise he was in the audience at Mrs Parsons' first meeting. That evening he dined with her, and she asked how he had felt when he saw the Master. A shy look came into his face, and Mr McClung, she noted, was anything but shy. He said he had felt as though he were in the presence of one of the great old Prophets, Elijah, Isaiah, Moses, then that it was more than that, then spoke of Christ, and at last said: "He seemed to me my Divine Father." Later she was told that at Alexander Graham Bell's house, after the Master had given an address, others were called on to speak. When Lee McClung was called on he said: "After 'Abdu'l-Bahá has spoken, I cannot."

At his request Juliet arranged a private interview for him with the Master. She arrived at Mrs Parsons' a little ahead of time, and while she was waiting a door in the hall opened, and there stood the Master, beckoning to her.

He was alone, so they had to fall back on His English and her scant Persian. "How is your mother?" He asked first. "How old is she?" Juliet could not say; her mother had always concealed her age. "How old are you?" Juliet confessed it. "In My eyes you are fifteen," He replied. "In our eyes I am an infant?" she asked. "Yes. Baby!"

Then the translator arrived, and the Master began at once.

"Tell Juliet that she teaches well. I have met many people who have been affected by you, Juliet. You are not eloquent, you are not fluent, but your heart teaches. You speak with a feeling, an emotion which makes people ask: 'What is this she has?' Then they inquire; they seek and find. It is so too with Lua. You never find Lua speaking with dry eyes! You will be confirmed. A great bounty will descend upon you. You will become eloquent. Your tongue will be loosed. Teach, always teach. The confirmations of the Holy Spirit descend upon those who teach constantly. Never feel fear. The Holy Spirit will give you the words to say."

Juliet wrote: "That erect head, that hand held high in command, the Power that eddied from Him as He spoke those words, how can I ever feel fear again when I have to mount the dreaded platform?"

Later He said to her: "You have many friends. You have no enemies. Everybody is your friend." He told her that He was not ignorant of conditions in New York, and that both factions there were pleased with her. "And you have accomplished this only through your sincerity. Others may do this through diplomatic action, but you have done it with your heart."

Just then Lee McClung arrived, and the Master took him upstairs.

In a note on this page Juliet explained that she was destroying her handwritten diary, but could not bear to lose any of the Master's words to her, "those dear words of encouragement. That is why I keep them."

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*.