The Rose Not Yet Opened

A retelling based on The Diary of Juliet Thompson (Kalimát Press; diary entry dated 6 July 1909). The narrative is retold in our own words; the short lines in quotation marks are verbatim from the Diary. Read the full text for Juliet's own account.

It was the 6th of July, 1909, in the prison-city of 'Akka. 'Abdu'l-Bahá sent for Juliet Thompson, and she came to His small room with its panelled wooden walls, where Munavvar Khánum waited to interpret.

He took her hands in His, and asked her — simply, as one asks someone truly cared for — whether she was happy, and whether she was well. Juliet, overcome, answered as best she could.

Then He asked her to carry messages home. And so began something Juliet never forgot: one by one, she laid before Him the names of the people she loved back in America — the believers who had sent their hearts with her across the sea. Lua Getsinger. May Maxwell. Mother Beecher. Mrs. Parsons. Name after name she spoke, and to each name 'Abdu'l-Bahá responded with tender affection, offering for each soul a prayer, a word of guidance, a blessing — as though each distant friend stood for that moment in the room with them.

She spoke of a godchild, born under hard and sorrowful circumstances, and He promised to pray for the little one's blessings. She spoke of her brother, and reaching for a way to describe him she said he was like a beautiful rose bud: not yet opened — not yet awakened to the things of the spirit. And the Master answered her with a hope as gentle as the image itself:

I hope this bud will become a beautiful full-blown rose.

Then she made her boldest petition. There was a man — Percy Grant — whom she longed to see become a believer, and she begged the Master to pray for him. 'Abdu'l-Bahá pressed her hand, again and again, laughing softly at the eagerness of her love, and gave her His promise:

I will pray for this.

What moves in this small scene is how completely present He was to one heart and all its attachments. Juliet had crossed the world to reach Him, and what did He do with their precious hour together? He let her empty her heart of every name she carried, and He gathered each one in. No love she brought to Him was too ordinary to matter; no person on her list was beyond the reach of His prayers. She had come bearing the people she loved, and she went home knowing that every one of them had been received, and blessed, and held.

This account is retold for the Bahai Story Library; it is a paraphrase, not the original text. The quoted lines are verbatim from The Diary of Juliet Thompson. See the source for Juliet's complete entry.

Thompson, J.. (1947). *The Diary of Juliet Thompson*. Kalimát Press. https://bahai-library.com/thompson_diary