One Big Family: Saying Goodbye at the Harbor

A retelling for children, based on Mahmúd's Diary (entry of December 5, 1912).

It was a cold winter afternoon, and a great ship called the Celtic sat waiting in the harbor of New York. Deep inside her, the engines were already warming up. The crew hurried about the deck, getting everything ready for a long voyage across the ocean. By the time the sun went down, the ship would carry 'Abdu'l-Bahá far away, all the way to a city across the sea.

For eight whole months, 'Abdu'l-Bahá had traveled across America. He had arrived at this very same harbor back in the spring, and now, in the dark of December, He was leaving from the same place He had come. It was like a story that ends where it began.

A small group of friends had come down to the dock to see Him off. They had traveled from cities near and far — from New York, from Boston, from Philadelphia, from Washington — just to stand beside Him one last time. Among them was a man named Mírzá Maḥmúd, who carefully wrote down in his diary everything that happened, so that we could know about this day even now.

The friends crowded close. For months and months they had been able to see 'Abdu'l-Bahá in person, to hear His voice, to be near Him — longer than any of them had ever dreamed would be possible. And now He was going. Deep in their hearts, many of them quietly understood something sad: they might never see Him again. No one wanted to say those words out loud. But they felt them.

'Abdu'l-Bahá spoke to His friends for only a little while. He did not need a long speech. For eight months He had been teaching them so many things — about kindness, about peace, about how all the people of the world belong together. He had explained it carefully, again and again, in city after city.

Now, at the very end, He gave them the whole idea folded up into just a few simple sentences — small enough to keep in your pocket, and to carry for the rest of your life:

We must be kind to the people of the world and forget all religious, racial, patriotic and political prejudices. The whole earth is one globe. All nations are one family.

Think about what He was asking. Be kind to everyone. And forget the ways that people split themselves apart — the way some folks decide they are better than others, or that strangers from far away do not really matter. 'Abdu'l-Bahá wanted His friends to let all of that go. The whole round earth, He told them, is really just one home. And every single person on it, no matter where they live or what they look like, belongs to one big family.

It sounds so simple, doesn't it? And yet it is one of the hardest things in the whole world to truly do. That is exactly why He wanted these words to stay with them, like a lamp they could carry into all the years still to come.

Then the time came. The Celtic began to move, sliding slowly away from the dock and out into the evening. The friends stood at the edge of the pier and waved. They waved and waved — long after the ship had grown small, long after they could no longer really see Him at all. They simply could not stop.

Many of them, just as they had quietly feared, never did see Him again. But Mírzá Maḥmúd tells us what they did next. They went home — back to their own cities, back to their ordinary days — and they began the slow, patient, everyday work of becoming exactly what He had asked them to be: kind to the people of the world.

That is the kind of goodbye that never really ends. 'Abdu'l-Bahá sailed away across the sea, but the gift He left behind stayed right there in their hearts, and it can stay in ours too. We are all one family. When we are kind to everyone — even the people who seem different from us — we are keeping His parting words alive.

This is a retelling for children. For the fuller account, see "All Nations Are One Family: 'Abdu'l-Bahá's Farewell from New York".

Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání, M.. (1998). *Mahmúd's Diary: The Diary of Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání*. George Ronald.