A Stone for the Mother Temple: 'Abdu'l-Bahá at Wilmette

Mahmúd's Diary records May 1, 1912, as one of the most significant days of the American tour. The Master had come west by train from Washington for the express purpose of dedicating the cornerstone of the future House of Worship of the Western Bahá'í community. The gathering had been convened in Chicago by the Bahá'í Temple Unity, the body that had been collecting funds for nearly a decade for the project.

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The site lay seven miles north of Chicago, in the small village of Wilmette on the shore of Lake Michigan. The land was a muddy lake-side field. Mahmúd records that the day was overcast and that the wind blew cold off the lake.

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The Master arrived in the early afternoon by motor car. A crowd of delegates had assembled — men and women representing Bahá'í communities from across the United States and Canada. Many had travelled days to be present. The diary records the gathering as one of the largest of the tour outside the formal city audiences.

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The cornerstone itself was a simple block of limestone. Beside it lay a smaller stone — a piece picked from a Chicago building site, brought to Wilmette by an unassuming believer named Nettie Tobin, who had felt that a stone offered in her own hand might be needed. The Master would, in the event, use her stone for the formal laying.

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He spoke briefly. He prayed. He took the small stone from Nettie Tobin's hand and laid it Himself upon the foundation that the workmen had prepared. Then He invited each of the delegates to come forward in turn — not the prominent only, but every one of the friends present — and to place a stone of his or her own upon the foundation.

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Mahmúd records the procession that followed. Persian believers, American believers, Black and white together, men and women, the elderly and the children — each came forward. Each placed a stone. The pile that resulted was untidy and heterogeneous and exactly the image the Master wished to preserve.

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The diary records that He told the delegates what they had done. They had founded together. The House of Worship that would in due course rise on the foundation would not be the House of any one of them; it would be the House of all of them. The labour of building it would extend over many years. None of the delegates present that day would see it in its finished form.

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The dome at Wilmette was completed in 1953, forty-one years later. The stones each delegate laid that May afternoon are still in the foundation.

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*Paraphrased from Mahmúd's Diary: The Diary of Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání (George Ronald, 1998), entry for May 1, 1912; see original for full text.*

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