The Sound of the Falls: 'Abdu'l-Bahá at Niagara

Mahmúd's Diary records that on September 9, 1912, after several intense days of talks in Buffalo, 'Abdu'l-Bahá agreed to a short excursion to the Niagara Falls. The friends of Buffalo had arranged the carriages. The Master, then nearly sixty-eight, travelled with His small party north out of the city to the American side of the great cataract.

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The diary preserves the visit in a few quiet sentences. The Master went to the lookout. He stood at the rail. He looked, for a long time, at the water as it fell. Mahmúd records that He did not at first speak. The members of the party stood at a small distance, not wishing to interrupt His silence.

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When at last He spoke, He spoke of the sound. The roar of the water — a sound so constant that ears soon stop hearing it as sound and begin to hear it as the silence beneath all sound — was, He said, a kind of prayer. The whole earth, He observed, was full of such voices, if one had the ear to hear them. The falls were one of the louder of them.

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He did not stay long. He had been ill in the days before, and the long stand at the railing had tired Him. The party returned to the carriage and to Buffalo by evening. The diary makes no particular drama of the visit. It is recorded in the ordinary manner Maḥmúd reserved for the ordinary events of the tour: an afternoon, an excursion, a few sentences spoken at a railing.

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It is recorded, however. And the bare record has been read for a hundred years by Bahá'ís who, when they themselves stand at some great natural sight, remember that the Master had stood at this one and had heard, in the noise that drowned all human speech, the form of an unceasing prayer.

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The next morning He returned to His travels. There were talks to give in the cities to the south. The roar of the falls was left, as He had received it, behind Him.

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*Paraphrased from Mahmúd's Diary: The Diary of Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání (George Ronald, 1998), entry for September 9, 1912; see original for full text.*

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