The Guardian Restores May Maxwell

*Rúḥíyyih Khánum, the wife of Shoghi Effendi, wrote of her mother, May Maxwell:*

1 / 5

My mother was the one who had first known Shoghi Effendi as a child, when she came to the Holy Land at the end of the last century; she had come again, in 1909, with my father but I do not know how much contact, if any, they had at that time with Shoghi Effendi.

2 / 5

Following the passing of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá she suffered a complete break-down in health caused by the shock of His death, the news of which was broken to her very suddenly over the telephone, and for a year we did not know if she would live or die or lose her mind.

3 / 5

My father felt that the only hope of dispelling the grief and dark thoughts that obsessed her - that she would never, because of her unworthiness, see the beloved Master in the next world - was for her to make a pilgrimage to Haifa again, this time to see the young successor of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. In April 1923 we arrived in Haifa and it was Shoghi Effendi who literally resurrected a woman who was so ill she could still not walk a step and could move about only in a wheel chair.

4 / 5

From that time the love of my mother's heart became entirely centred in the Guardian and when she was able to return to America, after we had spent two long periods in Haifa (with a break in between in Egypt while Shoghi Effendi was away in Europe), she once more served the Cause very actively.

5 / 5