The Hand Upon My Head

*A retelling based on **Portals to Freedom** by Howard Colby Ives (George Ronald, 1937). The narrative is retold in our own words; the short phrase in quotation marks is verbatim from the book. Read the [full text](https://bahai-library.com/ives_portals_freedom) for Ives's own telling.*

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It was the 5th of December, 1912, and the steamship lay in New York harbor, ready to carry 'Abdu'l-Bahá away from America. The believers had gathered in the ship's saloon for the last goodbye, and when the Master had finished speaking He asked them all to come forward, so that He might take each one by the hand in parting.

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When Howard Colby Ives's turn came, the weight of the moment broke over him. This was the end; he would not see this face again. Overwhelmed, he did not simply shake the offered hand. He sank to his knees, took 'Abdu'l-Bahá's hand in his own, and lifted it, and laid it upon his own bowed head — a gesture of reverence, of a disciple seeking a final blessing.

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And here Ives noticed the thing he would remember for the rest of his life. The hand he held did not press down upon him. The arm did not direct him or bless him from above. It lay, he wrote, completely relaxed and motionless — *a dead weight* — utterly without force, as though 'Abdu'l-Bahá would not for anything in the world impose Himself, even by the lightest pressure, upon the man kneeling before Him. He let His hand simply rest where Ives had placed it, and left the whole meaning of the moment to Ives's own heart.

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Yet when Ives looked up, that same self-effaced figure had a face shining with a light he could only call transcendent. Here was the paradox he never forgot: a power that came entirely through gentleness, a greatness that expressed itself as the complete absence of self-assertion. The hand weighed nothing; the face shone like the sun.

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That, for Ives, was the truest picture of 'Abdu'l-Bahá — and of the humility at the heart of all real greatness. As the ship at last drew away, he watched the Master standing at the rail, repeating quietly the words that had become the very breath of His life: *Alláh'u'Abhá* — God the All-Glorious. The hand had been weightless; but the blessing it left upon one bowed head has not lifted yet.

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*This account is retold for the Bahai Story Library; it is a paraphrase, not the original text. The quoted phrase is verbatim from Portals to Freedom (Howard Colby Ives, George Ronald, 1937). See the source for Ives's complete telling.*

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