How Is Your Mother?
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When in Bahá'í history
New York (today: New York, USA)
The Master also dearly loved His devoted disciple, Juliet Thompson. In her diary she wrote about a visit with Him in New York City in November 1912. One day she wrote, 'I had been very naughty with Mamma that day and had grieved her. My precious mother was brought up in luxury, lived in luxury until Papa died. She cannot get over her sensitiveness about our too-apparent poverty and she simply won't have people to meals. I had begged her to make an exception of Mírzá ‘Alí-Akbar, who was arriving at such an awkward hour, and to let me bring him back for lunch. But she wouldn't hear of it. Whereupon I flew into a temper, told her what I thought of her "false pride", and stamped out of the house.
'Now, entering the Master's house with the three Persians, instead of a welcome, I received a blow. The Master didn't even look at me. '"How is your mother?" were His first words. "Is she happy?"
'Then He told me to go straight back to her but to return the next day. I went back and comforted her with His rebuke to me.'
Source: Honnold, Annamarie, Vignettes from the Life of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, pp. 47–8, from The Diary of Juliet Thompson.
Collected from bahaistories.com (Subject: parents-treatment).
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