Bahai Story Library
All virtues

simplicity

6 stories where simplicity appears.

The Marriage of Ásíyih Khánum

In *The Chosen Highway* Lady Blomfield records the recollection of how, in the late 1830s, the young Ásíyih Khánum — daughter of a Persian noble and rare beauty of her age — was married to the young Mírzá Ḥusayn-ʿAlí, and how the household of Núr received its new bride with quiet ceremony.

2 min

The Quietest Wedding in Haifa

A young woman from Canada crossed the whole world to marry the Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith — in the smallest, quietest wedding you can imagine.

5 min

A Quiet Wedding in Haifa: Shoghi Effendi and Mary Maxwell

In *The Priceless Pearl* Rúḥíyyih Khánum tells the story of her own marriage to Shoghi Effendi in the spring of 1937 — a private ceremony in the room of the Greatest Holy Leaf, witnessed by a handful of family members, that joined two streams of the Cause and was deliberately kept free of fanfare.

2 min

Through the Eye of the Needle: 'Abdu'l-Bahá on the Rich Man

Among the Gospel images 'Abdu'l-Bahá would explain to inquirers was Christ's saying about the camel and the eye of the needle — the small *needle gate* in the wall of an ancient city, the kneeling of the camel, and what the image asks of the rich.

1 min

The King and the Shoemaker: A Story 'Abdu'l-Bahá Loved to Tell

Among the parables 'Abdu'l-Bahá would offer to those who came to Him troubled about poverty and station was the story of a king who envied a shoemaker's sleep — and a shoemaker who would not trade his small contented evenings for the king's heavy throne.

1 min

The Food Spiritual: A Meal in 'Akká

In her 1905 pilgrim notes Julia Grundy preserves a meal at the Master's table — His Eastern way of eating with the fingers, His easy explanation to Western visitors, and His turning of the moment into a teaching about the food that brings life and the food that does not.

1 min