Daily Lessons Received at ‘Akká, January 1908/Foreword
FOREWORD
[edit]Before there were Bahá’í books, pamphlets, periodicals—before there were, properly speaking, Bahá’í administrative institutions; before ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had made His historic voyage to America; before Shoghi Effendi transmitted to the English speakers of the world his own sensitive and authoritative translations of the Writings central to the Bahá’í Faith—there were Bahá’ís in America. On what spiritual food did they subsist? Ever since the announcement had been made at the World Parliament of Religions in 1893 concerning the spiritual sanctity of Bahá’u’lláh, Americans began to explore the new Revelation. Some Persian Bahá’ís came from the Holy Land about that time to give lessons in the Bahá’í Faith in New York and Chicago. The first pilgrimage to ‘Akká and Haifa, in 1898, was followed by a steady and ever-increasing stream of Americans intent on hearing the Faith expounded by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Whom Bahá’u’lláh had designated Center of the Covenant. The pilgrims, on their return to the United States and Canada, conveyed their ardor, enkindled at the feet of the Master, to their questing compatriots. They did it by word of mouth, by private letter, by widely circulated and continually copied and recopied letters, descriptions, journals, and accounts that went from hand to hand. Sometimes they published their little books and pamphlets, and, when the Bahá’í Publishing Society (predecessor of the present Bahá’í Publishing Trust)
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was established in 1902, these travelers’ accounts constituted an important part of its output.
But infinitely more important than such publications were the Tablets or letters that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá sent to the North American pilgrims. He maintained a continuous correspondence with these early believers, who welcomed the Tablets and eagerly, reverently shared them with their friends—by the same means, informal and formal, by which their personal experiences as pilgrims had been shared. The Tablets were written in Persian and were translated into English either in the Holy Land or in America by Persian believers and teachers.
One of the translators of these Tablets was the Master’s grandson, Shoghi Effendi, destined by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Will and Testament to become the Guardian of the Cause of God. There came to be, even before Shoghi Effendi’s accession to the Guardianship, a strong sense of the difference between official, authoritative expressions of the thoughts of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, on the one hand, and the informal reminiscences of travelers, on the other—of travelers eager to capture the precious words uttered by the Master as He taught the pilgrims—for He always taught; at tea, at lunch, on walks, on expeditions of mercy to the poor, He taught by deeds as well as words. Every minute of the pilgrims’ day was a lesson, sometimes concealed to all but the truly sensitive, sometimes apparent to the least gifted. Clearly, in the “pilgrims’ notes” (as they came to be called) there was necessarily involved the fallibility of each pilgrim’s memory and interpretive capacity. There was a danger that a sentence in a letter, dictated
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in response to a very particular question, might be generalized far beyond the case to which it was addressed, or that an oral lesson adapted and filtered by the needs of the hearer, become the basis of a doctrine that, emanating from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, would be seen as binding on all believers. Precisely this had happened in Islám; the Traditions, or Ḥadíths—that is, the sayings of Muḥammad as reported by His disciples—had come to represent, for the majority of Muslims, an authority second only to that of the Qur’án itself.
Bahá’u’lláh Himself had made it clear that, as Shoghi Effendi put it in a letter written on his behalf, “only those things that have been revealed in the form of Tablets have a binding power over the friends. Hearsays may be matters of interest but can in no way claim authority.” (Bahá’í News, no. 125 [May 1939], 6). Shoghi Effendi was particularly vigilant in this matter and repeatedly warned the friends against accepting hearsay as binding on anyone except him who had heard the Master with his own ears. However that may be, what can be more thrilling, short of the immediate experience, than hearing or reading the account in a pilgrim’s own words of his reception in the loving arms of the Master? Who can tire of the description of those penetrating eyes, that warm and merry laughter, the wise brow, the wisps of hair escaping from the confining turban? Surely pilgrims’ notes are not binding on us; they cannot be adduced as proof of anything; they cannot provide the basis of a serious, critical analysis of Bahá’í teachings—though the temptation to use them so is sometimes nearly irresistible!; but the sense of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s presence, His quintessential courtesy, His tenderness,
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His occasional severity, His powers of intellect and concentration—all these are infinitely precious to Bahá’ís, every one of whom is in love with the Master.
The account of the pilgrimage of Mrs. Helen S. Goodall and her daughter, Mrs. Ella Goodall Cooper, is among the earliest of the published descriptions of life with the Master, in His household.
Mrs. Goodall and her daughter Ella (not yet married), were attracted to the Faith at the same time. They lived, at the turn of the century, in Oakland and San Francisco, when Lua Getsinger was teaching at Mrs. Phoebe Hearst’s home. It was after Mrs. Getsinger had left the region that a niece of Mrs. Hearst’s and friend of Ella’s told Ella and her mother about the Prophet Who lived in the Holy Land. Both mother and daughter were so fired with the desire to know more that they went to New York City, where they received more informed instruction in the Faith than was available in San Francisco. At this time (1898) Mrs. Hearst, on the first American pilgrimage, cabled a young friend in New York City to join her in the Holy Land and to invite Ella Goodall to accompany her. Young Miss Goodall was delighted to accept and, after securing the permission of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, left for Haifa. Mrs. Goodall was not well enough at that time to undertake so arduous a journey, and so returned to California.
In the meantime, a strong nucleus of believers had formed in the Bay Area, of which Helen Goodall became one of the principal animating forces. She
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had her chance to go on pilgrimage in 1908 with Ella (now Mrs. George Cooper, married since 1905), for a two-week sojourn in the prison home of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. The Master was still under government surveillance; the Young Turks’ revolution had not yet ended His imprisonment. But that Prison was a haven of beauty and freedom, compared with the world outside. The present book is, of course, the outcome of that pilgrimage.
Simple, unstudied, direct, almost without form, it consists of descriptions, anecdotes, questions put to the Master, with the answers He gave, the record of lessons given not only by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, but also by that gifted teacher, Ḥájí Mírzá Ḥaydar-‘Alí. There are also appendices with Tablets from the Master to Mrs. Goodall and to Mrs. Cooper. There is an almost severe economy of expression: no concern for the graceful transition, but rather an abrupt turning of attention to the next matter of concern. This lack of “style” turns out to be the best possible style: it breathes the awareness of the preciousness of the lessons learned, the value of the experiences and observations of the two pilgrims; no time is lost getting to the central thought. A sort of sober ecstasy pervades these pages—no purple prose, no effusions. The flame burns pure.
But, lest you forget—these are just pilgrims’ notes.
It would not be appropriate to recount in full the lives of these remarkable women after the pilgrimage of 1908. But the chapter in O. Z. Whitehead’s Some Early Bahá’ís of the West (“Helen Goodall and Ella Cooper,” pp. 21–34) is well worth reading for the sequel. It will suffice here to say that after services of
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fundamental importance to the establishment of the infant Faith in the United States (not the least of which were contributed to the erection of the House of Worship in Wilmette), Mrs. Goodall died in 1922, her physical vigor having entered into a rapid decline after the passing of the Master. Mrs. Cooper was a loyal and energetic helper of the Guardian until the death of her husband, Dr. George Cooper, in July 1951; she died four days after.
Daily
Lessons
Received
at ‘Akká
January
1908