Stories of 'Abdu'l-Bahá

In searching for stories about `Abdu'l-Bahá, this is an exerpt from the foreword to `Abdu'l-Bahá in America: The Diary of Agnes Parsons, by Sandra Hutchinson:

In 1912, `Abdu'l-Bahá `Abbas (1844-1921), recently liberated by the Young Turk's Revolution from his forty-year long confinement in the prison city of Akka, set sail for America. He came, in the twilight of his years and on the eve of world war, to promulgate universal peace, a central teaching of the new religion for whose cause he had been imprisoned and at whose head he stood: the Bahá'í Faith. During his sojourn in the United States, poets and leaders of thought sought his counsel in private interviews, and seekers of all races and classes attended his public talks. Journalists, struck by his charismatic personality and by the modernity of his teachings, described him as a "Prophet from the East" and an "Apostle of Peace."

For the small community of his American disciples, however, `Abdu'l-Bahá's visit had a significance far beyond that ascribed to it by an eager public and in the newspaper reports of the day. A few American Bahá'ís had been able to make the arduous and costly journey to the Holy Land to attain his presence, but for most, `Abdu'l-Bahá's visit to their country offered a first and probably an only opportunity to meet the leader of their faith, the one appointed by its founder, Bahá'u'lláh, to be the interpreter of his teachings after his passing. `Abdu'l-Bahá's presence amongst them fired the imaginations of the Bahá'ís about the teachings they had embraced as he, "the Perfect Exemplar" of those teachings, demonstrated first-hand their application to daily life.

But the fealty of the American Bahá'ís to `Abdu'l-Bahá was inspired by more than a recognition of his station. To them, he was "the Master" -- a loving teacher who had nurtured them from afar through scores of letters and a Christ-like figure about whom they had heard numerous tales from returning pilgrims to the Holy Land. In fact, many of the early American believers believed that he, not Bahá'u'lláh, represented the return of Jesus as prophesied in the New Testament, and it took numerous reiterations to disabuse them of this notion: his only station, he told them, was the station of servitude and the name he wished to be called by was `Abdu'l-Bahá -- the "Servant of Bahá."

Today `Abdu'l-Bahá's travels in the United States hold an unrivalled place in the spiritual heritage of the American Bahá'í community. This legacy is honored by the reverence paid to the places associated with his travels, some of which have become sites of regional pilgrimage, and by the ardent study of the transcripts of hundreds of talks he delivered during his sojourn in America. Another way in which this legacy is celebrated is by the frequent repetition of anecdotes about `Abdu'l-Bahá's encounters with the diverse array of people he taught and counselled in the course of his journey. In fact, so important a place do such stories hold in the collective imagination of the American Bahá'í community that they have taken on a life of their own, forming an oral tradition about the sayings and doings of the Master.