Let your vision be world embracing
Bahá'u'lláh

After that initial visit, we caught up with our friends who work there and had dinner with them. By that time we had been up a long time and were exhausted. We went to our hotel and crashed. The hotel was plain and comfortable. They served a similar breakfast to the kibbutz of less variety and quality. Israeli coffee also lacks. But both the tea and coffee at the Pilgrim house were quite good.

What is so wonderful there was again the loving kindness and caring. The cups were picked up immediately and washed by whoever was serving there. Everything was served with such cheerful gentleness, by people who were themselves fasting. Our guides were fasting and yet managed incredibly long days of walking and talking, two of which were picnic days for us. I have never felt so loved or cared for and doubt that I will again.

Everything was arranged for our spiritual comfort and physical well being without intruding on our own journeys, without being oppressive or overbearing at all. And it was all done with so much humility and love that you became aware in a physical, intellectual and spiritual harmony of the way people can be with each other when they serve something outside themselves and truly desire to be better than they are or would be with some direction of a spiritual nature.

The next day was Thursday. Some of the pilgrims were scheduled to go to the Archives Building. We had a free day so after hanging around and sleeping a bit, we went down the mountain and caught a bus back to Akka. It let us off in front of the army base.

We walked back a bit to the north gate of Bahji and went along the gravel avenue to the Collins Gate, so named for one of the early Western believers, and from there straight down to the shrine. No one was visible, so we went round to the back, and into the caretaker's area through what was the donkey door during Abdu'l Baha's lifetime. A suitable bit of humility enhancing that, entering into the courtyard through the door the donkey used. One of the caretakers came to open the shrine for us. He would not let us enter until he had gone ahead and swept the three leaves off the entrance way and gone in to prepare the room. Ron, Jessica and I had the entire shrine of Baha'u'llah to ourselves. We sat for a long time, saying prayers to ourselves and meditating.

J and Ron went out after awhile, but I sat on filled with peace and joy. Some noise from the outside does creep in, but it is barely noticeable in the palpable atmosphere of serenity and rightness that fill the shrine. Whatever troubles you can be laid down there, if only for a while, and quiet fills your heart just as the attar of rose fills your senses and the soft light envelops you. Time almost doesn't pass. I sat and have no idea how long I was there. My watch still worked, I think, but I didn't look at it, didn't need to look at it, nor want to.

I never wanted to leave that place. I wanted to lie down and sleep there and then wake in that room. I didn't quite have the nerve to do that. But I stayed until I felt ready to leave. As I came out and chatted with the caretaker for a moment, some other pilgrims arrived. My time alone was over, but I was grateful for it.

We ate our bite of lunch in the tea room in the caretaker's house, though they were fasting. We had bought some bread and stuff on Haifa. It was a glorious day, windy and bright. We wandered the grounds, admiring the gardens of cacti and succulent, laid out to look like Persian carpets. An olive grove was left on the property and still bears olives. We walked under the olive trees. These are younger than the rambling, falling ancient trees I knew in Italy, but they have the same gray foliage and rough bark and gnarly, tortured trunks. Some Arab families in the area harvest the olives, process them and some of the oil and sell them back to the Baha'is as part of their livelihood.

After awhile, some of us decided to get a cab or a sherut back to Haifa. We found one easily. They cruise the bus stops looking for passengers. Two young Arab boys got on with us and determined to talk. One told us he was going to New York soon. He had lots of energy and was very social. His friend laughed at him a lot. Interesting reactions to J over there, mostly staring, trying to figure her with us. She doesn't react to it mostly and the Baha'is were enchanted with her, so I don't think she minded too much that the Israelis stared.

It was a wonderful day.