Let your vision be world embracing
Bahá'u'lláh

On the first morning, but the second day, we met at the pilgrim house and then took a bus around the bay to Akka and then a bit past it to Bahji. At this place, in this mansion, Baha'u'llah died. He is buried there and the visit to His grave was for me the pivot of the pilgrimage, the center around which all the rest of the journey, perhaps the rest of my life revolved.

The gardens and indeed the house and the shrine seemed beyond description. We got off the bus and walked in through one of the wrought iron gates and up the long avenue past the olive grove, or rather through some of it, that is the working part of the estate. The gardens are very formal but full of native plants and geraniums.

Shoghi Effendi, Baha'u'llah's grandson, who laid out the gardens, loved geraniums so they are everywhere. The grounds are maintained mostly by youth who volunteer a year or two there. They come from all over the world. Some locals are also hired to work there and each place has a caretaker who lives there.

So we walked on the gravel, past the dark cypress and the marble monuments and the graceful wrought iron lamps that once stood in the streets of London. We spread out, each occupied with her own thoughts and spiritual state. I walked slower, pushing through what seemed like a force field, panic rising in me that I would not be able to enter the doorway, that I could somehow not get to that threshold and cross. The force field grew thicker and I walked slower. Ahead of me others rushed to enter that presence. I watched them walk away from me and struggled on. Would I be worthy, could I actually get there? The entrance receded as I approached and I struggled on from fear and embarrassment and determination.

At last I reached the gorgeous wrought iron gate and put down the camera. I removed my shoes and entered the gate. The walk way was swept clean, the door to the sanctuary stood ajar. Cold marble supported my feet as I went up the three steps and pushed the door back. Thick Persian carpets lined the floor inside the shrine. Some hung on the walls. In the center of the main outer room, a tiny garden flourished. Four climbing ferns, four tiny orange trees, an aloe and some low growing green stuff I couldn't name.

The scent of roses filled the room. Cleostory windows let in the
brilliant light and a small breeze. Some people wept. Most were silent. Outside the eucalyptus trees rustled softly. I knelt down at the edge of the garden and waited. Alabaster lamps stand at the edges of the garden and in the corners. Flowers and roses filled the room and are laid on the threshold to the inner room, where Baha'u'llah is buried. There a kind of net curtain hangs across that doorway, but you can see through it to the flowers and candles surrounding the grave within.

I sat and prayed for those who had asked and then for those who I wanted to say prayers for and then some for myself also. In that room I was stripped to the essence of my soul and I felt that Baha'u'llah knew everything there was to know about me and I was abashed. I sat there, isolated with my feelings and waited and waited. After awhile, I have no idea how long, since for once my watch didn't' matter, I became aware that whatever God knew about me didn't matter. Whatever had gone before in my life, not just the things I have done, but things done to me, didn't matter. All that mattered in that presence was the future and what I would do there.

People began to go up to the threshold and bow there. The solemnity was overwhelming. And then from outside, a crow flew by cawing raucously. I nearly laughed with joy to know that crows are beloved of God too. I went to the threshold and bowed there and then went outside.

We were lovingly served tea by the fasting hosts and our guides. Then we had time to wander the grounds. Long alleys lead you out along various radii from the shrine, to the land around it. Baha'u'llah came here at the end of his life, after nearly 40 years in some of the worst prisons in the Ottoman Empire. He lived here under house arrest until He died in 1892. The place is an island of green fertility and order, of cleanliness and peace amidst what must have been then desert and grime. It is now guarded, albeit unknowingly, by the Israeli army who have a base just in front of it.