On August 3rd, 1936 I wrote in my diary:
"A very lovely thing happened this afternoon. Martha Root and Lucy Wilson drove over from Cambridge Springs and we had an hour to visit together. With Martha's dear sympathetic presence I felt expanded. I was simply on fire, happy beyond all belief, eloquent, loving, free of shyness. Oh, to be like that and to make others experience, if only for an hour, eternal life.
"Something BIG happened. Abdu'l-Baha had said that He saw His Father's face in the faces of those who came to Him and that was the reason they came forth from His presence radiant. Martha did that to me today and I know that she and Lucy carried away a picture of my true self that few see.
"It was heavenly. Nothing must ever happen to make me forget."
Nothing has made me forget that time, and I need to say more about it.
On that afternoon I was sitting in the garden among the flowers. Except for the stimulation of my own thoughts and meditations, it was a rather typical Jamestown afternoon -rather boring. I looked up and saw two approaching figures, Lucy Wilson and Martha Root. I had known that Martha was coming sometime because of the letters Lucy had shared with us.
Martha had prayed that her work wouldn't be incapacitated by ill health. That was the word she used, "incapacitated". Now, in the opinion of the Guardian, Martha was in capacitated. She was worn out by a long struggle against ill health combined with tireless exertion. The Guardian left it now, in the hands of a committee of the National Spiritual Assembly to decide when Martha, our most cherished teacher, was to be allowed to start on her trip to India. She was told to recuperate, to rest.
On the day that they visited, Martha seemed elated to have had a legitimate reason to rest. I was pleased that she was so relaxed and
happy. Later I told Willard that she was like a little girl who needed pampering and I felt a need to do things for her. I discovered that many people were feeling this way. People who were arranging her meetings. People who were working for her. All wanted to spoil her. Our feeling for her was tenderness. With her I felt that the spiritual powers were playing with us as though she were a window through which poured the "all pervading influence". We experienced a different atmosphere., a different vibration. This was sheer magic. Everyone who had contact with her felt a rising spirit. We all seemed to be touched by her power. She looked at us with such love that we would have believed anything she said. She looked at everyone with a look that goes beyond acknowledgement. It was a look of recognition that made us know of ourselves better than normally we thought we were. Her look and love elevated us. This was the atmosphere of the vibrating influence of the Holy Spirit released by her faith and actions. It was very much out of this world and I only wish that I could express it more clearly and credibly.
Martha and Lucy were like two schoolgirls on vacation, joking and laughing. on the start of a journey. They were looking for something to do that was fun and they invited me to come to Cambridge Springs. There, Martha could show me her life as it had been.
stayed at Lucy's house but spent hours every day with Martha. In this little town in the Allegheny Hills were the roots of Martha's heart. She was devoted to the memories of her people and to her brother and his family. It had been a keen personal sacrifice to be away for years at a time from this environment and now she was exultant and happy at being home again, so much so that she wanted to share her happiness with Lucy and me.
Early the first morning Martha came to take me to the Polish college where she used to teach English in her pre-Pittsburgh days. This was one of two Polish institutions in the United States designed tolo keep the culture of the `old-country' alive by educating young men in the language and traditions of Poland. The buildings were in a wooded hilly section and we approached them by a wooden bridge crossing over a ravine. Martha was welcomed by her friend, the bearded principal, who explained that because of the summer vacation, the students and teachers were away. It was an unlikely and dreamlike environment with portraits of Polish heroes staring at us from the walls of the long corridors.
The next day we sat with Martha's brother and his wife in the Baptist
church where, many years ago, Martha hsd been denounced publicly by the minister of those days - the very place, probably the very pew, where this shattering experience came to Martha. How her heart must have broken when her towns people withdrew from her!
That night we went to upper at her home and the neighbours were invited to a meeting. Martha, the world traveller, was treated now with honour and respect, even if the people still held to their old ways and did not accept Baha`u'llah. A few gathered in the country sitting room, but Martha became ill and asked me to speak to the people.
The next morning she started out, on foot, to show me more of the town. On the way to her brother's grocery store, again she became suddenly ill, had an attack, and had to lean, for a few minutes, against a tree until her strength came back. Then we went on - the same cheerful, enthusias tic Martha! The next day there was dinner at Lucy's with two Baha'is from New Castle, Pennsylvania.
Twice during the fall and winter Martha came to Jamestown, a short train-ride from Cambridge Springs. She was with us about a month. That winter of 1936 may have been the most difficult test of her entire Baha'i life. She felt impelled to go to India and was slowly getting to feel that perhaps this was not to be. She was disturbed. The lack of physical activity transformed that disturbance into rather unpleasant states. She became more and more depressed and became increasingly restless as she waited to hear from the committee. The power of the spirit around her seemed to have relaxed a bit. She was not getting the rest she was supposed to have. Why was she not told to start, she wondered. Why had not Horace Holley and the others cor responded? Why did not the Guardian tell her to go? He had always advised her before.
On her visits to Jamestown, ever self-denying, Martha took the least expensive room in the hotel. She lived on buns and tea made with hot water from the bathroom tap. When I came to see her, I would bring some fruit and we would share the food lying on the bed talking about "the Beloved" and about the Guardian. I have heard that Martha's relationship to him was motherly. They, the two hard-driving workers, were concerned about each other's health. One day I found Martha shedding bitter tears. The hoped-for letter with the permission for her to be on her way, still had not arrived. Martha Root wept in my arms.
[Doris McKay, Fires in Many Hearts, pp. 260, 261-263.]
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