May returned about this time and committee work resumed. From my notes January 29th:
"We have just returned from an evening with May. She has been talking about the elimination of self in teaching, about being humble, letting others do the talking. She says that this she can never learn! When the ego shows up, the other person loses interest.
We have had dramatic experiences of prayer with May. She is very
powerful and brings down to us a little of heaven's fire. Yet, some of the time she has been out of sorts. She would like us to understand that the call to the early Baha'is was to be heroes. It did not follow that they were always saints.
Last night, a test surprised me. After returning home from one of those exalting evenings, Willard went to bed; I stayed up, praying in the room downstairs. Perhaps May was praying too, for it seemed that suddenly I was invaded by her presence. Body, soul and mind were rocked by the entrance of her being into mine. I did not have the capacity to contain such grace. This is what May meant by her oft-repeated phrase, `interpenetration of spirit'. I was afraid and, then, surprisingly angry. It was a defensive response to my troublesome lower nature.
After dawn prayers, wisdom expressed itself in this way: `To contain May's love, you have to be a receptacle without sides. The celestial unity must flow through, and not be contained by you, otherwise it will shatter you.'
"We have just returned from an evening with May. She has been talking about the elimination of self in teaching, about being humble, letting others do the talking. She says that this she can never learn! When the ego shows up, the other person loses interest.
We have had dramatic experiences of prayer with May. She is very
powerful and brings down to us a little of heaven's fire. Yet, some of the time she has been out of sorts. She would like us to understand that the call to the early Baha'is was to be heroes. It did not follow that they were always saints.
Last night, a test surprised me. After returning home from one of those exalting evenings, Willard went to bed; I stayed up, praying in the room downstairs. Perhaps May was praying too, for it seemed that suddenly I was invaded by her presence. Body, soul and mind were rocked by the entrance of her being into mine. I did not have the capacity to contain such grace. This is what May meant by her oft-repeated phrase, `interpenetration of spirit'. I was afraid and, then, surprisingly angry. It was a defensive response to my troublesome lower nature.
After dawn prayers, wisdom expressed itself in this way: `To contain May's love, you have to be a receptacle without sides. The celestial unity must flow through, and not be contained by you, otherwise it will shatter you.'
[Doris McKay, Fires in Many Hearts, pp. 122-123.]
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