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f o u r Discovering Imageless Truths The Bahá’í Pilgrimage of Juliet Thompson, Artist C h r i s t o p h e r G . W h i t e Though Juliet Thompson (1873–1957) lived in what one reporter of her time called one of the most “materialistic and sordid corners of the world,” New York City, she had spiritual dreams, intuitions, and awakenings. She had one of them when she was a young woman, probably in her late twenties, while recovering from diphtheria, an illness that almost killed her. “One evening, while I was lying in bed,” she remembered, “I heard the doctor say to mother from the next room, ‘Juliet is dying.’ When I went to sleep that night I did not expect to wake up again.” But as she slept her fortunes changed, for sometime in the night an unexpected visitor appeared in a dream, offering a healing benediction . “I had a dream and in it I saw a most wonderful-­ looking man. He said to me with complete assurance, ‘You will get well.’” She had no idea who this person was, but she did recover, and af­ter her illness she told her brother that something about this experience had made her more thoughtful about spiritual things. She wondered—Were the miracles and wonders spoken of in the Bible true, and were they still happening today? Was the spirit of Christ still in the world, healing and guiding us? Somehow, it was hard to believe.1 The next day brought another providential sign. A friend named Laura Bar­ neyarrivedunannouncedatThompson’sdoor,lookingas“thoughshe had found the secret of happiness” and blurting out something to the effect that the Holy Spirit had come back into the world. There was a new divine ­ messenger, and 97 98 Christopher G. White his followers were living in British Palestine, the Holy Land. “I am sailing from New York tomorrow for the Holy Land, and I could not go till I had told you the marvellous thing I know now,” Barney exclaimed. “The Great Messenger of God promised in all the Sacred Scriptures, foretold by all the Prophets as the One who would bring peace to the earth, has come. His name is Bahá’u’lláh. He died, a prisoner, in the Holy Land.” His son and successor, Abdu’l-­ Bahá, was still in Akka (Acre), an old fortress city in Palestine, and Barney was sailing to meet him. This was a moment of real excitement for Thompson, but though she listened to her friend attentively, she seems not to have pursued the matter further. And she certainly did not connect Barney’s Holy Land pris­ oner with that wonderful-­ looking man in her feverish dream. Before she could make that connection, other providential signs would have to appear. She would need to make her own visit to the Holy Land, where she could see for herself that the Holy Spirit did indeed produce signs and wonders in the modern world.2 Juliet Thompson was a woman of great spiritual sensitivity, someone who felt deeply the religious dilemmas of her age and searched with determination for solutions. Like many others living at the turn of the twentieth century, she felt challenged and disoriented by dramatic changes that made religious belief difficult. Life in Ameri­ can cities fostered nervousness and an unsettling spiritual coldness. Like others, Thompson wondered if there was a place for spirit, or spiritual longing, in the cold, angular, urban spaces of modern America. And the new Ameri­ can city was not the only reason it was hard to believe. Chris­tian practices and traditions, those religious forms that for so many years clothed the spirit and made it real, now suddenly seemed out of date, superstitious , or irrational. Scientists and intellectuals of­ten labeled them as such, calling into question the veracity of the Bible, the reasonableness of belief, and the usefulness of any kind of worship. For religiously sensitive souls such as Juliet Thompson, and for millions of other Ameri­ cans who, while uncertain about Christianity, were incapable of doubting the existence of God, trying to sustain a sensitivity to spiritual realities was truly difficult. Was it possible to believe in prophets, miracles, or the Holy Spirit in the modern world? What forms would these spiritual entities take? In this essay I turn to Thompson’s life to point to different ways that this era’s spiritual seekers both tore down older religious forms and...

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