Mother

[Guest guest]

Here is a beautiful letter from Nivedita to Mother:

 

 

Cambridge Mass,

Sunday, Dec. 11, 1910.

 

Beloved mother,

 

This morning early, I went to church?to pray for Sara. All the people

there were thinking of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and suddenly I

thought of you. Your dear face, and your loving look, and your white

Sari and your bracelets. It was all there. And it seemed to me that

yours was the presence that was to soothe and bless poor S. Sara's

sick-room.

 

And, do you know? I thought I had been very foolish to sit in your

room, at the evening service to Sri Ramakrishna, trying to meditate.

 

Why did I not understand that it was quite enough to be a little child

at your dear feet?

 

Dear Mother! You are full of love! And it is not a flushed and violent

love like ours, and like the worlds but a gentle peace that brings

good to everyone and wishes ill to none. It is a golden radiance, full

of play.

 

What a blessed Sunday that was, a few months ago, when I ran into you,

the last thing before I went on the Ganges and ran back to you for a

moment, as soon as I came back! I felt such a wonderful freedom in the

blessing you gave me, and in your welcome home!

 

Dearest Mother, I wish we could send you a wonderful hymn, or a

prayer. But somehow even that would seem too loud, too full of noise!

Surely you are the most wonderful thing of Sri Ramakrishna's own

chalice of His Love for the world, a token left with His children in

these lonely days; and we should be very still and quiet before you,

except indeed for a little fun! Surely the wonderful things of God are

all quiet stealing unnoticed into our lives, the air and the sunlight

and the sweetness of gardens and of the Ganges. These are the silent

things that are like you!

 

Do send to poor S. Sara the mantle of your peace. Isn't your thought,

now and then of the high calm that neither loves nor hates, Isn't that

a sweet benediction that trembles in God, like the dew drop on the

lotus-leaf, and touches not the world?

 

Ever, my darling Mother, your foolish Khooki (baby), NIVEDITA