The Chosen Highway

by Lady Blomfield

Sara, Lady Blomfield began to take written notes of the spoken chronicles of the ladies of the Family of Bahá'ú'lláh during her first visit to Haifa in 1922. In the first days of mourning for the beloved Master's passing she listened to the Greatest Holy Leaf telling the story of her childhood and youth during the terrible imprisonment and exiles of Bahá'u'lláh, and began what she describes in her immortal book as an attempt to indicate some phases of a great historic moment in the life of Spiritual Civilization, which have not been elsewhere recorded.

No reader of The Chosen Highway or of the description of its author in the Preface by H. M. Balyuzi can fail to appreciate the qualities of warmth, spirit and faith that enabled her first to elicit and then to faithfully chronicle the stories told to her by Bahíyyih Khánum and by Abdu'l-Bahá's wife and daughters. No professional historian would have been taken into their confidence in the same way. Her presence gives us much joy, wrote the wife of Abdu'l-Bahá. We look upon her, not only as a friend, but as one of our own dear family.

These accounts, together with Lady Blomfield s own description of Abdu'l-Bahá s visit to London when she welcomed him as a guest in her home, have ensured the lasting interest of The Chosen Highway since its first publication in 1940.

Genres: Baha I

282 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Anthony Zemke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Could’ve read this in one night if I’d had the spiritual stamina, but instead it took me a couple of months to fully digest. Lady Bloomfield’s intricate weaving of kind-hearted stories, historical accounts and rare tablets is astounding and a most uplifting piece of Baha’i literature.

Although she is writing from a Westerner’s perspective, the deep mystical meaning and profundity of these historical and biographical portraits is never once lost. I can clearly see myself turning to these accounts of the lives of Baha’u’llah, The Bab and Abdu’l-Baha in times of great need.

[Eduardo Rioseco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lady Blomfield conoció a varias de las figuras históricas más importantes de la Fe Bahá’í, muchas de las cuales compartieron historias y testimonios que se registran en este libro y que no aparecen en otras fuentes. Entre los relatos citados la autora intercala ocasionalmente sus propias reflexiones, lo que permite entrever el asombro, la admiración, la inesperada devoción y otras reacciones que despertó la Fe Bahá’í entre los primeros occidentales que tomaron contacto con sus enseñanzas y sus personajes principales. Todo eso hace de este libro no solo un documento histórico de gran valor, sino también una experiencia bellamente emotiva.

[Becky Holum-B · Rating 5 out of 5]

a Baha'i classic

[Louis Brunet · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am really happy to have read it again, years after my first reading.