During the last illness of Mrs. Ole Bull, while nursing her at Boston in America, Nivedita wrote a letter filled with intense emotions, to Sardamata, on 11th december 1910. In it she had said:
“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 Sara’s sickroom. 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 a little child at your dear feet? Dear Mother, you are full of love! Andit is not a flushed and violent love, like ours and like the world’s, but a gentle peace that brings good to everyone and wishes ill to none. It is a golden radiance, full of play…
Dearest Mother, I wish we could send you a wonderful hymn, or a prayer. But somehow even that would mean too loud, too full of noise! Surely you are the most wonderful thing of God, 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 quite before you, except indeed for a little fun! Surely the wonderful things of God are all quiet, stealing unnoticed in our lives, the air and sunlight and the sweetness of gardens and of the Ganges, these are the sielnt things that are like you!”
[Swami Saradananda read out this original letter in English while translating the same in Bengali. As every sentence from Nivedita’s letter fell on her ears, Saradamata, became more and more introvert and in that very mood, at the end, she uttered her blessings addressed to Sister Nivedita and Mrs. Ole Bull.]
All her dealings and day-to-day conduct were graced with this lining of her fond tenderness and there was no limit to it.
A new entrant to the math, brahmachari, had to be disciplined due to a mistake of a serious type at his hands. At times one has to be punished. As a last resort it has to be done. It is inevitable in the affairs of an organization. If someone like this approached Mataji, he was at all times pardoned there. How could a mother get angry with her child? And even if she was angry how could she shake him off? This was her feeling about a person seeking her shelter.
I am the mother of the wicked, as I am the mother of the virtuous. Never fear. Whenever you are in distress, say to yourself, ‘I have a mother.’
Submitted by Arun Dey
