Orcella Rexford (one of those weird inexplicable Blogging tugs)

Here's a painfully reproduced IN MEMORIUM of a spirit by the name of ORCELLA REXFORD culled from the 1946-1950 edition of THE BAHA' I WORLD (copyrighted by the permission of Angels)....Sometimes I flap through old editions of BAHA'I World and chant the prayers for departed for pioneers from the 'old school' era. When I was lead to this reading tonight, I was requested to transcribe it--so here it is....please remember her in your prayers. Like all of us bloggers, perhaps she's just another lonely spirit waiting for an occasional intra-dimensional connection:

ORCELLA REXFORD

Orcella Rexford (Loiuse Cutts-Powell) was born June 12, 1887 in Tracey, Minnesota. Planning in her youth to become a college professor, she attendd the university of California, Berkeley, where she studies four languages and majored in philosophy and psychology, found her interests changing, and became a writer and lecturer.

The name "Orcella Rexford" is a cryptogram chosen for her by an old acquaintance in New York City. To Orcella this name symbolized her wish to link her personality to cosmic forces for good, which would give her the greatest impetus for development.

Orcella first heard of the Baha'i Faith from Mrs. Myrta Sandoz of Cleavland, Ohio, and was later confirmed by Dr. Edward Getsinger in Boston, Mass. She became a believer in 1918-1919.

Since belief and action were inseprable to her, while studying the faith with Dr. Getsinger she brought along two students from her own classes. These, too, became Baha'is. Soon she began to organize classes for Dr. Getsinger. In order to serve the Faith with Maximum efficiency, Orcella now took stock of educational equipment and capacities; she even investigated her geneaology to appraise possible inherited tendencies and thus fully to obey the commandment, "Know Thyself". As a child she had often been told of her second great-grandfather, William Jarvis, appointed by Jeffersonas consul and charge d'affaires at Lisbon, who gave his services without cost to the then young and impercunious American Government for nine years (1802-1811). Orcella felt that her tendency to pioneer, and to contribute her servcies to a righteous Cause, might have come down to her from this ancestor.

........

"She talked like a Baha'i, she radiated it; she seemed like some spiritual elf, trying to share with us teh ethereal joy of her religion. "Baha'is love peace.' She explained "They are hospitable. NO one has too much, for all too share. Children must get consent of both parents before they marry. Those who come into the faith receive a special outpouring from the Holy Spirit. This comes always with a new manifestation. Oh, If I could be your spiritual mother, and bring you into peace, the happiness, the utter contentment, that the faith has given me."