Kayala

Introduction:

Because of a devastating childhood illness at nineteen months, Helen Keller (1880-1968) was left both blind and deaf. Her life was rightly written up as a "miracle story" and became a play called "The Miracle Worker" (1957) with Anne Bancroft starring in the Broadway production (1959). But the "miracle" Helen Keller experienced was not any return of hearing or vision. The "miracle" she received was the miracle of her committed, loving family, and of her relentlessly optimistic and patient teacher Anne Sullivan.

When Helen was seven years old, trapped in a world where she could only communicate through a few hand signals with the family cook, her parents arranged for a twenty-year old, visually impaired teacher to come and work with their daughter. Using American Sign Language, Anne Sullivan spent months "spelling" words into Helen's hands. Everything Helen touched, everything she ate, every person she encountered, was "spelled out" into her hand.

At first Helen Keller didn't get it. These random motions being pressed into her palm did not connect with experiences she felt. But Sullivan refused to give up. She kept spelling words. She kept giving "tactile-verbal" references for everything Helen encountered.

Finally there was a "watershed" moment, which was indeed water-powered. Helen's breakthrough moment was as she was having water pumped over her hands and Anne Sullivan kept spelling the word for "water" over and over into her palm. Suddenly Helen "got it." Suddenly she realized those gestures meant something real and tangible. They were naming what she was experiencing.

The world of communication, reading, literature, human interaction were all made possible to one person through the gift of another person. The "miracle" Helen's teacher Anne Sullivan worked was the miracle of patience. She simply kept on and kept at it, showing Helen there were "words" for "things," and there was true meaning behind all Helen's experiences.

Wash Off the Stuff of the Day:

One of the most successful and personable people on television is Oprah Winfrey. Movies, book clubs, she does it all. Huge business operations. While all the other talk shows on television are tearing people apart and putting all their illnesses out for public humiliation, Oprah is helping put people and families back together again. . . In a Newsweek magazine interview the interviewer asked her, "How do you separate yourself from work?" Answer, "I take a hot bath. . . My bath is my sanctuary. (Listen to this) It's the place where I can wash off all the stuff of the day" ((Jan 8, 2001, p. 45).

Baptism is a huge symbol -- it's the water of creation. . . .we are born anew. . . . life in the Spirit . . . all the "stuff" of the day is washed off. All of that is true. But at its basic level, baptism is the death of the old self. Before anything new can be born, the old has to pass away. (Brett Blair)

Kayala

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