The life of Helen Keller is an inspiration to everyone who knows her story. She was left blind and deaf at the age of 19 months after a bout of scarlet fever. She learned to communicate through sign language and Braille and was even able to learn to speak with the help of her teacher, Feeding Hills native, Anne Sullivan. Helen later became a best-selling author and a renowned lecturer. Helen Keller is a symbol of human determination to live life to its fullest, despite the limits and challenges that confront...
The life of Helen Keller is an inspiration to everyone who knows her story. She was left blind and deaf at the age of 19 months after a bout of scarlet fever. She learned to communicate through sign language and Braille and was even able to learn to speak with the help of her teacher, Feeding Hills native, Anne Sullivan. Helen later became a best-selling author and a renowned lecturer. Helen Keller is a symbol of human determination to live life to its fullest, despite the limits and challenges that confront us. In her autobiography, The Story of My Life, Miss Keller writes about the day the outside world broke into her closed world.
She said that she and Anne walked down a path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and Helen’s teacher placed her hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand, Anne spelled into Helen’s other hand the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. Helen stood still; her whole attention fixed on the motion of Anne’s fingers.
Suddenly, Helen felt what she described as a “misty consciousness as of something forgotten – a thrill of returning thought;” and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to Helen. She knew then that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over her hand. The living word awakened her soul, gave it light, hope, joy, [and] set it free! She said that there were barriers still, but barriers that could, in time, be swept away.
Miss Keller concludes, saying, “I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. It would have been difficult to find a happier child than I was as I lay in my [bed] at the close of that eventful day and lived over the joys it had brought me, and for the first time longed for a new day to come.”
Helen Keller’s discovery of water mirrors our own rebirth in the waters of baptism. In baptism, we not only discover the Word for and of God, but that Word becomes our own name and identity - Christian. In the “wonderful cool something,” our lives are renewed in the life of God – the love, hope, and peace of God become ours.
As her discovery was the beginning of a new journey for Helen Keller, baptism is the beginning of our journey to the dwelling place of God with Christ as our teacher and constant companion.
Today, as we celebrate the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry with his baptism by John at the Jordan, let us remember and give thanks for the new day that dawned in our lives in the waters of our own baptism. +
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