Susan’s Thursday morning note
September 20, 2018
Helen Keller’s writing on her teacher’s beauty.
Fear of life after teacher’s death.
Essay on what she would do if given the gift of three days of sight and hearing
Good morning! Complete stillness. Only sound clicking of keys on computer and little cricket that is trying all of his calls to make my friendship knowing he is only a moment from death. Beside me an old dark black book with the simple words “Teacher” Anne Sullivan Macy. Helen Keller. So much inside of such a simple book. So much encouragement to find beauty in my day. To be aware. To see. To hear. To touch. To notice. This is on the relationship between her and her teacher Anne Sullivan. Helen was encouraged to write this from a friend who stated,
“When you rewrite the biography of Teacher, she will appear to you as a sacred fire – not consuming but warming, cherishing and enlightening.”
I loved that sentence. My desire on those I care for so deeply when they remember me. Following this book is part of a short essay by Helen on what she would do if given three days to hear and see. Encouraging us to realize what we have in those gifts.
On describing her teacher as a beautiful woman with and intense love of excellence.
Annie Sullivan was born for refined surroundings, fastidious living, artistic ad intellectual self-expression. She was proud of work as embodying the dignity of man and could not bear to see it ill done. Any ugliness in human beings or in places afflicted her, deformity repelled her, although her compassionate heart was ready to minister to its victims. Degrading poverty in every form pained her eyes, and I have known her to lie awake at night brooding on it and searching means for its abolition. She was so sensitive to comely faces, splendor in landscapes, and beauty in art that sometimes she actually shed tears.
On Anne speaking to Helen on her impending death and fear of being alone.
“Helen, you must not worry about the future. I am not going to die yet…But even if I should die, there is no reason why you should not go on with life…If you quietly observe the life about you, and your life in particular, you will see that the future cannot possibly be as hopeless as the beginning seemed before I came to you. Besides, you believe in the loving watchfulness of a Heavenly Father. There is always a way out of the most difficult situation if we really want to get out of it.
Helen’s last paragraph in the book on continuing to find life after the death of who gave her such joy.
I can think of her as a spirit giving out warmth, a sun of life. It is not necessarily true as Romain Rolland says, that one who has known rich intimacy and limitless friendship with another human being “has a joy that will make him miserable the remainder of his life.” There was such virtue and such power of communication in Teacher’s personality that after her death they nerved me to endure and persevere. I was gripped by the might of the destiny she had mapped out for me, it lifted me out of myself to wage God’s war against darkness. Of course there is always a choice between two courses, and shocked out of all security, I might have let go any further activity, but Teacher believed in me, and I resolved not to betray her faith. Conscious of her being alive with me, I have sought new ways to give life and yet more life to men and women whom darkness, silence, sickness, or sorrow are wearing away. And at times it seems that God is using her, who touched my night to flame, to kindle other fires of good…The certainty that her creative intelligence and truly human quality of mind do not perish, but continue their vivifying work, sweetens my loneliness and is like the warm spring air in my heart.
Excerpt from Helen Keller’s short essay by Helen Keller published in 1932, Three Days to See.
She began her essay telling of her friend not having any details to give her of a walk through the woods. She encourages us all to appreciate our gift of sight, hearing, and our other senses. To contemplate the loss of any to help realize what treasures we possess.
This, according to the terms of my imagined miracle, is to be my third and last day of sight. Today I shall spend in the workday world of the present, amid the haunts of men going about the business of life. And where one can find so many activities and conditions of men as in New York? So the city becomes my destination.
First, I stand at a busy corner, merely looking at people, trying by sight of them to understand something of their lives. I see smiles, and I am happy. I see serious determination, and I am proud. I see suffering, and I am compassionate. Always my eyes are open wide to all the sights of both happiness and misery so that I may probe deep and add to my understanding of how people work and live. My heart is full of the images of people and things. My eye passes lightly over no single trifle; it strives to touch and hold closely each thing its gaze rests upon. Some sights are pleasant, filling the heart with happiness; but some are miserably pathetic. To these latter I do not shut my eyes, for they, too are part of life. To close the eye on them is to close the heart and mind.
At midnight my temporary respite from blindness would cease, and permanent night would close in on me again. Naturally in those three short days I should not have seen all I wanted to see. Only when darkness had again descended upon me should I realize how much I had left unseen. But my mind would be so overcrowded with glorious memories that I should have little time for regrets. Thereafter the touch of every object would bring a glowing memory of how that object looked.
Perhaps this short outline of how I should spend three days of sight does not agree with the programme you would set for yourself if you knew that you were about to be stricken blind. I am, however, sure that if you actually faced that fate your eyes would open to things you had never seen before, storing up memories for the long night ahead. You would use your eyes as never before. Everything you saw would become dear to you. Your eyes would touch and embrace every object that came within your range of vision. Then, at last, you would really see, and a new world of beauty would open itself before you.
I who am blind can give one hint to those who see – one admonition to those who would make full use of the gift of sight: Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind. And the same method can be applied to other senses. Hear the music of voices, the song of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra, as if you would be stricken deaf to-morrow. Touch each object you want to touch as if tomorrow your tactile sense would fail. Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel, as if tomorrow you could never smell and taste again. Make the most of every sense; glory in all the facets of pleasure and beauty which the world reveals to you through the several means of contact which Nature provides. But of all the senses, I am sure that sight must be the most delightful.
Link to entire essay by Helen Keller:
Latin for this week:
visio – vision
vulchra aspectu – beautiful sight
ex omnibus nostris sensibus est sensus videndi – The keenest of all our senses is the sense of sight (Cicero)