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Sometimes, life turns on a watershed moment.
There is everything that happens before that moment and everything that happens after.
And what constitutes that watershed moment? It might be the worst thing that ever happened to you. Or it might be the best.
Arguably, the worst thing that ever happened to Helen Keller was the illness that robbed her of both her hearing and her sight.
At the age of 19 months, she was plunged into a world of silence and darkness. Even though Helen learned to recognize particular vibrations as the approach of her family members, and could find her way by means of touch, it seemed unlikely her inmost thoughts would ever be released from their sensory prison.
Then came the best thing that ever happened to her.
In 1887, just before her seventh birthday, her teacher came into her life. Her parents hired 20-year-old Annie Sullivan (who was herself sight-impaired) to see if she could open a window into Helen’s world.
Things did not start well.
Annie had brought Helen a new doll and had tried to spell out the word “d-o-l-l” into her hand. Helen resisted, just as she had resisted associating other words with particular objects. Keller recounts what happened next in her autobiography:
I became impatient at her repeated attempts and, seizing the new doll, I dashed it upon the floor. I was keenly delighted when I felt the fragments of the broken doll at my feet.
Neither sorrow nor regret followed my passionate outburst. I had not loved the doll. In the still, dark world in which I lived there was no strong sentiment or tenderness.
I felt my teacher sweep the fragments to one side of the hearth, and I had a sense of satisfaction that the cause of my discomfort was removed. She brought me my hat, and I knew I was going out into the warm sunshine. This thought, if a wordless sensation may be called a thought, made me hop and skip with pleasure.
We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout.
As the cool stream gushed over one hand, she spelled into the other the word “water,” first slowly, then rapidly.
I stood still, my whole attention fixed up on the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten – a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me.
I knew then that “w-a-t-e-r” meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away.
Suddenly, the world made sense. Everything had a name. Helen wanted to know them all.
Before that day ended she had learned “mother,” “father,” “sister,” “ground,” and “teacher.”
Then came this poignant moment when she returned to her house:
On entering the door I remembered the doll I had broken. I felt my way to the hearth and picked up the pieces. I tried vainly to put them together. Then my eyes filled with tears, for I realized what I had done, and for the first time I felt repentance and sorrow.
The drama of her discovery at the water pump is captured in the 1962 movie The Miracle Worker, in which Patty Duke plays the young Helen and Anne Bancroft depicts Annie Sullivan: Helen Keller – Water Scene – “The Miracle Worker” – higher resolution.
The watershed moment in Helen Keller’s life was the arrival of her teacher. “I am filled with wonder when I consider the immeasurable contrasts between the two lives which it connects,” she wrote.
Helen would go on to graduate cum laude from Radcliffe College. She would write a dozen books and visit 35 countries. Her image appears on the Alabama state quarter. She became an international force for women’s suffrage, labor rights, and hope for those with disabilities. Annie Sullivan would spend 49 years at her side.
Is there someone whose presence has divided your life into Before and After? Have you known a teacher who has opened your mind and dispelled your darkness?
For many people, Jesus of Nazareth is the answer to that question.
Sadly, we all too often relegate Jesus to some other function.
He is a symbol on a cross. Or the answer to some esoteric theological question. Or he is Dashboard Jesus, bobbing away when we’re in traffic. Or he’s a fire insurance policy, just in case we need some help in the next world.
But it’s an entirely different thing to enroll as Jesus’ student – to know him as t-e-a-c-h-e-r.
Let him open your blind eyes. Let him teach you the meaning of the things around you that you have always taken for granted.
He is, after all, the original Miracle Worker.