HELEN KELLER’S FAITH SURMOUNTS DISABILITIES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 17, 8 November 1948, Page 8

HELEN KELLER’S FAITH SURMOUNTS DISABILITIES

(Contributed by the Ministers’ Association) In her “Journal” Helen Keller narrates a talk she had 'in 1936 with the Danish sculptor Borghum, writes H. Lloyd Wilkinson in “Outlook.” “I have always felt,” said he, “that only by approaching the unseen can the artist achieve anything worthy of immortality.” “How true that is!’ Helen Keller replied, not until we look long behind the arras of matter and fear can we even half comprehend the soul that informs the body; that is the born teacher’s art too.” Borghum answered, “Why, do I realise that if your teacher had not approached the unseen forces in you she could not have been your Praxetiles, breathing life into your sense-shut faculties.” (Praxetiles was a Greek sculptor who chiselled living beauty out of formless stone. Miss Keller’s “Praxetiles” was Anne Sullivan- —later Mrs Anne Sullivan Macy—her early teacher and lifelong friend.

Slight Exits x She learned from Mrs Macy, HOx only to read finger signs, and braille, to type and to speak; she learned also the way of faith and of ser- ' vice. From an intolerable fate her teacher found “bright exits” for her through service, imagination and friendship. ...Her understanding of life’s meaning is shown in these entries in her diairy: “Certainly I believe that God gave us life for happiness, not misery. . . . The order of nature will always necessitate pain, failure, separation, death. . . . The delicate task will remain ours to ensure God’s gift, joy, to His children. Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. Happiness should be a means of accomplishment, like health, and not an end in itself. Helen Keller’s faith is that this goodwill of. which she speaks is a prevailing power in human life because its source is God. It is this faith that has sustained her throughout her life and in all her faithful wonk for those who are handicapped through blindness or deafness. She writes: “There is another sustaining belief for.me —that a watchful Providence guides equally the planet’s course and the flight of the sparrow, marks human affairs and strengthens endeavour. This faith that God is ‘personally’ interested in us gives a fairer asject to the weary old world where we live as strangers. and enemies.”