The tomb of Helen Keller can be found on the grounds of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
Helen Keller, the famous scholar and writer, became deaf and blind after a terrible illness in early childhood. As a result, she grew up savage-like in a home full of people who did not understand her. In the play, the Miracle Worker, Helen is saved by a young woman who comes to teach her. After months of battles, the young woman, Annie, has taught Helen how to have manners, how to eat properly, how to behave. But Helen remains alone in darkness. Over and over again, Annie will spell into Helen’s hands. Helen mimics the spelling and receives rewards, but never is she able to connect the letter with the meaning of a word, the actual connection between the word and the thing itself eludes her.
One day, Helen has felt her way to the water pump in the yard. As Helen pumps the water and lets it run cool over her hands, Annie spells the word W-A-T-E-R. Water. Again, Annie spells water into Helen’s palm as the cool liquid runs over her hand and out between her fingers.
Helen stops pumping. She would later write that in that moment, she awoke to life. All had been darkness before that moment. Before that moment, she was completely and totally alone in a world with no meaning, nothing but chaos was before her. But in that one moment, Helen recalled the one word that she had learned when she was just a toddler, right before she became ill. The word, as she had pronounced it, was WAWA.
WAWA, Water-Helen realized that the Word was a way of connecting to the liquid that had poured over her hand. Life and light entered her mind and her world, literally, began that day. She was born to the Word and the Word was born in her.
In the beginning was the Word…what came into being in him was life and the life was the light of all people. The Gospel of John
God is the Word. God is the Connection. God is the AHA moment.
God is present in the office of a therapist who has counseled and listened to the same man for years. Yet on this particular day, the therapist and gently repeats an insight that he has had and is able to communicate to the man a pattern in his behavior so that the man can see, for the first time in his life, that he is wounded, that he is good and that he is loved.
God is present when someone plays the most beautiful music, music that lifts the soul to levels that it has never experienced and a young woman sits in the concert hall and weeps and she cannot even explain why.
God is present when a mathmetician cannot solve a problem and he goes to bed in chaos and confusion. Then, just before the dawn, he awakens and the solution is clearly before him, like a gift from God. It is so simple and so clear. Why did he not see it before?
In the beginning was the Connection…
In the beginning was the Aha moment…
In the beginning was the…CLICK?
That is the question of our day, isn’t it? Is God present in the click? Can God be present online? Can the Word of God, the Logos, the meaning that gives life to all things, can it be conveyed in cyberspace?
I do not think that it is our job to answer this question. Rather, it is our job to send out the word, and see if it takes.
Annie did not know if the Logos would ever reach Helen Keller through the signs that she was making over and over and over again into the small hand of that child. Over and over again, Hellen Keller would receive spelled letters in her hand and it was nothing but an exercise, a game. Over and over again Annie spelled the letters that represented new objects and better objects. Helen would repeat them back but they meant nothing to her. There was no connection between the spelling of a word and the meaning or representation of the thing itself.
Annie would not give up because she knew that finding a way to connect with Helen meant the difference between light and darkness to that little girl. It was the difference between life and death.
Do I know how people will encounter God online? I have no idea! But as leaders in the Church, it is our call and our duty to keep spelling the Word into peoples hands in every way that we know how. And we must try to spell out the Word in every medium known to us, including cyberspace. If there is even a remote chance that God will reach out an touch the heart of a lost soul over the computer screen, then we must get to work!
Annie did not know that Hellen would hear her on that thousanth time that she sent out the same message of meaning to that little wild girl. She had no idea that on that day, it would be that word that would be heard. She spread seeds of the word every day, and waited for something to take root in Helen’s heart.
God continues to call us with the ancient words of Jesus. They speak to us over thousands of years… Go forth and preach the gospel – Go and tell folks that I love them. God calls to us to bring light and life to the world. We are to continue to spread the gospel, to spell out those words of God and this incredible man called Jesus over and over again. We are called to spell under water, in the air, online, in the movies, on skype and facebook and twitter and flikr.
