HELEN KELLER AND ANNE SULLIVAN
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.--Helen Keller
THOUGHTS
On the blogs, I read that so MANY of us are living in sheer misery. I'm not referencing the very hungry, nor the homeless, nor those in an alzheimer's unit--I usually don't find them when I'm blogging. But people I know, people I deal with daily and have come to love--I see, and feel with them their powerlessness. Of that misery, the madness of living in an intolerable (to some) situation year after year is an example. I respect and admire the commitment of these Peeps to keep their family, and themselves together. Their persistence to achieve a desired result is unfathomable to some.
"We are planning our daily actions, behaviors", they say. "NOT planning the outcome." Oh, if it were just that easy--simple, OK...but easy? NOT! The pain, the constant hurt, the aching, breaking hearts in such families HAS to bring on the energy of God's Serenity. His ears are tuned in, only needing to hear that voice crying for His help. And God will come, and DOES--as one told me last night.
God sometimes lets me wait until I am able to recognize His Hand reaching to meet with my own. In the end, He IS in charge. It is HE Who let me sink into a bottomless pit of hopelessness and despair, before taking my hand and leading me into my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And there my own healing began. By my own caution (lack of faith) it was a slow recovery, but HOPE was present from the first day.
Helen Keller had the courage only known by the desperately hopeless, when God met her at a water pump, and let her begin trudging her own path to brilliance. She became for many the light of hope.
My father became deaf around 20-25 years before his death. He had been completely sightless for many years before that. And the learning afforded him at the time of becoming one of the deaf-blind was directly a result of the pioneering efforts of Helen and her trusted lifelong dedicated friend and teacher, the beautiful, wonderful Anne Sullivan.
Frequently as I trudge my path to a happy sober life, I am overcome with Peace, and Happiness for Peeps, and for many others. And I remember that shortly after my father's death, two nuns wrote a booklet of his life of blindness and then deafness. The title: LIVING WITH JOY! (Whoa!)
Interesting isn't it, that in our AA book "Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions" the chapter on Step 12 a large part of which is "Helping Others" begins with those words, "THE JOY OF LIVING is the theme of AA's Twelfth Step, and action is it's key word."
Again, I got carried away and wrote far too lengthy a post. Please forgive me Peeps, for the more than 400th time.
Patience, Tolerance, and LOVE, Peeps, are the words I'm "pushing" today.
And PEACE!
And FORGIVENESS?
And SOBRIETY (Should have been the first word!)
