Thirst

“I cannot remember how I felt when the light went out of my eyes. I suppose I felt it was always night and perhaps I wondered why the day did not come.” Helen Keller

Helen Keller, a bright and interactive toddler, fell ill with ‘brain fever’ when she was nineteen months old. Her parents thought she might die, but she did not. When she recovered, she could not see or hear. Waking up to a dark, silent world, she often grabbed and screamed and thrashed her way through the next five years, while in the world of light and sound, her parents continued to love her and protect her from her own destructive fury.

Many of the spiritual teachings I read would say Helen’s story is reenacted with each new birth. I think of my own bad behavior, the too many times I’ve felt thwarted, thrown tantrums, large and small, snatched at relationships or food or books or ideas or new clothes, trinkets, gadgets, or experiences for comfort. I would have used alcohol or drugs (I was a dedicated cigarette smoker) if only I had the capacity for it. Looking back, I realize at those times I felt alone, separated from some bright love I longed for with all my soul. Most of my life I have searched for the language of love and truth, a language which would connect me with the larger universe and with my neighbor, with my children, husband, parents, friends. When I can’t connect, often I get mad. More often I get sad.

I believe the spiritualists. I believe the world of absolute love, friendship, and communication…communion…surrounds us, even though we are deaf and blind to it. But I want more than to believe it. I want to experience it. Others have experienced a reality greater than the one we normally see, or at least reported they have. I know because I keep tabs.

Once my husband, who had been practicing meditation in our back yard, sat on the deck outside of his office and smoked a cigarette. The building next to him dissolved, and he could see, not bricks and mortar, but shimmering energy, a reality which he says underlies the seemingly solid form of the bricks and mortar. He stopped his back yard meditating immediately. He felt he couldn’t work in the corporate world if he couldn’t see the corporeal world which housed it. He knew the energy was no more real than the bricks, but he will always have the knowledge of the brief moment the veil covering our work-a-day world lifted, and he was shown more.

A man I know works in a liquor store. One day while he was updating the books, he was enveloped in a white light. “What did you do,” we asked. He said, “Kept working until it went away.” He plans to have his eyes checked, but since the white light has never returned, he keeps putting the examination off. I think he, no matter how reluctantly, glimpsed the Other World.

The daughter of a friend said she meditates. She had been troubled by her childhood religious tradition. Once in a meditation she ‘saw’ a clear light, and knew Jesus was in the light. She was miffed. He laughed. “I’m not like you think,” he said. “I’m like you.” Then she was washed with an incredible sense of peace and love. On another occasion the walls of her bedroom dissolved, much the way the building did for my husband. Like him, she was a bit daunted.

The woman who worked for my father took off too often for my taste, though she was wonderful in many respects. When she missed one more Monday, I prodded her for details. She had not been sick. She had been to church in Houston, Texas. No, it wasn’t a church group trip. Finally she told me the whole story. God had told her to go to Houston. He spoke to her in voice just like hers and mine. A real voice. She and her husband drove all day Saturday to get there. God hadn’t revealed the exact location of where she was headed, or the reason for the trip. He said she would recognize the destination. Once in Houston, she told her husband to exit the interstate. They pulled into the parking lot of a McDonald’s. On one side was a Days’ Inn. On the other was a church. The woman knew they had arrived. They ate burgers, slept in the Days’ Inn, and went to church the next morning. They joined the congregation in the fellowship hall after the sermon. A parishioner came through the crowd. My friend recognized her, though she had never seen her before. “God sent me to tell you that you are making the right decision. You must do what you’ve been resisting,” my friend said. The woman from the church began crying. She had been praying so long for God to send her guidance she could believe.

My stepdaughter tells me when she meditates she ‘sees’ a ball of radiating energy, and knows everything emanates from the same source of energy. One internet acquaintance tells me she has caught glimpses of the Other World since she was a child. Another friend meditates, too. She is guided in her life’s path with symbols and flashes of phrases. When she follows this direction, her path smoothes out before her.

These are not by any means all the accounts of which I have read or heard, and does not include the flashier incidences of famous and minor mystics who received direct transmission of “the peace that passeth all understanding.”

This is what I want and have not received: the peace that passeth all understanding. I have moments of a sense of space, which brings with it an easing. For some of those moments I am so grateful I almost swoon….as if I am on the crest of a cosmic roller coaster, and the world as I know it is about to fall away. For others I feel as if I am afloat in a field of possibility I would call Love.

You would think that would be enough. You would be wrong.

My spiritual teachings say consistently the Voice of God will give me specific directions. Have I heard the Voice of God? No. What I do hear is a small, quiet voice which if spoken aloud, would sound just like my own. I am not reassured. If I already knew the answers, I wouldn’t be seeking them in prayer.

A childhood friend developed paranoid schizophrenia in his late teens. In his thirties, he used to drop by my house and talk about his instructions from God. He was to wash the world in the Blood of the Lamb. “The problem is I can’t be sure if it’s God or the Devil,” he would say. “If I’m ever sure it’s God, I’m going to have to do it.” It’s the message of War and the Sword we have heard since the advent of even a notion of God. With relief I do trust my spiritual teachings, which says everybody wins. If anyone must lose, I may be sure the Voice of God isn’t the one I’m hearing.

But like my childhood friend, I want to be sure the Voice I am hearing is God. Or some sign, maybe not the complete dissolution of worlds the renowned mystic Paramahansa Yogananda saw, or even the walls of the building next door or my room. I don’t even require a burning bush. And if I heard a Voice, just like yours and mine, directing me on a mission with only the name of a large city as my instructions, I might be a wee bit recalcitrant. But Jesus in a clear light, flooding me with love, even for a moment, would be a moment to cherish as I plodded my way forward. A white light would be nice, a ball of energy, or a Voice, not my own, giving me specific instructions about how God expects me to do Her Will today.

Oswald Chambers, in My Utmost for His Highest, says wanting that Voice of Direction is spiritual impertinence; “you are expecting God to tell you to do a big thing, and all He is telling you to do is to ‘come.’” Chambers also says God’s silence is His first sign of intimacy, for when God graces you with His silences, you are moving into a deeper level of communion where, without pretty pictures of reassurance, you can still move in this world with perfect trust that God has heard you.

Jacques Lusseyran, blinded when he was eight, learned to move through the world with that perfect trust. Instead of darkness, he discovered Light, a Light he needed as much as air. “There was no way out of it,” he said in his autobiography, And There Was Light. “I was the prisoner of light. I was condemned to see.” When he was afraid, the light disappeared. When he “hesitated, calculated, thought about the wall, the half opened door, the key in the lock...” objects reached out to trip him. Anger, impatience, being anxious to win, to be first, becoming jealous or unfriendly, all locked him into a world dark and hostile. “But when I was happy and serene, approached people with confidence and thought well of them, I was rewarded with light.” Jacques did not need a sign, or a seeing eye dog, or to have his physical sight miraculously restored.. “I always knew where the road was open and where it was closed,” he said. “I had only to look at the bright signal which taught me how to live.”

But I, a seeing woman, still feel blind. Because I can’t see Jacques Lusseyran’s sure Light, I long for Word from God.

“God speaks to you all the time,” my stepdaughter said. She means through other people, and that is true. I’ll be barreling along, sulky and grim, when something happens, a word is spoken, usually by someone whom I’ve suspected of being in that moment a drab, bitter, hard pebble of a person. My world cracks, and God’s generosity shines though.

At those times I feel about God’s Education the way Helen Keller, in The Story of My Life, spoke of the gift of language Anne Sullivan gave to her. Helen had been learning to spell words with her fingers, “monkey-like” and without comprehension of any meaning behind them. Miss Sullivan had been trying, without success, to make Helen understand the difference between mug and water; then she tried to help Helen realize the word for doll applied to both her old rag doll and her new china doll. In exasperation Helen broke her china doll, and was glad the source of her irritation was destroyed. Miss Sullivan did not give up. She didn’t punish Helen for her tantrum. Instead, she took her outside, which delighted the child. She took her to the well house. There she placed one of Helen’s hands under the spout as the water gushed out. In Helen’s other hand, Miss Sullivan spelled the word ‘water.’ “Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness of something forgotten—a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me,” Helen said. “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.”

She went back to the house, eager to learn the word for every object she touched. That night she went to bed, her world blossoming with words, and thoughts behind the words, and “for the first time longed for a new day to come.”

When God speaks to me through this solid world around me, like Helen Keller, I am washed in the Living Word. The world which had taunted me takes on new meaning, one I am eager to learn. Like Jacques Lusseyran, my step is light, my foot is sure, and I, too, can move around obstacles with ease. Then I begin thinking again. Once more I am blind and vexed.

“Why don’t you speak to me?” I cry to the Holy Spirit, the name with which my spiritual teaching refers to the Voice of God.

I speak to you through your writing, a voice said today. It was a small voice, with space surrounding it, the voice I have heard clearly in my head, the voice I so often discount because it seems to be mine. It’s true. Whatever I write stays with me. Over and over events happen, illustrating something I’ve recently explored with keyboard and words, and the correlation surprises me.

I was chagrined, but not mollified. “How can I trust you?” I asked. Trust me until I’m wrong, the voice said.

Suddenly I am aware I am the child of God. Why wouldn’t God speak to me in my voice? Is not my voice in His service? What measure do I have to mistrust it? I am reminded of my deafness, my blindness, and God’s immense, reassuring silence. In the enormity of that silence I must be still and listen. Who would God send to call me home, except His children, my sisters, my brothers? What Voice would He use but theirs, and mine? If I were given a cherished moment to carry with me as I plod my way forward, would that moment become my treasure, in place of God’s Living Word? Would I discover what I thought was a jewel had become a boulder? What need have I of flashy tricks and fancy illusions when goodness and mercy surround me, and God is with me always, sustaining me with joy? And in this day, God blesses me with His silence.

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Both Jacques Lusseyran and Helen Keller present me a metaphor for seeking my Voice and my Light, more complete than any I can articulate. Below are excerpts from their autobiographies:

“A light so continuous and so intense was so far beyond my comprehension that sometimes I doubted it. Suppose it was not real, that I had only imagined it. Perhaps it would be enough to imagine the opposite, or just something different, to make it go away. So I thought of testing it out and even of resisting it.

At night in bed, when I was all by myself, I shut my eyes. I lowered my eyelids as I might have done when they covered my physical eyes. I told myself that behind these curtains I would no longer see the light. But light was still there, and more serene than ever, looking like a lake at evening when the wind has dropped. Then I gathered up all my energy and will power and tried to stop the flow of light, as I might have tried to stop breathing.

What happened was a disturbance something like a whirl pool. But the whirlpool was still flooded with light. At all events I couldn’t keep this up very long, perhaps only for two or three seconds. When this was going on I felt a sort of anguish, as though I were doing something forbidden, something against life. It was exactly as if I needed light to live—needed it as much as air. There was no way out of it. I was the prisoner of light. I was condemned to see.

As I write these lines, I have just tried the experiment again, with the same result, except that with the years the original source of light has grown stronger.

At eight I came out of this experiment reassured, with the sense that I was being reborn. Since it was not I who was making the light, since it came to me from outside, it would never leave me. I was only a passageway, a vestibule for this brightness. The seeing eye was in me.

Still, there were times when the light faded, almost to the point of disappearing. It happened every time I was afraid.

If, instead of letting myself be carried along by confidence and throwing myself into things, I hesitated, calculated, thought about the wall, the half-opened door, the key in the lock; if I said to myself that all these things were hostile and about to strike or scratch, then without exception I hit or wounded myself. The only easy way to move around the house, the garden or the beach was by not thinking about it at all, or thinking as little possible. Then I moved between obstacles the way they say bats do. What the loss of my eyes had not accomplished was brought about by fear. It made me blind.

Anger and impatience had the same effect, throwing everything into confusion. The minute before I knew just where everything in the room was, but if I got angry, things got angrier than I. They went and hid in the most unlikely corners, mixed themselves up, turned turtle, muttered like crazy men and looked wild. As for me, I no longer knew where to put hand or foot. Everything hurt me. This mechanism worked so well that I became cautious.

When playing with my small companions, if I suddenly grew anxious to win, to be the first at all costs, then all at once I could see nothing. Literally I went into fog or smoke.

I could no longer afford to be jealous or unfriendly, because, as soon as I was, a bandage came down over my eyes, and I was bound hand and foot and cast aside. All at once a black hole opened, and I was helpless inside it. But when I was happy and serene, approached people with confidence and thought well of them, I was rewarded with light. So is it surprising that I loved friendship and harmony when I was very young?

Armed with such a tool, why should I need a moral code? For me this tool took the place of red and green lights. I always knew where the road was open and where it was closed. I had only to look at the bright signal which taught me how to live.”
Jacques Lusseyran, And There Was
Light ,p. 19-21

“Have you ever been at sea in a dense fog, when it seemed as if a tangible white darkness shut you in, and the great ship, tense and anxious, groped her way toward the shore with plummet and sounding line, and had no way of knowing how near the harbour was. “Light! give me light!” was the wordless cry of my soul, and the light of love shone on me in that very hour.

….The morning after my teacher came she led me into her room and gave me a doll….When I had played with it a little while, Miss Sullivan slowly spelled into my hand the word “d-o-l-l.” I was at once interested in this finger play and tried to imitate it. When I finally succeeded in making the letters correctly I was flushed with childish pleasure and pride. Running downstairs to my mother I held up my hand and made the letters for doll. I did not know that I was spelling a word or even that words existed; I was simply making my fingers go in monkey-like imitation. In the days that followed I learned to spell in this uncomprehending way a great many words, among them pin, hat, cup and a few verbs like sit, stand, and walk. But my teacher had been with me several weeks before I understood that everything has a name.

One day, while I was playing with my new doll, Miss Sullivan put my big rag doll into my lap also, spelled “d-o-l-l” and tried to make me understand “d-o-l-l” applied to both. Earlier in the day we had had a tussle over the words “m-u-g” and “w-a-t-e-r.” Miss Sullivan had tried to impress it upon me that “m-u-g” is mug and that “w-a-t-e-r” is water, but I persisted in confounding the two. In despair she had dropped the subject for the time, only to renew it at the first opportunity. 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. Some one was drawing water and my teacher place 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 on the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness 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, but barriers that could in time be swept away.

I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me. 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 shame.

I learned a great many new words that day. I do not remember what they all were; but I do know that mother, father, sister, teacher were among them—words that were to make the world blossom for me, “like Aaron’s rod, with flowers.” It would have been difficult to find a happier child than I was as I lay in my crib at the close of that eventful day and lived over the joys it had brought me, and for the first time longed for a new day to come.
Helen Keller, The Story of My Life, p. 35-37