Helen Keller

   Helen and Phillips Brooks wrote letters back and forth.  The young girl with such a heavy burden and the elderly cleric with so many natural gifts, they were so unlike each other.  Yet Brooks recognized that Helen and he did the same thing.  Reaching out of the total darkness of her isolated life, Helen was already touching people's hearts with her courage and noble spirit, already challenging people to look at what could be.  She lived in silence.  She lived in darkness. But out of her silence the Spirit burst forth with grace and power.  And out of her darkness, light shone.  This was what Phillips Brooks had dedicated his life to bringing about:  Let the people hear of what can be.  Let them know what astonishing good can come from God, even in the face of terrible sorrow.
    In one of her letters, Helen told Bishop Brooks that she had always known about God, even before she had any words.  Even before she could call God anything, she knew God was there.  She didn't know what it was.  God had no name for her -- nothing had a name for her.  She had no concept of a name.  But in her darkness and isolation, she knew she was not alone.  Someone was with her.  She felt God's love.  And when she received the gift of language and heard about God, she said she already knew.
    Phillips Brooks was thrilled by this.  This was the God he knew, the God who would come to a lonely child, a frustrated and lonely little girl, and find a way to speak love to her without a word.  He wrote a hymn we have loved ever since; I wonder if he had Helen in mind when he wrote:
 
 

How silently, how silently The wondrous gift is giv'n! So God imparts to human hearts The blessings of his heav'n. No ear may hear his coming, But in this world of sin, Where meek souls will receive him, still The dear Christ enters in.

Love without words.  Love that knows of love even before it knows anything else.  God who comes to the meek, to those who are hidden, to those whom the world discounts.  The old preacher, famous for his eloquence, was like old Simeon at the temple when he heard this from Helen Keller.  It was a confirmation of his ministry of proclamation.  It was all true.  God was really among us.  What Helen knew proved it.