Helen Keller’s “Holy Passion Pouring Down from the Springs of Infinity”
June 2, 2019
Today's message can be found below.
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OPENING SONGS
Try to dance, move, sing, hum or play along with this music – or enjoy a meditative listen with deep, mindful breaths
Six Feet Under, OceaN Eyes
Billie Eilish
Quarter Past Four
Avril & the Sequoias
Opening READINGS
From Biblical & Hebrew Scripture
Deuteronomy 28:12-14
"The LORD will open for you His good storehouse, the heavens, to give rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hand; and you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. "The LORD will make you the head and not the tail, and you only will be above, and you will not be underneath, if you listen to the commandments of the LORD your God, which I charge you today, to observe them carefully, and do not turn aside from any of the words which I command you today, to the right or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them
From Swedenborg's Theological Writings
Click here for free ebooks of Emanuel Swedenborg's Theological Writings
Click here for free ebooks of Emanuel Swedenborg's Theological Writings
Helen Keller's "Holy Passion Pouring Down from the Springs of Infinity"
By Pastor Cory Bradford-Watts
We’ve all heard of Helen Keller, the famous deaf and blind activist and author from the mid-twentieth century. Although not defined by her limitations, her story of surmounting their impact, learning and growing through them despite the odds, as well as going on to use her life for the betterment of others easily catches our attention as kids, providing hope and inspiration for our own growth with our limitations. I remember thinking to myself as a child, “If Helen Keller could do it, so can I.” So can we all, even amidst hardship.
In fact, sometimes the glimmer of truth that I feel from Helen’s story centers on how limitations can often allow for an even greater impact, an even greater story, an even greater power to uplift others to the extent that we overcome those so-called limitations’ impacts on our lives. There’s a reason why kids today still know who Helen Keller was, and it’s not just the bad jokes, it’s because she highlights the power of the garden of our life to break through barriers to share its fruit with others.
Helen was a member of the Socialist Party in the US, and throughout her career professed and published her socialist views to the chagrin of those who only wanted to highlight her other stories of overcoming. She went to bat to get her socialist, justice-oriented articles published and lectures given, and was a warrior for the disabled, the poor, and the idea that doing service for others with creativity and imagination was the quintessential source of joy and happiness from God.
And yes, she had a deep and profound belief in God, which she said inspired her justice work.
In her book, My Religion, Helen Keller describes her young, blinded, meandering search for an understanding of God and the universe that could truly answer her deepest questions and concerns about the subject. She says of this spiritual journey: “I lost myself many times in shadows and uncertainties, wandering back and forth between the Light which was so ineffably reassuring and the chaos and darkness of nature that seemed so real as not to be gainsaid” or dismissed.
She also describes how the Bible didn’t speak very deeply to her in her younger years, despite the professions of those near her. She was disappointed that it didn’t seem to present to her the face of Divinity that she knew so well in her soul. The descriptions in the Bible often seemed too fantastical, too conflicting, or too violent for her in their literal readings, without depth or a consistent goal.
However, through this rough beginning, she eventually found the mystical, interfaith-Christian writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, and writes that they were a wellspring of spiritual clarity for her and transformed her relationship with the Bible and the world. All of a sudden, she says that she could see the depth and interconnectedness in the parables that make up most of the narrative portions of the Bible, according to Swedenborg. She felt a kinship with the idea that these parables or metaphors described spiritual processes and spiritual realities as well as natural ones, as she herself often reflected on the connection between natural details to internal details, such as internal sight and hearing. She was inspired by the holy, transformational poetry she started to discover in scripture, by the nourishment of truth she started to find in it as well as in her clarified ideas about God and how that God “has provided religion of some kind everywhere, and it does not matter to what race or creed anyone belongs if he is faithful to his ideals of right living.”
Like Helen, may we also find such inspiration from our diverse faiths as I know many people do. And specifically, I find that I and many other Swedenborgians have had similar profound experiences of discovery and newfound spiritual clarity and openness when exploring its spiritual tenets. Helen’s openness and support of those with other beliefs, essentially a tenet of Swedenborgian-Christianity, allowed her to be a conduit of a great outpouring of the Infinite’s holy passion, as I believe it can for us as well. We see in her a life bent on meeting people where they are and working at great lengths to uplift them and their situations, and she says that this is because she believed that caring for, inspiring, and uplifting others (instead of trying to change their religious labels) was truly raising the queen/kingdom of the Lord on earth.
At the beginning of her book, Helen describes a garden where the trees’ roots are cramped. And yet, these trees bravely grow upward toward the outpouring of sunlight above them to shower “weary mortals” with “their wealth of blossoms” and fruit. Eventually, they break through the confines of their limitations to “spread out their mighty roots in the sweetness of liberty.”
Sounds a lot like a deep metaphor for Helen’s life, doesn’t it? Hopefully, ours as well. You see, Helen took this type of parable very seriously. Like Swedenborg, she believed that gardens and all aspects of nature presented deep truths poured down from Infinity about our lives and spirits. We each struggle with the confines of our limitations, and yet we’re given the opportunity to use the gifts showered from above to offer our own outpouring of gifts, our own fruit and blossoms. And we’re told by scriptures the world over that one day we will give up the shackles that contain us (in this world or the next) as we work, connect, and grow in healthy ways to eternity.
Further, the use of a garden metaphor is not strange in Swedenborgian writings. There’s a reason why artists, poets, and writers, like Emerson, Blake, and Frost were drawn to Emanuel Swedenborg’s explorations of the spirit world, nature, and deeper meanings of the descriptions in the Bible. Swedenborg said that he was called to explore how well each of these things correspond to each other when the Lord opened the eyes of his spirit, that he was called upon to explore how all things are essentially a poem about life and our relationships with Divinity. (These explorations also emphasize the holographic reality that physicists only recently started to recognize.)
For Swedenborg and Keller, things like an outpouring of sunlight and rain correspond to God’s nourishment of us with wisdom and love, the two essential elements of our life. As we see in our own gardens and outward lives, without nourishment, trimming, and connection, life struggles, shrivels and dies.
This understanding of how God worked in her life to help her bloom inspired Helen. Like the moments of insight that began to teach her language and how to connect with others, Helen’s spiritual insights motivated her to fruit in greater and greater ways, working with others to break down society’s economic barriers, barriers of bigotry, and ableist barriers. Through the empowerment and compassion she received from the Infinite, she strived to illuminate and nourish people once tragically confined by their own practices and the practices of society in order so that we each may find the sweetness of true liberty and clear vision.
Helen’s faith in a “holy passion pouring down from the springs of Infinity” was a light in her darkness, as she describes. A spout of wisdom that helped her to see the wonderworking power of God’s love despite the darkness that sometimes plagues humanity. She used the torch of her faith, a wellspring of love, to be inspired to work toward social justice in her life and uplift others with differently-abled bodies and differently-abled spirits and situations, things each of us has.
May we follow her example.
O light-bringer of my blindness,
O spirit never far removed!
Ever when the hour of travail deepens,
Thou art near;
Set in my soul like jewels bright
Thy words of holy meaning,
Till Death with gentle hand shall lead me to the Presence I have loved–
My torch in darkness here,
My joy eternal there.
CLOSING SONGS
The Sound of Silence (live in Central Park)
Simon & Garfunkel
That Sunday, That Summer
Nat King COle
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