How I Would Help the World - Softcover

Helen Keller (1880–1968) was stricken with a disease that left her blind and deaf at only nineteen months of age, and the story of how her teacher, Anne Sullivan, was able to break through and help her learn to communicate became the inspiration for millions. Keller quickly learned to read and write, and later became the first blind and deaf person to earn a college degree when she graduated from Radcliffe College. She spent her life traveling and writing in support of a wide variety of social issues, and was the author of several books, including The Story of My Life; Teacher, Anne Sullivan Macy; and My Religion, which was more recently released as Light in My Darkness. She has been the subject of many other books and films and has received numerous honors for her work.

There is among us a distressing indifference to all things of faith, and impatience at any effort to explain the laws of life in spiritual terms. The only really blind are those who will not see the truth—those who shut their eyes to the spiritual vision. For them alone, darkness is irrevocable. Those who explore the dark with love as a torch and trust as a guide find it good. Blind people who have eyes know that they live in a spiritual world inconceivably more wonderful than the material world that is veiled from them. The landscapes they behold never fade. The flowers they look upon are the immortal flowers which grow in God’s garden. Swedenborg’s message is like the rock smitten by Moses, yielding sweet streams of healing water, even an abundance of truths for those who hunger and thirst in their pilgrimage through an age of materialism and selfishness.