Daily Signet
Daniel Kish lost his sight from cancer at 13 months of age. Determined to freely navigate his world, young Daniel set out to master the technique of echolocation. Used by animals such as bats and dolphins, Daniel would make a clicking noise to create reverberations that enabled him to determine where objects are in space. This auditory feedback allowed him not only to find where objects were in space, it allowed him to create an image of the world in his mind—a world, he says, he can “see.” He practiced this daily, taking tumbles, colliding into undetected objects, and suffering countless bruises, breaks, and scrapes. Despite parental neglect and the disapproval of neighbors and authorities, he persisted until he could seamlessly navigate not only his way to school on his bike, but unpredictable terrain such as mountain trails or unfamiliar biking paths.
I believe we have our own sort of spiritual echolocation: that given our spiritual blindness, when faced with the darkness of the unknown, fearful of what unseen obstacle may suddenly present itself, we can send out sounds through prayer and meditation and wait for the echo, for the feedback from the Divine. While we do not receive the reverberations through our ears, instead we open our hearts, for this is where the call and response occurs. It is through our love of the Divine that we sense and discover our inner world, and then, with the grace of pure vision, “see” a clearer path. Saint-Exupery says in The Little Prince, “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
In ballet, dancers are seen as graceful when they use only the muscles necessary for each particular movement, without thinking about it. This ability is not a natural gift, but comes from years of daily practice. Just as Daniel practiced echolocation for years before being able to move confidently through the world. For us, it is through a daily practice of prayer and meditation that we can let go of all that is unnecessary, all that is self-conscious, and open our hearts to receive the echo of the Divine, to perceive a grace-filled life.
Alexis Drabek
On This Day…
Shinto day of remembrance for the beginning of internment in the United States of loyal Japanese citizens for the duration of the war (1942)
Carson McCullers born 1917 in Columbus, Georgia, died 1967: novelist. Works: The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, A Member of the Wedding, Ballad of the Sad Café
Quotes: “I live with the people I create and it has always made my essential loneliness less keen.” “There’s nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book.”