This podcast is about the people and events that have influenced our lives enough to cause us to remember the stories of how and when these memorable situation took place.
Did we meet a stranger or an old friend who did something that day to cheer us up? Did a person or a particular event cause us to think about a firmly held belief in a different way? Did a friend say something that we will not soon forget?
Life is full of stories we have lived. Often we don’t realize their effect on us until later, but somehow, that story sticks with us and causes us to consider other ways of thinking; other ways of being.
This is how it was for me. My childhood was full of people and events that are remembered now as if they had happened yesterday. I learned so much from my parents and other friends not by their preaching, or even by there telling me a story, but by their allowing me to come along with them inside the actual story itself.
I would like to tell you some of these stories and also hear about your stories that have taken you inside their telling.
I think there is also something quite magical about speaking one’s story aloud. It is not just a simple retelling. It is, in many ways, a reliving of that particular event that makes it become even more alive in our minds.
I have often wished that I had possessed the wisdom in my youth to thank the people who helped change my life. I cannot do now what I wanted to do for some of them because they are no longer with us. I can, however, honor the memory of what they have given me. I will promise to let people know when they had allowed me to be with them in an experience that has given me reason to remember just how lucky I was to be in their presence.
Show Notes for Recent Episodes
- How can one small 13-year-old be full of so much wisdom, compassion, curiosity, radiance, and love? Her name was Jeanine. Her time on this earth was so very short, but she left it, and all who knew her, in a better place because she lived among us. Because of our friendship, I am still, and […]
- When I was growing up, the absence of today's technology made it necessary for me to be more dependent on other people for many things. That gave me an insight into dependence that I never expected to discover. In short, many of my friends and acquaintances had similar problems, and they were not blind. Enjoy. […]
- When I enrolled in college, I was studying to be a minister. This is the story of that journey and how a very special gift of love gave me the freedom to think more open-mindedly about the very narrow path I was on. That gift also allowed me to respect the varied paths taken by […]
- Here are some stories about my early college experience as the only blind student on campus. This was quite a jump from my life at the school for the blind. Given my fear of what I might find at a very good undergraduate college, was this a jump from the frying pan into the fire? […]
- My parents knew that no school in our area could teach a child who was blind. They also knew they couldn't educate me themselves. So, they had to do the unthinkable. They had to send me away to school before I turned 5 years old. For me, spending my first 4 years as an only […]
- As a very young child, you can only know your own condition. If you can't see, you don't quickly grasp the fact that others have something you don't have. It's even harder if you have light perception, because then people tell you that you can see. But, can you? This is the complicated story about […]
- In this story, my grandfather and I walk through my grandparents' apple orchard. In part, this is a sound painting of events that took place in the orchard each time I was there. People say that a picture is worth a thousand words. How many words does it take to describe a special sound, a […]
- It all started with ear-hand coordination and Daddy's faith that I could do what some thought impossible. No, it's not the normal way one acquires a recorder. Even so, that was the day my knowledge and enjoyment of sound changed forever, and I changed right along with it. Just another story that goes way beyond […]
- It started with a simple childhood game of ball I played with my grandparents. My Mom and Dad kept improving the game. Slowly, it became less a game, and more a way of life. From this game and other fun times with my parents, I discovered I could use my non-visual senses to create a […]
- For a year or so, around age 12, I had often played by an old abandoned well. I would throw stones or other things into it to see if I could hear them hit the bottom. I could hear the echo from the well if I spoke into it. I could smell a strange but […]