[Faith-talk] Fwd: Re: Hi from Keith

Sat Sep 30 14:23:12 CDT 2006

Wow.  This list has been quiet.  This article was awesome.
Beth
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Penny Golden" <goldpen at frontiernet.net>
To: <faith-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 2:16 PM
Subject: [Faith-talk] Fwd: Re: Hi from Keith


>
>>Here is Keith Wiglesworth's message, an article he hoped you might
>>like to see.
>
> I just realized that I haad got off the list.  why, what a dummy; I
> tried to send to a list I wasn't on.
> but I'm here again, and here's keith Wiglesworth's note and the
> article he wanted you to see; for some reason he cannot mail to the
> list--but i did not get the reason.
>
>
>>Hi Penny,
>>     Okay, here's the article again.  Give it another go, or just send it 
>> to
>>Linda and let her post it if it doesn't seem to work from your end.
>>     Thanks.
>>     Blessings,
>>Keith and see below.
>>     Seeing the light
>>From: Richmond Times Dispatch - Richmond,VA,USA
>>STORY BY BILL LOHMANN PHOTOS BY BOB BROWN
>>TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF Sep 24, 2006
>>LINK: AUDIO SLIDESHOW
>>http://originmedia.gatewayva.com/rtd/multimedia/Preacher/preacher_conten
>>t.html
>>GLADESBORO - He ambled cautiously but confidently through the darkened
>>but familiar hallway of his church.
>>His hands reached for a light switch and then a door, which he pushed
>>open to reveal the sanctuary divinely bathed in sunlight. The
>>stained-glass win-dows
>>filled with life. The bright-red carpet glowed as if on fire.
>>"Isn't it gorgeous?" said the Rev. Duane L. Steele. "I think this is the
>>most beautiful church in Carroll County."
>>Pride is one thing, but how exactly might Steele know? Not once in his
>>28 years as pastor of Gladesboro Evangelical Lutheran Church, tucked
>>away in the
>>Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwest Virginia, has he seen the place.
>>Steele is blind, but he's come to know beauty when it presents itself.
>>"The ambience," Steele explained, not put off at all by the question.
>>"You can feel it. Don't you just feel the reverence in here?"
>>This is all part of Steele's job: helping others see the light he can
>>only feel.
>>Steele, 59, has been blind since shortly after birth. He was stricken in
>>an epidemic in the 1940s and early 1950s that claimed the sight of
>>thousands of
>>premature infants given supplemental oxygen that was too rich.
>>He's been friendly, enthusiastic and outgoing just about as long.
>>His best friend, Craig Werner, also blind, remembers when he met Steele
>>more than 50 years ago. Werner was 7, a scared and lonely child entering
>>the New
>>York Institute for the Education of the Blind in the Bronx, a
>>residential school where Steele was already a student. Steele
>>immediately welcomed Werner.
>>"I'll be your friend," Werner recalled Steele telling him.
>>"He was a very caring person, even as a small child," said Werner,
>>associate professor of English at Buffalo State College. "He had the
>>kind of personality
>>. . . you just wanted to take to him."
>>Steele grew up in the Catskill Mountains north of New York City, and
>>didn't have family close by. Werner's parents lived a few blocks from
>>the school and
>>embraced Steele as their own. They invited him into their home on
>>weekends, took him to church and to concerts, and introduced him to
>>opera. He and Werner
>>became like brothers.
>>When Steele was about 10, Werner noticed his friend had taken a keen
>>interest in religion - in class, in church and on the radio. For Steele,
>>the radio
>>was a sanctuary, a cherished source of news, music and ballgames, as
>>well as a wave of on-the-air preachers who never failed to enlighten, or
>>at least
>>entertain.
>>"My favorite heroes when I was growing up were pastors," said Steele. "I
>>took an interest in the Bible very early on . . . and I always sat in
>>the front
>>pew as close to the pastor as I could get.
>>"Then I started listening to all the people on the radio. Billy Graham,
>>Norman Vincent Peale, Harry Emerson Fosdick. I would listen to these
>>guys week after
>>week, and I would say, 'I want to be one of them.'"
>>In high school, though, Steele turned away from the church,
>>disillusioned by the war in Vietnam and by religion in general. He went
>>to college, thinking
>>he'd become a teacher. But he discovered few opportunities for blind
>>teachers. He quit college, married and started a family.
>>A gifted singer and pianist, he poured his soul into music. He took jobs
>>playing in restaurants and clubs. He moved to Northern Virginia and at
>>one point
>>was holding down three jobs: tuning pianos, playing gigs and serving as
>>organist at a small Lutheran church.
>>He wearied of that lifestyle and enrolled at what was then Shenandoah
>>Conservatory of Music in Winchester, graduated in 1974, and, at age 27,
>>decided he
>>would indeed like to go into the ministry. He finished seminary and
>>found a church in Lancaster, Pa., willing to hire a blind intern. He
>>wanted to prove
>>his independence. He got the chance.
>>The pastor went on vacation and left Steele in charge. When a member of
>>the congregation died, a panicked Steele tracked down his boss by phone.
>>"What do I do?" Steele asked.
>>Came the reply: "The funeral."
>>Meantime, Gladesboro Evangelical Lutheran Church was a small
>>congregation in search of a pastor. He came for a visit, preached the
>>sermon on Palm Sunday
>>in 1978 and, a few weeks later, was offered the job.
>>His oldest child, Jennifer, then 9, helped him learn his way around the
>>church.
>>"She brought me over to the church and we walked and walked and walked,"
>>said Steele. "She was very patient. My children learned over the years
>>having a
>>blind parent to be very patient."
>>It took only a week for Steele to become comfortable in his new
>>surroundings; he acknowledges it might have taken some members of the
>>congregation a little
>>longer to become comfortable with him. However, he eventually allayed
>>their fears, largely through his disarming manner; it's hard not to like
>>a man who
>>can perform a great, thunderous hymn on the electronic keyboard, then
>>push the piano button and launch into a bouncy version of "Ain't
>>Misbehavin'." He
>>also made members of the congregation active participants in the
>>ministry, regularly enlisting them to drive him on pastoral visits.
>>[wlo: Steele loves Gladesboro - it's not too terribly different from
>>where he grew up, although he says with a smile that he doesn't recall
>>eating pinto
>>beans on cornbread - and he loves the people and the church, which
>>celebrated its 150th anniversary last year. Over the years, he's
>>traveled the country
>>with his music ministry and as an advocate for the blind. At church,
>>he's married a lot, buried a lot and begun to baptize the children of
>>children he
>>baptized years ago.
>>But his deep-rooted ambition gnaws at him. Having grown up around
>>big-city churches in New York, he always envisioned himself pastoring a
>>larger church.
>>The opportunity never came.
>>"Frankly, I lost track of the number of turn-downs I received after
>>about the first 10," Steele said. "Most of the time, the rejections were
>>subtle. In
>>a couple of instances before the passage of the Americans With
>>Disabilities Act [of 1990], people said frankly that they were
>>uncomfortable, or thought
>>that their parishes might not be up to the challenge of working with a
>>blind person.
>>"I'm no longer marketable for those big churches, and I know that. So, I
>>grow where I'm planted. I believe God had a vision, and maybe his vision
>>was different
>>from mine. But it still worked out. I've had a fantastic life. The
>>people of Gladesboro Church have hung in there with me. I love these
>>people, and they
>>love me.
>>"If I had to be in one place for my whole ministry, this was the place
>>to be."
>>He and Janet, his wife of 38 years and a middle-school teacher in nearby
>>Grayson County, raised four children, all grown and gone.
>>He tries not to ponder what if, focusing instead on what is.
>>He said he has never been angry about being blind; he has known life no
>>other way. He has been angered at having to work so much harder to be,
>>as he put
>>it, "normal," but he has never been angry at the blindness itself. In
>>some ways, it has made him challenge himself, and he is not ungrateful
>>for that.
>>"When you operate with a disability, regardless of what job you go for,
>>you have to give it everything," he said. "You have to be absolutely the
>>best. I
>>think being blind made me reach more for the stars."
>>After all these years, Sunday mornings remain his favorite time. Church
>>member Bob Willard stops at Steele's home evey week to pick up the
>>preacher and
>>drive him the quarter-mile to the church. While Steele gets ready to
>>preach, the two talk sports.
>>Technology has made teaching and preaching much easier than it used to
>>be for Steele. He has computer software that can transform text on a
>>screen into
>>a digitized voice, and a Braille printer that spits out paper covered
>>with raised dots. He loves e-mail. He also loves his MP3 player, being a
>>fan of music
>>of all kinds but particularly classical.
>>On a recent Sunday at Gladesboro Church, the morning was still and
>>quiet. Early-arriving worshippers gathered out front to chat. Cows
>>grazed in the next
>>pasture. Inside, Steele sat at a table in the middle of a Sunday school
>>classroom in his dark suit the color of his sunglasses, his fingers
>>crawling across
>>his textured notes. Steele asked someone to read the story of the
>>conversion of a woman named Lydia in the Book of Acts. The reader had
>>barely finished
>>when Steele blurted, "Isn't that cool?"
>>His enthusiasm is something the members of Gladesboro have appreciated
>>since the moment they met him.
>>"That's what we needed," said Annette Marshall, a church member for 50
>>years.
>>And his blindness?
>>"It didn't really bother anyone after we first saw him," said Marshall,
>>who has been one of Steele's many drivers through the years.
>>During the 11 o'clock service, Steele preached and sang with the choir -
>>he said his voice has weakened in recent years because of asthma - and
>>delivered
>>the sort of announcements that ministers typically make. Before a
>>congregation of about 75, he welcomed visitors and noted a birth,
>>announced who was ailing
>>and revealed who was celebrating his 60th birthday.
>>During the last hymn, Steele recessed - alone and without a cane - down
>>the center aisle. He stopped at a pew to sing and visit with two of his
>>grandchildren,
>>then continued to the welcoming red front doors of the church to greet
>>his departing flock.
>>"He has this unclouded view of who we are, untainted by the visual
>>things that our eyes catch," said Bishop James F. Mauney of the Virginia
>>Synod of the
>>Evangelical Church in America. "Without getting too sappy, I think Duane
>>sees in ways others of us don't see, and I think that's a unique gift
>>for a pastor."
>>After the service, Eldon Gardner stood near the last pew, talking about
>>how he's attended the church for all of his 88 years and how he used to
>>drive Steele
>>to nursing homes for musical visits. Gardner played the harmonica.
>>"The only reason he's stayed," a smiling Gardner said of Steele's long
>>tenure in Gladesboro, "is he couldn't see to leave."
>>At that very moment, Steele walked past, heard the comment and
>>recognized the voice.
>>"I love you, Eldon," said Steele, without the slightest hint of offense
>>and without slowing.
>>Replied Gardner, "I love you, too, Duane."
>>Contact staff writer Bill Lohmann at
>>wlohmann at timesdispatch.com
>>or (804)
>>649-6639. Contact senior photographer Bob Brown at
>>bbrown at timesdispatch.com
>>or
>>(804) 649-6382.
>>http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD%2FMGArticle%
>>2FRTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1149190729158&path=!flair&s=104585593
>>6229
>>----- Original Message -----
>>From: "Penny Golden" <goldpen at frontiernet.net>
>>To: "Keith Wiglesworth" <kworks at etinternet.net>
>>Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 9:15 AM
>>Subject: Re: Hi from Keith
>>
>>
>> > Keith, my attempt misfired. would you send me the article again, 
>> > please?
>> > my address that I used automatically for the faith-talk list had two
>> > F's in it. what a chump I am. please send me the article again, if
>> > you still have it. if not, I'll have to look it up in the outbox.
>> > Blessings and thanks if you can do it, or even if you cannot, Penny
>> > At 07:17 AM 9/28/2006, you wrote:
>> > >Hi Penny,
>> > >     Thanks so much for doing that, and letting me know of Linda's
>>change,
>> > >and I'll send her a brief note as well to get her in my address book.
>> > >     Thanks again for everything.
>> > >     Blessings,
>> > >Keith
>> > >----- Original Message -----
>> > >From: "Penny Golden" <goldpen at frontiernet.net>
>> > >To: "Keith Wiglesworth" <kworks at etinternet.net>
>> > >Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2006 4:49 PM
>> > >Subject: Re: Hi from Keith
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > > Keith, She did get a new internet provider.
>> > > > She is now:
>> > > >
>> > > > mentink at frontiernet.net
>> > > >
>> > > > I posted your note and the article.  thanks.
>> > > >
>> > > > we're doing well and I have to nap before our evening service.
>> > > > Blessings, Pen
>> > > >
>> > > >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>
>
>
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