How Can I Keep From Singing?

For me, November is probably the bleakest month of the year (February is a close second!). The autumn splendor has disappeared and there is a gray atmosphere, a mixture of rain, sleet and snow. The prospect of six months of winter does not appeal to me at all. 

The Titanic sank in November. A dear friend and her three-year-old daughter were killed in a car accident in November. 

But good things happened in November too, just like they do in other months of the year. My Dad was born November 12th. Today, as I write this, is his birthday. I miss choosing birthday cards for him and writing letters to him in November (following our marriage we never lived close to home). My parents got married in November and their time together lasted almost 65 years. They taught us eight children about genuine love and commitment and I am so grateful to them. 

In October 1952, our family arrived in Canada after living in Paraguay for five years. I was nine years old. My mother had told us about snow. She cut paper snowflakes for us every Christmas and they were beautiful. She told us about Christmas in Ukraine and Germany and sang the German Christmas carol "Leise rieselt der Schnee" (quietly falls the snow) on sweltering Christmas Eves in Paraguay. That November of 1952 she called us to the window with great excitement. "Look at the snow!" she exclaimed. "Soon it will be Christmas. Our first Christmas in Canada!" I looked and looked, but all I saw was streaks of what looked like rain. If that was snow, I didn't know what all the fuss was about! I was quite disappointed. Later in December and for the rest of the winter the fields were covered with snow and we had to wrap scarves around our faces to keep them from freezing as we walked to school. After a while the scarves felt like frozen cardboard. I did not enjoy this. Snowballs shoved down my neck by boisterous boys were not my idea of fun either!

Above is a picture of my Dad and my sister and me in southern Germany, about a year after we were reunited. He had been drafted into the German army toward the end of the war, just before my sister was born. 

Several years ago I got in touch with a woman who used to babysit my sister and me when we were refugees. A teenager at the time, she is now an elderly woman. She says what she remembers about us is that we were always singing. As children, what mattered most of all was that we were loved and cared for. That made us happy.

Recently Hardy and I attended a luncheon in honor of Edgar Stoesz, an American Mennonite we met on two travel tours, one to Paraguay and one to Poland and Ukraine. Edgar was the "story teller" on both of these tours. Throughout most of his adult life Edgar worked with Mennonite Central Committee and had many interesting experiences to share with his fellow travelers. In his book Like a Mustard Seed (2008), he tells the story of how my father and his friend, Hans Rempel,  shouldered the burden of forming a vibrant church in the new Neuland colony,  I had never heard that story before. 

                                        

Edgar's most recent book, Finding my Way (2014), is his memoir. Edgar is an octogenarian and has led a long and interesting life. He ends his memoir with Robert Lowry's hymn "My Life Flows On."

No storm can shake my inmost calm

While to that Rock I'm clinging.

Since love is Lord of heav'n and earth,

How can I keep from singing?

I'm beginning to convince myself that I can make it through another November. I'll sing myself through it!

To Autumn

Of late I've been enjoying the "music" of the autumn season and have overcome my sadness and melancholy at summer's passing.  I mentioned the poets Keats and Rilke in my September post, and quoted some lines of lament from one of Rilke's autumn poems, which matched my mood at that time. Today my thinking is more in line with Keats who calls autumn a "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" in his poem "To Autumn."  When he laments the disappearance of the songs of spring he corrects himself and says, "Think not of them, thou hast thy music too."

In my last post I wrote about our neighbour's apples ripening on the tree and falling to the ground. My dear husband, who cannot abide waste of any kind, mentioned it to one of their teen girls and offered to pick the apples in exchange for a bag or two. The next morning when I opened the front door there were five bags of beautiful apples on the stoop! I spent a day processing one bag (coring, peeling, slicing, freezing, making apple crisp). It was enough to inspire me to be generous with this bountiful gift. I stored as many as I could in the fridge crisper and passed the rest on to my sisters and to friends at church.

Thanksgiving is here in all its glory! I am thankful for apples and pumpkins and squash and all the delicious things I can make with them to satisfy my physical need for nourishment. I am thankful for poets like Keats and Rilke who feed my soul. I am so grateful for places like McNally Robinson Booksellers and Jubilee Mennonite Church that give me the opportunity to take care of my soul as well as my body. We had an amazing thanksgiving potluck at church last Sunday, and when we go to readings at McNally Robinson we sometimes enjoy their excellent restaurant. Just recently we have attended several presentations by Mennonite writers such as Maurice Mierau (Detachment: An Adoption Memoir) which I mentioned in my last post, and David Bergen (Leaving Tomorrow). I am looking forward to reading Rudy Wiebe's new novel Come Back, about the loss of a child through suicide.

I am thankful for writer friends such as Dora Dueck who encouraged me to begin writing this blog. Her recent book, What You Get at Home (a collection of short stories), received an excellent review in the latest "Journal of Mennonite Studies" (Vol.32, 2014). In part, Frieda Esau Klippenstein writes:

As a Mennonite writer, there is something refreshingly different about Dora Dueck. The secret to success for many talented Mennonite novelists and short-story writers has been their audacity or shock value.  . . .  Dueck's writing is not within this genre. It is not at all outrageous, and is notably devoid of indignation or reproach. Rather than amusing or shocking us to attention, her strategy involves layers of perspective, with which she lures us to a place of empathy and new understanding. Her characters are so authentically portrayed that it is easy to believe that Dueck knows these people -- perhaps is some of these people. With this level of ease and confidence, overstatement is not necessary.

Last, but not least, I am thankful for friends who have sustained me along my life's journey. They live on in my memory even though we may have lost touch over the years. Just recently one such friend arrived at my doorstep. In grade twelve Carrie and I edited the high school newspaper together, struggled with math and science and had a crush on the same guy. Our ways parted after high school and we didn't see each other for fifty-one years.  FIFTY-ONE YEARS!  It blows my mind!  She came to Winnipeg to attend a Mennonite academic conference and we had one evening and a lingering breakfast together. Conversation flowed and on parting we realized we needed much more time! Perhaps I can return the visit and spend some time in B.C. where Carrie makes her home.

"I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers."

-- L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

The Days of September

I have to face the fact that summer is over and September is well on its way. I recognize all the signs: plummeting temperatures that almost reach the freezing point at night; geese honking across the evening sky and staging on the nearby lake; sunset arriving earlier as I go on my evening walk; our neighbor's apple tree loaded with sun-ripened fruit that falls to the ground and rots (When is he going to pick them? When is he going to bring us some? Maybe he forgot this year!); me, dragging my houseplants inside from the deck and realizing that they have grown immensely over the summer and I don't have room for them all. Our bright kitchen is beginning to look overgrown and I'm debating about which plants I have to get rid of.

There is beauty in this season of slow relinquishment, even though it is tinged with sadness. The poetry of Keats (To Autumn) and Rilke (Die Blätter fallen) hum in my head:

The leaves are falling, falling from afar, / as if in heaven distant gardens wither /

they fall reluctantly / and in the night the heavy earth has fallen / 

from all the stars into its loneliness. /

We all are falling. / This hand falls. / Regard the other one. / It lies in all. /

And yet there is one / holding all this falling / forever gently in his hands. 

                                                                          (R.M. Rilke, Die Blätter, trsl. by E.N. Schroeder)                                                   

Autumn Leaves, by Sir John Everett Millais

My summer reading has, for some reason, been all about the sadness experienced by people through abandonment and death, and how they (for the most part) manage to struggle through to the other side.

It began with Philomena: A Mother, Her Son, and a Fifty-Year Search by Martin Sexsmith, which we chose to read for our Sisters' Book Club. The Catholic Church took three-year-old Michael away from his single mother and sold him to a well-meaning American family. For years mother and son searched for each other from across the Atlantic. The book itself is very sad and rather depressing, with little redemption. I saw the movie (Philomena) first and (exceptionally) it was much better than the book.

Another book on the topic of adoption is Maurice Mierau's Detachment: An Adoption Memoir. It  is written from the parents' perspective. The author and his wife adopted two brothers, a three-year-old and a five-year-old from a Ukrainian orphanage in 2005. Like Michael in Philomena, the boys struggle with a sense of abandonment. Mierau deftly weaves the adoption experience in with his father's traumatic past; that of a small Mennonite boy who witnessed atrocities in war-torn Ukraine and Germany during World War II. The memoir is realistic and unsentimental. Both of these books widened my horizon and helped me toward a better understanding of what happens to children psychologically when they feel that their parents have forsaken them.

Moving from these adoption books, I read two books by Beth Powning which deal with the grieving process after losing a loved one. The Shadow Child (1999) is the story of a mother coming to terms with the stillbirth of her first child. I resonated with this memoir because it so accurately described my own feelings after losing our premature son.

Powning's second book, The Hatbox Letters, is a novel of love, grief and renewal. A widow begins to connect the strands of her unravelled life, while at the same time piecing together the hidden tragedy of her family through the reading of old letters. I was never bored by Powning's lengthy descriptive passages. They are like paintings in a museum that you can look at time and again and discover new meaning.

                     

I know that winter is inevitable and I will deal with it. I'll just move my chair a little closer to the fireplace, pick up a good book and transport myself into another world for a while. But for now, there is still time to enjoy autumn's splendor. I hope these Indian summer days will stretch well into November.

Sadness is a Wall Between Two Gardens

Years ago my husband Hardy and I had an experience which still makes us smile. We were in Winnipeg visiting family, and a missionary colleague invited us out for dinner to a Chinese restaurant together with our Congolese friend Pakisa Tshimaka, who is a paraplegic. We provided the transportation. 

After enjoying a delicious meal, we returned to our vehicle only to discover that our car would not start. It seemed the battery was dead and we would have to find someone who could help us restart it. 

As we sat there contemplating our next move, Pakisa glanced down the sidewalk and said, "I think Jesus is coming to help us." Startled, we followed his gaze, and sure enough, there was a bearded man coming down the sidewalk carrying a cross. He stopped for a moment, put down his cross and asked if something was wrong. We told him our car battery was dead and perhaps he could assist us by helping us push the car. He shook his head and said he was sorry he couldn't help us. He was carrying his cross all the way across Canada and he needed to be on his way, and off he went. "That wasn't Jesus, was it?" said Pakisa somewhat wistfully.

Hardy went into the restaurant to make a phone call. When the restaurant staff heard of our dilemma, one of the waitresses, a young Chinese woman, went to get her car, pulled out a set of jumper cables, attached them to her battery and to ours, and before long we were on our way. Pakisa smiled ruefully and said, "I think Jesus is a Chinese woman."

We often remind ourselves of that statement when our preconceived notions of how things ought to be do not match with our experiences.

I was reminded of it again when I read William Paul Young's novel, The Shack, for the second time. The author walks us through a father's journey with grief after his  youngest daughter, Missy, is abducted from a campground where the family is holidaying. She is brutally murdered. The book was published in 2007 and became a New York Times bestseller, with over five million copies in print. I read it at the time, was profoundly moved by it, but then put it aside. Recently, as we helped our oldest daughter and her family move to a new place, I rediscovered the book. My daughter had borrowed it and forgotten to return it. I read it again from cover to cover.

The Shack is an allegory in which the grieving father has a spiritual experience beyond anything he could ever imagine. Several months after the murder, he returns to the shack in the mountains where his daughter's bloody dress has been found. Like the battery in our car he needs a complete recharge, because everything in him has died. In the cabin he meets a God who is nothing like the one he has pictured all his life. The author depicts God as a big jolly black woman who loves to cook; Jesus is a brown bearded young man of Middle-Eastern origin, and the Holy Spirit is a lovely Asian woman. Together, the three-in-one help the father work through his grief and anger. He must face and deal with the demons of his own past before he can begin to work through the immense sadness and despair he feels at the loss of his little girl.

"Sadness is a wall between two gardens," writes the Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran.

Rereading this book has been therapy for me. As I wrote in a previous post (June 24th), the saddest day of my life was the day we lost our firstborn son. Any parent who has gone through a similar experience will probably identify with this. I imagine that the grief is even more profound and also mixed with rage when a child's life is deliberately taken by someone. I cannot even begin to understand how angry and upset those people must be who lost loved ones in the recent missile attack on an airplane flying over Ukraine.

Like the main character in The Shack, those of us who have experienced the death of a loved one must go through the grieving process in order to be healed. It is never finished.

"Sadness is a wall between two gardens."

Often the wall of sadness grows higher and higher and it seems impossible to find our way over this wall to the other side. Reading a book like The Shack might help someone take another step toward healing.

[Postscript]

At the time I rediscovered this book, I was preparing to lead worship on Sunday and writing a memorial for a tree dedication which would happen that same week. We were also busy  helping our daughter and family move, so I didn't have a lot of preparation time. When I paged through the book, I noticed that every chapter was headed by a quote. These quotes helped me immensely and gave me the inspiration for the words I needed that weekend.

Interestingly enough, The Shack kept inspiring me and I was so moved that I decided to blog about it. I also received some strong "nudges" to do so. The nudges came from what Catherine Marshall, in her book Beyond Ourselves, calls the "inner Voice." This "inner Voice" prompts us and we ignore it to our own detriment. One nudge was that my daughter had given us things to take to the thrift store, and when I was sorting through things, the book was there again (she must have had a second copy). It looked like a well-used copy, but my daughter does not remember having a second copy! Another "nudge" I got was that our youngest daughter called and told me they had won a painting from a raffle ticket they had purchased. She said it was a picture of mountains and a cabin. When I saw the painting, it was "the shack," just like I had pictured it while reading the book! I now had no doubt what the topic of my next blog posting should be!

The Impact of History on the Lives of Women

Last year I read Robert K. Massie's Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman. Massie specializes in writing about the Russian royals. He has a son with hemophilia and that inspired him to write Nicholas and Alexandra (1967). (The Russian tsar and his German-born wife also had a son stricken with the disease.) Massie went on to write Peter the Great (1980), The Romanovs (2011) and Catherine the Great (2012) for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. As I was reading Catherine the Great I kept thinking, this is an historical account, but her life reads like a novel; someone should write it as a novel." 

Shortly after I read Massie's book, I came across Eva Stachniak's The Winter Palace: A Novel of Catherine the Great (2012). I could not put it down.

Reading the historical account and the novel almost simultaneously was an interesting experience. However, there were certain things neither the historical version nor the novel fully explored for me. I really wanted to know more about how Catherine herself personally felt when her first husband rejected her and they went to bed night after night with no intimacy. Finally, after ten barren years, Catherine took a lover. Again, I wanted Stachniak to flesh out this relationship, and how it affected the empress. There were several more liaisons, one of which resulted in the murder of her first husband and Catherine's ascension to the Russian throne.

I don't know what prompted Stachniak to write another novel about Catherine the Great, Empress of the Night, but this second novel fleshed out all the missing aspects of the first one for me. One almost gets the impression that Stachniak felt she needed to rewrite the story from a different angle. It is written from Catherine's perspective instead of from the point of view of her personal servant Varvara, as is The Winter Palace. A review by Cheryl Girard in the Winnipeg Free Press calls this "the weakness of the novel." She writes, "Far too much time is spent dwelling on moonlight trysts and not enough on the historical accomplishments, politics and intelligence of the empress who was one of Russia's most influential female leaders." Perhaps the reviewer didn't read The Winter Palace, where Stachniak emphasizes all of that but neglects the emotional aspects.

Catherine the Great voraciously read the works of the French philosophers of her time and was idealistic enough at the beginning of her reign to try to emulate them and liberate the Russian serfs who suffered greatly and were treated like slaves. However, she was completely discouraged by her advisers from implementing these reforms and eventually gave up trying to do so. One wonders how history might be different had she persisted and insisted on these endeavors.

While I was still immersed in Russian history, someone alerted me to a fascinating memoir, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang (1991). The person who recommended this book was reminded of it after viewing a painting Ray Dirks did on his Road to Freedom exhibit of The Three Katharinas (pictured below -- my great-grandmother, my grandmother and my mother, all of whom were born in Ukraine and eventually found their way to Canada).

A blurb on the back cover of this book reads, "Wild Swans is a riveting account of the impact of history on the lives of women. This is a powerful, moving, at times shocking story of three generations of Chinese women ... ." -- Mary Morris

Wild Swans portrays a different aspect of Communism than the one with which I'm familiar. The author's parents saw the Communists as liberators from the oppressive Japanese, instead of as enemies as my parents did. However, even though Jung Chang's parents are completely dedicated to Communism, their view gradually changes as the novel progresses. The corruption rampant within the party offends their purist and idealistic version of Communism, which they have embraced with every fibre of their being. Because they are courageous enough to object to Mao Zedong's narcissistic style of government which is destroying their country once again, they are severely punished and the family experiences incredible suffering, as does the whole population of China. The courage and amazing resilience displayed by the author's mother and grandmother in the face of personal tragedy and great loss is almost unbelievable and a testimony to the strength of the human spirit.

Reading Massie's historical accounts of the Russian nobility, Stachniak's historical novels, and Jung Chang's memoir caused me to ponder my family's own personal saga. I was again struck by the two opposing forces so evident in history: the power to corrupt and the strength and stamina to withstand corruption. The main characters are these strong bigger-than-life women of endurance and great courage. They just never give up, no matter how terrible the circumstances.of their lives.

Remembering is a Way of Meeting

"Each time we embrace a memory we meet again with those we love, for the heart never forgets."

If someone were to ask me, "What was the saddest day of your life?," I would answer that question in a heartbeat, even though I have had many sad and many joyful days in the span of my seventy years.

The saddest day of my life was May 24th, 1969. That was the day we lost our first-born son, Harold Mark. It was preceded by the most joyful day of my life, the day he was born. Joy and sorrow, birth and death, so closely linked, so deeply experienced. "What is the meaning of it all?" I questioned sadly:

Blossom so white, so pure,

made to delight

with your lovely aroma and sight!

Why must you die

when you've barely started this life?

Harold Mark was born on a  cool dry-season day in Kinshasa, Zaire (now DR Congo), just outside the doctor's office, six weeks prematurely. We had one look at him just after he was born. Then he was whisked away to the nearby Catholic hospital and put into an incubator. Our hopes were high, but the next morning a nurse came with the words, "The sister was not able to save your baby." The saddest part about all of this is that I never saw him again. I never said good-bye. I never made closure.

Cut off too soon

from the root and the stem that bore you,

leaving it lonely and bare,

spilling its white sap-milk uselessly 

to the ground.

Our son's little grave was one of many fresh graves. Buried in this same cemetery were about sixty innocent young men, university students who had protested against the authorities and had been shot point blank. Every time we went to his gravesite, we were met by soldiers who looked at us with suspicion and asked us why we came there. I wondered if the mothers of these students were ever allowed to visit their graves.

Three months after our son's death, we moved to the provincial town of Kikwit. Friends of ours agreed to look after his grave.

We left DR Congo in 1984 and have not returned, but "the heart never forgets." Each time one of our three daughters left home, the sense of loss I experienced at the birth of our only son intensified. I knew I needed to make some sort of closure but I didn't know how.

It has taken a long time, but just recently the answer came to me and I acted on it. May 30th (my mother's birthday) dawned bright and sunny. On this day we remembered our son and our brother (who would be 45 years old had he lived) by planting a golden ash on our church property. Two of our daughters and their families as well as our care group and one of my sisters attended this ceremony. It was not a sad occasion, but a wonderful life-affirming time.

Our two strong sons-in-law and our oldest grandson helped our friend and care group member Edd lift the tree from the truck and brought cartloads of soil to pack around it.

The younger grandchildren sat around the tree and played happily, their bare feet digging into the moist rich soil. They were experiencing Harold Mark in their own way.

After we planted the tree, we had a short dedication service in which each of us had a part. We read the scriptures that were read at Harold Mark's graveside service so many years ago as well as a Bible passage that had become personally meaningful to us during that time. I also read a poem I had written; a sad little poem in which I questioned the meaning of this life-changing event:

Blossom, so white, so pure,

what were you meant to be?

Blossom, too soon you died.

The answer is lost to me.

Over the years I found that this life-shattering event could also be interpreted as life affirming and I could be at peace with it, but I needed something physical, something that I could touch and say, "This is in memory of someone who lived a very short life and might otherwise be forgotten." I don't want the event to be erased as if it never happened. Harold Mark is our son and part of our family and we want to remember that.

                    Together, our family vowed to remember:

                    At the rising of the sun and at its going down, we remember.

                    At the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter, we remember.

                    At the opening of the buds and in the rebirth of spring, we remember.

                    At the blueness of the skies and in the warmth of summer, we remember.

                    At the rustling of the leaves and in the beauty of the autumn, we remember.

                    As long as we live, you too will live, for you are now a part of us.

                                                                                    -- Gates of Prayer [Reform Judaism Prayer Book]


                                           

What a Life!

I have a confession to make. I love to read obituaries and I'm not dragging my feet about going to funerals anymore. Sometimes I think it must be my age. I remember when my mother would phone me and tell me that someone dear to her had just passed away and that she and dad were going to another funeral. 

Hardy and I are going to a lot of funerals now. Many who pass away are younger than we are. My sister, whose high school graduating class is celebrating their 50th anniversary this year, told me that nine of her classmates have died. We were both shocked!  We are still living life to its fullest -- learning how to use our new iPads, encouraging our children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, enjoying our hobbies, celebrating birthdays (there are so many candles on our cakes now!) and happy to have time for all of this because we are retired!

About reading obituaries -- it's not because I'm a senior that I enjoy reading them. I am interested in how people lived their lives, often so well and so courageously. 

For example, there is the recent obituary in the Winnipeg Free Press from a woman who was two years younger than I am. She wrote her own obituary, without a word about her disability. Her first sentence tells me that she had a great sense of humour: "I chose to write my own obituary, as it gives me the chance to have a last word." She writes about her life as "glorious" and "full" (this from someone handicapped who lost her parents at an early age). She writes how she "survived" getting both her bachelor's and master's degrees but claims she learned more from children with disabilities and their parents (with whom she worked for twenty years) than she ever learned at university. She did a lot of travelling and at the end she says she hopes that "each and every one of you make the most of every minute." She asks that donations be made to a memorial fund that helps the disabled.

O Love, that wilt not let me go, / I rest my weary soul in Thee; / I give Thee back the life I owe, / that in Thine ocean depths its flow / may richer, fuller be.

About going to funerals -- Hardy and I recently attended two, one from each side of our family. The deceased were not close relatives but people whose lives had touched ours over the years. 
Hardy's relative lived to the age of 93 and died seven years after his wife passed away due to the ravages of Alzheimer's. His casket was surrounded by his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, many of them weeping. Each grandchild placed a rose on his coffin when they entered the sanctuary. This man was an accomplished musician and an avid fitness and sports enthusiast, in spite of the fact that he struggled with obsessive/compulsive disorder all of his life (something we were not aware of during his lifetime). His children and grandchildren had many lasting memories of wonderful times they had shared with their Papa and Opa.

O Light, that followest all my way, / I yield my flickering torch to Thee; / my heart restores its borrowed ray, / that in Thy sunshine’s blaze its day / may brighter, fairer be.

The relative on my side of the family whose funeral we attended was 81 and had suffered from Parkinson's for the last ten years of her life. She was born in Ukraine and at eight, while visiting her grandparents in another part of the country, she could no longer return to her family due to the turmoils of World War 2. She met her father and siblings fifty years later, but her mother and brother had already passed away. Her grandmother, aunt and other extended family members adopted her. In spite of such a difficult start in life, she had a wonderful sense of humour and never complained. 

O Joy, that seekest me through pain, / I cannot close my heart to Thee; / I trace the rainbow through the rain, / and feel the promise is not vain / that morn shall tearless be.

Life is sweet and I want to enjoy every minute of it. So do our friends Klaas and Hinke from The Netherlands. We visited them in 2011. Now Hinke has the beginning of Alzheimer's. They go for walks and bike rides and when the weather doesn't allow it they attend concerts and go to museums. He writes that strength and courage come from friends, their congregation and their family. Klaas is an artist and has sent us several of his beautiful water colours (postcard size).

O Cross, that liftest up my head, / I dare not ask to fly from Thee; / I lay in dust life’s glory dead, / and from the ground there blossoms red / life that shall endless be.

The pastor-poet George Matheson (1842-1906) wrote the hymn which I dispersed throughout this post. As a young teenager I found a book about him in a dusty attic shelf and will never forget it. I cannot remember the title of the book and have not been able to locate it. It was not a true account but a fictionalized version based in part on his life. In the story I read, a woman who loved him before he was blind meets him again after his blindness, still loves him and wants to marry him. He doesn't want her pity, but she finally convinces him of her true love. In reality, the woman to whom Matheson was engaged left him because of his failing eyesight and he remained single for the rest of his life.  He wrote this hymn when he was 40 years old. It was 40 years in the making but took only 40 minutes to write. He didn't let his failing eyesight keep him in emotional darkness because he knew of a greater light that made his days brighter and fairer.