May 2019 newsletter

House-to-House

 Family of Hope House Church                                May 2019

Awl           

by Minor Junior Smith, a blind poet and author at Deerfield Correctional Center who is still waiting for his well-deserved parole release.

An awl is a tool for piercing holes, particularly in leather. It is a simple metal shaft, with a knob of wood for a handle, polished by its fit in the sinewy cradle of a leather worker's palm.

   It is likely the tool with which Louis Braille blinded himself as a three-year-old child in France, in an accident in his father's saddle making shop in the early nineteenth century. (1) Braille later invented a system of raised dots as a means of reading and writing for the blind. 

   We don't know whether he was in the shop with his father or alone, whether it was a damp and rainy day, or whether the sun shone and brought to life the floating dust that always hung in the workshop air.

   Maybe it was just a little poke in the eye with this small tool, a small slip of the hand, a small injury, a little fumble that resulted in his blindness.

   This was decades before general anesthesia or antiseptics. Perhaps the doctor they rushed him to believed n the value of "laudable pus" in a wound. I don't want to picture it.

   And as a child in his father's saddle-making shop, did Louis Braille already know the names of the parts of a saddle: pummel, stirrup, tree? Did he know the smell and feel of each grade of leather? 

   Of all the tools, punch and pincers, gauge and groover, chisel and awl, he chose awl. 

   Was it an accident that the tool I used at the blind school in Staunton, Virginia, for pressing hand-punched Braille dots was like a blunt, very small awl?      

(1) Braille’s injured eye developed an infection that spread to his other eye, eventually causing totally blindness. At first he didn't realize he had lost his sight, and kept asking why it was always so dark.

Notes, Prayers and Praises

• MAY BIRTHDAY BLESSINGS to Margie Vlastis 5/1, Alma Jean Yoder 5/15 and Karen Soich 5/20!
• A MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR BERTHA SWARR will be held at the Ridgeway Mennonite Church at 11 am Saturday, May 11.
• NEAL NELSON’s new address is Envoy of Staunton, Rm. 311b, 512 Houston Street Staunton, VA 24402  Neal loves getting cards!
• LOIS RIVERA-WENGER has invited us to her home for a picnic meal and for our service on May 26!

May Lectionary Texts

5   Acts 9:1-20     Psalm 30 Revelation 5:11-14     John 21:1-19

12 Acts 9:36-43   Psalm 23 Revelation 7:9-17     John 10:22-30

19 Acts 11:1-18   Psalm 148 Revelation 21:1-6     John 13:31-35

26 Acts 16:9-15   Psalm 67 Revelation 21:10 -22:5   John 14:1-29

May services, worship at 4, meal at 6 pm

5 Location: Park Place meeting room, 2nd floor                         432-0531

Worship and sharing: James Stauffer

Bible Study: Biblical Drama! Guy: A Dramatic Conversion, Elly: A Dramatic Rescue, Jim: A Dramatic Restoration, Dick: A Dramatic Outpouring of Worship     No meal   

12 Location: Guy & Margie Vlasits 3399  Caverns Drive          908-0391    
Worship and Sharing: Harvey Yoder

Bible Study: Kent Palmer                                                      Carry-in meal 
                   

19 Location: Lewis & Mary Ellen Overholt   Heritage Haven   432-7277  
Worship and Sharing: Elly Nelson

Bible Study: Lewis Overholt                                             Brown bag meal

26 Location: Lois Rivera-Wenger 204 Homes Lane 22401 502-663-3195       

Worship and Sharing: Lois River-Wenger                                           

Bible Study: Harvey Yoder                                         Carry-in-picnic-meal