I’m here in lovely Omaha, Nebraska for the latest Luis Palau Festival (the “Heartland” Festival. There’s even a band called Heartland that’s playing, go figure!). The weather is nigh perfect, if a little hot, on the banks of the Missouri River just across from Iowa. I’m staying in a hotel right across the street from the massive, shiplike Qwest Center.
At the center this week is another conference, the Families Connecting With Families Conference for parents of visually impaired children. They’re here to listen to experts in the fields of “...education, psychology, social services, and medicine”. There’s all these blind children here, holding their parents’ hands, using their canes to probe and scout out the terrain in front of them, touching surfaces everywhere and basically drinking the experience in. I wondered what one child was thinking as she got on a crowded elevator with her parents: Who are all these people? Why are they standing so close to each other? This room sounds very small. That lady’s perfume is strong. Whoa! The floor is moving - I’m going up, up, up! I feel the door move, and there’s beeping. Now, people are moving around. They must like each other, to stand so close.
As I wandered through the vast Qwest Center, trying to find a way through to get to our festival grounds, there were various families walking about with their kids. I walked by one as one family went into a big room with lots of people and activity. The child exclaimed - without seeing anything, I assume - “Wow! I like this room!” Such complete wonder at their surroundings: the room tone, the air temperature, the scents, the people talking everywhere. Amazing.
When I was in college, I did a lot of work in a darkroom. After a while, I got very comfortable in that little space - I could operate in complete darkness by memorizing the layout and by touch. Can you imagine experiencing the world that way? Can you imagine what it would be like to be healed, and receive sight - having never had it before?
