The Rules of Engagement

The Rules of Engagement

Within a short period of becoming Helen’s teacher, Sullivan was able to impart the concept of language to her, leaving only one educational moun tain left to conquer, which held the secret to unlocking Helen’s potential hidden beneath her disability: comprehension and the awakening to meaning. The turning point was when Helen saw the correlation between the water that slipped through her fingers and the word water she had been repeating. This simple but life-altering event made it possible for Helen to begin understanding instead of simply repeating what Anne was teaching her. Helen had been trained to repeat the word water, but it wasn’t until she combined the experience of feeling water and trying to communicate the word water simultaneously that Helen gained the wonderful gift of meaning and comprehension of language. These two elements, once kept from the education process, will keep a group of people unconsciously oppressed and believing that their oppressed state is normal. Up to that point, Helen had been like a well-trained animal, memorizing words, speaking them, and receiving praise from Anne. But now, suddenly, it came to her! The word water actually referred to, pointed to, meant the exuberant liquid that ran through her fingers. So the true and greatest casualty of spiritual warfare is not the human body, but the human mind. This is perhaps the greatest travesty of this weapon of mass destruction: the demise of the human soul. M isfortunes Misfortunes are circumstances that bring calamity, hardship, and diffi cult and challenging times. This weapon has a variety of faces, namely untimely deaths, loss of income, accidents, and economic hardship. (See 2 Kings 4:1.) M istrust Mistrust is a feeling of uncertainty about a situation or misgivings about a person or organization. (See 1 Samuel 18:1–9.)

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