Our community recently hosted a fascinating person at our dinner table.

His name is Norm Jones, and he and his wife are both artists. She is a painter and he is an actor and director. Norm is highly accomplished and respected in his field. He has written, performed, and acted in countless plays. He commissioned Cry Innocent, the longest continuously-running show north of Boston that has been featured on the Discovery Channel, the Travel Channel, A&E, Nickelodeon, TLC, NPR, BBC, CNN and MTV.

But for Norm Jones, each day he can see his wife’s artwork or use his gifts is precious, because Norm is going blind.

But losing his vision has caused him to see some things more clearly. “As my vision of myself as person is being revised,” Norm said, “I'm learning to accept the difficult lesson of being more dependent on other people and on God.”

Norm now walks with a white cane, a step of dependence that was difficult for him to take at first. But he found that embracing the cane brought more opportunities than he ever would have imagined.

“Watch this,” Norm whispered to Joel and I as we headed out of a crowded room. People came scurrying to open the door, to help us hold things, to assist. Because of his cane, a visible sign of dependence on others, Norm has been able to connect with people more quickly and easily than ever before in his life.

What really struck me about Norm was his open posture, his readiness to share his own story and to connect it to the stories of those around him. He’s one of those people who lives in a beautiful balance between childlike wonder and depth of thought and meaning. He finds God in the beauty of the ordinary. In fact, after spending some time with him, I started to wonder if Norm was actually seeing more than I was.

I hope we can drink in these true words from him:

“Share your own imperfections-your hurt, your loss, your grief--with the hurting, grieving Body of Christ, in whom God's perfect Spirit dwells; who--despite us and because of us--God uses to speak to one another through His grace.”

For more of his story, read the article he wrote, “Visions and Revisions: The Journey of an Artist Losing His Eyesight”

“http://www.gordon.edu/article.cfm?iArticleID=540&iReferrerPageID=2114&iPrevCatID=94&bLive=1