A story from today's MercatorNet
As always, I walked with hundreds of others through the dark to the Cenotaph on a frosty morning. There was silence as people listened respectfully to a memorial service delivered by an elderly Protestant minister. He gave a short and eloquent address about the heroes who had died for Australia which managed to make everyone, both religious and secular, happy.
There was something quite eccentric about his delivery, though. Every couple of paragraphs there was an pause. It only lasted long enough to remind all of us how cold we were, but it was slightly embarrassing. Then he would embark upon another burst before lapsing into silence again. Finally, he concluded with an Amen and a reverent silence.
He added a personal note. In a quavering voice he said that this had been his last Anzac Day service. He was 85 now and had done it for 30-odd years. Time to pass the baton on to someone else. And then he apologised for those pauses. "It was so cold," he said, "I had to blow on my fingers so that I could keep on reading." Suddenly it dawned on me: the old man was blind and had been reading in Braille with his frozen fingers...
There was something quite eccentric about his delivery, though. Every couple of paragraphs there was an pause. It only lasted long enough to remind all of us how cold we were, but it was slightly embarrassing. Then he would embark upon another burst before lapsing into silence again. Finally, he concluded with an Amen and a reverent silence.
He added a personal note. In a quavering voice he said that this had been his last Anzac Day service. He was 85 now and had done it for 30-odd years. Time to pass the baton on to someone else. And then he apologised for those pauses. "It was so cold," he said, "I had to blow on my fingers so that I could keep on reading." Suddenly it dawned on me: the old man was blind and had been reading in Braille with his frozen fingers...