MARK 9:33-37

I am holding up a story-teller doll. These dolls come from the Indian tribes of the Southwest. Nancy collected these, and had a number of varying sizes. She loved these dolls. Why? Because the dolls captured what she believed not only about religious education, but about life itself. NANCY HUBER was a great religious educator of deaf children. She believed it was not enough to tell children ABOUT God, Jesus,Bible, the Church. It was even more important to tell them the stories of God,Jesus, Bible, and the Church. However, for her, the more important part of that process was to tell HER story, HER part of the story of Faith. The doll with the adult seated, having children hanging on, represented to Nancy that children did, indeed, "hang onto" our stories and learn from them. Yet, the real genius of NANCY HUBER was her understanding that after you told your story of faith, you needed then to let the children tell THEIR story about God to you. For Nancy, the whole enterprise of teaching religion to children was an ongoing dialogue of mutual storytelling. Nancy believed that in that sharing, one learned how to communicate with children in a unique way. Someone once told Nancy that she was a great teacher. She said, "no, I'm just a good listener." For some of us that is an ironic remark, since we all know how much Nancy loved to talk!
Still, it was Nancy's love of "the story" that drove her through life. She was fascinated with the geneaology of her family,"the story" of her roots.. (What else would drive someone to spend her vacations in the basement of the library and city hall of Altoona, PA!) She loved to teach others how to research their family stories. Nancy would go to conferences and come back with pages and pages of notes. She would then dutifully transcribe them, and share them with everyone. She was incredibly generous in giving her time and expertise to others. Often, teachers and education specialists from public schools would call Nancy and say, "Nancy, I have a kid with a kind of deafness I have never seen." After a few questions(well, in Nancy's case, more than a few!), she would pause to think, then she'd say, "wait a minute, I remember a research paper done ten years ago from...Ukraine,Israel, Malaysia(she had all these!!!!!)- about this." She would then dig it up and make sure to send it to the person who called.
I remember one day, Nancy walked into my office with that smile she often wore. She said, "I just got off the phone with a Muslim mother who has a deaf daughter and wanted to know how to do religious education with her." I looked at her and said, "Nancy, I don't think that's in your job description." She just looked at me and with a wink responded, "Joe, most of what I do is not in any job decription."
How true! Nancy interpreted in sign-langauge the birth of babies for deaf moms; signed Baptisms, weddings,First Communions, wakes and funerals; she fought alongside deaf people for their rights; advocated for deaf children and their families; taught the hearing parents of deaf children how to communicate; would stay up half a night as some person poured out his or her story of grief, despair, and dark loneliness; and did not know how to say "no" to anyone who came to her asking for help.
What fueled all this was her deep and incredibly strong Faith in the "story" of Jesus Christ and His Church. She worshipped in this chapel for many years, hungering for the Eucharist; she fed her soul with the God's Word in the Bible; her own personal life of prayer was on-going and deep. She truly believed in God's love for her. In and through Nancy Huber's life, she helped us find that same love of God, in the "story" of His love revealed in the story of our own lives.