Light Another Candle

What Jeremiah A. Disney Taught Me About the Light of Christ

Sun, 06 Mar 2022 04:58:23 GMT

"We must be grateful for the good precisely because of the bad."

My only acquaintance with Jeremiah Disney came through a Jay Evensen column in the Deseret News on March 21, 2019, and what I was able to find by googling his name and death date. He seems to have been one of those who pass through life almost unknown beyond a small circle of people. Until his death. Yet through him I learned a profound lesson. But first, a quick discussion of value.

There are a number of terms we use to describe value. Four of the most common are: exchange value, something used as a medium of exchange, such as money; utilitarian value, or value based on need. When you have a flat tire, a shovel has no utilitarian value. A lug wrench has a great deal; sentimental value , or value because of emotional attachment to a thing. And finally, intrinsic value. The word comes from Latin, intrinsecus, meaning inward, and refers to value springing from the real nature of a thing; not dependent on externals; inherent. Ths is the value spoken of by Jesus when He said that we are worth more than many sparrows. We are children of God, His sons and daughters, and this status establishes our value independent of any earthly standard.

Now, Jeremiah's story.

On Tuesday evening March 12, 2019 George Hollingsworth of Marion, Indiana noticed that someone had evidently been on rummaging through his garage, which like many of ours, was highly cluttered. The next day he decided to clean it up and see if anything was missing. That's when he discovered that a 900-pound antique floor safe, which had been elevated by a floor jack, had fallen over.

And the body of a man was underneath.

Mr. Hollingsworth commented, "I would have rather seen him steal stuff and get out than die like that. What a horrible way to die." The dead man was 28-year-old Jeremiah Disney.

Deseret News columnist Jay Evensen picked up the story and used it as the centerpiece of his column. What struck him most, beyond Jeremiah's tragic death, were the comments placed on Jeremiah's Facebook page. It was soon filled with cruel and derogatory posts, some highly profane, particularly toward those few who dared to urge greater respect for Jeremiah and his family. And yes, he had a family. He was evidently divorced, but had three children; Jeremiah, Aria, and Jacob. He had parents and four siblings.

Coming to know more of Jeremiah's history revealed that he had a complicated life, one filled with challenges. He had a minor criminal history that included some short-term jail time. There was a domestic violence charge. However, he had re-posted moving songs that had touched him, songs about Jesus, and he had written on his Facebook page, "God is on my side and he has a plan for me." Whatever challenges Jeremiah had faced, he was redeemable. He had intrinsic value. He had - even if only dimly - the light of Christ still in him.

A second tragedy in this incident was in the failure of so many to recognize this. To react to anyone in the way of many online respondents to Jeremiah is not just to deny that value or light in others, but to injure our own personal status as members of the same family in the process, to dim our own light a little. A boomerang effect. We can't reflect the light of Christ outward without having something of that same spirit return and leave an indelible mark upon us, a mark of goodness and positiveness. The opposite is also true.

As I thought about this story, I realized that variations of Jeremiah Disney pass through our lives almost daily. They might be neighbors, acquaintances, or even members of our families. They might be the person next to us in a checkout line, the clerk at the register, or someone we pass. Wherever we encounter them, they have remarkable value, intrinsic value, something to be acknowledged, protected, and magnified. As C.S. Lewis reminded us so powerfully,

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal ( The weight of Glory, emphasis added).

Not even a man like Jeremiah A. Disney. Watch for him.

Thankfulness

Fri, 10 Dec 2021 06:41:23 GMT

"We must be grateful for the good precisely because of the bad."

One of Josh Groban's songs that I particularly like is his rendition of a David Foster/Carol Sager composition, Thankful. The lyrics read in part:

Some days, we forget to look around us.

Some days, we can't see the joy that surrounds us,

So caught up inside ourselves, we take when we should give,

So for tonight we pray for what we know can be,

And on this day we hope for,

What we still can't see.

It's up to us, to be the change,

And even though we all can still do more,

There's so much to be thankful for.

Even with our differences,

There's a place we're all connected,

Each of us can find each others light.

So for tonight, we pray for what we know can be,

And on this day, we hope for,

What we still can't see.

It's up to us, to be the change,

And even though we all can still do more,

There's so much to be thankful for.

Maybe this song appeals to me because it reminds me of my too-often-failure to be aware of the remarkable things that are around me for which I should be thankful.

As well as those things beyond my sight that I hope for, all within the context of mutual connectedness and light.

Light.

The Light of Christ, on manifestation of which is the feeling of thankfulness or gratitude.

Admittedly, it would have been a little more appropriate if I had posted this in the days leading up to Thanksgiving. I'll excuse that slip by reminding us of the 365/24/7 need for thankfulness, while acknowledging the formal holiday of Thanksgiving as an especially appropriate time for increased awareness and gratitude.

And that increased awareness is needed in the face of efforts by some in the "socially awakened" generation to change Thanksgiving from a time of national thanks to a time of ignoring remarkable blessings in a display of national self-punishment.

A time of replacing the light of gratitude for the dimness of ingratitude.

Columnist Chauncey DeVewga, in a recent Solon article, became a little of a poster child for this movement when he asserted that,

"Historians have observed that America's founding rests upon two crimes against humanity: The genocide against First Nations peoples [Native Americans} and white-on-black chattel slavery"...

Without telling us who those historians are...

From my own lifelong love of history, I know that they are few, and that their efforts to rewrite American history are challenged by other historians as inaccurate and biased.

Recent comments by columnist Emily Jashinsky stand as a counter to these anti-thankful feelings:

"Gratitude is a virtue. It's moral and it's healthy. Thanksgiving is a day to practice this virtue, rendering the efforts to rebrand the holiday an attack on thankfulness itself. In times of war and times of peace, there is always reason for pain. That we have a holiday dedicated to gratitude does not invalidate any of these reasons. It soothes our pains but does not dismiss them."

Nor does it ignore the terrible scar on America's soul created by our treatment of Native Americans and our toleration of slavery, the shadows of which still haunt us.

But as Ms Jashinsky also observed, a national holiday of Thanksgiving does not mean that we should accept current injustices - of which there are many - or push the awareness of past injustices out of our collective or personal memories.

"Thanksgiving is not about a fantasy of perfection or revisionist history. We must be grateful for the good precisely because of the bad," and the reminder it gives us that we are nationally still a work in progress, that when viewed in total, there are reasons for thankfulness and the "hope for what we still can't see," in the words of our song.

Efforts to rebrand Thanksgiving as a day for rejecting customary gratitude in the interest of focusing only on evil, are immoral and unhealthy, both culturally and psychologically. If ingratitude characterizes an individual, no matter how aggrieved, they will be miserable and unproductive. The same is true of a country.

So, while willingly acknowledging that "we all can still do more," I choose to hold to the light of "what we know can be" and to hope - with thankfulness - "for what we still can't see."

Or maybe the fact that we have courage to hope, and continue to try, makes it visible after all.