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I first heard of this as a Merrie Miss when we embroidered it onto a linen Articles of Faith banner. I put my school picture from that year over these words:
Quote:I Will Radiate the Light of the Gospel
My freshman year at BYU Eugene England handed the class this David O. McKay quote the last day before winter break. It was such a Merry Christmas Mormon-style moment:
Quote:There is one responsibility which no man can evade: that responsibility is his personal influence. Man’s unconscious influence is the silent, subtle radiation of personality–the effect of his words and his actions on others. This radiation is tremendous. Every moment of life man is changing, to a degree, the life of the whole world.
Every man has an atmosphere which is affecting every other man. He cannot escape for one moment from this radiation of his character, this constant weakening or strengthening of others. Man cannot evade the responsibility by merely saying that it is an unconscious influence.
Man can select the qualities he would permit to be radiated. He can cultivate sweetness, calmness, trust, generosity, truth, justice, loyalty, nobility, and make them vitally active in his character. And by these qualities he will constantly affect the world.
This radiation, to which I refer, comes from what a person really is, not from what he pretends to be. Every man by his mere living is radiating either sympathy, sorrow, morbidness, cynicism, or happiness and hope or any one of a hundred other qualities.
Life is a state of radiation and absorption. To exist is to radiate: to exist is to be the recipient of radiation.
–David O. McKay, BYU, 27 April, 1948
I just now read a 2005 quote from an Aaron Freeman that rounds out my group of three:
Quote:You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him/her that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let him/her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her/his eyes, that those photons created within her/him constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.
And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.
And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly.
Amen.
(And, P.S. – Thanks to all of you for the good vibes I feel at StayLDS.)
Quote:According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly.
As a wannabee scientist I really enjoyed your post. It’s never occurred to me that we as people should be blackbody particles sharing our energy with those around us.
On the other hand, you wouldn’t want the physicist to tell your spouse during the funeral that the same laws of physics say that disorder (entropy) in the universe will continue to increase forever until there is no life whatsoever.
President McKay’s quote is a cool way to say don’t hide your light under a bushel.
Wow and wow. Powerful pieces. As I read President McKay’s quote I found words to finally articulate my own faith crisis. For me, the religion and many of it’s people have lost their genuine radiation. I too have lost mine. It’s been covered over in doing the list. There is no time to cultivate, just do. Hawkgrrl has mentioned how we don’t ask cool questions any more. I note how we no longer encourage finding your path or personal mission. These things fueled our radiation.
Ann, you have brought a gift to me today.
Thank you
Such a wonderful uplifting post. You have such positive memories of the accursed linen banner! I got dragged out of my tree fort to work on my banner. I had to let lizards go. Again and again. I hated every minute of stitching. I had a paper route, a friend who raised horses, a bike, and a tree fort. My life was full and complete without a Merrie Miss Crewel Embroidery Project.
The nadir of the evils of the church correlation system are represented by that simple linen banner. They assumed all 10 year old girls would be equally interested in learning hand work. It was painful.
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