‘Every Day Above Ground Is A Great Day’
By John J. Duncan Jr.
duncanj@knoxfocus.com
My late partner, Zane Daniel, was the life of every party without even trying to be because he loved and enjoyed people so much.
He was one of Tennessee’s greatest trial lawyers. Juries loved him, as did almost everyone who knew him.
I started to think about what I would write for a Thanksgiving column, and one of the great many things for which I am thankful is my relationship with Zane. He was so good to me.
Zane told me one time that “every day above ground is a great day,” then he added, “Elvis Presley would give everything he had to be here with us right now.”
Almost half the people in the world have to get by on $4 or less a day. About 70% have to live on $10 or less a day. Just to live in the United States of America is a very great blessing.
There are 8.5 billion people living in this world now. Probably half or more would come here tomorrow if they thought they could get in. This country – our entire infrastructure – could not hold that many.
In my prayer every morning I ask for many things: blessings for each member of my family, and for forgiveness, mercy, wisdom, and healing. But I try every day to do much more thanking than asking.
Several years ago, I read a book called “Harvard Diary” by Professor Robert Coles. In that book, he talks about a conversation he had with an African American Yale student from a very poor family from South Georgia.
The young man told Coles of going home to Fitzgerald, Georgia, to be with his family, and being “in church, and that means half of Sunday, and plenty of times during the week: the praying out loud; the singing at the top of your voice, with your heart open full … the gospel songs, our people trying with all their might to catch God’s ear …”
The young man added: “And up here at Harvard and Yale, He’s – well, He’s nowhere! Up here everyone is fighting it out – and what they’re fighting for is themselves! To be a god! Each one wants his followers and believers.”
The unnamed Yale student told Coles about his grandmother who said: “It ain’t no good, no siree, for us to be asking of Him, always the asking. We have to think of Him… to my grandmother, God is always Christ on the cross, suffering, for us! …my grandmother in church, calling to Jesus, loving Jesus, making that connection, every day of her life, making it, between His life and hers, believing in Him, in His love, in His compassion…”
Everyone gets hurt by life, and everyone has unfair, mean or unkind things that happen to them. But life is filled with far more good times than bad.
We all worry too much. I heard a minister say one time that he had a friend who said he had lived a life of terrible tragedy, almost none of which had ever happened.
We are all blessed almost beyond belief every day, and we all take some of our greatest blessings for granted. Think, for instance, about the gift of sight. Think about all the many millions through the ages who have been born blind or have become blind through accident or disease.
I have spent my life reading – in my studies, in my career and for pleasure. I am 77, and I am amazed and thankful that my eyes have held out this long.
Think about the millions who have been born deaf or who have lost their hearing. Think about the millions who have lost body parts or who have become paralyzed.
One day when I was a young lawyer, I was in a big hurry to file something at the old Knox County Courthouse. Just as I was starting to rush up a long flight of stairs, I passed a young woman in a wheelchair just as she said to the woman pushing her, possibly her mother, “Oh, I wish I could walk up those stairs.”
Many years ago, I used to quote a poem called “Lord, Forgive Me When I Whine.” It tells a story about a beautiful girl who had just one leg, a boy who was deaf and another boy who was blind.
My memory of how that poem ends is: “Two legs to take me where I go, two eyes to see the sunsets glow, two ears to hear all I should know, Lord, forgive me when I whine, I’m blessed indeed, and this world is mine.”
My maternal grandfather spent his career working for the University of Iowa, writing several books and hundreds of articles about Iowa history and government. As a hobby, he published a few books of poetry. My favorite is titled “Blessings Everywhere.” It ends like this:
“In our own beloved country, there are blessings rich and rare.
If you seek the good about you, you’ll find blessings everywhere.
So as through life we journey, let us pause to meditate,
on the blessings that surround us – blessings small and blessings great.
Blessings that we may well cherish, wherever we may roam,
And the many, many blessings that we have right here at home.”
Happy Thanksgiving.
