This photograph matters today for several reasons.

First, it provides a window into how dramatically our relationship with death has changed.

In 1898, death, especially child death, was an unavoidable part of daily life.

Most families experienced the loss of at least one child.

Mourning was public, formalized, and extensive.

Today, death has become medicalized, institutionalized, and largely hidden from view.

We have fewer cultural scripts for grief and less experience with loss, especially the loss of children.

The Whitmore family’s memorial practices, the doll, the formal mourning, the memorial photograph, weren’t seen as strange or excessive in their time, but as normal, proper, and necessary expressions of love and grief.

Understanding this helps us see that our current discomfort with these practices reveals more about our own cultures relationship with death than about Victorian morbidity.

Second, the photograph reminds us of the remarkable progress in child health and survival.

Clara Whitmore died of scarlet fever, a disease that is now easily treated with antibiotics.

In 1898, it was a death sentence for thousands of children.

The memorial doll and photograph are artifacts of an era when parents lived with the constant possibility of losing their children, a fear that while not eliminated, has been dramatically reduced by modern medicine.

Third, the photograph illustrates the universal human need to preserve memory and maintain connection with those we’ve lost.

While we might not create memorial dolls today, we engage in our own memorial practices, social media memorial pages, video tributes, keeping rooms unchanged, wearing memorial jewelry containing ashes.

The specific practices change, but the underlying human need remains constant.

Fourth, young Thomas Whitmore’s experience reminds us that children grieve differently than adults, and that including children in morning rituals can be both important and healthy.

Modern grief counselors actually recommend practices not unlike the memorial photograph, creating opportunities for children to acknowledge loss, express grief, and maintain symbolic connections with deceased siblings.

Finally, this photograph has personal significance for the Whitmore family descendants.

After Dr. Chen published her findings, she was contacted by Linda Whitmore Harrison, a great great granddaughter of Thomas Whitmore.

Linda had grown up hearing family stories about Uncle Thomas’s sister who died young, but had never seen any photographs or known details of the story.

Seeing this photograph and learning Clara’s story has been incredibly moving, Linda said in an interview.

For 125 years, this image sat in an archive unidentified and unappreciated.

Now, Clara and Thomas’s story has been recovered.

Their grief has been witnessed.

That feels important, like we’re honoring their memory the way they deserved all along.

The restored photograph has been added to the Library of Congress’s permanent collection of significant Victorian memorial photographs.

A highresolution digital copy has been provided to the Whitmore family descendants.

Thomas Witmore, the 8-year-old boy holding his sister’s memorial doll in 1898, died in 1962 at age 72.

He carried Clara’s memory his entire life.

Now, through the rediscovery and restoration of this photograph, that memory has been preserved for future generations, ensuring that Clara Witmore, who died at age 6 in 1898, will not be forgotten.

[clears throat] That cute photograph of a boy holding a doll turned out to be something far more profound.

A document of love, loss, and the lengths families go to preserve memory.

Clara Whitmore lived only six years, but through this photograph, through her brother’s grief captured in a moment frozen in time, her memory survives 125 years later.

Sometimes the most powerful photographs are the ones that reveal their true meaning only when we take the time to really.

 

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A revolution is underway in parts of the region.

A Jesus revolution.

And >> reports say tens of thousands of mosques in Iran have closed with millions of people leaving Islam to follow Jesus.

>> Unprecedented number of Muslims are forsaking Islam.

>> I want to begin by sharing something from the Bible that changed my understanding of everything.

It is from the book of Isaiah 19:es 23-2.

The prophet Isaiah wrote these words over 2,700 years ago.

In that day, there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria.

The Assyrians will go to Egypt and the Egyptians to Assyria.

The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together.

In that day, Israel will be the third.

along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing on the earth.

The Lord Almighty will bless them, saying, “Blessed be Egypt, my people, Assyria, my handiwork, and Israel, my inheritance”.

When I was a cleric, I read these words in my studies, of other religious texts.

I dismissed them.

I thought they were corrupted words, impossible words, foolish words.

Assyria is ancient Iraq.

ancient Syria, the lands where I come from.

How could we ever worship the God of Israel?

How could we ever be called his handiwork?

It seemed like a dream that could never be real.

But today, as I speak to you, I am watching these words come alive before my eyes.

I am watching millions of my Muslim brothers and sisters across the Middle East turn to Jesus Christ.

I am one of them.

And what I once thought was impossible, I now know is the most real thing I have ever experienced.

My name is not important.

Many people still want to kill me for what I am about to tell you.

So I must protect my identity.

But my story is important.

Not because I am special, but because I am one of millions.

What happened to me is happening to countless others across Iraq, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and every corner of the Islamic world.

We are finding Jesus, or perhaps I should say Jesus is finding us.

Let me take you back to the beginning.

I was born in Baghdad in 1979.

My father was a religious man, deeply devoted to Islam.

He worked during the day as a government clerk, but his true passion was his faith.

He spent his evenings at the mosque and he wanted nothing more than for his sons to become religious leaders.

My mother wore the full black abaya and nikab from the time she was a teenager.

She never questioned, never doubted, never wavered.

In our home, Islam was not just a religion.

It was the air we breathe.

the foundation of every decision, the lens through which he we saw everything.

I was the eldest of five children.

From the time I could speak, I was reciting Quranic verses.

My father would wake me before dawn for faj prayer.

While other children played in the streets of Baghdad, I sat in our small living room memorizing surah after surah.

By the time I was 7 years old, I had memorized significant portions of the Quran.

My father would beam with pride when I recited in the mosque.

The other men would pat my head and tell my father he was blessed with a righteous son.

When I was nine, my father enrolled me in a special religious school attached to our mosque.

It was 1988 during the Iraq war.

The city was tense, frightening, filled with air raid sirens and checkpoints.

But inside our school, we lived in a different world.

We studied Arabic grammar so we could understand the Quran in its original language.

We studied hadith, the sayings and actions of the prophet Muhammad.

We studied fick, Islamic Jewish prudence.

We learned the intricate details of prayer possessions, ritual cleanliness, and proper conduct.

I loved it.

I truly did.

This is important for you to understand.

I was not a hypocrite then.

I was not pretending.

I believed with all my heart that Islam was the truth, the final revelation, the perfect way of life.

When I prayed, I felt I was communicating with Allah.

When I read the Quran, I felt I was reading the direct words of God.

My faith was sincere, deep, and unquestioning.

The years of study were rigorous and demanding.

We would start before sunrise and often continue late into the evening.

Our teachers were strict, sometimes harsh, believing that discipline produced righteousness.

We memorized not just the Quran, but also countless hadith.

learning the chain of transmission for each one.

Studying which were authentic and which were weak.

We learned Islamic history from the life of Muhammad through the caliphates and conquests that spread Islam across the known world.

I excelled in my studies.

While other boys struggled with the complex Arabic grammar or grew bored with endless memorization, I thrived.

I had a gift for languages and for remembering texts.

By the time I was 15, I had memorized the entire Quran.

My father held a celebration inviting relatives and neighbors.

I recited long passages from memory while the guests ate and praised Allah for blessing our family with such a devoted son.

During my teenage years, Iraq was suffering under international sanctions.

The country was poor, resources were scarce, and people struggled to find basic necessities.

But our religious school was supported by the community, and we always had enough.

The mosque was a place of stability in an unstable world, a refuge from the chaos outside.

This reinforced my belief that Islam was the answer to all problems.

That if people would just submit fully to Allah’s will, everything would be better.

By the time I was 22 years old, I had completed my religious education.

The year was 2001.

The world was changing in ways we did not fully understand yet.

The Americans had just been attacked and soon they would invade Afghanistan.

Within two years they would invade my own country.

But in that moment in 2001 I was simply a young man who had achieved his dream.

I became a cleric, an imam, a religious teacher.

I was given a position at a mosque in a neighborhood in Baghdad.

I was given the honor of leading prayers, of teaching the youth, of counseling families.

My father cried with joy the first time I led Friday prayers.

I can still see his face in the crowd, tears streaming down his weathered cheeks, his lips moving in quiet.

Thanks to Allah for giving him such a son.

My mother prepared a feast that day.

Extended family came.

Neighbors congratulated my parents.

I was someone now.

I had status, respect, purpose.

I married a year later.

Her name was Zahra.

She was 18, quiet, obedient, devout.

Our marriage was arranged by our families as was customary.

I will be honest with you, I did not love her at first, but I respected her.

She was a good Muslim woman.

She kept our home clean.

She prayed faithfully.

She obeyed without question.

Over time, affection grew between us.

We had our first child, a son.

Within a year, then another son, then a daughter.

My life felt complete, blessed, ordained by God.

My days followed a pattern that rarely changed.

I would wake for fajger prayer at the mosque, leading the small group of devoted men who came in the darkness before dawn.

After prayer, I would return home for breakfast with my family, then back to the mosque for morning Quran classes with the children.

Lunch at home, afternoon prayer at the mosque, then teaching sessions for the teenage boys, evening prayer, night prayer, home to sleep.

Then the cycle would begin again.

On Fridays, I would prepare my kudba, my sermon with great care.

I would speak about obedience to Allah, about following the sunnah, the way of the prophet.

I would remind the congregation of the importance of prayer, of giving charity, of fasting during Ramadan.

Sometimes I would speak about current events, the American invasion in 2003, the chaos that followed, the violence between Sunni and Shia, the need for Muslims to remain faithful during trials.

I remember standing on that minbar, that pulpit, looking out at the faces of my community.

Men I had known my whole life.

Young boys who reminded me of myself at their age.

Old men whose fathers I had known.

I felt the weight of responsibility.

These people trusted me to guide them.

They believed I knew the truth, and I believed I did.

The American invasion of 2003 brought tremendous upheaval to Baghdad and all of Iraq.

The government fell within weeks.

The stable order we had known, oppressive as it was, collapsed into chaos, looting, violence, sectarian conflict.

Our city became a war zone.

Many of my congregation looked to me for spiritual guidance during this dark time.

I told them to remain faithful, to trust in Allah’s plan, to believe that the trial we faced were a tests of our faith.

But inside, in a place I barely acknowledged, even to myself, small questions had begun to form.

They started innocently enough.

I was studying a collection of hadith one afternoon in my small office at the mosque.

The book was open to a section about warfare, about how to treat captives and conquered peoples.

I read descriptions of violence that made me pause.

I read about the treatment of women taken in battle.

I read about executions and punishments that seemed harsh beyond reason.

I pushed the thoughts away.

I told myself that I was not learned enough to question these things.

I told myself that there was wisdom I did not understand, context I was missing.

I told myself that Allah knows best and who was I to question, but the questions kept coming like water seeping through small cracks in a dam.

I noticed things in my community that troubled me.

I saw how women were treated, how they lived in fear, how their testimonies were worth half that of a man’s in disputes.

I saw young girls married to much older men, their childhoods stolen in the name of religious tradition.

I saw the way we spoke about Christians and Jews, about kafir, about unbelievers.

We said they were destined for hell, that they were less than us, that their lives had less value.

I had Christian neighbors.

Before 2003, Baghdad had a significant Christian population.

They had lived in our country for nearly 2,000 years, long before Islam came.

They were Assyrian Christians, Calaldian Christians, ancient communities.

I knew some of them.

They owned shops in our neighborhood.

They were kind people, generous people, peaceful people.

I remember one family in particular.

The father’s name was Yousef.

He had a small shop where he repaired electronics.

My television had broken once and I brought it to him.

While he worked, we talked.

He was respectful, gentle in his manner.

He asked about my family.

He refused to take full payment for the repair, insisting on giving me a discount because we were neighbors.

What struck me was the peace in his eyes.

Despite everything happening around us, the bombings, the kidnappings, the violence, he had this quality of peace that I could not explain.

His children were polite and well- behaved.

His wife, who sometimes helped in the shop, smiled often despite wearing a cross around her neck that marked her as a target.

The violence against Christians in Baghdad intensified as the years passed.

Churches were bombed.

Christians were kidnapped for ransom or killed simply for their faith.

Many fled Iraq entirely, leaving behind homes and businesses.

Their families had owned for generations.

Those who remained lived in constant fear.

Then one day in 2006 during the worst of the sectarian violence, someone bombed their church.

It was a Sunday morning.

Yousef’s eldest son was killed.

He was 16 years old, preparing to finish his secondary education.

A bright boy with a ready smile, who had helped his father in the shop since he was small.

I heard about it that afternoon.

I felt I should go to offer condolences.

Though it was not common for Muslims to visit Christian homes in mourning, but something pulled me to go.

When I arrived at their home, I found Yousef sitting with family members.

His eyes were red from crying, but when he saw me, he stood.

He thanked me for coming.

He offered me tea.

I sat with them for perhaps 30 minutes, unsure what to say.

As I was leaving, Yousef walked me to the door.

I expected to see hatred in his eyes, rage, a desire for revenge.

Any father would feel this way.

Instead, he put his hand on my shoulder and said simply that he forgave whoever did this.

He said his son was with Jesus now.

And that thought gave him peace even in his grief.

He said he prayed that God would open the eyes of those who did this terrible thing, that they would find the love of Christ and turn from violence.

I left his home shaken.

How could a man forgive the murder of his son?

Where did such strength come from?

What kind of faith produced this response instead of the rage and vengeance I knew so well?

That night I could not sleep.

I lay on my mat, staring at the ceiling, listening to my wife’s gentle breathing beside me, hearing my children shifting in their sleep in the next room.

I thought about Yousef.

I thought about his peace.

I thought about his forgiveness.

I thought about the light in his eyes, even in the darkest moment of his life.

For the first time, a dangerous thought entered my mind.

What if they have something we do not?

I pushed it away immediately.

I asked Allah to forgive me for such thoughts.

I did extra prayers that night, reciting the Quran for hours, trying to cleanse my mind of doubt.

But the seed had been planted.

The dreams started about 3 months later.

The first one came on an ordinary night.

I had gone to bed after a prayer, exhausted from a long day.

I fell asleep quickly.

Then I found myself in a dream that felt more real than any dream I had ever experienced.

I was standing in a place filled with light, not harsh light, but gentle warm light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

In front of me stood a man dressed in white.

His face was kind, his eyes full of a love I had never encountered.

He did not speak in this first dream.

He simply looked at me, and that look went through me like water through cloth, seeing everything, knowing everything, yet not condemning.

I woke up with my heart pounding.

I was sweating despite the cool night air.

I looked around our bedroom, disoriented, trying to understand what had just happened.

Zahara stirred beside me, but did not wake.

I got up and went to our small bathroom, splashed water on my face, tried to shake off the feeling.

It was just a dream, I told myself.

Perhaps something I ate, perhaps stress.

The violence in Baghdad was getting worse every month.

Perhaps my mind was simply processing fear and trauma.

I had counseledled several families who had lost loved ones in the previous weeks.

Perhaps that the weight of their grief was affecting my sleep.

But the dream came again a week later, then 3 days after that, then again and again with increasing frequency.

Always the same man, always the same overwhelming sense of love and peace radiating from him.

Continue reading….
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