“Our once great western Christian civilization is dying. If this matters to followers of Jesus Christ, then we must set aside our denominational differences and work together to strengthen the things that remain and reclaim what has been lost. Evangelicals and Catholics must stand together to re-establish that former Christian culture and moral consensus. We have the numbers and the organization but the question is this: Do we have the will to win this present spiritual battle for Jesus Christ against secularism? Will we prayerfully and cooperatively work toward a new Christian spiritual revival ― or will we choose to hunker down in our churches and denominationalisms and watch everything sink into the spiritual and moral abyss of a New Dark Age?” - Mark Davis Pickup

Thursday, January 23, 2025

STEPHEN'S REDEMPTION (A Christian 3-episode family-friendly TV or streaming series)



 


Logline: An autistic teen flees from his widowed alcoholic father and troubled home with nothing but a bag of clothes and his rusty old truck, leaving behind his champion horse,  in search of somewhere he belongs with his beautiful animal. Friendless and jobless in a new town, he eventually finds purpose and meaning and where he truly belongs with the help of a pastor’s daughter.


My grandson, Carson Pound (23) has Asperger's syndrome (high-functioning autism).* Despite this, God has given him with exceptional talent: Acting. (see his IMDb here). He has been in the acting industry since the age of 10. He recently developed an excellent story idea for a Christian family-friendly 3-part series for TV or a Christian online streaming service. Carson made a short video called Stephen's Redemption to help flesh out the idea in his head. See here

We are looking for someone to produce Stephen's Redemption. Investors are also needed. I can be contacted at HumanLifeMatters@shaw.ca or by telephone: (780) 929-9230.

Carson can be contacted by email at carsonpound100@gmail.com or by telephone: 1-403-470-2226. 

His agent is Diane Newton with City Talent Management in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Tel:  (604) 683-3990

* According to Iowa-based Autism Speaks, autism rates have been dramatically rising. One in 36 children and 1 in 45 adults are affected by it. Stephen's Redemption would be a timely and powerful evangelism tool. 

Monday, January 13, 2025

SOME GRIEFS FROM WHICH WE NEVER TRULY RECOVER

 I want to share a short testimony by Dr. Sheila Harding to the Catholic Health Association of Saskatchewan about Canada's descent into euthanasia acceptance. Her desire to see medicine return to its Hippocratic tradition reflects her optimism for the future. I am proud to call Sheila and her husband Terry personal friends. She refers to their son Ross whom I knew. 

A couple of years after Ross died at the age of ten, Dr. Harding met another Canadian stalwart against assisted suicide and euthanasia, palliative care nurse Jean Echlin. Jean was a beautiful old woman who lost a son decades earlier in 1962. Sheila asked the white-haired old woman when the grief subsided. Jean replied, "I'll tell you when it happens." 

There are some griefs in life from which we never truly recover. 

 Click the link below.



Saturday, January 4, 2025

KNOW THAT YOU ARE LOVED!

 My family has been unduly impacted by physical and mental disabilities. Multiple sclerosis, cancer, heart disease,
schizophrenia, bipolar and autism. Why? Why must we be brought so low, Lord? Maybe we are not “unduly” impacted by disabilities; perhaps they are necessary. God is not cruel. All I know is “that all things work together for good to them that love God, 
to them who are the called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8.28)

I tell myself, "Look for the good in life. It’s all around you. Look for the purpose of the heartache and heartbreak." It's one thing to say and accept it for myself, and my physical disability, but what about those I love who are being hurt and excluded due to mental disability? 

In some ways, non-visible disabilities can be worse than visible disabilities. See a man in a wheelchair and it’s apparent his legs don’t work and so allowances are made for him. See someone acting odd, or bizarrely and people pull back and distance themselves from the odd person who suffers from a mental disability. My long history of physical disability does not carry the same stigma as the mental disabilities of my child or grandchild. They are like two solitudes made apparent by level of visibility. 

That is the bad news, now for the good news. It is love (human and divine) that can build a bridge between the two. It is always love (divine and human) that genuinely builds bridges between people regardless of their state. 

It is love (human and divine) that desires to make room for others. It is love (human and divine) that builds human connection and solidarity despite heartaches and heartbreaks—especially then. It is love (divine and human) that makes it possible to find purpose and meaning despite suffering (perhaps because of it).

I know there is an epidemic of mental illness and depression amongst young people. The world can seem bleak. I know. We may not be able to change our circumstances but we can control how we respond to them. Imagine how things could be and may yet be. Assume an attitude of gratitude. Gratitude for what? 

Even with all their warts and blemishes you live in the greatest countries in the world. Millions of people want to be in America or Canada. They risk their lives to be here. You have access to clean drinking water, education, health care and education. Millions of people do not. 

If you think you are unloved, I want you to understand it’s not true. You are loved by the author of love and life. You have been loved since you were only a thought in the mind of God. He knit you together in your mother's womb and endowed you with His image and likeness because of His desire to love and be loved by you and spend eternity with you through His Son Jesus Christ!

Put a smile on your face, and in your heart. Assume an attitude of gratitude. Look outward not inward. Who can you bless, even if your own heart is breaking? Make the warm sun shine on someone else even if you are in the shade. 

I know it doesn’t seem to make sense. At 72 years of age and more than 50 years of my own suffering I have discovered that helping a fellow sufferer not sink beneath the waves of their circumstances was my best therapy. I discovered my pain paled compared to someone who had given up on life. 

With God’s grace, your heart can still smile again even in fear and sorrow. Clear your tears and put that internal smile on your face. Share it with those whose tears cloud their way forward. Help somebody see that the same sun that sets also rises for a new tomorrow. 

Life is worth living, regardless of age or stage. Look for life's sweetness. If you look, you will find it. As Josh Groban said in his song: "You are Loved (Don't Give Up)." If you do not feel loved or even wanted by anyone, you are loved by God. Click the link below.

Mark





Friday, December 13, 2024

A LONG AND WINDING ROAD FROM CHRISTMASES PAST

An excerpt from my upcoming book TRANSCEND: A Journey Toward Love 

_____________________________

My father & I in 

his store, Christmas 1958

  

My early childhood was idyllic. My parents loved me, my father indulged in us all and I worshipped the ground he walked on. My life was perfect ... until 1967. The photo below was taken in September 1967. 


Two months after the above photo was taken, my father had a major heart attack. He was urgently transferred by ambulance to the immediate care of the nearest heart specialist 100 miles away. A local doctor accompanied the ambulance to try to prevent him from dying en route.

The storm 

When my siblings and I arrived at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton, we were sent to the intensive care unit (ICU). We found Mom crying in the ICU waiting room. She told us that Dad’s doctors informed her that he could die at any time! It was like somebody kicked me in the head! Perhaps I had been listening too much to Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band album because I thought I heard the last prolonged piano dischord of A Day in the Life. Everything began spinning out of control.  It's impossible to describe the fear. That long night, Dad’s heart stopped and was revived three times.  


Visitation protocols for the Intensive Care Unit were restricted to immediate family members and only one visitor per hour for ten minutes. That meant I could see the hero of my life for ten minutes every fourth hour.  My first journey through the forbidding greenish-white metal doors with that terrible ICU sign above them was like entering Dante’s inferno.  As far as I was concerned, the sign above the doors may as well have said, “Dying Room.”  It was like an anteroom for the half-dead to twist and struggle against the clutches of their yawning graves. 

In the middle of the large Intensive Care Unit was a raised observation center for a proficient and aloof cadre of nurses and doctors to peer out over their subjects. They watched beeping monitors, examined charts and fanned out across the room to various patient’s beds. One side of the unit was for cardiac care. Other assorted life-threatening conditions lined the other walls.  The atmosphere was sterile in more ways than hygiene. It was like something out of a Robin Cook novel.[1] I walked past numerous beds, separated only by curtains and medical equipment until I reached my father.  I was stunned at the sight of him!   His skin was waxy grey!  Electric cardio shock must have been in its infancy because he had numerous marks on his chest as though hot stove elements had been held against his skin. 


Even in that very sick state, he kept up a brave and cheerful front, smiling at the sight of me. I had ten minutes in four hours to see Dad so I cut through the possibility of small talk. In four hours, he could be dead. I blurted, “I thought you were going to die!”  He became serious but with his usual unflappable way he said, “I thought so too, Mark.” His candour startled me.

“Weren’t you afraid?” I asked.

“Yes. I was afraid of dying before you kids are raised. I was afraid of leaving your mother to finish the job alone.”      

“Your heart stopped beating three times, Dad! How can you be so calm?!”

He looked at me intently and said, 


“I want you to understand that Christ was with me. Mark. We all must die. You can either die with Christ or without Him, but we all must eventually die.  This has been the point of everything I’ve tried to teach you, son. How you respond to Jesus Christ and His sacrifice at Calvary is all that matters when you die. I want you to give your life to Jesus and live for Him.”

Silence, then tears. 


Growing up in a Christian home, surrounded by Christians, I had often heard the familiar refrain, “Have you given your life to Jesus?”  As a child, I made a commitment to the Lord, but it was a cultural commitment of a boy who worshipped his father and wanted to please him, more than God.  Now my father was dying.


The sickly quiet of the ICU was suddenly broken by a gurney bursting through the doors with an entourage of medical people frantically working on someone. A nurse unceremoniously ushered me out of the unit.  I found myself standing outside the doors looking at some poor wretch’s wife with soggy cheeks. She had a lost, terrified expression on her face.  I knew exactly how she felt. 


Dad remained in the intensive for weeks (it seemed like an eternity). We watched other cardiac patients come and either recover enough to be moved to the wards or die. My family remained in limbo meandering in a shadowy nether land that swayed back and forth between life and death, alternating toward hope then despair, as doctors tried to stop the downward spiral of my father’s heart failure, and various related crises that befell him.[2]

The heart specialists worked valiantly to save Dad and their medical skills were spectacular: But I detested their detachment from the humanity of his suffering.  Damn it! It was not the patient in bed four.  It was my father! His name was Howard and he had a wife and a family who loved him.  Our hearts were breaking! He wasn’t the sum total of his electro-cardiograms, blood tests and whatever else was on his chart.  He was my father!


Heart transplant history

I should mention that the late 1960s was a revolutionary time in medical treatment of cardiovascular disease.  Open heart surgery was making major advances, the first coronary arterial bypass surgery was conducted in Cleveland, pacemaker technology was developing quickly, and on December 3rd 1967, South African surgeon Dr. Christiaan Bernard performed the world’s first heart transplantation on Louis Washkansky.  It was front-page news around the world! Sadly, Washkansky died eighteen days later just before Christmas.

Not to be deterred, Dr. Bernard performed the world’s 2nd heart transplant in early January of 1968, on a retired dentist by the name of Philip Blaiberg.  Again the daring of Dr. Bernard was front-page news. 

Back in Canada, the head of the cardiac team at Edmonton’s Royal Alexandria Hospital was a man I shall refer to as Dr. T. He called a meeting with the families of all the cardiac patients in the Intensive Care Unit and forbade newspapers or discussion of the Philip Blaiberg case because he didn’t want to see false hopes raised in his patients. Dr T believed that Dr. Bernard’s sensational transplant operations in South Africa were premature and doomed to failure because anti-rejection drugs were still in their infancy.   

Dad’s case was remarkably similar to Dr. Bernard’s first patient, Louis Washkansky.  Although we were warned not to get our hopes up for transplantation possibilities for our loved ones, it was impossible.  Desperate people grasp at any hope.

 

My father’s heart specialist had a god-complex.  His colossal ego was fed by an extraordinary skill of saving patients other doctors were losing.  Dr. was a blunt, egotistical rude man with an audacious bushy moustache. When he entered a room he expected its occupants to shrink back in awe and genuflection of his gigantic, superior intellect. His patients were a series of sustained arrhythmias, myocardial infarctions and faulty ventricles; I’m not even sure he actually knew his patients’ names.  They were specimens—challenges to help build his formidable reputation and prestige in the medical community.   

Dr. showed my mother Dad’s electro-cardiogram. Instead of explaining the medical problem, he announced, “That’s the heartbeat of a dying man.”  Good explanation. My mother broke down and cried like a mere mortal.  

The first man I saw die

One day while visiting Dad, a man three beds away went into full cardiac arrest. Within seconds nurses and doctors pounced on him. The scene reminded me of wolves attacking a crippled prey—except this pack was trying to save a life not take it.  It all happened so quickly that nobody had time to throw me out of the ICU.  A nurse made a haphazard attempt to close the curtain, but the patient’s feet were still visible.  I could hear shouts of medical lingo between doctors and nurses jostling around the bed, then the rude sound of electro-cardio shock paddles being applied to the man’s chest. His body convulsed! There was a pause, then, the paddles were put to him again, again and again! With each shock, his feet moved less. Finally, the medical team stopped their frantic work. Somebody closed the curtain around his bed and they walked away.  I watched the whole thing unfold with wide eyes and my jaw on my chest.  

It was the first time I ever saw a man die! I slowly turned to look at my father. I don’t remember what he said – or if he said anything at all – but we held each other knowing the next feet to bounce up off the bed might be his.  Perhaps we said nothing because we were at that stage of emotion when one dares not speak for fear of weeping. Besides, my ten-minute visitation was over. At the double doors of the ICU, I stopped and turned to look at him again, wondering if he would still be alive in four hours so I could see him one more time.  He gave me a sheepish wave and smiled. Such a terrible moment!  

It was one of those inscrutable moments in which we live a lifetime; a lifetime’s worth of love and sorrow – much of it still unlived – simultaneously flood our hearts. Our souls cry out in primal anguish, our pain throbs like a raw, gaping wound. Such moments are stark and terrible, yet to leave our souls unstirred would be a crime against our individual humanity.   

I longed to be far away in a boat bobbing on a lake with Dad in a cool morning mist like we used to do.  I think that moment was the only time I’ve ever heard the lonely call of a loon in a hospital. 

My dad recovered enough to live another two years. He died in front of me shortly after Christmas in 1970, as we were downhill skiing. I held him in my arms as he left this world for the next.

That summer the Beatles Let It Be album was released. It had Paul McCartney’s song Long and Winding Road. The first time I heard it I broke down and wept. 

I’m an old man now. It’s been nearly 55 years since I saw my father’s face. Yes, it has been a long and winding road since Christmas 1967. It won’t be long now before I see my father again.

__________________________________

To hear The Beatles, Long and Winding Road click here


Mark Davis Pickup



[1] Robin Cook writes medical thriller books.  His first published book was Year of the Intern (1972). At the time of my father’s heart failure ICU treatment (1968), Robin Cook was unknown. 

[2] When I was writing this portion of the book I consulted my mother, brother and sister to get their recollection of those terrible days. I encountered a curious response: They railed against being asked to drag up those terrible memories. My sister refused to revisit that time while my mother had distinct mental blocks. My brother had memories but was guarded and only offered clarification on one or two specific points. It was as though I asked them to recall a nightmare too horrible to contemplate again.

Wednesday, December 11, 2024

SELECTIVE HUMAN RIGHTS DAY 2024


 December 10th was international Human Rights Day. If abortion on demand is advocated by human rights advocates … they lose any authority for their virtue signalling. Do human rights include all human life or it’s just selective human life? The mantra of the left and so-called progressives of being “pro-choice” is the choice to kill another human being in utero. True human rights are never gained on the backs of another human being. 

To believe otherwise is ignorance, bigotry or sophistry. 

Any first-year biology student knows life begins when sperm fertilizes egg. Real human rights begin when human life begins. Period. Biological science has known this fact long before abortion became legal in Canada in 1967 and America in 1973.  Abortion advocates are conniving to return to Roe v Wade. In Canada every abortion is paid for with tax dollars, for any reason or no reason.

The 1959 United Nations Declaration on Human Rights stated:

“The child by reason of its physical or mental immaturity needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection before as well as after birth.” [emphasis added]

(NB: These exact words were reiterated in a 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.[1])

The 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights General Assembly declared in Article 3: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person.”[2]  The right to life comes first and that’s how it must be. All other human rights depend on the right to life. It is universal. That means everyone. The right to life is inalienable. It can be robbed from someone (in this case an unborn child) but it was theirs from their beginning, just as is it was/is or you and me.

The right to life must be the first and highest right and be inalienable or it can be taken away by a dominant or popular public opinion, a majority vote and a signature of a legislative pen, as happened in America, Canada and many other nations. 

If they can be trusted, which doubtful, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates there are 73 million abortions each year in the world.[3] The numbers might be higher; WHO also says in the same source document, “Comprehensive abortion care is included in the list of essential health care services published by WHO in 2020." Abortion is not health care. Not only is abortion the largest holocaust in human history, WHO considers it a “health service”. For whom? Certainly not the child!

So, we celebrated International Human Rights Day against this
barbaric backdrop, marred by the unprecedented massacre of unwanted children in utero. If we truly for universal human rights then include all human rights. Include all the world's children, including the protection and care of those yet to be born. Do not  betray their births. That's what universal human rights really means.

Monday, December 2, 2024

A CHRISTMAS GIFT FOR HURTING PEOPLE: THE BEYOND SUFFERING BIBLE

 

This Christmas the Beyond Suffering Bible is a great gift you can give to people affected by disability or chronic conditions who need the infinite hope only God can give to those who suffer.

This unique and critically important New Living Bible includes Book Intros, profiles, devotionals and connection points developed under Joni Eareckson Tada’s inspiration, hard-won insights, and oversight and leadership. 

The Beyond Suffering Bible was carefully crafted by her team at Joni and Friends at Agoura Hill, California in partnership with Tyndale House Publishers to specifically address the needs of people affected by disability and those facing chronic conditions. 

The Beyond Suffering Bible was first published eight years ago, and I had the privilege—at Joni’s request—to give input to its development. Upon its release, Joni sent me a copy with a note:

Dear Mark… I am so grateful for your endorsement and words of encouragement about the new Beyond Suffering Bible. … My heart is filled to overflowing with joy when I think of the many caregivers, special-needs families, people with disabilities and countless others who will be encouraged by God’s Word, as well as the many notes, essays and references in The Beyond Suffering Bible. … [T]hank you for being part of the team who is
helping to make this happen.”

Is there someone in your family or community who might benefit from the Beyond Suffering Bible? Order a copy today from Joni and Friends at https://joniandfriends.org/product/beyond-suffering-bible/ or a kindle version on Amazon. It may be the most significant Christmas gift you give this year. Click on the link below for a message from Joni at the time the Beyond Suffering Bible was first published—Mark Davis Pickup