IT IS BETTER TO LOSE FOR WHAT'S RIGHT THAN WIN FOR WHAT'S WRONG

Does it bother me being a
loser? Yes, but I would rather
lose at something right than win at
something wrong

Unless God tells me otherwise, I have reached the end of my public speaking days. A couple of years ago, someone asked if it bothers me always being a loser?  Here was the post I wrote in response to that question.
https://www.humanlifematters.org/2017/03/someone-asked-if-it-bothers-me-being.html?spref=fb&fbclid=IwAR0ySooi-b3lLbT6529u00Yzq0uKiF7wth0HoZs9m4T_ts2dh6D_b9X27kc

Mark

EMBRACE THE SANCTITY, DIGNITY AND EQUALITY OF ALL HUMAN LIFE

Many years ago I was given a task: Tell whoever would listen that every life is sacred and deserves protection, care and love. I took that message across North America. I believe that simple task was my life's work. For whatever reason, God put me in a wheelchair to deliver it. That message has been given and now I'm tired. In one of my last speeches, I summed up the message:

“I am convinced that, if a society does not embrace the sanctity, dignity, and equality of all human life (and North American society does not), any barbarity is possible. A truly civilized society includes in its tender embrace every human life—every child developing in the womb, every person with a mental or physical disability, those with terminal conditions, derelicts, the old, and people who are not wanted or even loved by anyone. Impossible, you say? Perhaps, but I’m a sucker for hopeless causes. Maybe it comes from having what many consider a hopeless disease. Love is what defines an enlightened and civilized society. But love needs the divine. The brotherhood of man needs the Fatherhood of God. Love without God becomes selective, coercive, and arbitrary—turning the lives of the weakest and most vulnerable into hell on earth. Yes, I am convinced that human enlightenment is impossible without God.”

Leonard Cohen wrote a song called "Anthem." In many ways, it is an anthem for the past 25 years of my life. Love is a choice—it is the last chance for survival of our dying western Christian civilization. 

TRYING TO AVOID THE SHARP END OF THE NEEDLE IN CANADA

Canada has become a very dangerous place for the incurably ill and disabled. Last year more than 2,000 people were euthanized by lethal injection. Canada's so-called "Medical Assistance in Dying" is a euphemism for euthanasia. It is in such a climate that I asked the letter below be put on my medical file.

A MESSAGE OF HOPE FOR A TIME OF DESPAIR AND GRIEF

American bioethical thinker, Wesley J. Smith wrote a column for the National Review entitled "Canada Medical Doctors Kill Thousands in 2018."  He writes:

"Canadian doctors committed thousands of homicides in 2018. According to an interim report published by the government, in the first ten months of last year, doctors lethally injected 2,613 patients (with one assisted suicide) — and that doesn’t include the homicides committed by doctors in Quebec, Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Nunavut. 

This means well over 3,000 people are killed by their doctors each year in Canada, which — if my math is correct — is more than 250 a month, more than 58 a week, and more than eight per day. Heck, that’s about one every three hours."

What has happened to the beloved nation of my birth? We meet suicidal terminal and disabled people with lethal injections rather than palliative care and treat murder as though it is palliative care! Canada does not have assisted suicide, it has euthanasia! Before the brave and brutal 21st Century, killing was never caring. 

Most Canadians requesting and receiving lethal injections are within my age group. I am familiar with overwhelming sorrow and grief that can drive a person to want to die? I also know there is a hope that lies beyond the sorrow. Morning always follows the darkest night. 

And so I want to revisit a column I originally wrote twelve years ago for a now-defunct Canadian Catholic newspaper. I've updated it.

___________

Reflecting on the despair that can accompany loss, sorrow, and grief

Acquired and incurable disability is a lonesome journey. At the deepest point of
grieving, life can seem like an endless series of disappointments, accommodations and compromises, lost opportunities and closed doors, inaccessibility, and inexpressible sorrow. One can feel totally alone

even in a crowded room. It's not that friends are unkind, just hard to find. I know, I've had serious multiple sclerosis (MS) for over thirty-five years. I have been one of that "great family of the heavy-hearted" who must live with sorrow and grief of degenerative neurological or other disabilities.

Each night we dread making our way to the terror of our bedrooms. Darkness awaits to engulf a grieving person in fitful sleep-wake torment. A chorus of self-doubt, despair and fear whisper, "You are alone. You are a burden to people. They wish you were not here." It is then in what seems like an endless night, lying with wide-eyed fear, staring into the darkness, that a bed becomes a rack. The horrible truth of misfortune seems too great to be borne. Throbbing hearts lie open and like a gaping wound. Whimpers break into to sobs of raw, pulsating sorrow.

NO ENDLESS NIGHT

Grievers awake! Emotions are unreliable. They are apt to intensify the feelings of isolation out of all proportion! Tears can obscure vision and distort perceptions of reality. There is no such thing as an endless night. It only seems that way. The longest night must eventually give way to dawn. It is only fear and grief that tell us otherwise. Even the pitch black of Arctic winter days will, in due course, transform into a peculiar summer of midnight sun.

VICTORS NOT VICTIMS

Many people with profound disabilities have risen above their predicaments and the abyss of intense grief to great heights of human achievements—sometimes in spite of their disabilities and sometimes because of their disabilities.

Ludwig Van 
Beethoven

Perhaps the most famous example is Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770-1827). Most of his vast contribution to the world of music was written in partial or total deafness. George Frederic
Handel (1685-1759) suffered from manic depression. His beloved Messiah was written at the end of a depressive episode. John Milton (1608-1674) was blind when he wrote Paradise Lost (1667). Paradise Lost is generally considered one of the greatest epics in the English language. (Remember that John Milton also wrote Paradise Regained.) Elizabeth Browning was an "invalid and recluse" to use the phrase of one biographer.  There was nothing invalid about her! Her gift for lyric poetry is with us to this day and still enjoyed by millions of people. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was physically crippled by polio at the age of thirty-nine; Despite this, America's 32nd President led an entire nation through the Great Depression and the 2nd World War!

EVERYONE IS AFRAID 

Grief, sorrow and fear are not unique to people with severe disabilities: They are common to the human experience. Everybody is acquainted with sorrow (or they will be). Everyone is afraid. The boastful "No Fear" t-shirt is not true. With the exception of babies and small children, everyone has fears from the past and fears about the future.

Most people are afraid of serious in-depth self-examination because they might come face-to-face with inner-demons, character flaws, and emotional handicaps. They might be challenged to go through a difficult process of change. Some people fear being forgotten while others fear being remembered.

Some people are afraid of committing themselves wholly to love yet are afraid of being unloved. Many people are afraid of committing themselves to lives with purpose—yet despise those who do. Others are afraid of dying outside of God's grace yet refuse to truly live within it.

GREAT FAMILY OF THE HEAVY-HEARTED

Helen Keller

Helen Keller (1880-1968) went deaf and blind before she was two years of age. In a time when society restricted the lives of people disabilities—not to mention women—Helen Keller overcame monumental obstacles to rise to international stature advocating for world peace, women's suffrage, human dignity and civil rights for other people with disabilities. She once said:

"When it seems that our sorrow is too great to be borne, let us think of the great family of the heavy-hearted into which our grief has given us entrance. Inevitably, we feel about us their arms, their sympathy, and their understanding."

That's my point! All humanity longs for affinity and the understanding of others. All humanity longs for belonging. A young person grieving their paralysis from a recent spinal cord injury may not yet know it but their grief has given them entrance into that "great family of the heavy-hearted" that spans centuries. Those of us who are full-fledged members of that "great family" have the Passion of Christ as our chief example and inspiration.

AFFINITY WITH CHRIST

It is to Christ we can ultimately turn with the knowledge that his sufferings dwarfed all human pains and sorrows. There is no grief Jesus does not understand! Christ is the ultimate affirmation. He is the ultimate over-comer. He can change us, if we allow it, to become victors rather than victims.

A PRO-LIFE MOVIE SCRIPT

I have retired from public speaking but I've taken on a new project. Over the past year, I've written a pro-Life movie script loosely upon the events of my life. What am I going to do with it? Well, the next step is to find finances and expertise to produce it. That's my next task. I leave it in God's hands. See the story outline below.

JOURNEY TOWARD LOVE

Story outline

 by

Mark Davis Pickup

HumanLifeMatters@shaw.ca

This is a story about a couple’s journey through the tragedies of abortion and catastrophic disability. It is a story about love’s capacity to convict human hearts of sin, transcend regrets, grief, despair and defeat to find purpose and meaning in the value of life. It is a love story based, in part, upon my life.

Now, as an old man, I have written a screenplay loosely based on those experiences and the power of God's

love to transcend it all.  The script has the working title of “JOURNEY TOWARD LOVE.” It straddles 2 genres: Christian and Romance. The story spans nearly 5 decades (1969-2018).  JOURNEY TOWARD LOVE is a pro-Life story.

It follows the fictional lives of Dan and Laura Fraser from teenage lovers through the heartbreak of abortion and trials of their marriage after Dan develops multiple sclerosis.  Dan and Laura struggle to accept their new lives with his severe disability. At the same time, they see a slow North American drift toward assisted suicide and euthanasia acceptance for the sick and disabled. Dan becomes convinced he must speak against it. He and Laura travel across Canada and America speaking to politicians, schools, universities, churches, community groups, warning about the perils to the incurably ill and disabled (like Dan). Dan becomes weaker as his multiple sclerosis progresses until he is bedridden.  He loses everything, except love.  And yet, in the end, Dan and Laura are at peace with God and themselves. They discover, through their relationship with Jesus Christ, that the only thing that really matters in life is love (both human and divine). Laura continues to take the message to anyone who will listen that every life is sacred from conception to natural death.

TIME TO STEP ASIDE

I could barely get through the
presentation's Q & A

About a year ago, I delivered my last address after 36 years working for the pro-Life cause across North America. I was exhausted and stumbled through my presentation. (See link below)

It's time to step aside and let a new generation of pro-Life activists take the helm of this sacred cause. 

I will continue with the HumanLifeMatters blog and do other creative work.
https://vimeo.com/261214898