For Love and For Justice / Part 97 / Zabeth and Paul Bayne

Remembering to Live for the Moment
After an entire life of dreaming, fulfilling dreams, becoming educated, trained, working at a fulfilling career, making innumerable friendships, given great responsibility, having countless opportunities for growth and improvement and seeing many countries of our world, I find myself blessed.

Did I always live life, truly live it? I am not convinced that I have. I spent a lot of days and weeks getting life done. I probably theorized that the best use of my time was the work I did and the tasks I completed. I learned to become a stellar organized man, and effective administrator. Christine often reminded me to be more spontaneous. Perhaps I am being too hard on myself in this assessment yet I realize now that the best use of my time requires that I know what is most important and then give myself to that.

The lesson was reinforced on Thursday evening when I watched a reality TV show called “Live for the Moment.” This premiere episode featured a family of four, a husband Roger Childs, and his wife and two young sons. We learned that Roger is suffering from ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease). Customarily this disease that degenerates the body is sufficient reason to cast the sufferer into a permanent funk. Roger, however, came to terms with the truth that he would not live long and he determined to live the time he had to its fullest and to help his family make this time rich with memories. Roger chose to have his family embark upon his bucket list of adventures. In stepped a TV network and host Jeff Probst of ‘Survivor’ fame and the network’s funds to finance the realization of Roger’s many interests and dreams. For an hour my emotions were increasingly challenged as I followed Roger and his family to NASA and a shuttle launch, then an exhilarating ride in a fast jet powered L39 Albatross, then a reunion with a college room mate and a heli-ski experience and finally a reunion with long lost friends and family. This culmination revealed a Roger Childs ALS Research Fund, and $80,000 college scholarship for his boys and he was made an honorary aircraft Commander.

Of course Roger’s lesson to us all was that living life is about the small moments and keeping perspective that's important. If there is something you want to do, don’t delay. Do it.

All the while that I was personalizing this lesson I was also thinking about my friends Paul and Zabeth Bayne and the uphill battle they wage daily to fulfill their dreams and interests. They don’t have the option of spontaneity. They must be 100% committed to one thing and only one thing. They must do all they can do in the preparation of their case together with lawyer Doug Christie, to convince a Judge in a court of law, that not only are they fit parents, but also that the Ministry of Children and Family Development in British Columbia has erred in its seizure of the Bayne children and in their custody of the children for well over two years. When the gavel comes down sometime this spring, those three children must be awarded back to Zabeth and Paul. That is the moment for which they are living. That is the compelling perspective and the most important goal of their lives. Only when that happens will they truly begin to live.

photo credit: CBS

Morrie Schwartz and some Dying Wisdom for Me

I have no idea who gave us this book some years ago but I picked it up again to read portions. Today I have climbed back aboard my hobby horse of feeling sorry for myself. I live each day with pain in my arthritic hands but tonight it seemed to attack my right hand, my painting hand. I cannot grip a pen or a brush. This keyboard doesn’t require a grip so here goes, because Morrie helped me with perspective again.

The book I opened is entitled ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’ and it’s touchingly sad and emotionally educational at the same time. Morrie was a man who suffered and then died from the devastating neurodegenerative disease commonly called Lou Gehrig’s Disease but more clinically by the acronym ALS or Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Morrie, like all other ALS sufferers living with the disease became progressively paralyzed due to degeneration of the upper and lower motor neurons of his brain and spinal cord. Eighty per cent of people with ALS die within two to five years of diagnosis and so did Morrie - unable to breathe or to swallow. ALS has no known cure or effective treatment. For every person diagnosed with ALS a person with ALS dies. Approximately 2,500 - 3,000 Canadians currently live with ALS.

Morrie was a sociologist and a professor at Brandeis University. Mitch Albom, one of his former students, became a columnist for the Detroit Free Press after failing to become a pianist. After seeing Ted Koppel interview Morrie Schwartz on Nightline, Albom visited Morrie and thus began a series of visits on Tuesdays. Albom’s recount became this 1977 best selling book based upon Schwartz wisdom, experiences, quotations and conversations. It became a TV movie starring Jack Lemon in 1999. Morrie Schwartz wrote his own epitaph: "A Teacher to the Last." The excerpts are like everlasting and critical proverbs.

Morrie Schwartz Quotes
• After you have wept and grieved for your physical losses, cherish the functions and the life you have left.
• Dying is only one thing to be sad over... Living unhappily is something else.
• It's not to late to... ask yourself if you really are the person you want to be, and if not, who you do want to be.
• It's not too late to develop new friendships or reconnect with people.
• So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things.
• The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.
• When you look at it that way, you can see how absurd it is that we individualize ourselves with our fences and hoarded possessions.
• Learn how to live and you'll know how to die; learn how to die, and you'll know how to live.

GPS Application

James 1:2-4 “Consider it nothing but joy whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not deficient in anything.

ALS Society of Canada
Ted Koppel interview with Morrie
Ted Koppel’s last interview with Morrie