What Terri is Still Teaching Us

I was trying very hard not to write again about Terri Schiavo. I'd like her to rest in peace. I'd like all of us - on all sides of the matter - to take a deep breath and consider what more can be gained now that we've proven beyond a reasonable doubt that we don't understand each other. But news has momentum. The discussion is back 'on'. The battle is joined. So here goes.

My initial reaction to the release of the autopsy report is "so what?" The media is describing her brain variously as Massively Damaged, Profoundly Damaged, Severely Deteriorated, or my favorite: Irreversibly Atrophied. Why is that my 'favorite' [heavy sarcasm]? Because it implies a level of foresight and medical omnipotence that I've learned - through my brother's illness, through consulting work in the medical industry, and through talking with doctors who are my neighbors and friends - that the medical profession simply does not possess. Christ was irreversibly dead... until he wasn't. YMMV, but believing that allows me to approach my time in this life with a longer perspective and far more joy than I possessed before.

The best docs are the ones most willing to admit that they know very little about how the human body in all its complexity (to say nothing of the human mind in its infinitely greater complexity) really works. Yes, they know a great deal more than they used to, and that is reason to celebrate. But even that is infinitessimally small compared to what they wish they knew, much less what could be knowable. Vanishingly, humblingly, frighteningly small.

Miracles occur all the time. I can't locate the reference at the moment, but I recently read that religious faith - while generally much lower than average among people with graduate degrees - is much higher than average among doctors (on the order of 75% as I recall.) It is even higher still among those serving patients directly in life-in-the-balance situations. I know this is true for the most part, of my brother's docs and nurses and that is comforting. Some actually gravitate to oncology precisely because they sense a divine, unexplainable presence there.

So what does this have to do with Terri? A great deal. All the autopsy told us was that she had a small brain - smaller, we assume, than before she became ill. What the autopsy cannot tell us though, is how Terri's life and death catalyzed the love of those around her - and due to the media circus surrounding her forced starvation, those well removed from her. Terri's suffering had a purpose instilling hope and faith among many. I will admit that that hope was small, but the God I know doesn't care about the size of such things. He will blow on the faintest ember if we will blow with him.

The fact that some chose (and still choose) to spit on that hope - retreating to a clinically reassuring view that we can all wash our hands, or move on and say "we may have gotten that one wrong, but look over here at another case instead" is frankly, demoralizing. Science and faith often reconcile - much more often than the media like to portray. It's unfortunate that they're still being driven apart in this case. Terri's parents may seem irrational. Her defenders may seem dogmatic. But that does not change the fact that hope is prettier to look at than a report that reduces Terri as a child of God to the size and weight of the non-inanimate brain that allowed her to 'be' in this physical realm.

I heard a sermon a week ago about death and life in the spiritual sense that I think is applicable here. The pastor's point was that without Christ, being dead in spirit, we are no better than an inanimate arm severed from its body (or more humbly, perhaps a fingernail clipping.) It is only in that body that we - individually and collectively - have hope of being something much much greater. Terri's brain is nothing. It is dead. Terri, I can only hope, is gloriously alive - free from the prison of the body that once confined her... and confused us.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has more after taking the time to read the 39-page autopsy report, as does The Anchoress here.