Prayer...not politics

Terri Schiavo's Body
1963-2005

Terri Schiavo
1963-1990

Found this editorial in the newspaper today....

Editorial | Terri Schiavo Prayer, not politics


A few prayers on the occasion of Terri Schiavo's passing:

Above all, may her spirit rest in peace.

May her parents find strength and solace inside their grief - from their strong faith and from the many friends who have rallied to their side in this ordeal.

May her husband also be given space to grieve as he should, and to move past the abuse he has received without bitterness or reprisal.

May her funeral be the dignified ceremony of faith and bereavement that it ought to be, and not a politicized circus of protest and speechifying.

May other families who face similarly wrenching decisions about the care of loved ones find a way to make them without deep division, public rancor or courtroom fights.

May all Americans who, thanks to Terri Schiavo, have been pondering their own wishes for end-of-life care act swiftly on the warning this case offers about the risks of not making their wishes known.

May those who have sought to use this tangled, emotional family trauma to score political points stop doing so - and grasp how shameful their behavior has been.

May those who offered sincere public witness of their moral concerns about this case struggle to understand that other people of good will could disagree with them without being fanatics or immoral.

May the news media whose hunger to fill airtime leads them to exalt emotional and uninformed chatter over factual reporting learn to mend their ways.

May all Americans accept that no one person, political party or philosophy has a monopoly on understanding the mysteries of death.

And accepting that, may all Americans agree that we must listen more to one another, must work harder for understanding, must be as ready to learn as to lecture.

Let us not do this to one another again.