A Notice About Fall 2015 Availability

If you contact me this Fall, please note that I am away on a 40 day retreat and am entirely off of e-mail, phone, Facebook, etc.  I will begin reading and responding to messages the week of Monday, November 16.

If you write to inquire about scheduling me to give a presentation, I will respond as specified above; in the meantime, you can see my upcoming schedule so far here.  

If you write to inquire about my book, it is scheduled to be released in January 2016.  More information is here.

And finally, some words for reflection: "The life of action ought to flow from the contemplative life... 'Before allowing his tongue to speak,' says St. Augustine, 'the apostle should lift up his thirsting soul to God, in order to give forth what he has drunk in, and pour forth that with which he is filled.' ...Is there anyone who does not know St. Bernard’s saying, to apostles: 'If you are wise, you will be reservoirs and not channels.'...The channels let the water flow away, and do not retain a drop. But the reservoir is first filled, and then, without emptying itself, pours out its overflow, which is ever renewed, over the fields which it waters. ...As a mother cannot suckle her child except in so far as she feeds herself, so confessor, spiritual directors, preachers, catechists, professors must first of all assimilate the substance with which they are later to feed the children of the Church. Divine truth and love are the elements of this substance. But the interior life alone can transform divine truth and charity in us, to a truly lifegiving nourishment for others." -The Soul of the Apostolate, By Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard, O.C.S.O. 

God bless you, 
Stephanie Gray!

Suffering Unleashes Love

On September 12, 2015, I gave a presentation (called "Love Unleashes Life") at Calgary's 40 Days for Life formation afternoon.  In that presentation, I quoted from St. John Paul II's "Salvifici Doloris" (On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering).  He wrote,

"We could say that suffering . . . is present in order to unleash love in the human person, that unselfish gift of one’s 'I' on behalf of other people, especially those who suffer. The world of human suffering unceasingly calls for, so to speak, another world: the world of human love; and in a certain sense man owes to suffering that unselfish love that stirs in his heart and actions."

The wonderful Victor Panlilio kindly recorded my presentation, and this (above) is a one and a half minute clip he put together.

Frequently Asked Questions About Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide, by Stephanie Gray

Image Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Syringe2.jpg

With various countries facing the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide, it is important for people of good will to be able to winsomely articulate why these are not moral.  Click here to read a PDF of Frequently Asked Questions About Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide.

The Garden of Stephen, by Stephanie Gray

“The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature.  To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body, but the soul.” –Alfred Austin

A garden is a teacher of life’s great lessons; namely, that variety breeds beauty, that good fruit is born of hard work, and that nature has its own rhythm to be trusted.  My father’s garden is set apart in its manifestation of these.

With a house sitting on almost a quarter acre of land, Pops, as I affectionately call my father, had a good chunk of space to work with.  Growing up, our backyard was simple: a large stretch of green grass and a long, rectangular plot of dirt for growing vegetables.  But when Pops retired, he transformed the plain, practical space into a living masterpiece. 

Variety

A garden is made more beautiful by a variety of plants and trees—it’s the many different colors and kinds that make it so attractive.  It’s a bit like our world—if everyone were a cardboard cutout of each other, how boring it would be!  It’s our different personalities, ethnicities, and idiosyncrasies that make the world interesting and exciting.  So too with Pops’ garden, which has as its pinnacle the pink magnolia tree, shading the area where we gather: “the red square” (dubbed so for its brick base).  Transplanted from the front yard, and dotted throughout the oasis of the backyard, are pink, purple, and blue hydrangea bushes.

Narrow pathways of the green lawn wind around the now-colorful space, lined with phlox, roses, rhododendrons, a Japanese willow, evergreens, a cherry tree, english laurel, lilac, yellow forsythia, potentillas, red and pink weigela, echinacea, and a diversity of bushes from Rose of Sharon, to viburnum, camellia, and spirea, and, even, heavenly bamboo.

Hard Work

One of the things I love about Pops is that he’s a fighter—it’s a tribute to his Scottish nature, for there’s naturally a bit of “Braveheart” in every Scot’s blood.  His determination and sheer will power conquered his lack of knowledge when it came to gardening.

Pops is self-taught.  To him, not knowing something isn’t an obstacle; it’s an opportunity to learn.  As retirement brought a slower pace of life, Pops took the time to teach himself how to garden.  Reading gardening magazines and looking at pictures would give him some ideas.  Others came from his imagination—and creativity and hard work brought things to life.

I asked him how he knew what to do, and he said from his study along with simply planting at his own discretion, learning another life lesson: the need to be flexible.  Pops told me, “Sometimes you realize, like all gardeners do, that you plant stuff in the wrong place, and so you have to change it around, but that’s trial and error and learning from experience.  Some plants like shade and some plants like sun, and just like humans they need to be fed, as well as get haircuts (pruning!).”

It took years of persistence, “practice making perfect,” and the reality of time for the garden to take on a life of its own, but now it is a magnet for those desiring to be surrounded by beauty.

Nature

I asked pops what gardening taught him, and he said, “The amazing hardiness of creation.”  When I asked him what he liked most about his garden, he explained, “Seeing all the flowers and trees bloom in the spring.  You look in the winter and think everything is dead and think it won’t come back again, but in the Spring you wander around and you see signs of life coming from the earth and all of a sudden, one day, it just shoots into bloom.”

I think we need to trust nature more.  In a world of technology, we often attempt to change the natural instead of letting it be, letting it teach us to weather storms and embrace changing seasons.  That’s not to say all things natural should be left wild—pruning is important, but it is to say that life has its own rhythms and routines worth embracing and growing from.

Immersing oneself in nature affords an opportunity to reflect on this.  And a garden, in particular, attracts contemplative souls to such musings, as well as to embrace nature’s beauty, something Pops’ garden does naturally, drawing birds and insects of all kinds along with Pops’ family and friends.

In fact, if the flowers, bushes, and trees of the Garden of Stephen could talk, they would tell tales of countless souls that have basked in its serenity, ladies who have enjoyed tea time, hummingbirds who have drunk from its nectar, and children who have played amidst its magic.  It is a sight to behold and a work of art to experience.

“Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.” –Luther Burbank

It's Not About Conscience, It's About the Nature of the Healing Profession, by Stephanie Gray

With today’s news that the Canadian Medical Association has voted to reject a motion that would protect the conscience rights of physicians who refuse to refer patients to die by euthanasia, panic and fear is likely to set in with some pro-life physicians.*

“Well, if I’m forced to refer for euthanasia then I can no longer practice as a doctor,” some might say.

Not true.  We create a false dilemma by saying there are only two options: Either I refer for euthanasia or I don’t practice as a doctor.  No.  There is a third option: You practice as a physician and you do not refer for euthanasia.  Let me explain.

I have never been a fan of emphasizing “conscience” as one’s argument for doctors avoiding practices that simply aren’t good medicine.  I have written on this before regarding abortion and that can be viewed here.  Emphasizing conscience has the risk of marginalizing true, ethical physicians, putting them on the “fringe,” as though pro-life doctors are somehow different from the average doctor because they have a “conscience” that tells them something that is different from what “real” medicine would do.  That is not the case. 

Real medicine heals, not kills. 

Real medicine alleviates suffering without eliminating sufferers.

Real medicine addresses the underlying motivation for someone’s request to die (e.g., administering pain medicine, giving love and attention to the lonely), rather than responding at a surface level.

Real medicine believes we should “do no harm.”

Real medicine heeds the Canadian Medical Association’s Code of Ethics which says, “Practise the profession of medicine in a manner that treats the patient with dignity and as a person worthy of respect.  Provide for appropriate care for your patient, even when cure is no longer possible, including physical comfort and spiritual and psychosocial support.”

Real medicine remembers it was less than a century ago when physicians were lead killers during the Holocaust, killing not only Jews, but also the elderly and disabled, the individuals they categorized as “lives unworthy of life.”

Real medicine remembers the words of Holocaust-survivor Elie Wiesel whose essay, incidentally titled, “Without Conscience,” was published in 2005 in the New England Journal of Medicine and read by UBC medical students in which he writes, “[I]nstead of doing their job, instead of bringing assistance and comfort to the sick people who needed them most, instead of helping the mutilated and the handicapped to live, eat, and hope one more day, one more hour, doctors became their executioners…Why did some know how to bring honor to humankind, while others renounced humankind with hatred?  It is a question of choice.  A choice that even now belongs to us—to uniformed soldiers, but even more so to doctors.  The killers could have decided not to kill.”

Real medicine simply does not kill.

Instead of emphasizing conscience, we need to emphasize what the nature of the healing profession is all about.  We have to show it is simply not good medicine to kill a patient.  Instead of saying, “I do not refer for euthanasia because my conscience tells me not to,” a pro-life physician should declare, “I do not refer for euthanasia because it is not good medicine.  I do not refer for euthanasia because it goes against the nature of the healing profession.  I do not refer for euthanasia because as a physician I am called to do no harm and I would be violating that command.”  At this link I have developed an apologetic to help guide physicians to articulate why euthanasia is not the proper response, and what, in fact, is.

To my many dear, and some of my closest, friends who are physicians: Do not let this decision discourage you.  Let it empower you.  Let it embolden you.  Get ready to love your patients like you’ve never loved before, and get ready to fight your medical establishment like you’ve never fought before.

If the day will come when you no longer practice as a physician, may it be because your license was taken from you, not because you voluntarily walked away.  Do not walk away.  If the day will come when you no longer practice as a physician, may it be because you were literally dragged from doing so, not because you willingly left.  Do not willingly leave.  

If the day will come when any of this happens, our attitude must be to look at it, not as the end, but as a beginning, to get creative about how physicians can practice as doctors and do the right thing, regardless of the environment one is in--just as others in the past who have lived through human rights violations have done.   Never give up. 

Patients who are truly loved and cared for physically, emotionally, and spiritually are unlikely to request euthanasia.  So do your job and let the lawyers who exist to defend you (here  and here) do theirs.

What the great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once said, in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, about the early church is as a relevant to the civil rights activists of his day as it is relevant to the pro-life physicians of our day:

“There was a time when the church was very powerful -- in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being ‘disturbers of the peace’ and ‘outside agitators.’ But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were ‘a colony of heaven,’ called to obey Gad rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be ‘astronomically intimidated.’ By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.”

If we are going to bring an end to the present-day evil of killing the weak and vulnerable, we will not only have to capture the sacrificial and courageous spirit of the early Church, but we will need to be prepared for an epic battle.  That is what happens when the Culture of Life clashes with the Culture of Death.  But we need not be afraid, because we are people of hope.  And as the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus once said,

“Hope is a virtue of having looked unblinkingly into all the reasons for despair, into all of the reasons that would seem to falsify hope, and to say, 'Nonetheless Christ is Lord. Nonetheless this is the story of the world. Nonetheless this is a story to which I will surrender myself day by day.' Not simply on one altar call, but as the entirety of one's life, in which every day is a laying of your life on the altar of the Lord Jesus Christ being offered up in perfect sacrifice to the Father.

“And will we overcome? Will we prevail? We have overcome and have prevailed ultimately because He has overcome and He has prevailed. There are days in which you and I get discouraged. On those days I tell myself — I suppose almost every day I tell myself, sometimes several times a day — those marvelous lines from T. S. Eliot's 'East Coker,' where Eliot says, 'For us there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.'

“For us there is only the trying. The rest is not our business. Some people read those lines as lines of resignation, kind of shrugging your shoulders and saying, 'What can you do?' But I read them as lines of vibrant hope. The rest is not our business. The rest is God's business.

“Thank God, we are not God. Thank God, God is God.”

So try, try with all your might, and watch God work mighty wonders through you.

---

*It should be noted that there were several votes by the CMA on this topic. Although the CMA reported that “Conscientious objection was a contentious issue, with 79% of delegates voting against a motion to support conscientious objectors who refuse to refer patients for medical aid in dying”  the CMA also reported that “According to results of a CMA member survey [of 1407 responses] presented at the meeting, many doctors remain opposed to assisting in a patient's suicide. Only 29% of those surveyed said they would consider providing medical aid in dying if requested by a patient, 63% would refuse outright and 8% were undecided.”   The CMA also reported, “‘No physician should be forced to participate against their conscience,’ said Dr. Jeff Blackmer, vice president of medical professionalism at CMA. ‘But there's disagreement about what this means.’”  

This isn’t the end of the story as the CMA is looking at all these votes and motions and considering guidelines moving forward; therefore, it is still possible the guidelines to come will respect a physician’s conscience.  Time will tell, which is why, at minimum, protecting conscience rights can still be lobbied for, but, more importantly, a solid pro-life apologetic on euthanasia must be articulated, not only at a national level with the CMA, but also to the provincial governing medical bodies as well as to our elected representatives on a provincial and federal level.

Do You See What I See? by Stephanie Gray

Glass half empty or glass half full?  It’s a question that shows how the same thing can be viewed two entirely different ways—the negative or the positive.  How we see something determines everything.  It’s all about perspective.

If you walk into an assisted living home for the elderly, you might see this:

•    An empty piano alongside a blaring TV with a row of wheelchairs in front of the latter, with the occupants of said chairs ranging from sleeping to zoned-out watching.
•    A drooling old man, wearing an oversized bib, sitting alone, slumped against a table.
•    A crippled, toothless person sitting alone in a room staring out the door to an empty hallway.
•    An elderly lady who refuses to leave her dark room for breakfast.

And if you see that, you might just support euthanasia. 

But I’d like to tell you what I see:

•    I see people to give the gift of music to, entertaining them by a person playing the piano.
•    I see an elderly lady who can be given an opportunity to come alive with music, giving her a chance to joyfully reminisce about her days when she attended musicals.  I see that lady not just standing, but dancing to the beat, swinging her arms, and singing along.
•    I see an opportunity to wipe the face of someone who, decades before, wiped the faces of many other souls.
•    I see a chance to slide open curtains and share the sunshine with a lady who didn’t know it was there.
•    I see someone with ears to speak to.
•    I see lips to be provoked into a smile.
•    I see sweet ladies to listen to and laugh with.
•    I see a fragile, soft hand to hold and give the gift of touch to.
•    I see people in wheelchairs to push into the brilliance and beauty of the outdoors.

And if you see that, you might just thank these people for being.  You might just realize their existence is enough to warrant our attention.  You might just realize

we have something to give,

something to learn,

and most importantly, someone to love.

Indeed, how we see something—especially someone—determines everything.

A Tale of Two Baby Boys Slated for Abortion, by Stephanie Gray

“If she can’t calm down, I can’t do the abortion,” an abortion doctor frustratingly declared in the presence of Holly O’Donnell, an ex-procurement technician who used to obtain tissue from aborted fetuses.  In Episode 3 of “Human Capital,” the expose on Planned Parenthood by the Center for Medical Progress, O’Donnell describes her observation of, and participation in, what happened after. 

The patient eventually did calm down; the abortion eventually did happen; and O’Donnell eventually did do her job.  O’Donnell was soon to see the intact, later-term baby who was killed as a result of the abortion the child’s mom calmed down for (although when, precisely, the fetus died is in question, since O’Donnell said a colleague tapped the baby’s heart with an instrument and it started beating).  In order to procure a brain, O’Donnell cut through the middle of the child’s face. 

It was a boy.

To think that this precious child could have been saved if—if his mom hadn’t “calmed down.”  Incidentally, that’s what saved the life of another little boy, the son of Dana.

When Dana was pregnant with her fifth child, overwhelmed by the pressures of raising a family, she and her husband opted for abortion.  She went to the clinic for a medical abortion: RU486.  She ingested the first pill in the presence of a doctor, and took the second pill home to consume the following day.  The first pill would kill her baby; the second pill would expel her baby.

Dana already had reservations about the abortion when she went to the clinic.  Those concerns only deepened as time went on.  She wrote, “I was already regretting my actions. I was thinking, ‘What if that would have been the son I wanted.’ I cried with my husband, and I cried myself to sleep.”

By the next day, Dana, like the first woman mentioned, couldn’t calm down.  In fact, she was crying hysterically.  But she had an advantage over the other woman: She was not in a clinic with time pressures, waiting rooms, and organs to harvest; moreover, she herself was in control of administering the abortion. 

So Dana went online and searched “Abortion pill regret” and discovered a miracle: It is possible to reverse the effects of RU486. The first pill in RU486, mifepristone, kills a pre-born child by blocking the effects of progesterone, a hormone a woman’s body produces that is necessary to grow a healthy baby.  So the Culture of Life Services in San Diego, California, was able to connect Dana to a physician who immediately began administering progesterone to her body, to counteract what the first pill was doing. 

It was a success: Dana maintained her pregnancy and in April of this year, to the great joy of his parents, a baby boy was born.

In struggling to “calm down,” both women showed that they intuitively knew how it goes against a woman’s nature to kill her child.  And in a bittersweet way, both women’s stories teach us how vital it is to never, ever give up.

"Let's Play Planned Parenthood!" by Stephanie Gray

Image Source: http://www.unmaskingchoice.ca/endthekilling/postcards

When I was little, I routinely said to my sister and friends, “Let’s play house!” or “Let’s play doctor!”  Indeed, it is common for young children to enjoy replicating in their imaginary world of play land what they see adults do. 

With that in mind, let’s imagine that two siblings are playing in their living room.  “Let’s play Planned Parenthood!” one little girl cries to her sister.  “Okay!” she responds.  So they gather their Barbies and their baby dolls and ask Mom to lend them some scissors.  Mom, figuring they’re doing arts and crafts, says, “Sure!”

The little girls then proceed to cut off Barbie’s limbs and cut open their dolls’ heads.  Now imagine the Mom walks in on this display and understandably shrieks, “WHAT ARE YOU GIRLS DOING?!?!?!”  They innocently reply, “We’re playing Planned Parenthood! We’re harvesting tissue!”  Something tells me that their mom would not celebrate their budding sense of “reproductive justice,” but would instead make an emergency call to a child psychiatrist about how to handle children who dismember dolls.

If we wouldn’t want children to play such a game in their imaginary world, why would we want adults to act in such a way in our reality world?  And that’s the very point the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform powerfully makes with this postcard of theirs (front and back).

Our very different intuitive reactions to a child’s declaration, “Let’s play house!” versus “Let’s play Planned Parenthood!” reveals there is something gravely disordered with the latter.

When I Went to Auschwitz, by Stephanie Gray

Nine years ago I travelled to Poland; while there, I visited Auschwitz.  That came to mind today, August 14, because this day marks the day that a saint, Father Maximillian Kolbe, was murdered by the Nazis.  I went to the very cell where that atrocity occurred, and this was my reflection to family and friends back home:

Our next morning was extremely sobering as we went to Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II/Birkenau concentration camps.  I'm finding it difficult to find the words to describe the experience of walking around a place built for such evil.  It was gut-wrenching.

We were shown how the SS viewed everything about the Jews and other prisoners as a commodity and refused to let anything go to waste. They used clothes for soldiers and other Germans; they used hair for socks, felt stockings, and yarn; they used even human ashes from the ovens for fertilizer.  Human life was viewed as disposable, an object to be used or discarded.

Two images stand out in my mind in particular: 1) a newborn baby's white knitted sweater amidst rows of clothes and 2) piles of medical aids (crutches, leg braces, etc).  Children?!  Sick people?!  It is impossible to understand how they could harm anyone, but one is especially bewildered at how they could attack the most weak and vulnerable.

At the entry to one of the buildings, the museum placed this quote by George Santayana, "The one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again."

And this is how, regrettably, the tragedy of the Holocaust lives on.  While society may remember the specific event of the Holocaust, it seems to forget the philosophy behind it.  When we fail to recognize the inherent dignity of human life, when we persist in considering the sick and the young (pre-born) as a burden, an inconvenience, or as having a low quality of life (the Nazis believed in “lives unworthy of life”) then our society maintains the very mentality that drove the SS to such destruction.

LIGHT AMIDST DARKNESS

This is why a Polish man who lived during the time of the Holocaust is such an inspiration to me: St. Maximillian Kolbe.  He was God's gift to a dark world, bringing an example and a message of hope for “such as a time as this.”

One of the most emotional moments at Auschwitz I was at Building 11 (execution block), cell 18, the cement basement cell where Father Kolbe was killed, a priest who freely offered to take the place of a fellow prisoner who had been sentenced to death.  For two weeks Kolbe sat cold and naked without food or water.  He helped calm those within the cell and surrounding ones by singing and praying.  The museum made a memorial to Kolbe in that cell and tells his story by saying the following: “Within concentration camps there were some resistance movements that were organized.  We tell Kolbe's story because he showed the greatest resistance to the Nazis: by staying human.”

In preparation for that trip, I had read a book about St. Kolbe called A Man for Others, by Patricia Treece.  In it is this powerful quote from Saint Kolbe, worth remembering on this day in particular:

“When grace fires in our hearts, it stirs up in them a true thirst for suffering...to show...to what extent we love Our Heavenly Father..for it is only through suffering that we learn how to love...In suffering and persecution [we]...reach a high degree of sanctity and, at the same time...bring our persecutors to God.”

Butterfly Children, by Stephanie Gray

     If you want to figure out if something is truly necessary in life, ask yourself, “Without it, would I die?”  In light of that perspective, one can certainly conclude that food is a necessity for survival.  It would therefore make sense that consuming food would bring nourishment that makes us feel good, not bad.  Consider, though, the case of Jonathan Pitre, a 14-year-old boy growing up in Ontario.  While food does nourish his body, it comes with a painful cost: eating causes blisters inside his throat. 

     Jonathan has a rare and excruciatingly painful genetic condition called epidermolysis bullosa (EB).  It is so debilitating that friction on his skin causes blisters on his body too.  In a moving documentary that can be seen here, one is exposed to the horrifying effects this condition has on Jonathan’s body: bandages that daily wrap around his fragile, skeletal frame, are removed to reveal his scaly, blistered, and cracking red skin.

     People like Jonathan are described as “Butterfly Children.”  When asked to explain why that is, Jonathan says, “They call us butterfly children because our skin is as fragile as a butterfly’s wings.  As much as a butterfly is pretty and gentle, we have the heart of warriors.  We very much are stronger than we appear.”

     A warrior Jonathan most certainly is.  Indeed, this small-in-stature teenager who relies heavily on others (such as his fiercely devoted mother) to daily care for him, has a strength to endure unimaginable pain.  He has a strength to continue moving forward in life, showing that hope is possible amidst suffering.

     How?  In reflecting on the documentary, three answers come to mind as highlighted in Jonathan’s life:

1.      The necessity of community.

2.      The importance of a shared experience.

3.      The power of the human will.

     When asked where his strength comes from, Jonathan reflects, “[My] strength comes from people around me, ‘cause they do believe in me, that I can get through it.”  Indeed, there is something about the encouragement and “cheerleading” of another that can drive us forward.  Consider why business people hire personal coaches, or why gyms offer personal trainers— it's because we humans thrive on relationship with others. We need their encouragement. We weren't meant to be alone.

     Indeed, when Jonathan had the opportunity to watch an Ottawa Senator’s game, and asked if he would be watching one player in particular, he responded, “A team isn’t just made of one player, it’s all of them, so I’ll be watching the whole team.”

     Jonathan not only experienced the necessity of community, but also the importance of a shared experience.  A life-changing moment for him was in 2012 when he attended an EB conference.  Why?  Because previously he had met no one with his condition.  Suddenly, a whole new world was opened up to him, a world of being “understood” in a deep and profound way.  He said, “I knew that I wasn’t alone anymore.”

     What is striking, is the effect meeting others like him had on him—it expanded his empathy and his desire to look outward.  He said, “I knew since then that I was going to become an ambassador.  I want to start helping other people with EB.”  This conviction of his brings to life the words of Holocaust-survivor Viktor Frankl who wrote, “The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.”

     Finally, Jonathan shows us the power of the human will.  There are others like him, with profound suffering, who don’t have the positive outlook on life that he has.  So while many can share the same experience—suffering—not all share the same response.  The response is what we individually choose.  And we can choose optimism, persistence, and drive, just like Jonathan has.  This reflects the power of the human will, which Frankl also speaks about:

     “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”