The Garden

So many people who have written about the effort to save Terri have emphasized the hope that she will "recover." On the other side, those who want to terminate her life say that because she has no higher brain function, she is already dead. It is time to address this serious error.

Terri is a miracle--a living person who is without sin, and without the capacity to sin. For fifteen years, she has lived as sinless a life as an unborn baby. She has never angered. She has never cursed. She has never experienced an impure thought. She has never defied her father or her mother--and how beautifully and steadfastly have they honored their bond with her. She has served as a perfect example of sinless devotion.

Who among us, in prayer, has not been frustrated at our inability to shut out the world, to give ourselves to God in perfect concentration and devotion? Is not Terri's example a gift to us?

Some may say that to live in Terri's state is somehow less than human. This is wrong! It is the life our first father and mother, Adam and Eve, led in Eden before, through Eve's transgression, sin entered the world. Terri is living in that primordial perfect state.

We were created in the image of God, but we marred that image through the disobedience of Adam. Every child is conceived in the same perfection as our first parents, and our Savior, but takes on Adam's sin at birth--that's why even at the moment of birth, a baby's first act is to cry for her lost innocence. Through Terri, we have a living example of God's perfect image, uncontaminated by sin. It is not for Terri that we fight to restore life-giving nutrients and water; she will have eternal life with her heavenly Father when she leaves us. It is for the gift she gives to us by her blessed example of a sinless life on this earth.