August 18, 2025

Dear Saints,

I always request Ginger Ale for my complimentary beverage on an airplane.  But during my Saturday flight from San Diego to Dallas I asked for coffee.  I had gotten little sleep the night before and got up early to arrive to the airport with ample time.  So I was sleepy.

But I was also riveted by a book I had just opened, only intending to introduce myself to it through its forward and maybe a chapter or two before resting my eyes.  And though it practically turned its pages for me percolating my earnest interest, I wanted to contribute to keeping it that way.

It is a 25th Anniversary addition of Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie, a memoir about reconnecting with and visiting his beloved college professor weekly along his journey to the end of his life.  In fact, his teacher meant the experience to teach him and others about what dying is like and how to do so with dignity, which was for him to live and live as best he could.  I read half the book before I landed in Dallas.  And I finished the rest of it before the rubber hit the runway in Milwaukee.

Here’s one of Professor Morrie Schwartz’s aphoristic refrains: “When you learn how to die, you learn how to live.”

Though I will mostly defer to Morrie and Mitch speaking for themselves in what follows, let me share here that while I read I kept thinking of this recent sermon from which I hope to develop an article: “There is Dignity in Your Christian Suffering.”

The book so inspired me that along both flights I jotted down song lyrics that kept coming to me and made me cry over grief and joy and hope.   I hadn’t had the inclination to write songs like this for a long time—only most recently while having a private memorial of my father on Father’s Day this June.  The only other time before that I can remember was a little more than a year ago while lamenting I didn’t get to my Dad before he died and instead prepared to take my family across the country to honor him at his funeral rather than introduce many of them for the first time on his death bed.  The moment of reading this book had that same kind of impression on me, only the phrases came pouring out over and over like a forrest waterfall with its refreshing attendant mist for spending time with it.

The book was so consuming me I passionately crunched over beneath the seat in front to quickly snag my dropped highlighter on the floor with my toes, lift it to my straining fingers, stop holding my breath, and recline and engage with the next chapter.  And I was thankful to be able to manage doing so in a cramped space with my big belly and stiff back—you’ll understand if you read along (and I hope you read the book).

I’d like to share some highlights with you.  Before I do, I offer only that there are especially religious disclaimers I know I don’t have to make in detail with you as you have discernment.  The pastor in me needs to say that—but as your pastor and friend and brother in the Lord and father of some, I yearn to pass some of this on to you and encourage you to read the book for yourself.

I purchased a paperback of Tuesdays with Morrie for my own birthday gift after attending a lecture by author Mitch Albom with my daughter, Rachel, for her senior writing class series at Point Loma Nazarene University.  It was lovely to join Rachel and look out through the glass walls over the Pacific Ocean wondering what will be her first novel to impact the world.  But it also was incredible to hear about Albom’s experience seeking to publish this memoir that is now a New York Times number one bestseller and by far the highest selling published piece of its kind in history.  Interestingly, Albom had to be turned away by myriad publishers before anyone would even consider it.  He did so to raise funds from sales to support his professor with his enormous medical bills.

Mitch first went to see Morrie after having lost touch for more than a decade and happening upon him one night flipping through TV channels to find him being interviewed by Ted Koppel about his choosing to embrace and share his dealing with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease), a horrible way to die—Albom describes it “like a lit candle: it melts your nerves and leaves your body a pile of wax … It’s the worst.  A slow killer with no cure.”  You can watch the three-part Nightline series with Ted Koppel documenting Morrie’s decline while always keeping his chin up here.

I partly share from this book also to honor my seminary professor Steven Miller who nobly faced ALS the same way with his faithful wife Jane at his side who has posthumously published his books.  You can learn more about him compared to someone else who is famous with the same name dealing with the same situation here: gentlereformation.com/2017/05/08/a-tale-of-two-men-with-als/.

Mitch visited Morrie on Tuesdays, and as things progressed, every week on Tuesday.  As it happened, they had also visited regularly while he was in college on Tuesdays.  Thus the name of the book.

For your convenience and interest, I’ve tried to categorize quotes by subject.  Some are from Morrie.  Some are from Mitch.  Most are quotes.  Some are sections of stories or dialogue.  I try and make such clear.

Touching Asides from the Author, Mitch Albom:

• “The subject was The Meaning of Life.  It was taught from experience.”
• “How useful it would be to put a daily limit on self-pity.”
• “I traded lots of dreams for a bigger paycheck, and I never even realized I was doing it.”
• After Morrie confirmed he wanted Mitch to record and share his story:  “ … I suppose tapes, like photographs and videos, are a desperate attempt to steal something from death’s suitcase.”
• “ … some mystical clarity of thought came when you looked death in the eye …”
• “We all need teachers in our lives.”
• A year after losing his mother as a child, “…a saving embrace came into Morrie’s life … his new stepmother, Eva … he felt, deep down, that he had a mother again … despite their circumstances [of extreme poverty and a detached father who wouldn’t let him speak of his birth mother and showed them zero affection], “Morrie was taught to love and to care.  And to learn … Morrie’s love for education was hatched in her arms.”
• “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” — Henry Adams
• “Here in Morrie’s office, life went on one precious day at a time.”
• On dictating all his letters to respond to his “fan mail”:  “ … don’t forget to sign ‘Thank you, Morrie.’”
• On Morrie working in a mental hospital before teaching sociology, and slowly reaching one patient: “What she mostly wanted, he learned, was the same thing many people want–someone to notice she was there … Morrie observed that most of the patients there had been rejected and ignored in their lives, made to feel that they didn’t exist.  They also missed compassion–something the staff ran out of quickly.  And many of those patients were well-off, from rich families, so their wealth did not buy them happiness or contentment.  It was a lesson he never forgot.” [And one Mitch—as an extremely successful and wealthy sports reporter and commentator, learns through this process at his professor’s side.]
• “He saw right to the core of the problem [of most conflicts], which was human beings wanting to feel that they mattered.”
• “Learning to pay attention … I now know it is more important than almost everything they taught us in college.”
• “We [the baby boomer generation] are great at small talk … But really listening to someone—without trying to sell them something, pick them up, recruit them, or get some kind of status in return—how often do we get this anymore?”
• “None of us can undo what we’ve done, or relive a life already recorded.  But if Professor Morris Schwartz taught me anything at all, it was this: there is no such thing as ‘too late’ in life.  He was changing until the day he said good-bye.”
• “He challenged me to think and to feel.”

The Kind of Man Morrie Was:

• “ … when he smiles its as if you’d just told him the first joke on earth.”
• “ … the idea of quitting did not occur to Morrie.”
• One woman read a poem at a “living funeral” eulogy for him that said he was a “tender sequoia.”
• “He had created a cocoon of human activities—conversation, interaction, affection—and it filled his life like an overflowing soup bowl.”
• “ … my visits with Morrie felt like a cleansing rinse of human kindness.”
• Not long after losing his mother, his brother came down with Polio that had him walking in braces: “At nine years old, he felt as if the weight of a mountain were on his shoulders.”
• After visiting the sweat-shop fur factory where his father—a Russian immigrant, worked, “He made another vow that he kept to the end of his life: he would never do any work that exploited someone else, and he would never allow himself to make money off the sweat of others.”
• “Morrie’s approach was … Turn on the faucet.  Wash yourself with emotion.  It won’t hurt you.  It will only help.  If you let the fear inside, if you pull it on like a familiar shirt, then you can say to yourself, “All right, it’s just fear, I don’t have to let it control me.  I see it for what it is.”
• “When Morrie was with you, he was really with you.  He looked you straight in the eye, and he listened as if you were the only person in the world … ‘I believe in being fully present,’ Morrie said.”
• “For me … living means I can be responsive to the other person.  It means I can show my emotions and my feelings.”
• “He never cared for sleeping, not when there were people he could talk with.”

On Lessons About Living and Dying:

• “He would not wither.  He would not be ashamed of dying.  Instead, he would make death his final project, the center point of his days … He could be research.  A human textbook … Morrie would walk that final bridge between life and death and narrate the trip … [though] his world shrunk down to a single breath, in and out, in and out.”
• “He was intent on proving that the word ‘dying’ was not synonymous with ‘useless.’”
• “ … he refused to be depressed.”
• “His philosophy was that death should not be embarrassing; he was not about to powder its nose.”
• “ … when all this started … I decided I’m going to live–or at least try to live—the way I want, with dignity, with courage, with humor, with composure.”
• “There are some mornings when I cry and cry and mourn for myself.  Some mornings, I’m so angry and bitter.  But it doesn’t last too long.  Then I get up and say, ‘I want to live …’”
• “Dying … is only one thing to be sad over … Living unhappily is something else.”
• “The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”
• “Now that I’m suffering, I feel closer to people who suffer than I ever did before … I feel their anguish as if it were my own.”
• “The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.”
• “It’s only horrible if you see it that way … It’s horrible to watch my body slowly wilt away to nothing.  But it’s also wonderful because of all the time I get to say good-bye.”
• Dictating a response for a letter to him (as he did for most of his frequent “fan mail”) from a schoolteacher in Pennsylvania with nine children who all suffered the death of a parent: “I lost my mother when I was a child … and it was quite a blow to me … I wish I had a group like yours where I would have been able to talk about my sorrows.  I would have joined your group because,” His voice cracked [reading it in front of Ted Koppel during one of his three interviews with him in his home documenting his dealing with dying], “because I was so lonely …” “Morrie,” Koppel said, “that was seventy years ago your mother died.  The pain still goes on?” “You bet,” Morrie whispered.
• “Everyone knows they’re going to die … but nobody believes it.  If we did, we would do things differently … be prepared for it at any time … That way you can actually be more involved in your life while you’re living.”
• Always turn to the “little bird on your shoulder” and ask, “Is today the day I die?”
• “The truth is … once you learn how to die, you learn how to live … most of us all walk around as if we’re sleepwalking.  We really don’t experience the world fully, because we’re half-asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do.” And facing death changes all that?  “Oh, yes.  You strip away all that stuff and you focus on the essentials.”
• “Because I know my time is almost done, I am drawn to nature like I’m seeing it for the first time.”
• “Learn to detach … detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience penetrate you.  On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully.  That’s how you are able to leave it … If you hold back on the emotions—if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them—you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid.  You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief.  You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.  But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely.  You know what pain is.  You know what love is.  You know what grief is.  And only then can you say, ‘All right.  I have experienced that emotion.  I recognize that emotion.  Now I need to detach from the emotion for a moment.”
• “I want to die serenely.  Peacefully … I don’t want to leave the world in a state of fright.  I want to know what’s happening, accept it, get to a peaceful place, and let go.”
• “Aging is not just decay … It’s growth … if you’ve found meaning in your life, you don’t want to go back.  You want to go forward.”
• “ … it is impossible for the old not to envy the young.  But the issue is to accept who you are and revel in that … You have to find what’s good and true and beautiful in your life as it is now.”
• “I decided what I wanted on my tombstone … A Teacher to the Last.”
• “The things I am supposed to be embarrassed about now—not being able to walk, not being able to wipe my [behind], waking up some mornings wanting to cry—there is nothing innately embarrassing or shaming about them … It’s just what our culture would have you believe.  Don’t believe it.”
• “ … this disease is knocking at my spirit.  But it will not get my spirit.  It’ll get my body.  It will not get my spirit.”
• “If we know, in the end, that we can ultimately have … peace with dying, then we can finally do the really hard thing.”  Which is?  “Make peace with living.”
• “Death ends a life, not a relationship.” [This certainly can be said for Christians.]
• Mitch: “What if you had one day perfectly healthy, I asked? What would you do?” Twenty-four hours? “Twenty-four hours.”  Morrie: “Let’s see … I’d get up in the morning, do my exercises, have a lovely breakfast of sweet rolls and tea, go for a swim, then have my friends come over for a nice lunch.  I’d have them come one or two at a time so we could talk about their families, their issues, talk about how much we mean to each other.  Then I’d like to go for a walk, in a garden with some trees, watch their colors, watch the birds, take in the nature that I haven’t seen in so long now.  In the evening, we’d all go together to a restaurant with some great pasta, maybe some duck—I love duck—and then we’d dance the rest of the night.  I’d dance with all the wonderful dance partners out there, until I was exhausted. [Mitch shares early on that Morrie would frequent his church’s dance nights and often dance by himself with his eyes closed, profusely sweating, sometimes bringing and pressing for his own music to be played—look at his picture at the top to take this in.] And then I’d go home and have a deep, wonderful sleep.”  That’s it?  “That’s it.”  Mitch: “It was so simple.  All so average.  I was actually a little disappointed.  I figured he’d fly to Italy or have lunch with the President or romp on the seashore or try every exotic thing he could think of.  After all these months, lying there, unable to move a leg or a foot—how could he find perfection in such an average day?  Then I realized this was the whole point.”
• “He has decided the best way to die is in a serene, calm state, which, not coincidentally, is how he now feels it’s best to live.”

On Not Sacrificing Relationships for Things and Success and Being Stubborn:

• “We are too involved in materialistic things, and they don’t satisfy us.  The loving relationships we have, the universe around us, we take these things for granted.”
• “We put our values in the wrong things.  And it leads to very disillusioned lives … You can’t substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship.”
• “There’s a big confusion in this country over what we want versus what we need … You know what really gives you satisfaction?”  What? “Offering others what you have to give … I don’t mean money …  I mean your time.  Your concern.  Your storytelling.”
• “ … if you’re trying to show off for people at the top, forget it.  They will look down at you anyhow.  And if you’re trying to show off for people at the bottom, forget it.  They will only envy you.  Status will get you nowhere.  Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone.”
• “Part of the problem … is that everyone is in such a hurry … People haven’t found meaning in their lives, so they’re running all the time looking for it.”
• “ … how much time we spend trying to shape our bodies, lifting weights, crunching sit-ups, and in the end, nature takes it away from us anyhow.”
• “People are only mean when they’re threatened … and that’s what our culture does.”
• On dealing with problems in our culture: “The way to do it, I think, isn’t to run away.  You have to work at creating your own culture.  Look, no matter where you live, the biggest defect we human beings have is our shortsightedness.  We don’t see what we could be.  We should be looking at our potential, stretching ourselves into everything we can become.”
• “Invest in people.  Build a little community of those you love and who love you.”
• “In the beginning of life, when we are infants, we need others to survive, right?  And at the end of life, when you get like me, you need others to survive, right?” His voice dropped to a whisper.  “But here’s the secret: in between, we need others as well.”
• When asked by Ted Koppel in the third and last interview close to his death if Morrie had anything he wanted to say to the millions of people he had touched through these national TV interviews, he whispered: “Be compassionate … And take responsibility for each other.  If we only learned those lessons, this would be so much better a place.”  He took a breath, then added his mantra, “Love each other or die.”
• “Forgive yourself before you die.  Then forgive others.”
• “There is no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness … these things I so regret in my life.  Pride.  Vanity. Why do we do the things we do?”
• “You need to make peace with yourself and everyone around you … Forgive yourself.  Forgive others.  Don’t wait … Not everyone gets the time I’m getting.”
• “There is no formula to relationships.  They have to be negotiated in loving ways, with room for both parties, what they want and what they need, what they can do and what their life is like.  In business, people negotiate to win … Love is when you are as concerned about someone else’s situation as you are about your own.”

On Marriage, Family, and Children:

• “The fact is, there is no foundation, no secure ground, upon which people may stand today if it isn’t the family.”
• “Love is so supremely important.  As our great poet Auden said, ‘Love each other or perish.’” [This was another refrain.]
• “Say I was divorced, or living alone, or had no children.  This disease—what I’m going through—would be so much harder.  I’m not sure I could do it.  Sure, people would come visit, friends, associates, but it’s not the same as having someone whom you know has an eye on you, is watching you the whole time.”
• “He had raised his two sons to be loving and caring, and like Morrie, they were not shy with their affection.”
• “ … he showed respect for his children’s worlds.”
• “There is no experience like having children … there is no substitute for it … If you want the experience of having complete responsibility for another human being, and to learn how to love and bond in the deepest way, then you should have children … I would not have missed that experience for anything … Even though there is a painful price to pay … Because you’ll be leaving them.”
• Observing Morrie’s relating with his much more private wife, “They worked as a team, often needing no more than a silent glance to understand what the other was thinking.”
• “I’ve learned this much about marriage … You get tested.  You find out who you are, who the other person is, and how you accommodate or don’t.”
• “ … there are few rules I know to be true about love and marriage: If you don’t respect the other person, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble.  If you don’t know how to compromise, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble.  If you can’t talk openly about what goes on between you, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble.  And if you don’t have a common set of values in life, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble.  Your values must be alike.  And the biggest one of those values … Your belief in the importance of your marriage.”
• “Personally … I think marriage is a very important thing to do, and you’re missing … a lot if you don’t try it.”
• “Love each other or perish.”

Morrie’s Aphorisms Along His Final Journey:

• “Love wins.  Love always wins.”
• “ … if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too …”
• “Learn how to die, and you learn how to live.”  [This was a constant refrain.]
• “Without love, we are birds with broken wings.”
• “When you learn how to die, you learn how to live.”
• “When you’re in bed, you’re dead.”
• “Don’t let go too soon, but don’t hang on too long.”
• “Tears are okay.”
• “ … part of being human … Stop, renew, stop, renew.”
• “I think it’s OK for men to cry.”

On Being the Caregiver or Supporter of Someone Dying:

• “He told his friends that if they really wanted to help him, they would treat him not with sympathy but with visits, phone calls, a sharing of their problems … “
• “It was the most helpless I have ever felt in my life.”
• “When I have people and friends here, I’m very up.  The loving relationships maintain me.” [Morrie]
• “The slightest human contact was immediate joy.”
• As things progressed: “ … his need for physical affection was stronger than ever.”
• “Sometimes, when you’re losing someone, you hang on to whatever tradition you can.”
• “I … grasped his fingers … I leaned in close, a few inches from his face … He moved my hands to his heart.”  “I don’t know how to say good-bye.”  “This … is how we say … good-bye.” He breathed softly, in and out, I could feel his ribcage rise and fall.  Then he looked right at me.  “Love … you,” he rasped.  “I love you too, Coach.”  “Know    you    do … know something else …”  What else do you know?  “You … always have … “Okay then,” he whispered.  He had finally made me cry.

Mitch shared that Morrie passed away not long after on a Saturday.  He died serenely when his gathered family had all briefly left the room for a break.  His funeral was on … a Tuesday.

Let me close with this last thought that kept coming to mind while reading—something I shared with you in a sermon recently.  A speaker quoted the well-known seminary preaching professor, Haddon Robinson, summarizing Psalm 90: “Help me count my days to make them count.”

Verses 10 and 12 of this Psalm by Moses read: The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away … So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

I think that gets at the gist of Professor Morrie’s memoirs as recorded and complemented by his student, Mitch Albom, and how we should apply them as Christians for Christ and His Kingdom.

Or, as Mitch said of Morrie about learning this lesson for all of us willing to listen and read: “ … the payoff of the whole thing is the best last lesson one generation can teach the next: how to die with peace about how you’ve lived.”

Semper Reformanda,

Pastor Grant

PS: Flying back to San Diego through Phoenix tomorrow.  Thanks for your traveling prayers.  I’ll have to find something else to do along the way.  Had planned to still be reading Tuesdays with Morrie this Tuesday. 😉