On Tuesday morning, April 28, 2026, Susan Lea Whittaker, age 75, suddenly collapsed and then died in the arms of a homeless man in Southern California. She had been homeless for ten years herself. She leaves behind one son and one daughter but no other immediate family, and there’s no one likely to write an obituary or conduct a memorial service. She was not affiliated with any church. She had served as a lawyer for many years, representing clients who had been exploited in various ways, including those who had been sex trafficked. She had seen a lot of corruption in the professional class of the church as well as in other institutions. She had recently been in a battle to get her license to practice law reinstated after it was revoked in July of 2021.
Her appeal had been rejected on Monday, April 27, 2026. The defeat was a devastating blow. She died the next morning. Now she is beyond the malice of any of us, beyond the possibility of exploitation, neglect and abuse, such as the physical abuse she had suffered at the hands of her father many years ago. I commend her to the mercy of Jesus. For the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on Susan and on the whole world.
I’ll write more about Susan later, but I just wanted to post this today and ask for your prayers. There are countless people who die without notice and without human respect every day. I just happened to know of one and I thought it would be better if she were remembered… better for her and better for us.
It may be possible for each [person] to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would strongly be tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another…. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal…. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.
CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory
