May 12, 2024

Living in Unconditional Love (166)

 

“Love flows from God to humans without effort:

As a bird glides through the air without moving its wings-

Thus, they go wherever they wish united in body and soul,

Yet separate in form.”

–Mechtild of Magdeburg

 

My wife Eileen died from esophageal cancer in February 2020 one year after being diagnosed, 60 years after we met on Long Island. Then my brother Tom became ill (not COVID), and I spent a total of six weeks being with him in Ohio, but he died in October 2020. My sister-in-law Sue Mahoney died from Covid-19 in January 2021. On top of it all stood the pandemic, locking everyone down almost two years. Covid has proved to be a persistent problem, and many of the long-term effects are quite serious, and it has proven much more serious than flu.

05/12/2014                             Mother’s Day is today, and I approach that day with very mixed feelings. My own mother passed many years ago (1992), and Eileen four years ago, but my family has many mothers to celebrate this wonderful feast day. My daughters Karen and Janet are wonderful mothers, and Alesandra and Julie as my daughters-in-law have continued the trend as wonderful mothers, so our family is blessed for all.  I visited Eileen today, as she is the epitome of mothers in my estimation, as she mothered not only our seven children but was a surrogate mother of countless others.

Yesterday I celebrated with many others the ordination of a friend from our parish to become a permanent deacon, John Mihalko. It was a nice celebration of a major step in his life, culminating three years of intense study for this event. His family sits right behind me in church (usually) and I have known his wife Cathy and Mother-in-law Ann Calice from the 70s’ or 80s’. Time flies and It is amazing to understand that aspect of life. Ann’s husband Roger Calice passed away almost two years ago now, and Roger and I spent many a Sunday chatting during our initial stay at St. Patrick’s Church in WP.

Our bonsai club met on Friday afternoon, and I gave away another of my young Japanese maples. I plan on reducing the number as I still have 17 or so which is more than enough to handle. I still love to study them and work on them to maintain their health, and this is the time of the year when they require most care, but the weather remains wet and cool, making it difficult to work outside.

The daffodils are coming to an end, even though the late ones are still blooming nicely. It has rained much of the time, but I did get a chance to mow on Tuesday, but this next week looks wet every day. It may permit time to mow on Thursday, but I shall see if it dries off sufficiently. The lilacs are opening nicely, and they look and smell wonderful.

I hope to get my car back from the shop this coming week as they keep saying it will be ready, but I shall see if that occurs.

The world news is filled with tales of hatreds and grief, killings and more, but the news seldom mentions the wonderful works of love that tries to back-fill the holes of hatred. So many work in the face of potential death to help others that are in terrible conditions and put themselves in danger doing so. We do not hear enough about all these others that work tirelessly to help their neighbor and risking their lives in doing this act of love, day after day.

Meditation

 

Gentle One, I give to Your care our wounded earth, as we humans have desecrated both the earth itself and its’ inhabitants, both human, non-human, and the very earth itself. We seem to intend to destroy our planet for our immediate pleasure, and so much is aimed at destroying life itself that I am saddened by our short-sightedness. I pray for the countless others that are working to keeping life going on our planet and lay their lives down to help.