Jun 01, 2025

Living in Unconditional Love (220)

 

“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.

06/01/2025                             Rain has continued throughout the week, and it has rained all day today (Saturday). It has stopped raining for the moment, but it is dark and gray as I look outside.

Today God gifted me with a prayer extracted from the diaries of Ann Frank that she wrote while hidden in an attic in Amsterdam from the nazis that occupied the city and that imprisoned and killed any Jew they discovered. I may have shared this before, but I will share it now, for if she could write this in the midst of the fear of that time, I have to look at the grace of God now for the future.

“In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hope on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death.

 

I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness; I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us, too, I can feel the suffering of millions, and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will come right, that this cruelty will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.

 

In the meantime, I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out.”

                                                 –Ann Frank

If Ann Frank could express this level of hope and therefore trusting in the Love of God, I too must hope for the future and the Love of God as expressed by our recent popes. Their lives of working leadership, working with the poor and disadvantaged is an inspiration. I will admire the beauty of nature that I see in my views as the azaleas and rhododendrons show their glory with the iris starting to display themselves richly.

I too trust in the ultimate victory of the Love of God.

 

Meditation

Gentle One, You have gifted me with the insight in this young girl who held onto her beliefs even as her world was destroyed. I ask for her strength as I see so much suffering caused by greed and egotism of so many of our leaders, those we have chosen to carry our country forward. Work their hearts to feel the suffering as Ann

Frank felt the pain but carried her hope in the future.