Aug 22, 2021

  Living in Unconditional Love (24) 

“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 to the day that we met on Long Island. Then my brother Tom became ill, 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 for over a year. 

I am not home, but at my daughter Janet’s in Pittsburgh. Visited the ancestral home area in Ohio (Elyria) to pick up some family remembrances from my brother’s stepchildren and visited with three high school classmates before going on to Columbus to visit my two daughters and three granddaughters there before going on to Pittsburgh on Friday. We will visit an enclosed garden (with tickets to avoid close contact) and I I will head home on Sunday, so I want to put this week’s journal up on Saturday. I have been extremely careful but stayed in hotels until Janet’s home where she had a spare bedroom. Great to see all. 

I discovered that one of my classmates lost her husband just days after Eileen died, very suddenly rather than the year-long process with Eileen. There is no easy way, different but always a challenge. Her daughter has long-Covid and has many problems and is staying with her. They will be moving soon to an apartment to reduce the maintenance of owning a house. The other girl lost her husband many years ago, and my friend Tom lost his wife a year ago. We had a great time together. Tom and I have been talking often over the years, but this was a great chance to get to know more deeply two others that I always has found pleasant but did not know well. 

I have decided that what God is calling me to do at this time is to talk to people who are in similar circumstances as me. I received a call on Friday evening from someone I vaguely knew, who has the same cancer that took Eileen and is in hospice in South Carolina, but she just wanted to talk to someone who understood her situation. Cheerful and accepting of the situation, so I will add her to my list of persons to call until she can no longer receive calls. 

I have been asking God and Eileen to guide me in this phase of life, as I still feel well and have decent health. What am I being called to do now? I do not want to just sit around doing nothing as that would drive me nuts. The book club on Zoom is still going well, and we just finished a marvelous book on the spirituality of the 12-step program by Richard Rohr, “Breathing Under Water.” Our next book will be “You are the Universe” by Deepak Chopra, co-authored with Menas C. Kafatos, a renowned cosmologist, on cosmology and quantum physics and consciousness. It postulates that the universe itself is conscious, as quantum physics predicts that it requires a conscious choice before anything is made whole, so what consciousness over the past 14 billion years made the material universe that we see? I have read and heard similar presentations, with that by Brian Swimme being the best I can recall: a series of lectures on Audible. If anyone is interested in joining in listening to an Audible presentation of the book together with discussion of what we hear, contact me by responding to this journal and I will send you the Zoom address. We meet Wednesdays at 7PM est. 

Life is still good. Lonely as I miss Eileen in words that cannot be expressed, but still good. 

Meditation  

Gentle One, I place myself in Your care at this time. Show me how I can bring peace and joy to the sadness of our world and let me be of service where I can help. I offer help where I can, and I seem to be finding more and more souls that can use a call now and then. Give me the ability to bring peace to those struggling in this phase of life, as this will bring peace to my life in the process.