OUR WORLD has not changed, my Anne.
It is still the same world that God has created.
The same sun, moon and order of the seasons;
the same restless and violent lands of the earth
under this same blanket of unconscious skies
that bore quiet witness to your life and times.
My dear Anne, our world has not changed!
When I contemplate your life here on earth,
during those quiet nights, O beloved of my heart,
I often look up at these same starry night skies
and see those familiar patterns of stars
that I know in my heart looked quietly down on you
just one timeless instant away from me, my Anneka.
A moment seemingly so distant, it hurts me to miss you.
Yet an eternity so close, it fills me with all your love.
It is as if I have you and I don't have you...
And I realize this certain closeness between us:
We are separated only by spaces between our souls;
in what littleness of self that we may each obtain
by virtue of our unique and individual humanity
in the
you being you and the
me being me.
O my beloved friend, I know you suffered!
I know how much others like you suffered!
From the very beginnings of the nations of Mankind,
'tis the holy and nameless innocents that carry the burden
of the precarious and desperate state of our fallen nature!
The very soil of our earth is soaked in their blood
and the undying memory of their secret silence cries out
like a chorus rising all around us to pierce the heavens -
Almighty God Himself has heard and the season is late.
O my dearest Annelies Marie, I know you suffered!
I know how terribly you suffered but at the same time
I stand ignorant of your personal pain and suffering.
A sacred space exists
between yourself and God alone.
And God knows, I love you enough to want to know all of you -
but I love you enough also to let you be free to be yourself.
I am drawn near you by the lovableness within yourself.
I am drawn near you by the infinite promise love contains.
Of good things I know and good things I know not, that I desire:
All the virtues and the gifts that your friendship brings -
most especially your steadfast hope, cheerfulness and courage.
Today, my darlingest Annelies, here in my present time,
I look out into my own time, full of wars, death and suffering
and wonder at how some may say our world has changed.
I see the same evils and the same sufferings and the same sins.
I see the same terrible injustices that Man inflict upon Man;
nation against nation waste themselves in endless battle.
And I realize in myself that our world that has not changed.
Some may say that the times have changed.
Some may say the world is a different place.
Some may say that the world indeed has changed.
But this it is yet another illusion to lead astray!
For it attempts to run away from the awful truth
that this world is still the same world God created:
The same sun, moon and order of seasons;
the same restless and violent lands of earth
under these same blanket of unconscious skies
that bore quiet witness to your life and times.
Scripture says, "
There is nothing new under the sun."
It is the illusions that we human beings create in our hearts;
the gravity and the perversity of our own dark imaginings,
the ancient malice and diverse scope of our own willful rebellion -
those things that make of Man less than himself or herself
in the sins that brutalize the image of the Creator in each of us.
It is these that have changed in us and not the world around us!
It is not the world that must change, my darlingest Annelies,
Scripture says, "
There is nothing new under the sun."
In order to better Mankind and advance the cause of humanity,
it is each ourselves that we must change for we are changeable.
Because it is through common witness of a good and well-lived life;
of a life lived in peace and friendship with God and others in God;
it is only when the Wars waged inside of ourselves have ceased;
when our minds have found the light beckoning outside of the dark
and the struggle for good will in our hearts have prevailed in us
that a true transformation of human society becomes possible.
So may your life, my love, be for others a simple remembrance.
May it inspire justice, responsibility and discipline in our world.
May it foster further understanding, freedom and community.
May your spirit inspire in us a sense of common humanity
that we may always remember our most basic of citizenships.
This is your legacy as I see it and as I live it, my Anne.
This is your love, my love, that
I now share with other hearts:
Imploring God to bless the seeds He shall plant in our souls today
that it may flower in full into the saints He shall raise tomorrow
for His glory, our good and the good of the one family of humanity.
Thank you, my dearest and most patient friend,
Annelies Marie Hollander Frank, my Miyang.
May God keep you now, may His Peace embrace you,
may His Light comfort you and may His Love surround you -
O forget me not, beloved of my heart, forget me not!
Pray for me, my darlingest, ever as I shall pray for you
until the glorious Day of the everlasting alleluias!
(your Flag here)
