"Love is the Ultimate & Highest Goal"

Katie's hospice nurse, Amy, has a blog. Amy's recent posting took my breath away. She has a way of walking with those who are dying, and their families, that is peaceful, respectful, understanding, sacred, serious and light at the same time. I consider Amy (and many of the other nurses we've met) to be angels on earth - literally.

This quote from Viktor Frankl, a holocaust survivor (which Amy featured in her posting) holds a deep truth which expresses my way of seeing and being, so I will reprint part of it here:

“A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – THAT LOVE IS THE ULTIMATE AND THE HIGHEST GOAL TO WHICH MAN CAN ASPIRE. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way – an honorable way – in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment."*

*from: Frankl, Viktor E., Man's Search for Meaning, Washington Square Press, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1963.