The Anchoress eulogizes her “birth” brother who died yesterday after A sad painful life.

I don’t blame him for not having faith. I can’t think of any example of love he ever encountered that did not – ultimately – get distorted or misrepresented or prove itself to be wholly untrustworthy, not to be counted on, not to be believed.

I loved him, but I was much younger than he, and of a completely different nature. I doubt he believed it, that I loved him. He had no tools to believe it.

How tragically sad is that?

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I say to hell with that. He was loved into being; he was baptized and sealed. The people who were supposed to teach him the way in which to go spun him madly, incessantly – then allowed him to get dizzy and lost. He lived a sad, tortured life the best way he knew how – quite imperfectly, but then his tools were also very insufficient and his trust was non-existent. I cannot claim to know anything, but I do not believe that a loving God would look upon this much-sinned against man and reject him once again, as he was rejected all his life.

For one thing, none of us know what happens in those infinitesimal moments between life and death, if mercy is offered one more time, and accepted.

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Tonight, I am believing that my brother John is finally in the presence of the all-encompassing and unconditional love in which he can finally trust, finally surrender to…or that he has glimpsed enough of it to want more, however long it takes to become fit for it.