I had no idea until today that so many of you have been writing letters to residents of the Mansion Assisted Care Facility here in Cambridge, where Red and I do some of our therapy work. A social worker there told me about it today. “The messages are just pouring in,” she said, “they are coming from everywhere!”

I have been posting portraits of the residents and photos of Red working with them on the blog, and I said at the bottom of one  post that people could write directly to them if they wish, and scores of letters have been coming in to Mary, Connie, Peggy, Nancy and Brother Pete, among others.

It was an afterthought, it occurred to me in a moment, I imagined a few people might write letters. I was wrong. Many did.

Thank you so much for that, so many of you never fail to do good when you can. I am told that your letters have brightened the days of many people, residents and staff, in profoundly important ways.  You are seeing the unseen, touching them, letting them know they are cared for.

Red and I are going to the Mansion on Monday to visit some of our friends there and I’ll look at the letters and take a photo of the bulletin board and share it with you. Through the blog, and through my love of Maria, I have seen and learned that people are good, given the chance.

There is a great disconnection between the love we feel in our hearts and souls and the hatred and anger we see and hear outside of ourselves and our communities. I see the world as being in the ancient grip of a great conflict between love and hatred, and I believe love is the more powerful force. I believe it will prevail. Love is the point, God told people in the Kabbalah.

On my blog, every time I have reached out to ask for help for someone, or for me, people have been  quick and generous to respond, usually well beyond my expectations.

It is simply impossible for me to accept that this is an aberration, and not an integral part of the human condition, as, apparently, is hate and cruelty. We all have to decide where we stand and so many of you have made your choice through what I am told are beautiful, thoughtful and meaningful messages.

I can’t wait to see them. They are a powerful antidote to the anger and hatred that comes from the people who say they are our leaders.

You don’t have to spend much time with the elderly to see that we have too often failed them at this critical time in their lives. The people caring for them that I have seen are especially dedicated and loving – it is profoundly difficult work, it pays little and the hours are long.

But the elderly remain among the unseen in our world, confined in institutions where they live lives that are too often regimented and anonymous, cut off from the very things that matter the most to us in life. We know how to keep them alive, often through treatments that fog their spirits and sap their bodies and return little benefit.

But we don’t know what to do with them when they live.

At the very end, we fail ourselves, allowing our fates and last days to be controlled by the dictates of medicine, insurance companies, technology, and strangers. We have left the elderly behind, out of sight and hidden from view, we don’t see how they live, we don’t see how they die.

Our popular culture has expunged them from our consciousness. The institutionalized are no-one’s target marketing demographic.

Red and I have been working with the elderly for several years now, before that I worked with Izzy and Lenore. Contact with the outside world is profoundly important to many of these people, it tells them that they are known, cared for, thought of, alive. It is essential to their health and well-being that they matter.

The letters you have been writing to these residents have had a profound impact on them, I am told, and I will see for myself next week and report back. I thank you for it, if you wish, you can continue to write to them – letters, postcards, messages are so valued – c/o  Residents, The Mansion, 11 S. Union Street, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.

I hope you also know that these letters greatly boost the morale of the staff as well, people who work hard in challenging circumstances. They love our visits and contact as much as the residents do.

Thank you so much, this is the news that matters, not their news, but the real news of real people with  hearts and souls. You will never see this story on the news, and that is a shame. It is very real.

As Peggy, a resident of the facility told me last week when she visited the farm, “why, God Bless You!”

(The Residents, The Mansion Assisted Care Facility, 11 S. Union Street, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816)