A little story this morning tells the tale of a 150-year-old Chestnut tree that is about to be cut down. Sad news that such a grand tree will fall; sadder news that the tree is the one Anne Frank wrote about in her diaries:

“Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs,” she wrote on Feb. 23, 1944. “From my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind.”

The passage continues, “As long as this exists, I thought, and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies, while this lasts, I cannot be unhappy.”

The world has rushed by, wars have ended and begun again and there grew the tree that is now to be felled. Meanwhile, here at home, The Secret is the bestselling book. Could it be more different than Anne’s diary? She hoped for life, longed for life, yearned to see just a tree. Did The Secret fail her? No. The Secret is materialistic, greedy, pseud0-spiritualism. May it fall much more quickly than that great tree under the weight of its own hubris and lack of compassion.