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A blog reader most kindly sent me this today.  I find it so quieting, so true, so beautiful that I want to share it here – Please enjoy!

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Letter from Fra Giovanni Giocondo (Fra Giovanni) to Countess Allagia Aldobrandeschi on Christmas Eve, 1513:

I am your friend and my love for you goes deep. There is nothing I can give you which you have not, but there is much, very much, that while I cannot give, you can take.

No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today. Take heaven!  No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant.  Take peace!

The gloom of the world is but a shadow.  Behind it, yet within reach, is joy.  There is radiance and glory in the darkness could we but see — and to see we have only to look.  I beseech you to look.

Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by the covering, cast them away as ugly, or heavy, or hard. Remove the covering and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love, by wisdom, with power.

Welcome it, grasp it, touch the angel’s hand that brings it to you.  Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, or a duty, believe me, that angel’s hand is there, the gift is there, and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Our joys, too, be not content with them as joys.  They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty — beneath its covering — that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven.

Courage, then, to claim it, that is all.  But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are all pilgrims together, winding through unknown country, home.

And so, at this time, I greet you.  Not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you now and always, the day breaks, and the shadows flee away. 

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