Wishes for the New Year

I copied this out a few years ago, but I’ve been thinking of it on and off the past few days so that must mean it bears repeating. All the best to you, friends and gentle readers!

Letter To A Friend
Fra Giovanni, 1513 AD

I salute you. I am your friend and my love for you goes deep. There is nothing I can give you which you have not got; but there is much, very much, that, while I cannot give it, 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 instance. Take Peace! The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach is Joy. There is a 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 their 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, and you touch the Angel’s hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial or 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 pilgrims together, wending through unknown country, home.

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

From: One Thousand Beautiful Things, compiled by Marjorie Barrows, 1947 (Peoples Book Club Inc)

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One Response to Wishes for the New Year

  1. Mom says:

    I think the whole world needs to see this. I love rereading it myself.

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