Every time an old man dies, it is as if a library burns down. African Proverb
(The same is true for a woman too!)
On
Christmas Eve, 1513, the Italian monk Giovanni Giocondo wrote a letter
to his friend the Countess Allagia Aldobrandeschi. In the letter, he
beseeched her to look for the meaning behind the trials of mortality,
the purpose behind her problems. His message is timeless and true.
"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 it
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 our reach, is joy. There is radiance and
glory in the darkness, could we but see; and to see, we have only 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 splendour, 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, a
sorrow, or a duty: believe me, that angel’s hand is there; the gift is
there, and the wonder of an over-shadowing Presence. Our joys, too: be
not content with them as joys; they too conceal diviner gifts.
Life is so full of meaning and of purpose, so
full of beauty beneath its covering, that you will find that 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."
