Written on Christmas Eve, 1513 - Happy New Year to All

Written on Christmas Eve, 1513

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. 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 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, a sorrow or a duty, believe me, that angel's hand is there.
The gift is there and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Your 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 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 shadows flee away.

~ Fra Giovanni ~

On Love

Then, just like that, it comes

When you least expect it,

they always say. But,

to your surprise, you find

you are not surprised,

at all. Love is like that.

It sprouts when the peace

of the long winter has so warmed

the ground of your being

that it may finally extend

upward its tender, coiled chutes,

reaching forth strong and slow

that you might know

a circle of embrace,

sun above, life below. You

have moved beyond

expectation, been danced right

into that sanctuary of knowing,

the place beyond place,

space in between spaces,

into the face you have come to see

as the source of your very own.

And it comes, in the turning

and returning, no other face to see

any longer. No other way to live, but

in love.

©Heather Barron