This present little instant

Porta Borsari designed by Giovanni Giocondo

I found the following letter in the process of looking for some appropriate material to use during ongoing meditation class this week. It was written in 1513 by Giovanni Giocondo who was an architect and classics scholar as well as a Franciscan friar. The letter was addressed to Countess Allagia Aldobrandeschi who was obviously going through some sort of rough patch at the time:

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.

It is relatively simple, isn't it, for us to count our blessings and be thankful for those things we unambiguously evaluate as positive. But what about the difficulties? Fra Giovanni teaches us how to view these things as truly valuable as well.