This week I received a letter that restored my heart. A balm to my soul. Well, truth be told, the letter was written and sent in 1513. Let’s just say it took a while to get to me.
You see, when I give in to the cacophony—the din and dissonance—in our daily news recently, it’s as if I “lose my way”. Well, that’s what I tell myself. And I confess that every now and again, waves of melancholy are high (depleting hopefulness and courage), and I say, “No more”.
Thankfully, I received this letter to a friend.
In 1513, Fra Giovanni Giocondo wrote to Countess Allagia Aldobrandeschi, “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.”
(Fra Giovanni Giocondo—1435–1515—was a Franciscan friar, a Renaissance pioneer, architect, engineer, antiquary, archaeologist, and classical scholar.)
So. Here’s the deal: I believe this letter is addressed to every single one of us. Because this is a Sankofa Letter. In Sabbath Moment, I’ve talked about Sankofa (from the Akan language of Ghana), associated with the proverb, "Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi," which translates "It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten." Yes. More than ever, we need emotional and spiritual nourishment. Places of sanity and restoration… including reminders to invite and welcome the healing power of goosebumps. Letting us savor moments of palette cleansing awe. Yes, “Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel’s hand that brings it to you.”
The power of Giocondo’s letter is this simple reminder; these gifts (the “diviner gifts”) live within us. Today.
And yet, for various reasons, we do not see them.
And this I know, when we do not see, a part of us shuts down.
I loved the quirky movie (with the sophisticated title) Joe versus the Volcano, about a young man who has resigned himself to slogging through life. He puts in his time at a job he detests. He is hampered by persisting attacks from a "brain cloud," a supposedly fatal ailment. (I laugh out-loud when his friend asks incredulous, "You mean you were diagnosed with something called a brain cloud and didn't ask for a second opinion?")
Through a bizarre twist, Joe is presented the chance to sail to an obscure island where he is to be offered as a sacrifice to the volcano gods. Believing that he will die anyway he takes the offer. The trip, of course, awakens him from his soul-sick stupor.
And for the first time, he notices.
He sees.
He is enchanted.
He feels gooseflesh.
And he learns the lesson that it is not just where you look, but how.
"My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement." (From Joe versus the Volcano)
Sabbath Moments
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