[Dialogue] A Christmas Card (with more good lines and stanzas)

[John Cock]

    A Christmas Card  (from John and Lynda)
 
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
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. I beseech you to look!

Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by the 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, 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. 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 all 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 the shadows flee away.
         
             ~from Fra Giovanni Giocondo to his friend, the Countess Allagio
Aldobrandeschi on Christmas Eve 1513
 
 
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