New Year: same old stories?

Well, it's a New Year, but already it's hard to see what is new about it.
Back to work already with a number of funerals this week and a meeting in Edinburgh. AND... my team were beaten again by Rangers. (Unjustly, of course, since Motherwell played the better football by far and it didn't look like a penalty to me... etc. etc.)
And it is raining...
New Year: same old stories?

However, I have managed, at the last minute, to book up for the annual Fiddle Force Winter School at Wiston Lodge this weekend and am looking forward to getting the fiddle warmed up with a couple of days of non-stop playing. (Hardly played much at all this year due to a variety of circumstances.)

Of course, in one sense there is nothing "new" about any new year. All dates are just arbitrary moments in time. In fact they just exist to remind us that time never stands still and that we are always getting older... But (and I really do believe this) every moment is new and full of possibility. Of course, you have to learn to look, or the only thing that you see is what you've seen before.


letter written by Fra Giovanni, 1513

I am your friend
and my love for you goes deep.
There is nothing I can give you
which you do not have,
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 splendour,
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.