Five hundred years ago...
a mysterious and romantic legend became a part of my story. Through its telling, the inspiration of its characters and our Creator’s grace, I am no longer doubtful about the immortality of our souls.
We are each players in a wonder-filled love story and experience its rich texture. In this tapestry that is our history and lives are found a multitude of joy, sadness, passion, loneliness, laughter, fear, intimacy and isolation. We write the next chapter each day. The happy ending is up to us.
For those courageous enough to move towards their divine purpose,
those who come before us, even long before us, conspire with our Creator to make easier our path. Their efforts are neither bound by time nor place.
In our hearts we know this to be true. When we’re inspired, whether in the listening to a beautiful piece of music or moving speech, in the witnessing of childbirth or the sun setting over the ocean, in the feeling of a lover’s embrace or the final words of an ailing parent, we glimpse beyond our own mortal selves. We can be moved to tears, holy water, differing in its chemistry because it is rain from a boundless place.
What connects us to the past,
to prior generations of our family, is more than DNA or the blood coursing through our veins. What connect us are an appreciation for the women and men, their sacrifices and struggles, the hundreds of decisions made and the peace finding those who understood they did the best they could.
A passion for our history amidst the growing clouds of our culture move me to share this story. It is an account of a long forgotten renaissance artist and his inventive muse who walked upon my family’s native Italian soil five centuries ago. What they together accomplished blessed and altered the course of many lives, indeed my own.
Great grandparents, grandparents, my father, and much loved aunts and uncles, are gone now. The last to leave is the person I most credit with my faith, my mother Catherine. Her children and those fortunate to have crossed her humble path witnessed her goodness, even when repeated loss and hardship befell her. Because of her stories and daily example of gratitude and prayer, I acknowledge and am attentive to the divinity within all of us.
With my pen I honor my mother and father, my wife and children and extended family, the wonderful spirit of the Renaissance artist Bernardino Luini and the woman whose sweet invention, today known simply as DiSarrono, unites our stories. I walk in their shoes and hope to inspire those thirsty enough to follow.
