Where do your explorations take you?

 

We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

                                    T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) American-born British Poet

 

      

I took these fall photos last week, just downloaded them yesterday, and decided to take care of it before I go to bed. There were more leaves on the tree last week, of course, and most had blown down over the past couple of days.

The above shot is a view of our front yard. The one below is our back yard, both taken from about the same position on the side of our home, facing East-Southeast, mid-morning.

            

                                        Here is where my buried treasure lies.

The quote that opens this entry is one of those truths that lends itself to many versions of the same story told over hundreds of years. Maybe you have heard one version or another.

Here's one that I remember:

There was a poor man who had the same dream every night for several nights. In thedream, he walked to a big city and found a great treasure near a bridge there. He ignored the dream at first, but after a week, he decided to leave his family behind and seek out the dream. After walking for several days, he arrived at the city, and hung around the bridge, looking for the treasure.

A palace guard was suspicious of the man loitering, so he asked him what he was doing there, and the poor man told the guard of his dream.

"What a foolish thing to do, old man," laughed the guard. "There is no treasure here! Go home to your family. Do you see me looking for treasure? I had a dream last week myself that showed me a treasure buried beneath the stove in a poor man's hut out in the country. It was a foolish dream, too! Go home old man.There is no treasure here."

The poor man walked directly home, and when he got there, he dug the earth beneath his stove. Imagine his surprise when he found the buried box of silver and gold coins! His family was never hungry nor poor again.

When I think of that story, I think not of buried treasure, nor money, nor wealth of that nature. As in the TS Eliot quote, when we explore within our world, and we should explore, our talents, our skills, our faith, our relationships, we will eventually come to know something new about ourselves, and about those with whom we live.

We come to realize that it (what we were searching for) was there all along, that we just didn't see it. It was buried, in a sense, from our awareness. Perhaps a dream triggers it, perhaps some action we take, some decision we make, a move, a job, a word we hear spoken. We turn around and, within and without, find ourselves with a new sight and new understanding of what we have lived, and even where we are going.

It's like we see our purpose for the very first time. Or we see our strength for the first time, we recognize our Creator within ourselves. In that way, we are given a new life, a second chance, a new beginning, a rebirth.

That is the treasure:  to find ourselves back where we started and knowing it for the very first time. Thank you, Mr. Eliot, for making that so crystal clear to me!!!

This solves a piece of the puzzle of life for me. How about you?