{"id":16252,"date":"2014-12-26T14:22:17","date_gmt":"2014-12-26T19:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=16252"},"modified":"2014-12-26T14:22:17","modified_gmt":"2014-12-26T19:22:17","slug":"finding-what-youre-looking-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2014\/12\/finding-what-youre-looking-for\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding What You’re Looking For"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"'Found<\/a><\/p>\n

[Image: “Found Anything Yet?,” by Yau Hoong Tang on Flickr<\/a>. (Click to enlarge.)
\nUsed under a Creative Commons license.]<\/em><\/p>\n

From whiskey river<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

It’s harder to talk about, but what I really, really, really want for Christmas is just this: I want to be 5 years old again for an hour. I want to laugh a lot and cry a lot. I want to be picked up or rocked to sleep in someone’s arms, and carried up to bed just one more time. I know what I really want for Christmas: I want my childhood back.<\/p>\n

Nobody is going to give me that. I might give at least the memory of it to myself if I try. I know it doesn’t make sense, but since when is Christmas about sense, anyway? It is about a child, of long ago and far away, and it is about the child of now. In you and me. Waiting behind the door of our hearts for something wonderful to happen. A child who is impractical, unrealistic, simpleminded and terribly vulnerable to joy.<\/p>\n

It’s just this: that there are places we all come from — deep-rooty-common places — that makes us who we are. And we disdain them or treat them lightly at our peril. We turn our backs on them at the risk of self-contempt. There is a sense in which we need to go home again — and can go home again. Not to recover home, no. But to sanctify memory.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Robert Fulghum [source<\/em><\/a>, among others])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

You have no idea how hard I’ve looked
\nfor a gift to bring You.
\nNothing seemed right.
\nWhat’s the point of bringing gold
\nto the gold mine, or water to the ocean.
\nEverything I came up with was like
\ntaking spices to the Orient.
\nIt’s no good giving my heart and my
\nsoul because you already have these.
\nSo I’ve brought you a mirror.
\nLook at yourself and remember me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Jalal al-Din Rumi [widely quoted around the Web, in these or other words, e.g., from this source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Finding the Scarf<\/strong><\/p>\n

The woods are the book
\nwe read over and over as children.
\nNow trees lie at angles, felled
\nby lightning, torn by tornados,
\nsilvered trunks turning back<\/p>\n

to earth. Late November light
\nslants through the oaks
\nas our small parade, father, mother, child,
\nshushes along, the wind searching treetops
\nfor the last leaf. Childhood lies<\/p>\n

on the forest floor, not evergreen
\nbut oaken, its branches latched
\nto a graying sky. Here is the scarf
\nwe left years ago like a bookmark,<\/p>\n

meaning to return the next day,
\nhaving just turned our heads
\ntoward a noise in the bushes,
\ntoward the dinnerbell in the distance,<\/p>\n

toward what we knew and did not know
\nwe knew, in the spreading twilight
\nthat returns changed to a changed place.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Wyatt Townley [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

The individual pilgrimage in search of the true self is only ever authentic when it leads to the point of awareness that all our true selves are living cells within a greater wholeness of complete inter-relatedness and inter-dependence. When we discover our own pearl of great price, we will always find it to be one and the same thing as the pearl of great price for all of creation. Having made our pilgrimage of “seven times seven,” having lived our own weeks and years in search of our own deepest truth, we come to the place where our alone become the all-one of original wholeness. When we reach this point we glimpse the truth that the existential loneliness in which we so often feel we are living is actually leading to a very different kind of true belonging. Not the belonging that implies possession, but the belonging that holds us in ultimate freedom, each true self discovering its meaning in the true sense of all.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Margaret Silf [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: “Found Anything Yet?,” by Yau Hoong Tang on Flickr. (Click to enlarge.) Used under a Creative Commons license.] From whiskey river: It’s harder to talk about, but what I really, really, really want for Christmas is just this: I want to be 5 years old again for an hour. I want to laugh a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[38,1393,250,5,36,251],"tags":[2946,3367,3942,3943,3944],"class_list":{"0":"post-16252","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-backwards","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-art","9":"category-06_writing","10":"category-reading","11":"category-poetry-writing_cat","12":"tag-robert-fulghum","13":"tag-rumi","14":"tag-yau-hoong-tan","15":"tag-wyatt-townley","16":"tag-margaret-silf","17":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-4e8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16252"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16255,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16252\/revisions\/16255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}