Knowing Where You Are Going

Turning and re-turning

The other day Sue asked me if, with all my many contemplations and commenting  on ”turning points,” ” turning” and “re-turning,” since our last Abkhazian Dinner, I could describe where or what I was turning from and to what or where I experienced myself moving toward.

That was, indeed, an apropos question of me. And one I am glad she asked. Certainly the word “turn” does signify a change of position; a movement, often involving a rotation, as in turning a doorknob.  So where have I been and where am I headed, if I am not simply going in circles?

I have a definitive map of where I am going. I can see that map clear as day in my mind’s eye since returning to mainstream life after my recovery from blindness (2006).  There was so much to see when I was blind. And, I do my best to share the gifts I brought back from the experience. One of the most important ones for me is that though I often come upon detours, I almost always know where I’m going, now, as far as the destination is concerned. And, I know who’s going with me.


Thinking global,
acting local

However, as clear as my destination is for me, I am at a loss as to how to express it concisely to others. But let me try it this way today.

I am heading for Jerusalem, traveling with anybody and everybody who is going there too. Not the Jerusalem, mind you, of my growing up years in a family raising me to be an observant Jew. That was the Jerusalem of “making aliyah;” returning to Israel, the land of the exodus of the Jews to which the Bible tells us to return.  I doubt I will ever visit that Jerusalem though I did set out for it, once, a long, long time ago.

My Jerusalem is, among other things, the state of mind one reaches when experiencing awe or wonder. I know this place to be my real home so I write of it often on the New Horizons blog site; the top of the Mountain of Awe. I know the pathway home so very well that I will, at times, when conditions are right, offer myself as aguide, though I am most often living only halfway up this mountain on a day to day, down to earth basis.

I can, generally, reach this magical peak readily on my own.  Yet traveling this path to wonderment with only oneself (even with Divine connection to light one’s way) is truly not enough. I share the yearnings of many people I have interviewed in our Possible Human, Possible Society Study, I hunger for this at-one-ment with everyone I can find.  

Lucky me to have designed the Possible Human, Possible Society Study. One year into it I have been blessed to find so many others with whom I can travel. Since I began translating the design I created for the study in 2009 and putting it into action, I have discovered that, without conscious intent, through this study I am deliberately placing my next steps and the ones after that and on and on actively seeking traveling companions to the higher realms of human endeavors. So it has turned out to be and so it is; life is with people. That’s where it really begins.

However, the BIG lesson of my turning this year has to do with which people and how to be with them to reach the peak of the Mountain of Awe. Nay, nay for the Pretender Peace Buddies, up close. They are the challenge. Never the door to be shut in one’s heart, but if mindful of going for the gold, one must be discerning to travel with the choicest of companions, day by day.

Somehow all this; turning points, turning and re-turning, reminds me of words written by T.S. Eliot  in the “Four Quartets”…

And the end of all our exploring

will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

So my answer to Sue’s question, I believe, is that I am always returning home to myself, as if it was some very new place to be. And,  seeking, always, to share that space with like-minded others.  Breaking bread, once more, as if it that was what we had always been intended to do.

The irony that strikes me, however, is how difficult and unfamiliar this road back to where we began can sometimes seem. And, how challenging it is when we are out of step on the trail with others we care about.