”Flecks of Gold On a Path of Stone - Simple Truth’s for Profound Living” - Part Two

Flecks of Gold On a Path of Stone - Simple Truth's For Profound Living

An unknown author wrote, “Real treasure lies not in what that can be seen, but what cannot be seen.”  Oddly, we possess this strangely cockeyed perception that we must be able to see something in order to treasure it.  What we see as treasure is really only the thing that’s revealing the treasure itself.  The treasure in a daisy is not the daisy, but the massively creative genius behind the daisy.  The flower itself is simply a tender, fragrant and quite intricate manifestation of the real treasure.  Reflected in the wonder of this simple flower we are privileged to see a whisper thin slice of something truly marvelous.  Real treasure then lies nestled in hidden places with generous clues to its magnificence scattered all about us like a generous field of daisies that rolls off to blue horizons.  Sadly, we call those clues “treasure.”

The real treasure is often too airy and intangible for us.  But, we feel that we have to see treasure, which in reality keeps us from seeing treasure.  Not only do we have to see treasure, we think that we have to be able to somehow hold it in our hands.  And then, in far too many cases we think we have to be able to own in order to really treasure it.  What we haven’t figured out is that if we can possess something it’s simply not a treasure, for real treasure is far too elusive to be held in the hands of any man.

Sadly, we rarely consider the reality that real treasure is the stuff that can’t be seen.  Therefore, we don’t look for it because we presume that there’s nothing to look for.  Because we don’t look for it, we miss real treasure and we accept the bogus, phony and plastic stuff of life for the stuff of treasure.  We plod through life with our pockets crammed with a squalid array of worthless trinkets that we think to be treasure.  We live anemically impoverished lives and we don’t even know it.      

In fact, it may well be that to treasure something in a truly treasured manner it must be entirely ethereal; it must be something that we can’t see, that we can’t hold and that we can’t own.  When we possess something, the fact that we have the ability to possess it suggests that whatever it is, it’s terribly limited; so limited in fact that we can control it.  Possessing something suggests that whatever we possess is subject to our whims and the flux of our own whimsy.  Anything we can control must have some sort of inferior status that automatically excludes it as being treasure of the most treasured sort. 

Being unable to possess something suggests that it has a sweeping scope, an unfathomable significance, and a fathomless depth that is far beyond us or beyond anyone else for that matter.  Real treasures are elusive because if they’re not, they don’t rise sufficiently above our sordid and stained humanity to be genuinely categorized as treasures.  Real treasure will not be owned, or bound, or appraised, or hemmed in, or leashed, or locked in a vault, or confined to a trust, or be made subject to either our ridicule or praise.  Real treasure is priceless because it supersedes and completely eclipses any rogue monetary standards that we’d foolishly attempt to place on it.  Real treasure will not bow in servitude or obediently follow at our heels because it is superior to us.  Yet the real wonder of real treasure is that it is withheld from no one. 

 

Sparrows and a Clapboard Garage

Every spring the sparrows came back to the old garage; something like coming back to a comfy, old friend.  Darting and bouncing in feathered frenzy, they would burst from the muscular maples and the tangled brush of the Mock Oranges, flirting and flitting in front of the garage in some sort of grand hello after a winter’s separation.  Upon their return their boundless energy and contagious enthusiasm seemed wildly intoxicating; vibrant, vibrating and filled with all the fresh energy of spring.  I often wondered if they had spent the cold, gray months of winter in a nearly uncontrollable anticipation of greeting their old friend once winter had rolled off the horizon of spring.

Sometimes in life there seems to be a subtle yet wonderfully warm camaraderie of sorts that develops between things you’d never think would or could be connected like that.  Those things are a kind of treasure in themselves.  That seemed to explain the quiet, entirely unspoken kind of relationship that existed between the old garage and the sparrows.  They seemed like long seasoned friends that didn’t need to say much because the bond that they shared spoke more than words ever could.  The old clapboard garage and the house sparrows were each warmed, gently magnified, and beautifully enhanced by the other.  Each was a treasure embraced as a treasure. 

The sparrows would glide up between the heavy wooden doors and slip by the sturdy steel tracks that they ran on; seeming to nestle into the garages soft, clapboard embrace.  Every spring the sparrows would settle in and nest right above the heavy wooden doors, tucked just inside the thin edge of the garage attic.  There was far too much love and warmth in the old garage, so there were usually two or three nests enfolded above the wooden doors.

It was easy to see the sparrows incessantly coming and going as they bobbed and darted about.  Yet, as with any real treasure you couldn’t see what they were doing.  Treasure enveloped in secrecy always lends a bit of tantalizing mystery to it all.  The sparrows were phenomenally tireless; transporting endless bits of straw and brown grasses into the garage; building a place to birth the treasures of the next generation.  Within moments of entering the garage they would poke out elated heads, and then burst into flight with empty beaks.  In no time they would return with more strands of lacey grass, or bits of tattered weed, or cottony fibers, or limply discarded pieces of string . . .  over and over.

Within weeks the sound of new life could be heard tentatively reaching out from above the old, wooden doors.  Scattered chirps and peeps liberally tossed out as brilliant shards of spring would be shushed when anyone approached.  Patient mothers were teaching their little ones that life is an incomparable treasure, but treasure does not eliminate danger.  These little, hidden treasures would become ever louder as they grew.  They would grow strong and eventually seek the independence of flight.  Before the close of spring they would launch themselves in a gangly and awkward kind of flight.  Curiosity would beckon them out to explore the places close to the garage, bursting into uncoordinated flight but never wandering too far way.  Life would eventually call them out ever further from the clapboard garage until they were gone into summer’s embrace.      

 

Characteristics of Treasures

Unobtrusive

Treasures are hidden away in quiet places.  They speak in soft tones and often become silenced as we approach.  They don’t beg to be found, but embrace us if we do happen to find them.  They are the product of completely ordinary circumstances unfolding in wonderfully extraordinary ways.  They are found hidden in the nooks and crannies of our existence; all around us if we quit allowing our attention to be captivated by that which is noisy and listen for that which is quiet and still. 

 

The Product of Unexpected and Loving Camaraderie

Treasures are a product of treasures.  Real treasure is the product of lives shared, experiences intermingled, roads merged into single lanes, sacrifices jointly experienced, the soulful laughter of two hearts in beat with each other, and lives bountifully expended in unity.  Treasures are the step-child of lives lived out in shared experiences that dramatically multiply both the experience and persons in a manner geometrically beyond anything the persons could hope to experience alone.  Treasures rise out of the relationship of people who are intimately woven together by the threads of time and the needle of experience.

 

Always Creating and Never Preserving

Treasures are not stagnant.  They’re not to be preserved as in the preserving they will most certainly wither and they will perish.  Real treasures begat other treasures.  Real treasures are designed to perpetuate other treasures.  Sometimes the perpetuation involves the replication of the original treasure, and sometimes the replication is something entirely different but just as wonderful.  Treasures are ingenuously and deliberately crafted to enrich the world.  If one thing is for certain, they are not designed to be encased in the lifeless museums of our making, or the vaults we create to keep them to ourselves.  It’s in their multiplication that the cold of life’s winters are forced off the edge of the calendar to make way for spring.

 

Sown to the World

It’s our natural inclination to preserve treasures; to corral them and box them and seal them tight.  We assume that unless they’re preserved they’ll be lost, which is entirely contradictory.  In fact, they are designed to be launched and thrown out to the horizons of each of our lives regardless of whatever the season is that we might be in.  Authentic treasures permeate our world; they gain wings of their own and they disburse so that they might reproduce in other places and in other lives.  The stuff of treasure is irrepressibly infectious and prudently wild; intent on providing enrichment whenever and wherever it can.  We must work against our own inclinations and toss treasures out to the world around us.

It would be tremendously wise to rethink the concept of treasure in your own life.  What you may be holding onto may not be treasure at all.  In fact, if you’re “holding” onto it, it’s not.