Lost and Found

By Karen Abler-Carrasco, WSFS Instructor

“One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making new discoveries.” — A. A. Milne, from Winnie the Pooh

Or as Calvin, of the Calvin and Hobbes comic series says, “There’s treasure EVERYWHERE!” And haven’t we all had those delightful moments when we reach into the pocket of last year’s winter coat and find a stash of money, or those long-lost earrings.

My own home is a comfy blend of tidy and disordered, so I get the best of both worlds–reassuringly Known and the strange Unknown, side by side. And residing in the mystery of the Unknown are all of the leprechauns and fairies that steal and relocate my things. Those imps, what a teasing dance they lead me in sometimes– “now, where are those car keys?….I set them RIGHT HERE last night.”

My son and I have experienced some amazing cosmic disappearances of items over the years, and we have come to call this “disappearing into the 4th dimension.” I see it as pointing to a netherworld just beyond the visible spectrum, where material objects seem to lift up and hover for awhile, sometimes transporting themselves a short distance, and then falling back into the density of the 3rd dimension, often in a slightly different location from where they first left it. For example, the lost car keys (a favorite toy of the trans-dimensional imps) that appear the next day right in the middle of an empty kitchen tabletop, where they could never have hidden the day before. The forces that vanish the items love to replace them in the most obvious and impossible spots, as if to prove that the cosmic mysteries of the Unseen worlds exist and surround us all constantly.

This happens to my Irish mother all the time, throughout her long life, and our family has witnessed the seemingly miraculous return of lost items in the most unlikely places, sometimes years later. Once she found a garnet necklace under her pillow that had disappeared many years before, in a distant city! We have experienced a measure of life-saving angelic appearances as well. I like to think that, through her strong Irish lineage, we have our own ancestral set of mischievous leprechauns, and angels, that desire us to know, without a doubt, that there are other realms, other worlds, just beyond our sight, yet very influential in our reality all the time.

So, I always allow for a little migrating nest of mess somewhere in the house. It’s a home for the Unknown to rest, waiting to sneak out and seed a fresh miracle into my awareness when I need a reminder of its existence. As long as I have a few shifting areas that are left gently out of my control for awhile, I can feel that some magic can happen in the rest of my world. It’s exactly the same outside in my garden–there must be a generous place left undisturbed for a season or two, where insects, butterflies, microbes and mysteries have sanctuary. There they can lay their eggs, hatch their new life and restore the Harmony and Balance that come from the Unknown dimensions just beyond our sight, smell, touch and hearing. As Calvin says, “There’s treasure EVERYWHERE” and much of it lies just around the corner, in the coat pocket, or hidden in the embracing Unknown and Unseen, waiting to bring us fresh gifts of awareness and vibrant Grace.