There once was a woman who was given a pair of gold earrings for Christmas. The earrings were crafted in the middle east and featured a twisted hoop with a hammered edge. They were lightweight, easy on the ear lobe. Truth is, the woman actually spotted them herself one day, but then a daughter purchased them to be given to the woman by her man.
On Christmas morning, the woman unwrapped a small, telltale box. Having completely forgotten about the earrings in that moment, there was true surprise on seeing them hanging on the cardboard in the case. Twice the delight.
One day, soon after Christmas, the woman slid the thin, gold bar through the piercing in her ear and painstakingly fiddled it into the clasp. She looked in the mirror and was pleased at the shape and the shine of the gold against her hair.
After donning a heavy, winter coat, she was out the door, into the car, and off to town.
Parking streetside, the woman did the usual route of errands for her mother – pharmacy, bank, cheese shop, and grocery store. The day was grey, sloshy, and cold. After delivering, unloading, and putting away the mother’s items, the woman and her accompanying sister headed to a rough and tumble fabric warehouse nearby to sift through bolts of cotton, rayon, and linen, looking for January bargains.
While driving home, the woman reached up mindlessly and felt for her earring in her left ear. It was not there.
Maybe it came out at home. Maybe it’s in a crevice in the vehicle. Maybe it’s caught in the hooded coat.
And so ensued the search.
The woman lit her lamp and swept her house. She searched for the earring that she had lost. She retraced her errand route, checking the slushy parking spots, inquiring after lost and found items, but did not find what had been lost. Relentless was the search, naught was the result.
The lostness lingered, persisted. She watched the floor while walking, always looking for a glint of gold. She inquired again after lost and found items at the shops. But the seeking and asking did not result in a finding. The lost earring remained lost.
And so, the woman had to let the lost be lost. The remaining earring hung in its box, solitary, on the dresser.
******
It was only an earring. I was so sure I would find it. I could see it. But that is not how it ended. And then I wondered if there might be a life lesson to be found in my own parable.
Was I being invited to fixate less on the thing I had lost and more on letting go? Acceptance of something being gone? Not needing something to be resolved in one certain way? Being open to the possibility of letting a thing be “unfound” in the traditional sense? Being open to a whole new and different possibility presenting itself because not finding leads to a void which is space? Entertain hope?
I took my story to my spiritual director, and one of the pieces of wisdom she reflected back to me was something she had read recently that suggested that “lost is a place too”. Lostness, she said, is/can be a liminal space, a threshold, and it’s important for growth and expansiveness. She also kindly reminded me that parables are stories, they are not formulaic in nature. I took these good thoughts and words home with me to ponder and to tease out meaning, and also to simply let sit as it is and let time and life and spirit work their distillation and settling (and frankly, kept an eye out still for a lost earring).
And so I offer to you my story – an ordinary, mundane, everyday story, full of cracks, crevices, and holes – and maybe you can catch a glimpse of a glint of gold in the dirt under-foot on your quotidian path.