A Gift of Uniqueness

January 10, 2011 by Andrea Friedmann 3 Comments

Yesterday, on a podcast,  I heard British Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks say, “By being what only I can be, I give humanity what only I can give. It is my uniqueness that allows me to contribute something unique to the universal heritage of humankind.” This sums up so well what I believe about each and every one of us. Just hearing it illuminates me.

And now I am approaching the day when I can offer one more form of my uniqueness, when I can give one more gift that only I can give.  And that thought fills me with more joy than I can fit into one three-letter word, or any word at all.

I have made reference here, before, to the home of my soul. It is a place like no other that I have ever visited, in the breadth of my travels. It is a place that sounds pedestrian when I describe it, compared to what it offers. It is not like the glaciers in the Rockies, which took my breath away with their stark beauty. It is not clear and turquoise, jade green, and eight other shades of blue, like the Caribbean. It is not rich with history and the presence of many anonymous lives, the way Macchu Picchu is.  I won’t find there the dragonlike sea iguanas and Frigate birds with bloated red breasts that I would on Galapagos.

And yet, like all of those places, La Finca can open my heart in my chest. It can fill me with a silence so deep and so broad that I can clearly hear my own soul. It can offer me treasures as minuscule as an inch-long golden orchid hidden under a leaf, which fills me with wonder and awe.

And that is half of the gift I can offer: a visit to La Finca with anyone who cares to experience for themselves the magic that I can’t do justice to with such meager tools as words.

Another view at La Finca