On Christmas night I caught the end of The Wizard of Oz on TV. They show it at this time of year. I had tuned in right at the moment when the Wizard’s balloon was taking off and Dorothy had missed getting in because Toto had run away. She was heart broken – how would she get home. Glenda the good witch arrives and tells Dorothy she has always been able to go home whenever she had wanted to. She asks her: “ What have you learned?”
The scarecrow asks too: What have you learned, Dorothy?
Dorothy: Well, I - I think that it - it wasn't enough to just want to see Uncle Henry and Auntie Em - and it's that - if I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with! Is that right?
Glenda says, “That’s right” and goes on to show her how to click her heals tree times and say “There is no place like home, there is no place like home, there is no place like home.”
I started to cry and repeated with Dorothy – “There is no place like home.” Dorothy had to learn that her hearts desire was in side of her (her own backyard) So to have I . I ran away to find the other side of the rainbow – to search for a place where bluebirds fly. And I found many places like that but not my hearts desire. Like Dorothy I had to re-find my brains and heart and courage. They were with me all along; I just didn’t know they were a part of me and not about where I was in the world.
I can’t click my heals to get back to Seattle, that will take a plane to do. And I may not be in Seattle all the time in future as well. My home, in the end is within me, and the people I love. The search I have been on has taken me back to myself. I self I never really lost, but I had to find out like Dorothy that it was mine again. Wherever I go, I take myself with me and the ‘home’ I have inside is what will sustain me and help me to share and be with others.
