In the beginning it was an email from Kong Tao an ancient architect designer who responded to an email I sent wanting to build a friendship park in Boynton Beach where I lived at the time. We traveled to Qufu in October 1999 to visit him on our way to Urumqi to adopt our daughter Emily. That trip led to over forty trips and living and teaching in Qufu, the birthplace of Confucius. From the first trip onward, I knew I was home again.
Several places and things convinced me that I had been here in western Shandong, nearby Jining, and Qufu. None more than finding the Flying Horse of Hansu pictured above. My mother, wife, daughter Katie, and I were having lunch with several city planners in Jining, a city about an hour south of Qufu, when I told them I kept having thoughts of being here before and seeing this iron horse floating in the clouds and that it was close by.
They all took me seriously and said they wanted to take me somewhere. We all got in a van after lunch and drove a few miles out of the city. We stopped along a dirt road and went up to what looked like an old barn. Inside there were several stone tablets from the Han dynasty more than two thousand years old. They told me of the history of the early Han and how they were all connected to their own roots and history.
We went outside to another small structure where they were casting images in iron of a design that dated from the Han period of history. They pulled out an eight-inch-high iron flying horse and asked if this is what I was looking for… and this was it. When we got back into town, they took me to see the design of the new Jining University soon to be built in Qufu. This was in October 1999. Little did I know that I was to teach at this university in 2011 twelve years later.
Now, today, after walking in the footsteps of Confucius over many years and having lived next to the Confucius Mansion and Temple and teaching at the school founded for his descendants, more than twenty-five years after that first trip, I am happy in knowing that I don’t have to be there – to be there. I had come home.
Number 41 of the I Ching
Staying at an Ever-moving Standstill
Slowing your pace to an ever-moving standstill, the Tao teaches one to appreciate the direction and values of our activities and their net results. Keep thoroughly quiet and calm staying again only to the back roads as before and let the overwhelming situation at hand play itself out.
Do not contribute to misunderstandings that can not be controlled. Know only what must be done and do only that but well. Keep others at arm’s length and keep to your own inner destiny maintaining a constant sense of goodwill in your dealings with everyone.
Show a quiet solitude and confidence in dealings with others and stay within the inner peace that is within you only to be found for yourself. Fade back and simply find everything there is to know.
Once well rested, continue forward refreshed and renewed. Each step with a confidence not known before but now ingrained with alternatives to follow. Trouble will always be lurking around the corner. Stay alert and be prepared to brush it aside like gnats and mosquitoes that in reality can do no real harm but to only delay your real progress. New beginnings and help are on the way. Stay at an ever-moving standstill and they cannot pass you by.
An original composition and interpretation of the Chinese Classic the I Ching(41 DECREASE / Mountain over Lake). 3/10/94
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