A Cold Spell

MON., MAR. 30, 1987, 6:29 AM
FARM, STUDY

Here it is, clearly into warm Spring weather, and you’re experiencing a cold spell. The skies are gray, the temperature is low, and a north wind is blowing. The Spring blossoms and early flowers shall suffer… and perhaps the developing fruit. Is there a spiritual analog to this weather phenomenon? You can be sure that there is if I have started the Teaching in this way.

You are just emerging from one type of spiritual cold spell. It is one that is unique to you because it involves this relationship with Me. It is as if there is a source of warmth, but you stay away from it. The house is warm, but you choose to remain outside in the cold. Now this doesn’t mean that you have had a marked loss in spiritual interest or capacity, just as being outside in the cold may seem necessary in order to accomplish certain important chores and tasks. For you this cold spell has not been unproductive. You have accomplished some vital projects, including the conducting of yesterday’s worship service, with its fun-filled sermon.

Still I define and describe it as a cold spell when you are not hearing Me directly and not writing these pages. A cold spell is not bad. It just means that growth is slowed, even temporarily halted. Outside this could have been a day in which flower and grass would grow, but instead it is one in which all of this “progress” stops. Even so, it is Spring, and so this will have no truly lasting effects. It shall pass on through, and the warming winds will return and growth will proceed. And so it is with you as you take up this pen again.

There is another kind of cold spell of the spirit, analogous to a weather change in late September. If it were now that time of year, and the winds and temperatures were as they are now you might expect the early onset of winter, with little respite from the continuing cold. Flowers would cease growing and would die. Vegetable plants yet capable of more growth and production would wilt and produce no more. Activity associated with growth would cease and be replaced with that of maintenance and rest.

In the dimension of spirit this would be as if you decided this time with Me was a waste, and you had come to favor the conclusion that this isn’t real… just some obsession of yours. What time you would have if you didn’t have to sit and write, type originals, reproduce these, conduct a class, keep the many pages in order, and write a minimally appreciated letter called Ruminations! What time indeed! As your thoughts would settle into such a pattern your rational mind, with all of the glee it could muster, would create tasks to fill those spaces of time. And yet you would be no more productive in any way… would actually produce less and feel less good about what was happening.

Without My help you would not be a failure or a derelict. Some might not even notice any difference. But you would, and other spiritually discerning persons would. There would not be emptiness, but there neither would be the fullness you often feel and experience now. And you would know, in your spirit, that growth, as a total person, would not go on with any vigor until the warmth returned. And that warmth, in spiritual terms, is the active walk with Me and the tasks I offer you as a part of that walk.