Are You Still A Health Educator?

WED., JULY 8, 1998, 11:55 AM
OFFICE, PULLIAM

Quite an enjoyable… and enlightening… experience was just yours to have, talking with Ralph and Lynda. The theme was, ostensibly, their prelim exams coming up next week, but, for you, it was a kind of answer to the question in My title. You were encouraged to muse back over your career as an educator, at 3 institutions, over 50 years (if We count your career as a student trainer). I have told you that it has been a fine, above-average career, and this “seminar” this morning confirms that it still goes on. But, “are you still a health educator?” How have you changed over these years?

Your initial interest was in coaching or improving health through competitive athletics. Your training room experiences were some in restoring functioning… and therefore “health” as an athlete. In the classroom you had junior high kids… good experience… fun… but you decided against that as a career. You had good mentors at UCLA and at Stanford, and you came to see the university scene as the one to which you would aspire. You succeeded in that aspiration, you were professionally active, you took opportunities that came along and created others, and you received several honors as a health educator. You published sufficiently to become a tenured full professor, but as your career developed the personal aspect of being a health educator became more important. Oh, it was an element from the very beginning, and your continued contact with the Punahou classes of 1952 and 1954 show this to be so. Those you taught… whatever… have become life-long friends.

You were almost “too busy”, at Stanford, becoming one who can profess as well as a health educator. Still, you became active in the alcohol education scene, with some lasting friendships out of those “contacts”. Here you have had memorable students, with many as personal friends, with Ralph and Lynda as some of “the last”.

You have evolved as one who professes that the spiritual is an important dimension of health… and you have “lived this”, through spiritual/personal relations with students and colleagues. You are now emeritus, and increasingly you see the spiritual as the key concept in health… the essence of health. This is not yet accepted in your profession, but, partly through your influence, there are more young folks in the field who are comfortably talking about spirit as important to health, earlier than you did. And, crucially, they are relating to those who learn from them in ways that show forth and help develop spirit.

Thus, from My perspective as Holy Spirit, one very much concerned about the health of humans, you are still a health educator, now more focused on vital aspects of health than when you were younger. As I’ve told you, you could publish a few more papers, as encouragement for this “former profession” of yours to pay attention to spiritual health. I realize that you probably won’t do this, but I can still chide you a bit.

Our Ruminations are an important publication for you to send forth, and I also include your monthly newsletter for the church as a means of celebrating a healthy church life. I’ll also push again for letters to several who need to hear from you. Your reply to Veronica was a good one, and you and she may soon rekindle your friendship.

So… you are no longer a researcher, leaving this aspect of your field to others. You are a health educator, still, by who you are, as a spiritual being, how you communicate with others (more important than the “what”), and how you live your life now and how you tell about this. You are not a health educator by certification standards, most of which seem unimportant to me. Yet you are a C.H.E.S., and it is important to this profession that there are a few still like you who have this designation.