As In Days Of Yore

THURS., OCT. 7, 1993, 5:22 PM
AIRPORT, ST. LOUIS

It is not often that you seat yourself in as non-quiet a place as a major airport and listen for a Teaching from Me. In the early days of Our relationship such was much more common, and you discovered that you could hear Me quite adequately, above the conversations that were only “clutter” to your ears. The sounds of TV were too distracting… as were these loud public announcements, but you adapted to these limitations. You know now that I am here, even as you have this experience rather seldom, as your career winds down.

You are comfortable with this “liturgy” that We have developed, and you know that each Teaching has the potential for being meaningful and helpful as you live life out. So it now is seldom that you question a title or even speculate critically as to whether this shall be a worthy addition to the volumes of evidence for My presence.

You will not be surprised as I challenge you to use this time of reunion for as much exploration of spirit and spiritual paths as possible. This reunion will be an attempt to harken back to days of yore when you were a teenager and a high school student. Your spiritual path was not yet established and set, but I already had elected you. Remember that you ran for Council in junior high and were elected. You were elected President of Comus Club and of the Boy’s League in high school. You remember no situation in which you ran and were not elected.

While none of these “honors” were important to Me, as such, they marked you as one who was experienced in election. You remember little about your church youth group, but you were reasonably active. You didn’t deny Me, even as you rarely affirmed Me publicly. A good, clean-cut kid was an appellation that fit you then. But this still means that you were not aware of how most of your classmates related to Me… or did not relate. I just tell you now that a few have had strong spiritual experiences, and they’ll talk about these if asked in the “proper” way.

I realize that initiating such conversations, “from scratch,” is not easy for you, but let this Teaching be an urging for you to be more aware than you would naturally be of opportunities, in the bud. You’ll run the risk of being spoken of as a religious weirdo, but since this is a group that you’ll probably never see again the risk is a slight one. For if you seek you shall find one, perhaps more, who shall be willing, even eager, to share experiences and convictions about life, as you are now in its 7th decade.

The relevant days of yore are those in Long Beach prior to and including the beginning of your War. With the commencement of life beyond high school you separated yourself from these friends and this community. Most shall have little to no appreciation of your present life. You know this, but it still may be difficult to balance, talking about your good life and listening to the stories of those quite different. This shall be another part of the challenge.

Did you have spiritual experiences in this time that is the focus of this reunion? The one you remember most vividly is that of feeling lost in the mountains, a feeling that brought you to your knees in prayer. Did I answer and lead you to the camp? Assume I did, and that for all of your non-spiritual antics I still wanted you there, moving ever so slowly toward Me. As you remember it, your life then brought you few situations that would push you to pray for blessing.

Yet isn’t it strange that you made a feeble attempt that next year, at Berkeley, to become a candidate for the Chaplain Corps? It was feeble, and you assumed, later, that this wasn’t My Will, but it was another small indication that you should be elected, much later in life, for a lay ministerial task, one replete with mystery.