Contemplation

SUN., SEPT. 8, 1985, 5:54 AM
FARM, STUDY

This is a word, o son, that represents a very important human activity. To contemplate is to use your mind, your emotions, and your spirit in the most favorable “combination.” To contemplate is to seek meaning. To contemplate is to have a good grasp of meaning and to apply it in some variety of ways… even new ways. So as a warm Sunday dawns hear My thoughts on contemplation.

With these descriptive definitions I have given you, you see that contemplation is almost unlimited. Contemplation does not preclude other activity, but it must be mostly physical or routine… familiar. You can still recall the times as a graduate student when you worked as a gardener, and you did much contemplation as you performed the non-intellectual tasks that kept garden and yard kempt. You still do this, of course, and it is one of the values of a large property that requires care – it provides time for contemplation.

This morning you shall lead your class in discussion of population, and this is a subject quite fit for contemplation. Don’t forget the premise that as anything increases in quantity beyond “some point” it becomes less valuable… even harmful. Water is certainly valuable and vital to all kinds of life in the earth. Yet when water comes in abundance, and then even more, it threatens life, destroys property, and its very plentitude reduces its value. Oxygen is important to life, and so is carbon dioxide. Yet it is the balance of these gases that is most valuable. Even though oxygen is more directly important to human life, an increase in it and a decrease in carbon dioxide would be as life-threatening as the reverse change.

This gives you both population and balance to contemplate. You can consider the earth, with its billions of people, mostly not like you, either in appearance or in education. You are unique even among your colleagues in printing and distributing some of your contemplations. Do many of these diverse peoples contemplate as they live their earth lives? Are their contemplations anything like yours?

You and Lenore are two people, and you produced five children, more than a doubling of population. These have now produced six (nearly), which is closer to replacement, and more appropriate to your contemplation of a desirable future. Yet you would value more, because they would be “yours.” And thus balance is threatened, because it is not easy to act in accordance with a global picture. I, of course, do see the global picture very well, but I also am part of innumerable family, tribe, clan, group, and national realities. I cannot perceive only in global or cosmic terms. When I am part of individual people’s lives I cannot think of them as mere population, any more than you can as you consider your family. Can you contemplate My contemplation?

All living people require daily food for the sustenance of life. Can you contemplate such a food supply? How is this contemplation jarred by the fact of surpluses in this country, bringing prices that cause farmers to leave food growing as a profession? How will this balance be reachieved? Food can be very simple… and also very complex. Do I approve of the complexity in the distributing and serving of food in your elite segment of the earth? A search of My Scriptures is not very enlightening on this matter.