Do You Still Need Goals?

FRI., NOV. 29, 1996, 10:26 AM
FARM, STUDY

This pad was in readiness for an early morning Teaching, but, wisely, you “beat the rain” with your wood-gathering, which shall make for some warm fires, as the rain falls. You “almost” have that wood-lot cleaned up, which has been a goal for sometime. After a fine Thanksgiving dinner with son John Patrick and his family you started a small book, the theme of which does encourage this teaching. What do I have to say about goals?

How about this for an introduction: for everything there is a season…? As a small child you need few… or no… goals. Then when you begin to want things you have to work for, small goals begin to pop up. As you get older goals may include passing certain courses, making a team, having certain people as friends…

You don’t remember much about junior high goals, but, into high school your desires to play football and to become a Comus were certainly goals. Each was accomplished, and your opportunities to play football had many effects on the rest of your life (including this recent 50th reunion). Graduation from high school was a “given” and therefore not truly a goal. But you did want to be in the armed forces during that war, and particularly in the V-12 program. That goal was accomplished… and you had nothing but small, proximate goals until… what about a career?

So perhaps your first real Goal was to become a coach. Over the next 8 year period you became head coach, at Punahou, in your two sports and finished with a championship football team to match your three track championships. But then, along with this coaching goal, you met Lenore, and soon having her as your life partner became a Goal. That finally was accomplished, and I am pleased to have helped with that victory.

Another goal, in the midst of this was to earn a doctorate at Stanford… without a Goal to which this lead. But then you were offered the position at Stanford, and your Goal became one of succeeding in an academic career. Along with this was the Goal of being both a good husband and father, and these Goals had a recurrent way of conflicting.

During this time, as part of the Menlo Park congregation I broke through your good-church-Christian “status” and let you know, subtly, that you had been born again. This had not been a Goal of yours. It was not something to “work for”, but a “condition” to just accept, as a gift.

A clear Goal at this time was to “build” your academic career, with the “right” balance of teaching, research, and service. You wanted to succeed at Stanford, but that was not to be, for I wanted you here. Higher status was yours to enjoy here, and soon you were a tenured full professor. Of course you wanted it, but your Goal was more one of being such a well-rounded professor that this promotion would come… and it did.

I have led you into these areas of teaching, and then I quite clearly and deliberately called you to this relationship with Me, receiving these Teachings. From these come Our Ruminations, and… from now on you need have no Goals.

Oh, you can have goals, like getting in some wood before the rains come, or cleaning up the kitchen, or… this table, to your left. But your accomplishments in life have been sufficient. You have been above average, but short of outstanding. Be satisfied with that judgment (though, yes, it was nice to be selected as the Outstanding Teaching in these last years of your career). You can complete your career any way you wish, as long as there is a strong emphasis on spirit as an important dimension of health.