In Search Of Relevance

SUN., NOV. 29, 1987, 6:15 AM
FARM, STUDY

You have virtually completed your Ruminations on the time of Christmas, as speedily as I said you would. A dozen Teachings were selected as your basic material, and then began the search for relevance to the season, as you developed it. The process is now a fascinating one, isn’t it?! It is a research process in the scholarly mode. You have always done it well. Now you are doing it well and faster.

What is of relevance to life? to earth life? to life in your culture? to your own present life? Certainly most of the major topics have been spoken to over more than eight years of My active relationship with you. When will Teaching after Teaching be honestly judged redundant? Given that I have asserted that I, as a fine teacher, use repetition and reinforcement as a regular approach, it should be clear that the time of redundance is afar off. I don’t require that you start each day in this learning fashion, but if I did, each lesson would have a relevance. (Nice preparation!)

I won’t yet give you a theme for the next letter, the first of Volume 9 in 1988, but it shall be one that requires more scholarly “digging” to establish the proper relevance. It shall be a more arduous task than this one, but you shall enjoy it. Eventually this shall be your most compelling task, a wonderful combination of responsibility and joyous pleasure.

One of the criteria for relevance is the relative one of “what do you have time… or room… for?” You haven’t truly finished this epistle on Christmas because you’re not sure how much space is left. You have a self-imposed limit (a good one, incidentally), and so the relevance for inclusion is bound by the limit on pages. Thus, you can’t determine whether the comment on caroling is relevant or not. Though I guide you in general, I leave such judgments to you.

The most fundamental piece of knowledge pertaining to relevance is that any activity or any situation in life, no matter how exciting or how dull and routine, can be a means of spiritual growth. Yes, any. It depends on your awareness and appreciation only. Therefore any circumstance of your life now, here in the earth, has relevance to your continuing life. Isn’t that a great economy? You are far enough along your spiritual path to have repeated insights into this truth. You can only dimly imagine what day-to-day life is like when this realization is a constant, ever-present one.

Is writing an important, overdue letter of more relevance than splitting and stacking wood? Yes… and no. The requirements of and benefits to you are certainly different. Yet each is important to growth and to functioning, and hence each is relevant to the growth of spirit, if you realize and appreciate each.

The leaves all have fallen, and the trees are bare, and they will be for months now. Nothing blooms now outside as the fall temperatures prevail, and winter will be soon. I urge you again to see the relevance of each season for growth. You have the privilege of living with four different seasons, and this is such a marvelous symbol of earth life. And you have to understand earth life rather well before you can see its relevance to continuous, eternal life.

“In search of relevance” is an important title. It implies, on the one hand, that you must search out the relevant from the irrelevant, with much of the latter to avoid or discard. On the other, it implies that the search is merely to recognize the relevance of any circumstance, any activity to the life of ongoing spirit. Thus, whatever you do is relevant, but you know that some uses of time are more worthwhile than others… for contributions to the lives of others. So continue to keep “missed opportunities” here on the desk until My suggestions have been implemented. The ones to be completed are truly no more difficult than those already marked off.