It’s A Good Time… Isn’t It?

SUN., DEC. 10, 2000, 9:28 PM
FARM, ROCK’G. CHR.

Your feet continue to heal, though not as fast as you’d like. You have pain from time to time, which should be a good reminder of both your vulnerability AND your capacities to adapt. You do accept that pain is one of My ways of getting your attention, and so I do remind you of this, yet again.

At this time in your life this “accident” wasn’t a great inconvenience. The weather has been mostly pleasant, you’ve had good help with necessary chores, and you have no continuing responsibilities, in the Department or at the Church. So you’ve been given the privilege of non-stressful healing. Appreciate this… as part of this last portion of this earth life. I can almost call it “ideal.”

Since We are now into December, the last month of this year (and by some countings, the last of this decade and century) and this is a task that usually is hampered by the end of the semester, Christmas decorating, even traveling, you could… even should… be getting the Teachings selected and reproduced for this final Ruminations of this year. Naturally it should focus on this “event” that injured your feet but that should be seen as, primarily, a challenge to your spirit. So, in addition to what I have “beamed your way” since the “hike in the woods” I want you to look for other earlier happenings in your life on which I’ve commented… all that reinforce the reality that a good earth life must contain some painful times, as particular spurs to spiritual growth. Your spirit if fairly well developed, but I’ve chosen you for some special, unique ways of growing. (You’ll probably find out… and remember) that We decided on something like this (ways of developing spirit) before you came into this life… and now is a good time to let you see how this growth benefits you.

Thus I can affirm that at your age, with the losses of which We’re both aware, including this significant, painful one, it is quite a GOOD TIME to review your life, as it has been (and how that has affected your attitudes and behaviors now) and how it can… and should… be in the time left. This is to say – if this event had been avoided (by you and/or by Me) it isn’t probable that you would be looking at your life, as I’m suggesting, past, present, and future. Remember… “out of the mud grows the lotus.”

As you think back on the lives of your parents you certainly affirm that they had a good life together, even into retirement, in both Long Beach and Honolulu. They would agree with your assessment, however, that they each lived a bit longer than was comfortable for them and for Joanne and her family. You were pleased to be included in some of your Dad’s muses about his life, and you now wish that this could have happened when he had been younger and more able to remember.

This should suggest to you that you should be continuing the “sessions” with son John Patrick, letting these Teachings from Me be a good way to pass on some of your observations on the life you’ve been privileged to lead… what has been and what could have been.

You are quite assured that you have had a good life, in quite a good era, and in almost ideal settings. As you look back on it you see that you had quite an ideal childhood and adolescence… even as objective history pictures these years as those of Economic Depression and a mighty World War.

You enjoyed and profited from your education, culminating in two degrees from UCLA and a doctorate from Stanford. You also had both a satisfying athletic career and a comfortable spiritual life, with experiences, both recognized and not. Then your teaching career, with its beginnings also including coaching, developed marvelously, at three different and unique institutions. You were an active part of your profession, and you truly enjoyed relationships with students, all through the years… but particularly in these last years, here at SIU.