It’s Part Of Your “History”

TUES., NOV. 3, 1998, 6:30 AM
FARM, STUDY

Last evening, after you finished the Newsletter task, you read over the Teachings that I offered you on your 1992 journey to Hawaii. And now you’re considering a return trip, to see your Dad and express your concern for him. Yet it also is a revisiting of a place that was important to your development as Bob Russell. Those Teachings, in 1992, emphasize this, but I’m certainly not bashful about revisiting and reemphasizing vital aspects of your life. It is part of your “history”, as the spirit in an eternal soul, on a long life journey.

As part of your life story, this time, you grew up active in your Methodist Church. It was a good aspect of your life, but you did not try to integrate it with your “dominant life” of Comus, athletics, and high school. (The closest you came was… you and Wilber together at the Church Camp, two Comuses.) Both “scenes” of life at that time were important. They just didn’t relate much to each other.

During your years in the Navy and at UCLA you continued intermittent attendance at church. Part of your spiritual story is that you never rejected the Church or this religion of Ours. You often tell the story of that meeting with John Fox and your “sudden” decision to accept the teaching/coaching job at Punahou, but you don’t emphasize that this was a school founded by Christian missionaries that still retained its Christian heritage. Each school day began with a devotional and prayer, and each week was marked by a chapel service. The atmosphere was not overly religious, but the “mixture” was a comfortable one. Ken Rewick, the chaplain whose life was cut short by disease, was a good friend, and he did marry you and Lenore.

For, yes, you did meet, as you were “destined to”, Lenore, and much of those first years there were times of courtship. You were a competitor in athletics and in your brief coaching career, and you were successful in your competition for this special life partner. She was a “fallen away” Southern Baptist, you were a Methodist, but you both went to and were married in a Congregational Church, an historic one at that. Then you became Presbyterians as your life progressed together, but Central Union was a vital “bridge”.

Hence you began your classroom teaching in a Christian atmosphere, which was a kind of “seed bed” for this emphasis on the spiritual as the integrating dimension of health and life in your closing years here at a secular university. It was a significant beginning which led, in a circuitous way, to this last enjoyable portion of your professional life.

So… you are planning to return to that early site of your career. Changed as it is now, it still is a reminder of earlier years and quite an important beginning to your adult life. It is “part of the whole picture” that your sister and your Dad, who were not part of your early experiences in Hawaii, are now there, offering you a family “place” to be, as a returning “visitor”/malahini/coast haole from Illinois.

It also is interesting… isn’t it!?… that your current Ruminations “project” will be My comments on your visit there over 6 years ago. You may even start the Letter there, and will also be hearing from Me as you go back to relive some of your history. That is “history” of your life over 40 years ago. These Teachings are, in part, a “history” of this most current 20 years. And there in Hawaii they “merge”, rather nicely. I am good at what I do!