Losses… And Gains

TUES., MAY 8, 2001, 2:15 PM
FARM, STUDY

It is a beautiful, warm Spring day, with the trees around this study of yours (Ours) in full leaf. This is a fine season, with some rain and then days, like this, in which the sunshine is supreme. You have some work to do on your gardens, but the growth of desired plants is acceptable, and there should be some enjoyment from them as the summer comes alone.

You have two small rabbits, survivors of the original five, with one still loose in the yard. So it may or may not survive. You seem to have “lost” your duck and drake. You knew it was risky to let them roam free, and it would appear that some of the “wild creatures” took advantage of their “lack of wildness.” (Check around the pond and pasture when you have finished this.)

Loses of physical capacities continue, but slowly, and you can adapt to some. ( 2:24 / 3:17 ) Your eye sight is “a loss,” but it isn’t getting obviously worse, fast, and you can still manage. You know, however, that it is important to consciously compensate for lack of depth perception. It is now appropriate to describe your healing feet as “uncomfortable,” but not in real pain. You realized the healing would be slow, but you can’t always accept that this slowness could mean up to a year, rather than just a “few months.”

You are losing desires that you once had for travel to old and new places. You heard your Dean and a colleague talk about and show slides of their trip to Cuba. Before that you got out and read the Teachings I offered to you while you were there, now 10 years ago. Then you gave the Dean a copy of the Ruminations We put together after that venture (making the experience more of a gain). You shall be interested in whether Keith will respond in any way to “Us.”

With this being Finals Week at the University it means yet another year in which you have experienced the losses associated with your professorship and the gains of a less pressured life, here on this Farm and around the campus. The loss of your “work” is felt less and less each year, and the gains in retirement are many.

Still, you have one more loss to experience in that realm… that of your small but familiar office. Even this week you should start on the “keep” choices from that office ( 3:35 / 3:58 ), coordinating what you bring home with what is now here. You did make the “search walk” down to the pond, looking for signs of ducks, present and past. No sign of Aflac, but there was Sir Francis, swimming on the pond with a wild duck. So… it appears that one loss remains, but another that was presumed lost was not. Life goes on, with its “partials,” as well as gains and losses.

Even with the bodily and mental losses, you are enjoying life, as you should. It is a season and a time in life to enjoy, what is, now, and what has been in the past, recent and not so.

You had quite a walk, on healing feet, but not as far as you expected to go. The “loss” of your feet is receding, but… you still need to be “careful.”

You are only minimally interested in the politics of your government in its interactions with “friends” and “foes” in the earth. Yours is considered to be a strong nation, but this may or may not contribute to your “popularity,” among the others. As I’ve told you I am only minimally interested in these political machinations, and, at this point in earth life, I am not fully committed to “saving human lives” (or extending such). Deaths are part of the earth’s ecology (will both of those small bunnies survive, on their own?), and thus there must be losses of human life in order to insure the gain of a well-functioning earth scene.