More Progress On The Off Ramp

FRI., NOV. 1, 1996, 10:28 AM
AIRPORT, ST. LOUIS

This meeting was a short one for you, but it was also another bump down the off-ramp from your professional life. You attended some sessions, but, true to My advice to you, you spent a goodly amount of time with “spiritual matters”. Your interest in the professional aspects of this field in which you have served these many years is waning fast, and this is as it should be. Any further association with this group will be because of certain people rather than with the conference itself. I recommend this, and you are agreeing, as you should.

You’ve never had a strong attachment to this profession, though you’ve sometimes appeared to have such. It has been a good group with which to associate, but you see the “cause” of school health education, important as it seems to be to you in the field, apparently no further along to anything like full acceptance, than when you entered 50 years ago. There have been individual successes, and some schools, even districts, have had effective, viable programs, but nationwide it seems to be “shaky as ever”, overall.

Two of your areas of interest and concern (Mine, too), spirituality and death education, are still perceived as controversial, and your interests in the clearly acceptable topics are minimal and declining. Oh, I should also have included environmental education, as you and I envision it (fewer humans and simpler lives), as another controversy.

Still, there is no reason to feel discouragement or frustration. You have spent a good career teaching, encouraging learning, and influencing some of those who have come to you. Successes in your culture’s terms is of little consequence to Me. My concern is with “spiritual successes”, like unto Mark, and you have had several of these. You did notice that virtually every alumnus, Ruminations reader, and even some of your present students was quite willing to greet you with a hug, a small symbol of a “special relationship”. Such is more important to Me than formal presentations or published papers. You have been one who has helped to make the hug, of both men and women, quite acceptable in the professional setting, and I applaud this as a small success.

It was fun for you to have that rather long conversation with Mark, Adrienne, and Heidi last evening. Part of the joy came from your knowledge, through My Teachings, that something like this was going to happen… as it did. You reacted to them, from your spirit, and it was a most worthwhile evening. In any future conventions this should be your sort of involvement. Good, yeah!?

I’ll continue to remind you to appreciate how fortunate you have been in your total life work. You should recall how athletics and coaching was your motivational “start”, and this “reunion” coming up tomorrow should be appreciated as a part of that time of choosing. While your on-ramp was the coaching, you also were guided to classroom teaching with health as your focus. The on-ramp took you then to Stanford and the degree which made your main journey possible… and then back to Punahou for more experience in teaching… and the opportunity for your sister to start her family life. (It is fun to be able to combine such circumstances, so all benefit.) (Break)

The time at Stanford, as an assistant professor, was both enjoyable and frustrating, and you see now that it was more preparation for the “level” portion of your earth life adventure (this time), as a full-tenured professor at this Midwest university. Your spiritual and professional development continued, and at one point you headed up again (on My Scorecard), for I came to you, personally and tangibly, with these Teachings. I assured you of your task, and, as in most matters in the earth, I have been more interested in your faithfulness than in your actual successful (or not so successful) “performance”.