Some Insights On “Your Three”

FRI., JAN. 20, 1995, 10:27 AM
OFFICE, PULLIAM HALL

This Spring term has begun, and you have met two of your three classes. These clearly are your favorites, though the excessive numbers do dampen your ardor somewhat. You enjoy the Foundations class in the Fall, and the small number this past term made it particularly pleasurable. Yet in that you feel constrained to cover material that is of little interest to you but is important for students who later must write prelims. In contrast “your three” this semester are each courses that you have developed and organized, and you can include or exclude whatever you choose.

This is important to Me, for it allows you to not only introduce but really develop the spiritual dimension to these three foci – international, environmental, and death. You can and do include it in your other courses, but it is most naturally a part of these three. You are experienced in doing this, but some insights from Me, as the sun breaks forth for the first time in many days, should be welcomed. You agree, of course?!

The course in international health is your longest running course, and you assert, as you should, that this has been a long-time encourager of the inclusion of spirit as a part of health. Over 30 years ago you became aware that your culture’s dominant premise that spirit had little to do with health, as defined by the medical model, was not dominant in the total world, and perhaps not even in your own country. This term I want you to give more attention to the Christian faith as the dominant one in your culture, affecting health. You can comment on its role in healing, but also how it has affected perception of the environment and of death… in the past. Then you can suggest how it may be changing these perceptions now… or consequences if it doesn’t.

Remember that I am not opposed to living that is somewhat to much simpler than your culture’s norm. There always will be disparities in wealth and in property, but My interest is in spirit, and what you own and earn is only tangential to how your spirit is developing. There is a great range in spirit and how it is expressed… in Native American villages on reservations in this country… and in wealthy suburbs of your great cities. And so it is throughout the earth today. Some people survive and prosper because of spirit. Others deteriorate and die because of a deficiency of spirit… even while receiving excellent physical medical care.

The message that I am most concerned that you deliver in the environment class is that I am more concerned with the health of the earth’s total ecosystem than I am about the growth and health of the human population. To sustain this environment for good living in years ahead today’s humans must accept and act according to the spiritual premise of giving up something good for something better… and including that the first shall be last and the last first. Humans are clearly the highest form of life, and therefore you must have more concern for the lesser forms of life, in order that the whole complex system, that I continue to create and sustain, may survive and thrive.