“Sunshine On My Shoulder…”

WED., OCT. 15, 1997, 8:36 AM
OFFICE, PULLIAM

You are here in this spacious, comfortable office, after your breakfast/Bible study, with Sunshine on your shoulder(s) and almost in your eyes. It is a cool autumn day, but the sunshine is warm… and only a mite bothersome. You’re not sure what this Teaching will be about, but you’re certainly going to find out, now aren’t you!?

The title is, obviously, that of a song you learned from John Denver, who just experienced a quick, traumatic death. You have enjoyed many of his songs, for they were of and from an era that you enjoyed, in many ways. The music was “your kind of music”, and he made contributions that you enjoyed… just listening or singing, in your own style. His singing career on earth is now over, live, but it continues with the records and tapes that “keep him alive”.

With the demise of your classes it could be that your “career” also will wane. That would be too bad, for you have a unique talent, that I like… even as it is not “commercial”. Let Me set a goal for you, when you finally get to retirement: play and sing at least one day a week for, say, an hour… or even on two days. Review some of John’s songs. You should be able to carry on the tradition of the music from your… and his… era.

Another observation from this title is a reminder that this sun, the “setting” of which you watched last evening and the “rising” that you almost saw this morning, is My greatest gift to this earth and, therefore, to you humans. You realize, because you are an educated human, American, that the sun is stationary, and your earth is the moving “object”. Yet from your observation places you see the sun “moving”, daily, and also seasonally. By December the setting will be farther south and easier to see.

Yet from My perspective as a lover of humans and of this earth, with its many interactive forms of life, the sun is a gift that, symbolically, moves around you. In both perceptions there is truth. From your perspective the sun is moving, as it should. It is My special gift. From a scientific perspective it is the center of this universe and life on the earth is here because of pure chance. Sunshine of your shoulder can be explained in terms of energy, but it also is just one of the pleasant, comfortable mysteries of life. Both/and.

The sun is the ultimate “source” of energy, just as I am the ultimate source of spirit. Most of the warmth that you will experience from now through the winter season will be generated by energy “created” even before there were humans here. You folks are slow in developing means of using the sun’s energy more directly for this needed heat. You set the paper and kindling for a fire in your fireplace, for this evening. The wood that will give off the heat you desire was grown in your lifetime, and your Farm has much in the way of “replacement”. There would have been no such growth without this sun of Mine. Logs and kindling are dead wood, but the energy potential is still there, to be liberated.

This “sun of Mine”, when spoken, sounds the same as this “Son of Mine”, who is symbolically, the source of all spirit. (This clearly gets into the mystical, for We are Three, but also One… and also interchangeable. That is, I, as Holy Spirit, am the Source of spirit, but so is Jesus, the Christ, and so is Almighty God. Doesn’t “make sense”… just “is”). So when the Son shines of your shoulder you can be even happier than with sun-shine. The sun can make you “high”, and so can the Son. Energy and spirit are both essential for life.