The Autumn Of Your Life

FRI., OCT. 20, 2000, 12 NOON
FARM, STUDY

This is a beautiful Autumn day, with warm sunshine playing on the multicolored leaves in front of you and on the yellow-green-gold maple leaves to your left. The work on your old Farmhouse is pau for the week, but this room is more of a mess than it was yesterday. You have vowed to bring it to “presentability,” but you don’t have full confidence in your vows, at this age. “If you don’t get it done today…”

For this is the Autumn of your life. You still have health, strength, and vitality comparable to the warmth and wonder of this day. Most of the leaves are still on the trees, but it is the season in which they fall… to make a carpet on the ground. So you’d better mow as much grass as you can today, for “food”. (Just a suggestion…)

Life flows more slowly for you, and it becomes more “disturbing” if you feel required to speed up… accomplish… in a specific time. Still, I’d say you are adapting pretty well to the changes in your body that “your Autumn” brings. I don’t see that you’re “fighting” this aging process. Some of the “changes” are bothersome, but your basic attitude is as I want it to be. Accentuate the positive. Focus on what you still have. Enjoy this life as you now have it. Thank Me (as you do frequently) for this career completed (with a nice “residual”) and for this place, as a great place to finish a good, happy life.

You are pleased with your sons, as men, and that two of them live close and are on good terms with you and Lenore. You are thankful for the thrift of your parents and for the “cushion” they’ve left you for this and the last season of your life. You never were really worried about your financial future, but now… you needn’t be. And that feels good.

You have set a goal for the return of this good room to neatness and order. You should reach that goal… but… if not, set another, until you do. You know what you want it to look and feel like. Lenore returns.

( 12:25 / 3:39 – Now on the Deck)

Autumn is a wonderful time of year, and this is one of its near-perfect days. You sit here in shorts and no shirt… and find it hard to attest that it soon will be Hallowe’en and then November and Thanksgiving. But the leaves do come down, though now only one at a time.

You read the article Andy sent about service to others, and you sometimes feel that you should still be doing more… of what you did until two years ago. So… remember… “I love diversity.” I love those who continue to serve Me, through service to others. Yet everyone need not do thus. I was with you through much of your 48 years as a teacher, and I’m aware of all that you did during those years. For some, it is important to stay active in “giving” ways, and, surely, there are many needs that are yet unfulfilled. For you it is time to continue to hear Me and write down what you hear… and time to compose and send out Our Ruminations, 4 a year. You should take opportunities offered, such as this presentation for Hospice, and some occasional classes in your Department.

But your additional challenge is to contemplate, to devote both mind and spirit to an idea… a happening… a provocative reading. And you must give some time to appreciate – your life, the lives of family members, your life work in retrospect, even some current happenings.

Continue to believe that I Am in Charge… that what happens is what I will or that I allow, for some future, greater good. Despite what you read and hear, I have not lost control. It is the Autumn season and also the Autumn of this life of yours, as Bob Russell. Winter will come, and the beauty you see now will be gone… but there will be others, of the winter “type.” And then will come Spring, and new leaves will form, with new blossoms.

You will drop this body, but, outside of time, you shall, in spirit, experience the equivalent of Spring – some new form, with new chances for spiritual growth. I assure you that this shall all be as familiar to you as this deck, this pen and paper, this mug of home brew.