The “Clash” Of Seasons

SAT., MAY 1, 1999, 6:55 AM
FARM, STUDY

The season of Spring is definitely “in place” in this special part of the earth. The leaves on the giant trees outside increase in number and size each day. The grass is green and growing, so mowing is now at least a weekly “opportunity” for exercise. You shall plant some more each day, for soon the days will be warmer, and you do want your gardens to produce.

Yet it also is the elderly season of your personal, human life, and you don’t quite have the strengths and agilities that you had in the summer and early autumn of your time as Bob Russell. Thus, all that you would like to see accomplished just doesn’t get done… and, hence, there is at least a minor “clash” of “seasons.”

You know that you need not accomplish as much now as in your “working years,” and yet it is frustrating when you find yourself choosing among important tasks, and sometimes not even accomplishing what you choose. It still is satisfying to see portions of this place looking “cared for,” but it is troublesome to see some other tasks, necessary ones, left undone. You are moving toward a better balance for this season of your life, but you still are hanging on to what you could do in younger years.

A much longer life… one comparable to your Dad’s… is not one that you envision for yourself. Yet you do want to have some elderly years, with the satisfactions these can bring. It is not good to miss these by hanging on too tenaciously to activities that should be left with “the season past.”

Your Dad “did it just about right,” but he has had more time in the autumn and winter “seasons” of his life than most men. Though you recognize that the length of the lives of your parents and grandparents suggests, genetically, a longer life for you than you envision, you also accept “weaknesses” that could close out this life in the three score and ten, plus…? So I suggest that you balance both of these possibilities, being certain that your autumn is not too much like your summer.

You note, of course, that My analogy is a mixed one, for your Christian culture. In this dominant thinking the seasons repeat themselves each year, but human earth lives are lived only once. Oh, there is “continuing life,” but not here, in bodily form. Viewed botanically, the seasons are perennial, while human lives are annual – one actual life, with “seeds” that can provide for the next annual generation.

I, Holy Spirit, have let you see that My “garden of souls” is a mixed one. Some of you are annuals, like unto the marigolds that are “trying” to survive the actions of Digger… but to “survive” is to produce flowers for only one season. But some of you are perennials, like the mums that go dormant, but return in leaf form in the summer and then in a proliferation of blooms in the fall.

You are one who needn’t be bothered by an “early” end to this earth life. Just don’t waste this last portion of it trying to “stay modern and current.” Contemplate this life, now in its late autumn season, reviewing and reinforcing what you have learned in it. For there will be opportunities beyond this one, and I don’t want you to lose the gains of this time in the earth.

Remember, yet again, that I do love diversity. There are many shapes, colors, and temperaments in humans. There is great variety in dogs… in flowers… in birds… in religions. You are a Christian, quite right for this life. Yet I encourage you to see life in a way anathema to most Christians. You know of men – Origen, Edgar… ______ who were Christian, in the spirit of diversity. And, thus, so are you.