Times Of Plenty, Times Of Want

SUNDAY, FEB. 28, 1983, 6:04 AM
FARM, FRONT OF FIRE

Your Christmas letter has been sent, virtually, so the next imperative, for Me, o son, is another issue of Ruminations. There are many day-to-day responsibilities, surely, and you must balance these with conscience and an eye to My priorities among them, but Ruminations shall be your most important continuing publication. It does not seem particularly important now, but I assure you it will be. Yet it cannot be so unless you (We) write it.

You, your neighbors, and your fellow Americans are now in a time of plenty, if we limit thinking to the two categories of this morning’s title. You have food, clothing, heat, shelter, and amenities galore… and you are not one of the ostentatious ones. Your money supply seems always limited, but this is necessary for your growth. And it is combined with the fact that you always manage to have enough for what you need. I commend you for habits of frugality and recommend these in abundance, for a time of want is imminent. It shall come with some suddenness for most of you, and many will deny its reality unnecessarily and overlong. Do not do so yourself, but see such a time as one of another kind of growth… and proclaim it to be in your teaching.

You did introduce rhythm as a descriptor for health in the big class. Continue that theme into your last two lectures, emphasizing that health is both discovering and developing the proper rhythm for the time, place, and circumstance. All individuals who are healthy do not have the same personal rhythm, but those of different rhythms mesh and complement and interplay with one another for a healthy society. Each individual’s healthy rhythm contributes to the health of the community (however defined, and there are myriad ways) AND the communities health contributes to… certainly affects… the health of each individual.

Some will be those who give, partly because of circumstances and partly because of relationship to Me. Some must take, and it sometimes is most difficult for one who normally gives to become, of necessity, one who must take. Know that this is proper spiritual rhythm, but also that the ideal is sharing or trading. If you must receive, from others, some substance, always give back something… a smile, a kind, gentle word, a song, a bit of wisdom, a story… The response, spiritually selected, may be of more final value than the substance which seems so vital.

As a child and youth you took, but then you developed a fierce independence, and you have been essentially a giver during your adult life. You must be increasingly ready to be one who receives, for while there is merit in independence and in giving to others, the time returns, as you age, when you must let others help you increasingly. Healthy rhythm involves not losing the capacity to take care of yourself (insofar as body and mind “cooperate”) but giving this up as others seek to help.

In the time of want ahead there will be a “testing out” and a revelation of spirit developed during times of plenty. The potential for the development of spirit is present in any time, but in times of plenty the evidence of spirit can easily be overshadowed by affluence and physical plenty. That’s what “lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven” is all about. Yet it is difficult for anyone to know what she or he has developed until it is necessary to “show and tell”.