What Will You Say?

SAT., MAY 17, 1997, 6:06 AM
FARM, STUDY

On Monday, next, the Human/Spiritual Interacting workshop begins, and at the end of the first week I want you to tell your spiritual story. You did a version of it 3 years ago, and there were no great repercussions… and some who became readers of Our Ruminations. Now, as your full-time career comes to its end, you should do this again. If you accept this invitation, what will you say?

Hear some suggestions from Me, your friendly Holy Spirit. You were born and grew up in Long Beach in a stable, two child family. You were baptized as a young child, and you went to Sunday School at the Methodist Church, downtown, where your parents were active members. You remember these as pleasant years. In high school you were on athletic teams and in Comus Club, and your friends were not those who went to your church, but you continued to go and be active. You were not rejecting the Church, as your sons did, but it was a “separate” part of your life.

In the Navy and in college you felt some need to go to church, fairly often. You don’t recall any great spiritual yearning for worship, but you felt some personal need, for there were no compulsions to go, and lots of motivations to not go… when you had, presumably, freedom to choose. When you went to Hawaii it was to a school with a Christian heritage, a chaplain, chapel services weekly, morning devotions, and an historic connection with Central Union Church. You had no clear theology at that time, so you had no trouble shifting from your Methodist upbringing to the Congregational scene.

You sang in the choir, taught Sunday School, and became good friends with Ken Rewick, the Chaplain at Punahou, who was Presbyterian… but later became the senior minister at Central Union. You were married in that church to Lenore who was to be your life partner. (Was I involved in this? Of course.) When you went to Stanford you were both “drawn” to the Presbyterian Church, and now many of your friends were those in church. You were ordained as an Elder in your late 20’s, but that was not because of, nor did it bring forth, any spiritual leap forward.

But it was in that church, a few years later, in a noon-time Bible study group, that you had your gradual, quiet born-again experience. The Gospel writer John and the Apostle Paul helped in this “conversion”, and partly through them you became Aware of predestination and slowly to Appreciate that this was real and applied to you.

You had been introduced to reincarnation in the Indian Philosophy class, but then you “encountered” Edgar Cayce, who offered it in an American Christian context. Earlier, before you were married you considered leaving teaching as a career. But that didn’t seem right… and now it had a spiritual context: you were predestined to have a career as a guider of learning because in some previous lives in the earth you had enjoyed teaching roles, so this was a “continuation”, in this life.

This, of course, was not Presbyterian doctrine, but you continued in that church, with this Awareness kept “hidden”. When you moved here to Southern Illinois (as was your destiny) you continued to be Presbyterians, active ones.

But then I, the Holy Spirit, “came out of the closet”, so to speak, and bestowed upon you a second born-again experience. You began to hear Me, in a mystical way, and we soon developed a kind of ritual, with you writing, by hand, what you hear Me telling you. In about an hour’s time you have three pages of writing, and each of these is called a Teaching. I am your Teacher, in order that you might be a better teacher of others… and in order that you might reintroduce the spiritual dimension to health and in health education.