You’re Getting Older

THURS., OCT. 16, 1997, 12:43 PM
OFFICE, PULLIAM

As you relate to students, in classes, and around the Department it is rather easy to feel that you are a colleague… older, but not yet elderly. Then the meeting this morning offered you the more appropriate perception – you are not only older, but you are firmly among the elderly. Oh, you’re not as old as some there… and you do have some youthful ways… but retirement creeps up on you, as you gradually prepare to move from this office.

Transition… that’s what you’re in now, and this is as good a time in life as any. You are enjoying it, progressing but not in any great hurry. Yours has not been a particularly hectic life, but you have some need to slow down and be less scheduled. Be aware, however, of what you are doing and not doing, and make judgments. It is not good to be too “busy”, but it still is possible to “waste time”, leaving undone some activities which should have more priority.

My most insistent admonition is to evaluate life activities – past, present, and future – increasingly with spirit as your main criterion. How is spirit involved? Could spirit be more of a “factor”? What are effects on your spirit? How well can you discern the spirit in others involved with you?

In this morning’s session you participated “just about right”, from My perspective. You asserted yourself easily, but suggested other people to take the administrative roles, thus avoiding any possibility of being asked, yourself, to be an active leader. Continue to know that I approve of you not taking actual leadership roles in organizations. If you are to be involved, let it be in a teaching or facilitating role.

As you see the deterioration that is evident in people in their 80’s and 90’s you wonder whether there is any accuracy in, say, Noah’s being 600 years old… or Methuselah in his 900’s. I really have nothing to say about such. Just consider it as something mystical in the Scriptures and focus on your present time. The category you are now in… the elderly… is the fastest growing age group in your culture, so you are told. Yet you have heard Me proclaim that the increase in populations that require much of “the environment” is dangerous to My whole web of life. And thus I say again that lives that must be sustained by high energy means have less and less of My approval.

Rightly, you have no desires to live on into the “really older” group, if it can’t be done “naturally”. What I advise is to live life fully and actively, and be little concerned with “premature death”. John Denver’s was premature, but he came on over living life fully. He had contributed plenty to your culture, in the time you enjoyed most. Continue to sing some of his songs in your distinctive way, and you’ll help keep his spirit alive here, even as his body is no longer alive.

Rightly, also, you have no desires to give up your earth life too prematurely, but continue to avoid medical interventions and excessive attention to prolonging life. The way to do this which is most pleasing to Me is this positive, active, full living that I’ve trumpeted. You’re doing fine. Just keep it up.

Be aware of the balance, for your life in the present, between the past and the future. You have had more past than you will have future, so it shall be best if your present balance is somewhat comparable. Focus more on “revisiting” ideas, concepts, and writings that are of the past than on what lies ahead for your culture and the world. You still waste time each day… yes, waste… on current news. Be more selective, of what you read and what you hear and view. If a bit of news is important to you it will be made known to you. You’ll have to develop the better balance. I just give you the general direction for change.