May 13, 1994

• Bend with change to grow spiritually

• Welcome challenges

God is with each of you as you stand in your own crossroads. Much has happened since you last met, and yet the experiences that you have had have added to who you are spiritually and in human form. You learn by living, you learn by dealing with your experiences. These experiences shape you. They do give meaning and relevance to your perception of life. Life itself is no more valuable or less valuable, but your perception changes.

The crossroads that you all stand at are important because they help to give character and meaning to what lies ahead. When you are faced with questions, decisions, choices to be made, they not only help provide a perspective to your past, they also provide a clearer vision and a strength to meet what lies just around the corner. Your lives are indeed blessed. They are richer for your experiences. The challenges which you face are not ones that defeat or devastate. They are meant to provide a potential for elevation, strength-giving, clarity, depth to life.

There is no guarantee that life is to be easy or without conflict or without need for question and reevaluation. The only thing that life does guarantee is change. It is the change of perspective, it is the change of goals, it is the change in the nature of relationships, physical location, emotional orientation. It is these changes that are so essential for each of you. Because they are essential, they should never be shunned, they should never be wished away, no matter how poignant the challenge. It is in approaching these challenges that you learn more about yourself. Armed with that knowledge, you are better able to serve others, to bring light to the lives of others, strength, courage, faith. It is by learning more about yourself that you become more aware of love in your life. You are thereby more capable of expressing that love to those around you.

Your lives are not a kind of intellectual construct. They are variable, fluid, flexible. The strength of your lives as evidenced in your souls' development is gained by the very flexibility which brings with it uncertainty, frustration, fear, and anxiety. A twig that cannot bend in the wind breaks, but the bending occurs because of the forces which surround it. If you are to continue to grow spiritually, each of you must learn to bend even more. Such bending is never a sign of weakness, but it is an essential quality for survival and endurance.

Flexibility in life means being more sensitive to what life offers you. If you are surrounded by the pain of others and you are not moved, you are not being bent, you are not being sensitive and you do not grow through that experience. Growth takes place when you are bent, when you are moved. To be moved by events means allowing yourselves to be influenced by those events. Strength comes through growth. It is not achieved through resistance. The individual who refuses to be bent at all avoids what is necessary for future growth.

Life is not meant to be without challenges and decisions and frustrations. Living such a life is living in an unbending state, not allowing the life around you to help shape your soul and deepen your human experience. Crossroads are therefore essential for your growth, for it is at the crossroads that the wind blows most intensely. When you shutter out the outside and live contained within the four walls and a roof, there is no wind, there is no opportunity for adaptation which leads to growth. You should therefore welcome the challenges that face you and have confidence in your ability to receive God's blessings which translate into your ability to bend but never break.

The decisions and the opportunities which await you in the years ahead are meant to allow for your growth, but you must be willing to be moved by events, whether they be occurring to you as individuals or to others whom you know. Yes, the world is full of torment and apparent needless suffering. You cannot completely change the world, but you can grow by allowing yourself to be moved by the events of which you become aware. Your lives do not have to be passive, as we have shared with you before, but you cannot go through life always in control of everything which occurs. Being out of control means being willing to be shaped by external forces.

The tree that is twisted and gnarled on the coast is full of character, and for many, great beauty, but that tree was not shaped of its own accord. Its beauty and its character are the result of the wind and the rain helping to shape it. The lives of those whom you know that reflect the greatest depth have been shaped abundantly by events and people that surround those lives.

Allow yourselves, therefore, to be blessed by being shaped by others with whom you are in contact. You do not live alone. You live in a community of others. Allow yourselves to be moved by the lives of others. Recognize the benefit of that interaction and you will thereby be more understanding of your own influence on others.

The interaction of all people and of living with events around you is essential, and we again reiterate the importance of welcoming these opportunities. They do not mean that life is easy, but they ensure that life is meaningful, that it is justified, that there is purpose, and that there is beauty. Rejoice in your abilities to be shaped by others, and welcome the opportunities when they come to make an impact on the life of someone else, an impact that may be challenging, supporting, loving, sacrificing. For it is this interaction, either the giving or the receiving, that shapes your souls and gives them depth of understanding and a clearer vision of God's presence.

We are moved at times by your activities, your insights, your sacrifices, and we pray that you in turn may be moved by our efforts and the efforts of those around you. It is in bending that you become strong. It is in being moved that you are deepened.

We bless you with the winds of God that pass through your souls and give them shape and meaning, character and strength.

Amen.