JFK, 100 years old and still going strong

My column for Central Virginia’s The Echo World for May, 2017, noting that May 29th was the 100th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s birth.

JFK, 100 years old and still going strong

By Frank DeMarco

In communicating with the non-physical, you need to give up the idea of certainty. Who are you talking to, really? The person you envision? An imposter? A figment of your imagination? Certainty is for know-it-alls, not for the rest of us.

In these communications, we always have to bear in mind that our own ideas may contaminate the message. (For instance, the scripture quoted below was not used in JFK’s undelivered Fort Worth speech, but elsewhere.) That’s just the kind of thing that happens. Every so often, we’re going to get it wrong. We can only do our best.

Thursday, April 6, 2017

6:15 a.m. For my article for Echo I wanted to write something about John F. Kennedy, in recognition of his 100th birthday. I awoke thinking, use one of my old communications with him from 2006 or whenever it was – then I thought, what’s wrong with talking to him today if possible? And that had suspicious fingerprints on it, as if others had had it in mind, and I had only just caught on. Well, we’ll see.

Mr. President, if you had something to say to us about your life, or about our situation today, or anything at all, what would it be?

Keeping in mind that this may not be me, really.

I’m smiling, but it is always a feature of this kind of communication. I can only proceed on faith but not without skepticism, or anyway caution.

Yes, a familiar state of mind. That was me, too. There aren’t all that many things in the world that are as cut and dried as they appear.

As I look at your life, it seems a miracle of perseverance against impossible odds. Not just your political career but your lifelong battle for life itself, and for health, and for the active life that others take for granted but that you had to struggle for.

It is easier to be competitive when your whole life is a competition for health, only you have to refuse to define yourself as sick, or crippled. But if you think you may have only so many days of life, and you want to excel, and you can’t stand being bored, competition isn’t an effort so much as a redirection of effort that would be expended anyway. Fortunately, my father didn’t believe in babying, and he didn’t believe in second place, and he was as interested in his children’s lives as in his own. It made my life possible.

I have thought that your father’s wealth may have had the unfortunate side-effect of making you a guinea pig for the Mayo Clinic and other high-priced research medical places.

It was a demonstration of what money can provide in the form of opportunities. I didn’t forget that later as we thought about social problems. But yes, in a way an undiagnosed illness or set of illnesses is a great temptation to well-meaning and perhaps misguided doctors to try this or that and see what happens.

So, any words for us today, in 2017, on the life that began in 1917?

Everything changes, but human nature doesn’t change. That’s why we look to the arts as well as the sciences. Science tells us what the world looks like, and it can bring us greater insight into the meaning behind the appearance, but it is the arts, the inner sciences, that tell us who we are among changing circumstances.

Every generation’s challenges are unique, because the world around them is new. But every generation still contains the blood of its ancestors, and the habits of mind and the passions that impel them. There’s no need to stay in the same place when you were born to venture out into the seas. But it is foolhardy to travel the seas without compass, or radio, or chart, unless absolutely necessary.

No words about our present situation?

Everyone’s challenges are their challenges. You can’t fix someone else’s life, you can only provide the help they can use. The rest is up to them. In the same way, those of us who loved our country love it no less from our new perspective, but we see wider ramifications, perhaps more extensive threads connecting this and that manifestation, this and that line of cause and effect, say.

The scriptural reminder I intended to use on the day I was killed remains true, and remains appropriate and to the point:

Be strong and of good courage,

Be not afraid.

Neither be dismayed.

Thank you for this, and for the gift that your life was to us. I trust you found it satisfying in retrospect.

I still wish I had had more good times!

Smiling. As your press conferences used to end, I’ll say, “Thank you, Mr. President.”

Frank DeMarco is the author of many books on communication with those in the Non-3D world. He writes a blog, www.ofmyownknowledge.com.

 

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