What I write to you here in the article, "Choices," reflects on perhaps the most difficult time I ever faced in my life.

This experience remains intensely personal and more than a little embarrassing to me for the subject it speaks of and what it reveals about me. So saying, it is hard for me to put this forward to you. In fact, I wrote this article probably three years ago, but could not send it to you. Instead I have saved it and updated it from time to time knowing that, if I ever did send it, it would be the last article I would send you.

And now we are here, and I am sending it to you, the last article that I will send you.

I honestly never thought that we would come to this point. I have considered it many times, but I never really thought that there would come an end to this that we have shared. I always thought that I would go on with you; that there would be one more point to make, one more word to speak.

But, as I said in the previous issue of Words of Caring, the truth is I am not out of points to make, nor am I out of words to speak. It simply comes down to the reality that what I have yet to share with you cannot be spoken of openly in this particular forum.

With this Words of Caring I am rather fully and directly showing you my hand. I am expressing to you what (or rather Who) it is that drives me, has made the lessons of the Parent Seminar come alive for me, and has allowed me to move in some fashion beyond the poor person whom you will soon read of.

I make no secret of it, but say here openly that I have found the Lord, Jesus Christ, even as He knew me before the foundations of the world. He has opened the door to my heart and I am held in Him.

I have not, as so many say today, accepted the Lord my personal Savior, for this really not how it works (at least not as it is stated today). Rather, and truly, the Lord has opened me and opened Himself to me, bidding me in His submission and by my submission unto Him to be myself immersed in Him as He is in me and so be unto the living, lighted flow of the grace of His Presence that is, of essence in Him, true love.

Though I know not how, I feel I must speak somehow of this, and of Him, to those who can and will listen. As I have already attempted feebly to relate, there are lessons far beyond the Parent Seminar.

As good as it is (and it is good), the Parent Seminar is but a tiny movement in a worldly setting whose true source is farther beyond the edge of the classroom than the universe is beyond the edge of the earth. And yet in the Parent Seminar (and elsewhere) we touch that universe tenderly and intimately in the binding and mystical communion shared between us that is of Him in true love.

But are we open: to love and to Him? As this article so vitally questions, do we know, can we see; and if we know, and if we see, what choice do we make?

We cling so tenaciously to this life, to this world and to our survival in it. But I submit to you that there is another life, another world, lying just beyond the realm of what we know and what we can see. And yet there is also a barrier, a veil that hides this other world from us, making it largely invisible to us and very difficult for us to enter. That veil barring us to this life and to this other world is truly and in fact we ourselves.

By our knowledge, in our confidence, and simply by the distraction of our constant attention to us, we create a wall that appears not to be there, but which indeed is solid, forceful and tremendously difficult to move. In this condition, we live largely apart from Him Who calls us and outside of that invisible world to which He invites us. And so in our ignorance and lack of acceptance we deprive ourselves of the peace, the joy, and the enduring security of communion in trust that is humbly of Him in this living, spiritual place of true love.

I am not saying that we do not have love, but that the love we have is so often not true. As I have spoken of it in other articles and in other places, the love we have today is very much borne of expectation, condition and fear. We engage love to please ourselves and to be pleased; and in this way we push others to love us according to our own desires and needs lest we feel the fear of loss and that we are not loved. In short, this love is a manipulation that serves us rather than a love that serves and so is true.

And all of this is because we live in this world and not the other. We logically see gain as security and loss as threat, and so we work from the worldly framework of perceived power to overcome that threat for the sake of ourselves, for the sake of our survival, for the sake of our lives.

And all of this is because we do not know Him and so do not know, in Him, the true security that is gained in loss, forged by suffering, and is, in trusting faith, unto the boundless, warm, embracing peace of true love that is beyond all threat.

And all of this is because, in this world, all reference to and allowance of Him is being systematically tainted or erased from our lives such that we do not know, are not being taught, and so are not teaching our children truly Who He is and how to find Him.

I myself lived in this condition directly for 25 years, but in actuality for much, much longer. The experience I write of here in "Choices" came at the height of my ignorance, when I was fully engaged in becoming self assured, assertive, and successful by the ways of this world. I was going to win, I was going to gain the world on its terms and take for myself what I felt logically and rightfully belonged to me.

However, what I rather knew, but could not assess in terms of impact, was that I had no real foundation, no underpinning on which to stand and move. On the surface I appeared to many to be complete and confident, but underneath were large gaps and imbalances in my nature and make up.

And, though I had been Roman Catholic before leaving the Church, I had no real center; or rather I should say the center I did have was wholly (and of a certain necessity at the time) unto me.

I did things that outwardly appeared very good, and I was becoming, after a fashion, successful and acknowledged. But underneath, it was all of power and for me: to secure my status, fulfill my desires, and ensure my survival according to my perceived needs and expectations.

The very experience that I write of here was the result of a trial that I could not control and which attacked me critically at my weaknesses. Alone, unsupported and unprepared, I fell into a tailspin of dark despair and depression that lasted for well over three years and culminated in the event you are about to read of.

But this was also the beginning of something new. I came to this area from where this event took place, determined to begin a new life. I married Judy and took on Troy within two years of arriving here. We bought a house one year later and had Joshua together the year after that.

By happenstance and for the sake of my family (I like to think there was design in this), I re-entered the Christian Church about ten years ago, but an Eastern Orthodox Christian church regarded by most knowledgeable people as the oldest, most authentic Christian church in the world. This is when pivotal things began to happen to me. I was forcibly transferred from the job that was for me, at that time, the vital center and source of my life. I also became a target (though tangentially) of severe reprimands and even a disciplinary investigation at my place of work.

But rather than retaliate against these unbelievable rebukes (an option that was strong in my then powerful mind) I took stock and attempted to learn. The real lessons of the Church began slowly to open to me in different and profound ways and I began to see (to my surprise) that, in looking at it from a godly, spiritual perspective, my life was a shambles.

I was unhappy, lost, disillusioned, and out of control. I began to understand that there were deep and long-standing psychological imbalances in me, destroying both my family and myself, but which I could not overcome. Still, I was too proud and distrustful to seek professional help.

Then on a Monday evening in the year 2000 I sat in a school auditorium, supposedly for the aid of my stepson, and heard a man named Larry Evans speak to me profoundly on the subject of Personal and Social Responsibility.

The rest I think you know or can glean from what I have written to you over these last five years (Larry, I have never told you exactly like this, but now I have. My friend, perhaps now you can better see how much I really needed you and what you teach.).

In the Parent Seminar I found lessons that, in the immediate, saved my life and put me on a beginning road of understanding and hope that I had never quite traveled. These were lessons that, from where I then was, I could understand and move with.

But I also and vitally had the Church and a very strong synergy began to form between these two essential forces in my life. By the beginnings that the Parent Seminar forged, I began to open to the deeper and more fundamental truths that the Church had to teach me.

Over the past several years I have come to see and understand that the true source and center of the Parent Seminar lies in the Church and fully in the Lord. So saying, the Lord and His true Church have become preeminent in my life.

Now it may sound to you that I have only exchanged one passion and source of dependence for another. I have also often wondered about this, but I am increasingly convinced that such is not the case. I won’t here go into the details, but within the Church, and with the help of the Parent Seminar, I have found a balance and peace in love and surety – the true seed of Life – that I have never before known, and it is growing.

Though I have still a very long way to go, my anger and fearful, anxious volatility are slowly leaving me and are being replaced by a quiet, abiding joy based in faith.

My former attachment to my job and my personal status led me away from my family towards the singular fulfillment of my own needs. This new condition, however, is leading me more and more towards my family and all people in a reconciliation and unity of relationship formed in love. Where this is not so, it is because I am still learning, admittedly resistant, and as yet unformed in all the realities that constitute the real truth. Before I seemed very old and with nowhere to go, but now I am young again and very new in terms of what I have missed and where I need yet to go.

As good as they are (and have been for me), the lessons of the Parent Seminar come originally and vitally from the Lord and His Church; and these lessons must be connected to this critical center if they are to remain true and correct. More importantly, it is faith in the Lord and through the Church that causes the real nature of the Parent Seminar to be known, enriched and made alive in a way that extends necessarily far beyond its lessons.

For them to be true and to have value, the Parent Seminar, PSR, and most importantly our very lives, must reach back to and draw upon their root; that blessed and holy Source of the Lord, which our souls obediently know and call upon our minds and bodies to once again learn, submit to and join with.

And so of need, in this light, I am preparing to go fully to that source in Him that has so opened me and write of what I am learning from my struggles for how, where, and from Whom, all this began.

As a Westerner in Eastern Orthodox Christianity I think I have a rather unique perspective from which to share. I will let you know when I have something to view and I hope that you will come and join with me. I can guarantee that you will see something you have never seen, hear something you have never heard, and, if you are open to it, you will gain something you have never, ever known, even as I have.

Lastly, I want to say a most heartfelt Thank You to all of you who have supported Words of Caring and the other efforts over the years. You have, "Made the Difference in What We Could Do Together." I love you and thank you for everything.

And especially I want to thank you, Larry. I won't attempt to say how I feel towards you and all you have done for me (I know I don't have to). I will see you at the next Parent Seminar and may God continue to bless you.

I bid you all wonderful holidays and good-bye for now. I hope to meet you all again soon in a new community and with new Words of Caring.

Enjoy!

-- John Borland --


Choices
By John Borland

A young medical student, Hunter “Patch” Adams, stands at the brink of a cliff overlooking a rural countryside – a checkerboard of fields dotted with woodlots. He stares upwards speaking to the Almighty.

“Yeah, I could do it,” he says.

His voice echoes with anguish and guilt following the shotgun murder of his beloved and trusting partner, Carin, by a mentally disturbed patient Patch had accepted for treatment.

“We both know you wouldn’t stop me.”

I watch the scene with my young son Joshua and my mind returns in trouble to an earlier time.

I take Joshua off to bed and, as I sit in the quiet darkness of his small room, the haunting memory unfolds once more before me:

It is a winter afternoon in November of 1987.

The digital dashboard of my beloved, red station wagon reads 67 mph. The speed limit is 35.

The coming curve is a hairpin. The road is treacherous ice.

The drop-off on the far side of the curve is significant and sufficient.

All is now in motion and commitment is at hand.

It will all be over soon.

At the last second a blue sedan emerges oncoming from the blind side of the curve. I regain the wheel. The station wagon fishes wildly on the slip glare surface, but miraculously negotiates the turn.

I won’t relate the details leading to this point. Suffice it to say that, in the mind of a tortured young man, there was nothing else left, no other choice to be made. This time the call for help would be decisive, and final.

I look at my son softly snoring as tears stream down my face. The understanding that I have come to know is now more visible and pointed.

This innocent child, who kisses me each day and hugs me tight, who shares stories with me at bedtime and listens with care to my lessons and teaching, this precious bundle of hockey and football, of laughter and joy, of future and bright promise, who brings to me such fulfillment, if I had succeeded, would never have existed.

I gaze intently at his face and say to myself, “My God. What did I almost do?”

And I ponder further and ask with awed perplexity, “How is it that I failed?”

It is here dear readers that I must seek your forgiveness and pray that I do not offend, for I cannot this one time speak in the parables that I have used so often in this newsletter. It is just too profound and important to me not to speak the full truth.

You see my friends, I know without any doubt that on that cold, dark and fateful day now 18 years ago the Lord reached out His hand and saved my life. And now, because of that day, He fully owns my life.

Everything now – every possession, every gain, every event, my marriage, my wife, my stepson, my home, my job, my position, my friends, my status, my reputation – everything I am and have, every part of my life, all of it is a generous gift from God.

Now every God-fearing person knows in some fashion that our lives are a gift from God. But for me this is not quite the same. It is, but it is also different, or maybe more pointed or direct.

You see I chose to end my life. I consciously planned by my own hand to throw His gift away. But, for reasons only He knows, His choice for me was otherwise. He chose, in spite of me, to continue me a while longer.

I know this because He put in front of me, at the last possible second, the only natural obstacle that could have possibly deterred me: the blue sedan and the innocent person or persons within.

This action – my decision, my choice – was, in my mind, only for me. I wished no harm to another. I could do no harm to them.

I didn’t even really want to hurt myself. My action was a confused cry for help. If you can believe it, my intent was a contradictory choice for survival; a jumbled plan to gain someone’s attention and have them, finally, reach out to me. By taking my life, I would become undeniably visible, though ultimately unreachable.

For whatever the reason, I now know that, from that moment of my decision, I was received from death, not by my hand, but strictly by His. On my own I was dead, but by His choosing I am alive.

For years after I still did not see this. Only very recently have I been opened to it. And only of very late have I been enabled to make the true connection.

As I said, everything I have and am is now clearly from Him, but you may also notice that I left one item out, the small boy lying before me – Joshua.

Everything and everyone else I have named is apart from me. Even Judy and Troy existed before me, and were, in a sense, outside of me before they came to be joined to me. They had a choice.

But Joshua is different. Joshua is truly of me as he is of Judy. He is, in a manner of speaking, a special signature of our unity.

Without me, and without Judy together, Joshua could not have existed at all. Judy could have married another, and she could have conceived by him a son, but it would not have been Joshua.

It is now, when I look at Joshua, that I am most aware of His truth, His choice.

Yes, all of our lives are a gift. But mine, to me, is a most special gift, because it was given back to me by His gracious choice.

Everything from that point I have received by Him from death. And it has all been given to me, only to use.

My life, you see, and all our lives, are a gift of choice from Him Above, given to us also together with a choice: “What will you do now with My gift?”

Many, you see, choose to possess and protect their lives, to hold His gift strictly for themselves.

It is, however, a wise person who sees and knows that he is given this precious gift of life freely and solely to give it away, by choice, as a gift to others; that he may possess nothing of himself, but choose, also freely, to place himself in God.

Judy and Troy are most special to me for they are from that time beyond. And you are also all special, for you too are from beyond my death.

But Joshua is for me a visible, singular reminder here on this earth – the choice who had no choice – who connects me with Christ, Who connects me with God. It is Josh more than any, except for He Himself, who helps me to know (when I am open enough to see it) that I and all I have and touch is only by and for Him, by choice.

Now you may pity, or perhaps even scoff at me because I was foolish enough to seek my own end. But I am also blessed, because I was taken from death and returned to life, and finally, though still foolishly, by His grace given to see.

I know, perhaps more than many that my life is a gift of His choice, and of my solemn choice to use; but what about you?

Do you see the choice?


It was a Wonderful Night with Larry
The 11th Annual Excellence in Education Awards Dinner held on October 19th to present the 2005 George M. Leader Excellence in Education awards and Business Partnership awards afforded us truly an evening to remember.

The event, sponsored by the Council for Public Education, the Leader Family Corporation, Capital BlueCross, Highmark Blue Shield, and the Pennsylvania State Education Association was held in the spacious Aztec Ballroom of the Hershey Motor Lodge to an audience of perhaps 300 people. Included were several DCTS administrators, teachers, parents and friends. We listened to fascinating accounts regarding the new recipients of the Leader Awards and, in turn, heard their many and varied speeches of acceptance: some serious, some with humor, and all with gratitude.

What set Larry Evans apart in this ceremony as the receiver of the Leader Award for Excellence in Secondary Education was, as Vicki Glenn the 2004 recipient who introduced Larry noted, that his nomination came not from school board members, or administrators, or other teachers, but from a student – James Roccasecca, currently enrolled at DCTS – and his parents who appreciated Larry's efforts with students and parents and took it upon themselves to honor him in this way. And we were graced to sit at the table with James and his mother, Karen, at the awards banquet.

I felt Larry's acceptance speech was most appropriate in that, among other words simply put, Larry noted that at the center of all of this that we do for students and as teachers and parents is and must always be love.

Again Larry, I wish on behalf of all of us who have gained from, shared and worked with you to express our sincere congratulations on the receiving of this most notable award and to say thank you for all that you continue to do for our children and for us.

-- John Borland --

YOU MAKE THE DIFFERENCE IN WHAT WE CAN DO TOGETHER!

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Last Modified: December 08, 2005