Last night, after supper ‘old man winter’ as the local Native people such as the Sarcee called it, moved back in at the end of a very nice mild and sunny winter day. On this nice weather Garda and I commented as we left Sharen’s care home yesterday after our lunch with her.

I had been busy all morning, first with a visit to Steve, my physician, to see him about my leg hurting as I go about. Treat it like an injury he recommended, but where did this injury come from I ask. I’ll give it about three weeks and if there is no improvement, I’ll have to make an other visit and ask for a more thorough going diagnosis.

After this medical visit I stopped by at BJ and Sarah’s to drop off a few prints, but they invited me in for a coffee and we visited until about the ten thirty (10:30am). I even talked to Sybil and Rudy in Zurich on skype! Little Alec, almost one year, jumped up and down when I came in and Sybil showed on the laptop screen. He also tries to talk, but that will take some more time, but not very long by the looks of it.

I got home just after eleven (11am) and was about to settle in, when I remembered that I was to meet Garda and Sharen for the mentioned lunch! All this engagements in my social life! I am overtaken at times, but I also have quiet days, such as today. No coffee with John he told me last night, because he is in an internal management seminar this week. So, we will meet on Saturday.

Last night I made good progress with the design of a webpage for my annual review for 2012. I did such a review at the end of 2010, but not ‘11. At the time I used the well worn html4 markup method called ‘definition list’, however I now wanted to add sound to the text and image conent for each month, and that called for the modern html5 features.

Using the newer techniques that I learned from my courses and practice since that December of 2010, I now have a more flexible and attractive page layout unit for the monthly write up. To provide the content I have a set of images for each month and now have to supplement these with a little write up and a small sound file for each and I also intend to get a few clips from Annie, John and Elisabeth. All in all, it was 00:30am before I hit the sack as the expression goes.

A note on my entry for last Tuesday, which I left incomplete. I will compose an end to round it off and indicate this.

Yesterday morning I awoke with a notion that I am still working on today, because it has legs as they say in the news media. The first notion from yesterday was as follows. The figures from history, such as we learn about in the cases of the Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad and others, present us with examples of attitude with which to live. They are examples of conduct to follow, as we go about living our lives and be informed about doing this in a responsible way. We need such examples even today, because we can observe much misconduct that quite often goes unpunished and often not only ignored, but justified even.

This was more or less the notion that arose about such examples to follow and a little background as to why we need to do so. Today I am working with this notion again and this morning a second aspect formed as I thought about our global situation. It requires the mentioned and other examples of life, but today we need to meet at common ground and make common cause.

None of these mentioned examples, in their handed down tradition, teach or advocate respect for ‘the other way‘. There are some isolated references that exist, such as where the Gospels refer to ‘sheep from an other stable’ and the Qur’an refers to earlier prophets who preceded the Prophet of Islam. However, none teaches its followers to honour, respect and value believers of an other faith or message. It is in this that the given - handed down - traditions need to be complemented. I say complement, because that means ‘to make complete’. We are not talking about ‘supplement’, because this means to add as extra.

My contention is that the old tradition are insufficient for today’s global situation, but are still necessary all the same. So, we keep what we have, but we complement it with teachings about mutual tolerance and valuation in order to allow for these handed down traditions and belief frame works to exist beside each other.

An important aspect here is to realise that we are talking about teachings, the teaching of values and conduct that is required in our new globalising world. Tolerance has to be taught, because it is a part of conduct and conduct has been taught since times immemorial, by means of the mentioned traditions. Today with our newly gained knowledge about our human origins, make up and past, we have to become our own prophets. This requirement follows from our now having become conscious of the process in we ourselves participate, in other words consciousness obliges. This means that we have to seek out ways in which we humans are going to live together on this our planet, which we now must learn to share in relative peace, if we are to have a civilisation to show for it.

Ask your self: Is it worth it to share with the other human - Native Indian, Aboriginal, illegal Immigrant, Stone Age human, Low cast or class member, other believer and so on - my country, community and planet, while it really is ours and not just mine? And how would we justify the not-sharing? The answers to the latter question may indeed be an unsuspected lesson in personal psychology.
<9:43am~