2013-01-21;  8:06am, Monday again of a new week.  There is light in the sky now, as the sunrises a whole month since winter solstice.  Mild again today, but the weekend was minus 15dC.

Diary: Weekend visits and activities.

~~A family visit and a quiet weekend as I am taking things easy with my walking.  Elisabeth comes by for a visit and I work on my mandala some more, but have second thought about how to proceed.~~

John and Annie came my way and after coffee Annie inspected the new play ground nearby, after which we went on to pick my ‘Casual Vacancy’ by Rowling from the local library. 
	 Annie explained to me that she takes all her classes in French except English, which is not taught as a language until grade three.  Contact with my sister Tieneke’s granddaughter of Mariska’s will have to be email; there is no face book on the roster with John, which I also feel is too risky for children.

I did not go to the Centre meeting at the Palliser on account of my game leg, which problem I now have located as originating in my pelvic area.  It is very slowly improving and I am just nursing it along, steady as she goes.  I also missed Alec’s birthday, but I sent an email and will drop off a card and the photo stick.
	Elisabeth came by at my request and we had a good visit with much discussion.  I wanted to ask her for a hand in keeping my place in order at this time that my movement is restricted some.

In the evening I spent some time colouring my doodle mandala, which is progressing slowly.  If I just follow the doodle itself, it will lead to some unexpected colour streams as I call that.  This because, thought there appear to be symmetric designs within the mandala, there are also streams and channels that interpenetrate those designs again.  This put me a bit in a quandary last night, because I tend to favour the predictability, sense of order and control that is represented by the symmetry of the sub-designs.
	But, I started to realise that by using this approach, I may be defeating the integration effect that the mandala represents to me in the process of my colouring it.  So, I’ll have to give this some thought and try a different approach coming Sunday, which will be the Sunday of my talk ‘My Belief so far’.  And with this in mind, I now switch to ‘Writings’, because I have several ideas for this talk as a result from my weekend contemplation about my topic.


Writings: Four talking points outlined for ‘My Belief so far‘.

~~I outline four points in a rudimentary fashion, just to get them from my head onto ‘paper’ so to speak.  I aim at noting my life sages first and then show what I learned from that to finally form my forth point, that is ‘My Belief so far’ and its message.~~

When I first planned this talk, I had in mind explaining the mainly intellectual type concepts about my belief frame work.  For example, I was considering re-incarnation, continuity of existence and consciousness, the process of integrating my life experience and several other ideas that I have noted in my yellow ‘Desk-Tech’ notebook, pages 12 through 19 or may be 21 now.
	However, the idea kept gaining in importance to make this talk of some direct application to our world of today and  give it some relevance in this regard.  I also felt a need to make a connection to old taught values of the Christian tradition or other traditions for that matter.  This second notion took on more prominence this past weekend and this is what I want to address and express below.

Based on my life experience I have four points for my presentation: 1) Indoctrination and confession <Age:17;  2)secularity <Age:17- 46;  3)exploration <Age: 47 - 70;  4)consolidation <Age 70 - on.

In the forth part, I want to address and built upon the aspects and results of the preceding stages.  
Stage one gives the Apostolic Creed; the Catechism Sunday one; the Eucharist; love your neighbour.
Stage two gives the loosing of the taught foundation and the questing of new beliefs; the loss of values other than the self serving ‘golden rule’; competition rules and success reigns; I come from nowhere and I leave into oblivion, though I may have done some good.
Stage three: there is more to my person than just this life; New Thought opens new perspectives about what a human being is and can be as based on some evidence without set doctrines, but with openness to new ideas; we can have some influence over our own life.

Stage four presents ‘Existence Divine’ which makes place for each and every tradition and value frame work, viewing each as a revelation particular in time, place, people and circumstance in human history and earlier.  This needs working out and that takes me to my belief so far, outlined next.

From one we take: the belief statement, what is my existence, the affirmation of ‘eat and drink’ with: remember and belief transformed by adding ‘affirm’ and its content; finally we accept the ethics of the old tradition but add to it. [See 4]
From two the freeing of the bindings of imposed values and teachings, the search for, finding and defining of one’s own way.  This opens the door to three.
From three the affirmation, the connectedness that Quimby revealed that we are our beliefs and can influence that.  The techniques of affirmation, meditation and conscious effort.  The self made belief for a self made world, in which are implicitly held the vales of the Western Christian tradition.

In four:
	The ethics from one to guide the techniques of three, the realisation that the eucharist ritual is an affirmation of a confessed belief and that this is similar to New Thought.  But, what is the belief you hold and the affirmation you make?  This is where the taught ethics of the traditions speak there words of wisdom, even though the dogmas no longer may do so.  As for us, we need to integrate our life experience in this stage four to steer our lives and our world guided by handed down traditions and newly interpreted and applied ways.  
	Adding to each taught human tradition and identity, is the admonition of tolerance, such as in respect your neighbour and honour ‘its’ [her and his] values and beliefs.
Example: Who is our neighbour today and how do we help that person or people, as well as ourselves!?