Plenty late for the morning, but early for the aft! Last night I did join Shirley for the show ‘Monty Python’s Spamalot’, which went from one hilarity to the next. The company has the Amateur rights to the earlier Broadway show and this is the first time it has been put on! And in Calgary you say? Well of course, there are few if any backseats to be had in this town, according to local perception. I enjoyed myself immensely and am thankful to Shirley to have taken the initiative this time. So, Shirley, take a bow, also for getting us those first row seats, making us part of the vast at times!

The laundry is due at 10:50am and today I’ll only run two loads instead of the usual three. But, I’m a bit ahead of myself and still have to brush my teeth. That done and the next load bag ready to go, I’ll continue. I am trying to clean things out daily, by carting of for disposal at this time, no less than two bags of what ever. Books will have to be sold, but can be set aside as soon as I make some room for this throwing things out. Wish me luck, I do!

I did not even finish my daily entry of yesterday, but I do have a firm grip on my talk’s frame work. Laundry reload. Lunch followed and the next load change due twenty five minutes at 11:20am. I’ll elaborate on my talk under today’s writings.
Last night’s outing taught me that I should not restrict myself too much on account of my leg, but rather push myself a bit in this regard.

Even though I have not yet rounded out yesterday’s writings, I do want to record yesterday’s thoughts about my upcoming talk’s overall theme and its finish.
The finish is that we should make an attempt to reinterpret and rededicate the teachings and value of our childhood and youth, finding a place for them in our lives today. This part I call the integration of your personal life experience.

This idea of integration is also valid for our global society in which we face a great variety of value and belief systems, with their many confrontations. So, we could say that what is true for our personal life is also true at the global and regional communities, which is the need for attitudes and methods that help in this process of integration.

At some earlier presentations I have introduced and explained the concept of ‘Existence Divine’, a frame work that accommodates the various religious traditions of humankind. This overall framework respects and honours the unique character and claims of each and every religious conviction as a revelation of the mystery that is Existence Divine. 11:38am, time to attend to my laundry and back at 11:57; last one is due at 12:30pm. Each such revelation being specific in time, place, people and circumstance, honours the unique character, message, identity and other aspects. This applies to traditional as well as modern such revelations, insights and discoveries.

Whereas of old, each revelation informed tradition was considered unique in the absolute sense, due to the particular nature of these early revelations, today we have to admit to a uniqueness in its own right, without the exclusion of other such traditions.

This is a uniqueness that is shared in the diversity of the richness so revealed about the nature of the mystery of Existence Divine. One singly unique revelation is not sufficient and is incapable of revealing the mystery that existence holds for us in all its known and unknown dimensions and in which we are participating participants.

The framework of ‘Existence Divine’ has a place for each tradition, ideology or value frame work, providing a setting and reference within which mutual differences and similarities can be studied, understood and maybe even admired, areas of conflict to be resolved and modifications made to accommodate the diversity that is the human lot.

In this regard, I often recall the beautiful sight of the mountain meadow adjacent to Wells Gray Park ca. 1990, when my former wife and were camped near Hemlock Falls and think our human collection of identities alike that variety of flowers in that high mountain meadow, a beauty to behold.

A last thought in rounding out the theme of integration. It is through Existence Divine, that our human experience as a species and as an individual, that the variety of experience is given a way to contribute to a mosaic - in part of our own making - revealing of the mystery in which we exist.

This idea is in need of some worked out examples at the level of the individual and society. Last load time, 12:27pm; and continuing at 12:49pm:
The personal example could come from the first of the one hundred and twenty nine (129) questions of the Heidelberg Catechism, which I had to learn by heart at the time. This question is: “What is your only comfort in life and in death?” The answer [shortened]: ‘That in body and soul I belong to Jesus.’

There are several community example, but I want to use one that pertains to Christianity and does not stir up inter-traditional sentiments. I’ll look for some thing within Protestantism, that appears to be my best bet. Possibly the identity created in the personal example above is one of community as well, one that falls away when I consider my move to secularity.
I’ll work on these two for tomorrow.
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