Friday’s start was late, I called my sister Els and also was called by Anne-Marie, both calls relating to Sharen’s birthday and good wishes to be conveyed. In the afternoon I visited Sharen, because the first of February was and is her birthday.

I brought her a little decorated tube with macaroons from the Patisserie with the -hard to get- 100-birthday card. As I arrived, David and Betty-Lou were just leaving from making the last arrangements for Sharen’s birthday party on Saturday.

On the weekend I visited John and Annie, Sharen’s 100 Birthday party and reconnected there with several mutual acquaintances and Sharen’s family, including Donna and Keith.

Sunday morning I first met up with BJ and Sarah at the Perk, where Alec kept all three of us busy! My birthday card was the third one of its kind, a growth chart! I also had my photos on the stick for them.

Later on I met with our group at the Palliser, where the second half of Herman’s talk was on its topic on Lao-Tzu, with about seven points to meditate on during the week. Our group was small, but it was good to say hello and Larry gave me a welcome reference to his Chiropractor, as I am without one right now.

I also chatted with Shirley about living in Senior’s housing and its choices. It is something I have decided to inform myself about. She has a place in such a complex, with kitchen and a common area, which is close to transportation and shopping near Dalhousie. I’d prefer something in the Southwest, but that will probably further out than I am here in Mission.

The rest of the day was spent on reading in ‘Casual Vacancy’, cooking, dishes and some colouring of my doodle-art Mandala from 1973! Progress is noticeable here, but not overwhelming. However, there is enough there for me to say that the colours are working out, except that I need one lighter blue yet.

Jeltsje sent me an email that my ‘Christmas’ cards - a winter and summer postcard of Calgary - had arrived in Aswan a week ago. Tourism is still dropping off there and people are hurting. She appreciated my intent of sending some different kind of scenery

With respect to my next talks I have defined three areas of focus, all under the theme of ‘My Belief’, respectively: exploring, structuring and perspective for action.

And further to the ‘Exploring’ focus, I am playing with the idea of using ‘model narratives’ as I call that. Such a narrative would be a story type rational explanation about a topic of exploration, e.g. ‘human violence’, something I wrote about last Thursday and am still working on. An other such topic for a model narrative could be ‘re-incarnation’.

The intent is to provide plausible explanation of how such a concept could function and be of importance to us in our lives, using modern knowledge.
The model narrative is meant to provide a story line that uses modern knowledge to frame a life situation and/or existential situation. An example of this is: ‘What is the meaning of my life’. I will leave the religious answers for what they are, but simply add a possible modern view to this as a part of ‘My Belief’, sharing some views and initiating discussion.

Regardless of our position, secular, religious, free-thinking and others, our beliefs are private affairs even for members in a traditional belief. As a teenager I always wondered about how I would know that the belief in god of the head elder of our church would be the same god as that I believed in. You can talk about it using the same concepts and statements, but that inner experience is private and remains private.

The model narratives then are intended to give an outline using modern concepts about older religious ideas, adding and supplementing what is already there. For myself, it is important to add as much functionality to such ideas so that the can be used and applied in daily life. There are books about ‘tools of philosophy’ these days. I look at these model narratives as ‘tools of meaning’ in dealing with our life situation and held belief frameworks. <10:09am and 10:28~