The last few days I was quite busy with getting my ‘Talks’ category up to snuff. There now is a ‘New Talks’ button in the page top nav-bar, which leads to the new display pages of the talks categories organised by theme and made attractive through the use of images. These in turn are the links to the groups of themed talks, usually about four. The individual theme page provides links to the individual audio files that are listed on the particular theme page.

Each of the - now 27 - audio files have a new appearance, colour coded for that theme, e.g. blue for ‘Existence Divine’ or green for ‘World Religions’. If the individual talk cum audio file has handouts, these to are all there and equipped with return links back from the handout to the talk file.

What remains to be added is a few live links to related essays and the overview table of the talks. And this is all posted on my website and has been tested for functionality. So, go and have a look at the ‘New Talks’ as that appears on the home page navigation bar and CLICK:)

Next in line is the category ‘Topicals’ and this is all ready at the ‘Assembly’ stage in my TTS-version2 folder and working. I am using the same technique as for the Audio cum Talks Category, that is image with intro text as link. This technique is widely used by the news sites, is efficient, flexible, attractive and not to cumbersome to maintain.

As I am working on these ‘Topicals’ cum essays, I realise that the essay files themselves also will need some enhancing and updating to the html5 level of markup. This can be done in one fell swoop, as the saying goes. After that the feedback form will have to be revisited big time, as I do not have an operational feed back system going. Ideally I would set up a comment window at each talk, essay and daily entry. This I’ll have to read up on.

In the background of all these plans remain my gallery category and the ‘Left_Hand_Work’ category, which is rudimentary so far, but has dozens of images waiting to be readied for web display. In the mean time I am working on these daily entries and on cleaning up my paper work in the bed room. The large table in the latter facility now has a cleaned up top, but much remains to be done during the rest of this year; December is the deadline.

A thought about the Papal events of this week. Pope Francis appears to be a good choice and was the runner up of the last one. I read last night that Pope Francis warned against the church (Roman C.) becoming a compassionate NGO.

I presume that this warning is aiming at the fact that commitment to religious values needs to be central to any church or religious movement. It is about more than ethics as I see that, albeit that this is a part, as is compassion. In religion we have the core aspect of ‘revelation’ and ‘obedience’ to the ‘higher power’.

The problem for us today is that we have many different religions all claiming to be representing this higher power and having related revelations to support that claim. Then, there is the shift away from the traditional and formal religious practices, with similar affect and effects in Christian Europe and Buddhist Thailand.

Yet, when a speaker like Deepak Chopra comes to town in Calgary, people fill the Saddle Dome to hear him and this popularity is no exception. I put it this way: People drop denominational religion and embrace religious spirituality, but avoiding the word ‘religious’ as the plague. “Spirituality? Yes, Denomination? No“, is how I put it for short.

Spirituality? Yes, Denomination? No

Spirituality as this is popular today is vague and non-specific, but will be easily blown away like a mist, once the winds of societal restructuring winds start to blow. Here you may think of the shifts in wealth and political influence that are taking place in our world today.

Un-tethered spirituality can not be a guide for conduct when difficult ethical choices have to be made. But, we do need a way to accommodate the diversity of religious expression that we face experience in our society today.

Returning to the Pope’s warning, with the above observations in mind, I ask what would be the most essential aspects of religion, regardless of the belief frame work or denomination. All religions share the idea of revelation and a power that supersedes human power and human comprehension. This I have called ’Existence Divine’ a mystery knowable, but not comprehensible.

In the past, all religious frame works have laid claim to revelation and single source availability. “No salvation outside the church” was and is the claim Rome makes and the Protestants in all their variations, were quick to follow; they are not the only ones. As a case in point, most Hindi Swamis do not talk to Buddhist Lamas, or even among themselves. That is why ‘being spiritual’, and hence undefined, appears so attractive leaving the doors open for dialogue.

This forms a good starting point, but it is only the beginning of the journey. We are going to need custom, practice and … yes doctrine or teachings to which one commits.

With the Pope’s remarks still in the background, I recalled from my studies the situation in Palestine around Year Zero, YZ for short. In my relating talks, essays and studies it becomes clear that the Pharisees were practicing a renewal. They wanted people to know the law and held that temple service with its priest, was not all that necessary. So, the Pharisees went around teaching people and the Essenes did something similar, as did Jesus.

I mention this, because at that time this represented an important shift away from the traditional and institutional temple service, to the much more enabling teachings where people themselves were put in charge of their own rules and conduct. It was not that authority was abandoned, but is was shifted away from the priest and temple, to the law and the people, the followers. The essential part then, was that the people served the lord by obeying his commandments, with the making of sacrifices, not so much!

The point I want to make now, as this occurred to me this morning, is that today we need to identify the essential aspects of our human religious traditions and emphasize those, even when this means letting go of venerate institution like the temple service in YZ. The essential aspects are at least ‘higher power’ - the connectedness with mystery - and revelation - the process of inspired knowing.

Revelation has always been the prerogative of religious institutions and this we have to re-examine today, but that revelation will still need to be tested and be informed by tradition. So, what we have here then, is the direct access to the mystery by the individual within a given tradition, with the old institutions in the new role of facilitator, - psycho-pomp for the knowing - rather, then in the old role of authoritative distributor.

This all adds up to a greater responsibility on the part of the individual, not unfettered, but informed and prepared like the driver of a car. We are leaving the learner stage behind and are now operating solo as we live our lives in tune with and relating to the mystery as individuals, informed by our traditions, but not ruled by them.
<9:59am~