We had a wintery weekend, but ‘April so sweet, often gives us a white hat treat’, which is a direct translation from a Dutch saying my Mother taught me. And then there is: ‘April does as it will’, with the emphasis on pril in April.

However, the weather was no obstacle to my activities. On Saturday I picked up John and Annie - who can now travel without the car seat - and we went to spend my stolen gift card at the ‘BulkBarn’. It has several thousand items for sale, from soap, spices and pastes, to cookies, candies and tea, all in bulk form.

So, it was tough choosing for me and Annie, but John appeared to be more sure of his choices. I bought ‘English’ liquorice, liquorice laces and dates. The five dollars each were easily spent and I may come back an other time for tea, peanut butter and cane sugar.

On Sunday I attended Herman’s lecture where we had an audience of five all told. This on account of the weather Herman figured. His talk was a good one on the gospel of Thomas, one of his favourites.

Herman also recalled meeting late Mayor Klein who had asked him to lead the Council opening meeting in prayer, which turned into a meditation on Klein’s suggestion. He introduced Herman with: ‘Here is a minister who does not pray’! Klein was known for his ‘on the mark’ quotes, and this is an example, this in addition to his most famous ‘Bums and creeps from the East’, back in around 1982 or so. May Klein rest in peace, as he was remembered last Friday here in Calgary.

Sunday evening I attended the installation of ‘JK’, a friend of Thomas and colleague of Gabriella in a denominational Ministry under the New Thought umbrella. The event was well attended and inspiring to me. I had come out of a sense of obligation and curiosity, but left enriched by the ceremony, the general ambience and interesting conversations with Ken Gordon, who conducted the installation and later with Teresa, who uses the web in her ministry.

After some bites and a coffee and some casual encounters I went home with a little detour giving Rene a ride who had come with JK. On the way home from Rene - Inglewood - I got stuck waiting for a long and long freight train, that went slower and slower. So, I pulled out of the line up and took Spiller road, then the 12th Ave SE Elbow Bridge and through the Stampede grounds, home. I had not done this in years, hence the detail.

As a result of all these activities, my regular Sunday Mandala colouring was passed over for a second time in a row. Therefore be it resolved that next weekend this neglected activity will be front and center, even with some newly replaced felt pens maybe - yellow, ochre and … ?

For my upcoming talk on April 21 a focus is forming for me on the theme ‘comfor ye my people’, a phrase from the Isaiah scroll (OT). I feel a need to let this idea of comfort inform the ideas I aim to present under ‘My Belief Explored’. I learned from Peter’s - the husband of my friend Helene - comment ‘that is a comforting view’, that the way we view our world can give us comfort.

I want to give such comfort to my audience and myself, by means of the views and insights that I plan to present under the mentioned title. This, because our present world is confusing and its guidance is local and ad hoc, while we are in need of a frame work that is at least robust and comprehensive.

My second topic relates to my website, where I want to make a start with upgrading the Left_Hand work website category. It and the feed back form together, are now the most neglected and primitive in design of the seven. I now trust to have the technique in situ to tackle the Left_Hand work drawings and its texts.

The feed back form will have to wait, because I do not have time to handle any feedback at present. I may give it a rudimentary upgrade such that I can look at left comments once a week, rather then set an email based feed back mechanism.

The third observation under writings today regards a conversation I had last night. [Coffee time has arrived and I’m making some.] Ken and I were exchanging views and observations on the formation of New Thought in North America as a new kind of belief or religion even. I happened to mention ‘Spirits in Rebellion’ - by Braden I think - and his observation that there is a connection between New Thought and the Gnostics.

Ken then pointed out to me that he felt there was even a connection with the Ancient Egyptian religious tradition in that their god Thoth, is also the god of thought as Ken put it and acts as a messenger between humans and the gods.

As an aside, Thoth was the god of the scribes, with his Ibis bird type head, in some depictions. The varying depictions often seem to depend on which function of the god that is emphasised. Ken suggested that our word ‘thought’ and the god’s name Thoth, were related on the bases of being homonyms, but that is going a step too far as I see that.

However, the idea of thoughts being messengers of god, as symbolically represent by the Thoth cum Hermes symbology is a fruitful idea. This the more so, when we consider the ability of humans to be intuitively aware of information, not available otherwise. This is the direct knowing that we also experience through the physical senses, such as touch and smell. [See also C.G. Jung on the ‘irrational’ functions.]
<10:11am coffee time with sun!

A fourth notion needs a word of expression. It is my waxing interest in the culture of the Mayan. I mentioned last week that I’d bought a tomb by that title, but this has grown legs, as journalists say about a breaking story. It has emotive energy for me, because it keeps surfacing in my attention as an idea of interest; it is numinous as Rudolph Otto, author of ’The Idea of the Holy’, would call it.

And … this fascination has an early history with me, going back to my second time around in first grade Junior Hi! I’m a slow learner, but I keep at it, the learning that is!

At the time, Mr. Bos the Math teacher, was giving me ‘by-lessons’ as we called that in Holland. To this purpose I would visit him at his home, where he instructed me in his study about the rules of algebra - I had some dyslexia I now know. In that study, Mr Bos would at times, leave me to work by myself and towards the end I’d finish early and look around his library.

There I spotted Streckfuss’ history volumes, one of which was on the conquest of the Mayan, Aztec and Inca empires by Cortes and Pizarro respectively. As luck would have it, Mr. Bos was also our history teacher, so we obviously held shared interests. He let me take the volumes home and I read the two sections from beginning to end.

This reading included the portion about the human sacrifices that the Aztecs practiced, which in turn motivated the Spaniard’s - along with their thirst for gold - to further conquests. And I also read of the hieroglyphic script, about which no one had a clue at the time of publication of the mentioned works.

However, my interests remained when the lessons finished, but I never pursued it any further. I felt that without us knowing about the script and the codices, it was not much use to study these lost cultures. I turned my attention to Robert Grave’s ‘The Argonaut Journeys’ and philosophy as well, covering the grounds from Plato to Descartes in a second hand anthology, long since gone from my shelves, but not my memory!

So, returning to my new book on the Mayan, the interest now meets up with my recollection from then, because the script is now open to reading and we know so much more about this culture, to rekindled my interests. Hence, going with the energy of the emotions, I will give it renewed attention.
10:59am, Lunch time; and 12:20 after lunch and edit.~