Today, in the year 1940, Nazi Germany attacked the Netherlands, which started a war of three days. In my childhood it was a day recalled by my parents and our family, albeit not commemorated. In retrospect from what I now know as an adult, that quick surrender was a wise decision. The alternative would have been a country destroyed and a population deported at least in part. Hitler would have gone mad about a strong Dutch resistance, which he would have felt as an humiliation. This is my view, based on what I now know about his fragile personality.
I think my breakfast is ready to be eaten, the pan’s lid is making announcements! And done at 8:19am, to continue with my Diary.

Yesterday Don came by and we drove on to ‘Wave’ at 9th St. and 17th Ave. SW. Here Don treated me to coffee and a Panini, as we talked for hours about our experiences since last Fall. Don likes his new location in California better than the one in Arizona and showed me some photos of his newly tiled pad and a brochure of the extensive park with its hundreds of sites.

It is Fundamentalist country though, because this is where that started back in 1920 as a reaction to the movie industry. This fundamentalist reaction was an early warning sign then, of the porno industry that flowers in LA now.

It was good to talk to Don, who spent many years surveying, which is an activity I share with him. We may make a trip again to the ‘Little Book Shoppe’ outside Red Deer and possibly have look at the bird farm as well.

In the evening I read some pages in my new, but second hand book, titled ‘Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion` an anthology with J. Waardenburg as editor. His editorial pieces and the objective temper of the collected pieces of forty one (41) contributors matches closely my present mood and views on our global religious and social situation. This book along with `Sources of Indian Tradition`, edited by Embree, was a parting gift from Dave during the second last day of his closing bookstore. The latter book covers the period up to 1800 of the religious record of India. India is metaphor for our global village, because of its diversity, its age and only partial integration.

The Waardenburg tomb with its over seven hundred (700) pages, presents material and maintains argument - albeit dated in some of its content and theories - in an ambiance of attempting to understand this so human phenomenon of religion. This approach fits into my present frame work of formulating a way forward for our human society, as to how we humans can learn to tolerate those who have different identities from our own.

The authors are exploring just like I am exploring and hence, I can easily relate to the content and style of their presentations, which are selections by the editor from the various works by the contributors. I am browsing three of them now, Delizsch’s “Babel and Bible” (#9), Radcliffe-Brown’s “Religion and Society” (#35) and Walter Otto’s “The Homeric Gods” (#37).

However, before reading these through, I have started first with the Waardenburg’s own introduction, which I will then follow with the three essays of part one, on the beginnings of the Discipline of ‘Religious Studies’.

The latter in order to get a well defined understanding of the aim of this discipline. I do need this perspective, because over time my readings in this field have been occasional of some of the authors presented here, but always without the benefit of a systematic and disciplined reference. Waardenburg refers to the need for a ’nominalist’ approach (p.14. Preface) and that is what I need to acquire with respect to studies, views and functionality of religions.
<Ca. 10:00am