We did get a good and solid winter storm yesterday, even to the extend that Jack phoned to postpone our regular coffee. I did not go out, but will today shortly to do my monthly grocery shopping.

Yesterday I located - after much searching - the new html5 feature 'contenteditable'. I knew it existed, but had never really studied it, so I did not know what attribute name to look for. The feature in question allows for the web page visitor to make changes in the page. I wanted to incorporate this feature for the handout of my last talk ‘My Belief as Practice’.

I tried it out on the handout page called ‘Outline’ and got to work, now I’ll have to style it clearly for the user to know what to do. One thing to know is that all the changes disappear when you refresh the page, but you can save it too, so due diligence is required.

I made a start with my Christmas decorations by hanging up the lights to cheer on the outside world yesterday during the snow storm and to brighten things up inside of me and my homeplace. This early start - for me - has me planning my cards as well.

I’ll be there shortly.

I printed and mounted in a frame Sharen’s picture, - see last Friday's entry -, which I took last Thursday. It shows her face lit up by a veiled sun turned up to the sky as if to say “I’ll be there shortly.” And I know that is what she wants, has so for several years, with the tea light on the shelve giving a glow to the framed 4by6 print to help bring her wish about.

My next talk is scheduled for the 19th in the first month of 2014 and will be about ‘A Spirituality for our day’ or close to that. At first I’d been thinking about migrations or wandering of the spirit, but I kept changing it. I now have the notion that I should focus in on what our spirituality of this day is, examine its character and point beyond some of the preoccupations of our society.

This reminds me of my early readings in Van Riessen a Reformed and critical sociologist at the Technical University of Delft, NL in the mid 1950-ties. There was a good deal of social critique in the circles of my upbringing, because politically we were in the opposition, with Labour and the Roman Catholics being in power.

This attitude of critical examination is still with me and it seems to have surfaced now that I have come to a closer definition of my belief over the last year as expressed in my talks. It seems to me that now is the time to bring forth a description of what we need to do, ‘Where is the spirit listing?’ is the question that hovers.

In this I feel an acquaintance with the views of Pope Francis, who also is redrawing some perspectives that are past their due date for today’s world. Why do we hold the making profits as the bottom line? What would be the purpose of all that money?

I say: You are in business to provide a service or goods and profits are the reward for doing this well.

I say: "You are in business to provide a service or goods and profits are the reward for doing this well." To be in business to maximise profits by providing goods and or services of minimal quality and often not needed, is a 'sin'. [ Elisabeth calls and now it is time to shop, at 9:26am; back at 10:32am after a cold and windy outing.]

Maximisation of profits is not an allowable goal all by it self. There has to be due diligence with respect to morals and ethics, because if there is not, then people will be harmed and even killed for the sake of saving money on required measures and for increasing profits. This is not outside the realm of possibilities today as we read about the Elliot Lake Mall collapse, the Lac Megantic train calamity, not to mention the Westray Coal Mine explosion in Nova Scotia, which 20th? remembrance was earlier this year.

Once you start looking around for such events, you notice them all over the world. Just recall India’s Bhopal Union Carbide poisonous explosion, the clothing factory fire in Dhaka just recently and deadly bar fires, fireworks explosions and building collapses. In most, if not all cases the reduction of costs was a motive for shortcuts of one kind or another.

It is our call to be aware of these events and processes and agitate for change in behaviour. We investigate crimes against humanity in the case of some wars - Syria yes, Iraq no - , but why don’t we apply the same criteria to the cases of commercial and industrial misconduct?

I am concluding with this thought, because it casts a light on an attitude and value set that goes largely unquestioned in our Western society. Making money as a final value, making invisible the ways and means of accomplishing that, with the excuse that one has to stay competitive, … at any cost? That is the question!

Why not be competitive in the ethical sense? Who decides such criteria? These are the questions I want to pose in order to examine the road on which we are traveling in our modern, postmodern and globalising society of today.
<10:58am~