Saturday John, Annie and I visited Devonian gardens from where I walked home, while they went on to have some lunch and buy skates for Annie. In the afternoon I joined the birthday celebration gathering at the Wave for Elisabeth. She had gone through a lot of trouble making the food that was served there, while we had some drinks.

I bought her a large Belgian hot chocolate, but Elisabeth would hardly sit down, being busy as she was with the coming and going. All together it was a celebratory event with lots of conversation among eight plus friends, new and old. We started at three pm and at past six, went our ways into the cold!

Sunday too it was cold, but very bright and I took quite a few pictures and two videos along the way, walking to our regular Palliser Sunday meet. In the aft I caught up with much sleep and even in the evening, but I did manage to take down the Christmas decorations and make a second trial page for my left hand work on lower quality smooth Hilroy sketch paper. I plan to keep the Bristol for special cases, but do my regular work on the Hilroy sketch pad.

At around one pm today Jack and I will have our first coffee of the new year at the Perk, with a heavy agenda to work throughJ!

My January talk on spirituality is now less than two weeks away and I will have to start focussing on it. My chosen topic’s content appears to be elusive, according to its nature you might say. Since early on, I always felt that spirituality was an aspect of religion and contained in it, however now I am considering reframing this structure.

I am starting to form the idea that human spirituality is a given and that over time religion emerges from it. The latter being the practical application and frame work for that motivational power of the spirit, slowly forming and channelling its powers into ways beneficial to society and the community.

This point of view gives spirituality the space it needs as the raw and unadapted force that it can be at the time of emergence. Religion provides that container as it were in which the emerging powers can be sufficiently shaped to become useful. The opposing danger being that the container becomes self serving, restricting new expression of human spirituality.

This model of interaction is a useful one in that it can help us understand the ongoing processes on our planet at this time and furthermore is underpinned by the work of J.B. Peterson who deals with this process in his oeuvre ‘Maps of Meaning’.

Using this model I can also show how human spirituality first started, subsequently formed into religions. These at times, bursting their bounds to adapt to new requirements, absorbing and regulating newly emerging movements. An example of the latter is the successful counter reformation which saved the Roman Catholic church from diminishing any further. A second example is the way Zoroastrian concepts and Ancient Egyptian symbology informed the various subsequent religions.
<11:32am with editing~