Easter behind, as renewed human beings we now arise to the challenges and enjoyments of the summer season. The Easter this year went by without having my eggs enhanced with a Polish blessing. I wanted to stay quiet on Saturday and I did. It is called ‘Quiet Saturday’ in the Dutch tradition.

I joined the Cook family and friends for Easter Sunday dinner and the rotating presents game. My African ‘fan’ was a wanted item, but I ended up with unwanted body lotions and other unnatural chemicals, which are now awaiting a suitable donation moment. Our circle is getting smaller, but with the quality of our get together becoming more engaged.

Yesterday I stopped at Juliet’s to help her with her ‘story’, which continues to be a challenge. She likes having company, with the typing taking second place. However, I did get the typed pages with the corrections confirmed and expanded.

After Juliet’s prepared and tasty curry and lamb meal, I took on the task of unpacking and firing up her new Epson printer. Next is the installation of the software for a wireless hook up, which is scheduled for this aft. First I’ll try this for my own Epson printer since it is similar and still needs the wireless connection activated for my own laptop.

Sunday morning I had coffee at Sarah and BJ, delivering the wayward letter from Der Schweitz, after which it was on to the Palliser for our Sunday meeting with a crowd of twelve (12) for Easter.

Upon coming home, Michelle asked me along for a walk circling through Lindsay Park, Erlton and then Roxborough, back over the Mission Bridge and home along Fourth. We chatted all the way and I surprised myself with the walk’s length and my ease of walking and lively company helps!

I also called my sister Els and son Derrick, both are doing well. The rest of this week is busy with two appointments, visiting Juliet, lunch with Herman and possibly coffee with John! Today I’ll try the installation of that wireless hook up.

Two themes emerged this weekend, one relating to the days of Easter and a second to humanity’s endeavours within Existence Divine.

This year’s Holy Week, as that is called in the Christian tradition, became an occasion for me this year to focus on its various days. I know of the ‘White Thursday’, but do not know its significance, but used it to focus on the three main days of Easter.

‘Good Friday’ is the first of those and it is the day that Jesus Christ died on the cross as the tradition hands this to us. Died for our ‘sins’ maybe, but certainly we have our missteps and wrong doing that we do undeniably make. This Good Friday then makes room, place and allows acknowledgement for such deeds, acts and omissions, for our failings in other words.

So on Friday, I recalled my own embarrassments, my deeds and omissions that make me feel ashamed, those that I could have done better, but did not bother, along with the oversights in ignorance and my acts of selfishness.

Such sentiments require their place and acknowledgement, but then too we keep in mind - staying with those Easter teachings - that Good Friday also holds within it ‘forgiveness’, enabling acceptance freed from guilt. We humans make mistakes, but forgiveness enables us to move on and not be burdened by that knowledge of our misdeeds.

So, on ’Quiet Saturday’ I thought all this over and formulated for myself that ‘descend into hell or darkness’ of our shortcomings and misdeeds, combines with the forgiveness and acceptance. This process I labelled ‘integration’. This is where the walls of repression are taken down through this acknowledgement and the newly found insights are given a place as ‘learning from experience’.

The Sunday of Easter - the day of resurrection - celebrates the new energies that now have become available through this process of integration. The energies that I had invested in the repression of my ‘dark deeds’ have now been freed up, having accepted and learned from my shortcoming and stumbles.

This inspires me to go forward in a renewed way with freed up energies and to - yes - make some more mistakes and commit wrongs, but also explore, learn and express along the way. All this, knowing full well that we are engaged in a cycle, but one that spirals upwards so to speak.

I think that this Easter symbology that Christianity has uncovered and thought for so long, enables us in this upward motion as it were. We do not have to become cynical or stay there, we can break from that discouragement that can be so overwhelming at times. This is where the ‘trueness’ of Easter rests in its ultimate grounds in our human traditions shared across its many boundaries.

My second notion is one that I recalled from my left hand art work. It is a saying: ‘Becoming, of becoming conscious, conscious.’ I formulated that at the time (1991) in an elaborate drawing as a final wording of the drawing process.

Becoming, of becoming conscious, conscious.

That saying, although not forgotten, never took on a significance until this weekend. It kept ‘announcing’ itself while I was contemplating my talks for this year, which are in the theme of ‘Spirituality’.

Mulling over this recalled saying about consciousness, I combined it with the notion expressed in my two completed talks. It is the notion that we look for a wholeness in diversity in our human spiritual traditions.

Merging this old and unapplied insight on consciousness, with the newly formulated need of wholeness in diversity, resulted in a new realisation. It is, that by going back to the way we humans became conscious in our various ways and along their different paths, we all share in this adventure of bringing into conscious expression this diversity which attests to and bears witness of the multi facetted Mystery of Existence Divine, which is made known in this manner.

This the leaves us with the imperative of finding ways and means to accommodate the variety in our human views and traditions, realising that we are all engaged in this process of becoming conscious beings and that we can learn from each others traditions, disasters and accomplishments.

In that sense this process is akin to my contemplation on the Christian Easter symbology that I mentioned as my first topics above.
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