Nice temps mean not too cold and not too hot, just right and that seems to be between 20 and 26dC, a fairly narrow range. This often surprises me as we look forward to warmer temperatures, but not thirty for most people.

To me that is fine, I start to complain when it gets warmer than 40dC. But then I became used to field surveying during the summer and winters in Southern Ontario during the early sixties, with the accompanying clouds of mosquitoes and black flies at times!

Yesterday I made an unusual purchase. It was that of an modern fountain pen! Not the once only type, but a regular one with which to write, complete with a bottle of black ink and some note cards! I felt surprisingly good about having done this and wrote a card to myself celebrating this event.

Later in the evening I recalled the last fountain pen that I owned. It had a green streamlined design with the writing tip barely protruding from under its plastic shield and with a metal cap. As I wrote my card yesterday, I was reminded of the gentle resistance that the metal tip gives to the hand. This is so characteristic to the act of writing as I remember that from my elementary school days.

Now I’ll have to write the cards and the intended letters. For this I have the plan to use the pen and ink for the occasion of card writing for such events as birthdays and religious celebrations. And as the Dutch sociologist Kees Schuyt urged, to also write letters just for their own sake, resisting the onslaught emails and its off-springs, retaining and fostering that personal touch, like the touch of that writing with a pen.

I also detoured in buying a new ‘Web Design’ - English - issue that is dedicated to website design using the new features of HTML5 and CSS3 from the start. I can use some new inspiration in that activity, as I am stuck with old ideas and need to spruce up my site.

I’ll continue with expanding on where I left off yesterday with the younger male Marduk defeating the older goddess Tiamat. His condition is to become the supreme god over the younger gods, if he succeeds in the battle, which he does. More on this can be found in section 21 of ‘A History of religious Ideas’ by Mircea Eliade, vol.1.

My own view on this is that this cosmic battle is the mythological depiction of a change in human understanding that occurred in the late Neolithic. Joseph Campbell suggested that humans at that time discovered the functionality of sexual intercourse.

It is true that this must have been a discovery at some time, but why the Neolithic? I suggest that it was the domestication of animals that made people realise that cows don’t calve unless there is a steer around. That new insight, then was that it was not the gods caused that caused child birth, but the male, animal or human. This made Marduk the new hero so to speak.

The male hero god powers are also found in Homer’s ‘Iliad’ where they tell the humans what to do, while in the ‘Odyssey’ the more human mortal heroes like Jason and Odysseus act on their own power. These heroes take on all comers and mount all challenges, but show no compassion. Some of the actors in the Old Testament - Rubin - illustrate the same value set.

In Antiquity compassion was regarded as a character weakness that had to be overcome, as exemplified by the Amphitheatre games of the Romans. That world was a cruel place, in which compassion was a misplaced value and sentiment.

That changed with the new hero figure as depicted in the letters of Saint Paul, the Gospels and the New Testament teachings. The Jesus Christ symbol as hero to follow and imitate in daily life motivated and exemplified a totally different set of values to be applied.

Today we are faced with the problem of a lack of tolerance towards the other believer and we are in need of ‘new hero’, a new ‘wayshower’ to follow. However, since we as moderns are now aware of the difficult challenge that we face, we will have to device our own inspiring teachings. These must aim at overcoming our preconceived ideas, lack of self-insight and the intolerance between the various value systems that exist side by side, in our modern globalised society.

The choice is clear, we can either fight it out for dominance or learn to tolerate each other. It is in this, that our redemption lies, being a part and parcel of the soteriology that we must work out, knowing what we know from our traditions today.

Having become conscious of our pedigree as sapient humans, we must now take on the task of also defining, as well as working our own salvation, if I may expand on a New Testament notion!
<10:20am~