Diary: Heritage holiday weekend potpourri:

~~Backwards reporting on storm, dinner, fifty year memory and current events, including today‘s.~~

During that storm the temps dropped ten Cd to about freezing with all that hail! Flooded underpasses with down slope ponds and blown manholes formed the news reports. It was pandemonium all across Calgary and environs!

Leaves and hail stones covered the lawn in front of my window, while the Elm tree’s leaves rained down with the hail and sky water. I filmed about half a minute of this down pour from my kitchen window looking at the parking lot to the East of us here.

The Monday night before, Michelle and I enjoyed our ethnic supper at the ‘Salt and Pepper’ in Inglewood seated outside on the patio in the nicest summer evening you could wish for! What a difference a day makes!

Michelle had suggested this spot after she had been there the night before during the Calgary Fringe Festival, which plays out in Inglewood and is still going until coming Sunday. I may go Saturday evening to take in the ‘Berlin Waltz’ a one person show about Berlin, where I was for the month of August in 1999.

Last Friday Ina - my former spouse - and I had a drink at Earl’s as it was fifty years ago then, that we had our wedding.

Last Friday Ina - my former spouse - and I had a drink at Earl’s as it was fifty years ago then, that we had our wedding. This act of reminiscence and honouring many shared experiences went well, taking about three hours of treasured memories and acknowledgement, complete with a few pictures!

Last Sunday night I sent an email to my brother with pictures, to which he promptly replied with thanks. So, that potentially adversity was nipped in the bud and we will continue from here, with ore emails I presume.

Today I meet Shirley at around one pm. We have not met since she left for England last February, so I’m looking forward to see and hear her, because she has always many things to relate! Then later on I’ll visit Juliet, but I still have to phone to confirm. John and family are back from holidays and Derrick is in the last two weeks of his final summer school course, which will close off his masters study in psychology. Wow!! What a switch from Mechanical Engineering so many years ago.

Writings: Forming a new affirmation:

~~I relate the forming of a new affirmation as I awoke this morning.~~

I few notes on a contemplation from this morning at 7-am, before getting up. I started with the thought that I am not the only person thinking about and studying our present day human dilemma of diversity. Even though I have no community that is actively engaged with this challenge, I know from opinions and observation that come my way via friends, the media and political activities that many in our society are so engaged.

Thinking along such lines, I recalled Elijah’s story from the book of Judges in the OT. He feels all alone and laments to his god about this, who reassures him by recounting to Ejijah all the others who still serve his god as he does himself. This story is an efficient and emotive reminder to anyone to not become trapped in a self centered solitaire vision.

Existence Divine is my commitment and dedication within humanity’s traditions and its diverse community.

Next I became aware of the following words: ‘Existence Divine, commitment and dedication’, as well as ‘c before d’ as to the order of the last two words. This then formed right away into: ‘Existence Divine is my commitment and dedication’.

This notion I held for some time, but I wanted to add this sense of community in that there are others so engaged. However, this still felt inadequate in that it was no more than some modern humanitarian but unconnected goal, like so many others in our society.

Then my notion of old surfaced regarding human traditions, meaning that we need to acknowledge the traditions that have come down to us from our human past. With the additional insight I now composed:

“Existence Divine is my commitment and dedication within humanity’s traditions and its diverse community.” That was followed by an ‘Amen’ and or ‘Right! That’s it!’

This I then repeated to myself a number of times so that this insight would not slip away, as that can so easily be the case with such early morning insights. Although, if they have ‘truth value’ - as I call that - they will emerge later on in some other form.
9:56am and 10:25am~