Yesterday at ten am Tim and I met for coffee in Marda Loop - after the old streetcar loop, where we discussed our new national government and other politics. Tim was not taken in by the Rodney Stark’s book ‘The Rise Christianity’ that I’d lent him. He considered the author to have a Mormon background, if not such a bias. Yet, Stark makes clear that he came to these studies as a sociologist and I suspect him to be a Jesuit, scholarly, but with religious views.

In the early aft I shopped for Juliet and dropped them off at her place, but could not stay. This on account of an acute dental problem that needed the attention of my friend Ken. On the way there I stopped at my barber’s for some much needed attention clips and buzzing.

It was close to four pm by the time I’d walked home and getting time to prepare supper, which I did. As after dinner activity I stretched out on my couch, catching up on my delayed afternoon nap!

I was no in a place to read, so decided to listen to some cds I’d bought there, one of which - The Chieftains - has Canadian connections!

After the CBC National I played several cds from my time in Berlin in 1999. I was no in a place to read, so decided to listen to some cds I’d bought there, one of which - The Chieftains - has Canadian connections! And then at around one am I added notes to my pencilled insights that I have going at this time, which are related, in part, to my ‘Threshold’ talk in two weeks.

The above mentioned notes relate to an urge I feel emerging within me to make an explicit formulation of my view and understanding of our existence in the realm of humanity. This is the reality in which we humans operate and from which basis we develop our understanding of existence as we are aware of that.

For me this existence is not just existence by it self, since such would be superfluous, rather I have come to the insight that it is ‘Existence Divine, but knowable’. The divine lends meaning to existence, while existence lends reality to the divine.

It is one of those dual concepts that we come up with as humans in framing our experience. We discern ‘matter and energy’, ‘particle and wave’, ‘good and evil’, ‘health and sickness’ and many other such pairs. I suspect that it is inherent to our human way of being conscious that we describe our world in these basic pairs.

It fits with the notion - suggested by C.G. Jung - that consciousness arises from the action of resolving conflicts - between instincts he says. The most basic such tension situation is the separation of the individual from the whole, symbolically expressed by the archangel Lucifer - Light bearer - falling from heaven.

We humans do need to understand that we are now in this position of independence, fending our way through existence on the one hand, but also understanding the path that led us here as our traditions and histories inform us.

We humans do need to understand that we are now in this position of independence, fending our way through existence on the one hand, but also understanding our the path that lead us here as our traditions and histories inform us. Like in all development processes, we built on the old, adapting it to the new, but retaining what is needed to continue.

My own challenge in my circumambulating - making those above mentioned notes - is to come to that new understanding of our human situation that combines the reality of our existence with the Divine as revealed in time, place, to people and circumstance.

We humans have formulated the beliefs of our traditions over time, that we must recognise, while ‘keeping Holy’ the processes - revelation, insights, discoveries - through which this happened and still happens today. Humanity built its traditions interacting within the Mystery of Reality that is part of Existence Divine, which includes all that is.