One month from today I will become eighty years of age! I can add similar descriptions to this marker, but when I think about what to say or write, it is all said in that one observation of that age. However, I do want to add my feelings of thankfulness, amazement, humility, accomplishment and at time regrets. Life is about experience, I have concluded for myself, because it is from this experience in the body that my spirit is enriched by means of the soul.

This philosophical opening today comes unplanned, but obviously was ready to be expressed. Similar thoughts do occupy my almost everyday, but I do not often give expression to them. Yet, as I am closing in on this eighty mark, I have become more sure of the convictions that I have cobbled together since my youth and feel that the time to voice them has arrived. There will be more to come in other places and times.

There I picked up some information on cooking with canola, the importance of riparian areas, biodiversity and where the cuts for chateaubriand and filet-mignon are located on the long suffering cow.

Last Tuesday I met up with Elisabeth at the Stampede’s Weadick Ville. We visited the former Roundup centre and went from there to the Agricultural exhibit. There I picked up some information on cooking with canola, the importance of riparian areas, biodiversity and where the cuts for chateaubriand and filet-mignon are located on the long suffering cow. Next were the midway and its rides, after which I went home and Elisabeth visited some music venues.

The weather was warm and sunny well into the aft, which probably made it the best Stampede day this year; all for those seniors of course! Elisabeth and I chat a lot as we walk, she about her affairs and I as I see and notice things while looking. It is good to share your experience with a friend, which is something I have had to learn to do. Elisabeth with some other friends have been a great help to me in this regard. Thank you guys, take a bow!

Obama is the first and missing Black Father of Confederation for the US, I say.

This aft I expect to meet with Don, whereas my Wednesday visit with Juliet was cancelled again by her. Don and I share about Western Canada and local, as well as southern, politics across the border. I bought him yesterday’s Globe and Mail, which has Obama’s Dallas full speech as a folio item. I consider it a master piece as this US president seeks and holds his nation together across this painful and prolonged divide in values and aspirations of its people. Obama is the first and missing Black Father of Confederation for the US, I say.

Last night I wrote some pencil notes on thoughts that had surfaced at waking, remaining with me all day. I kept combining various ideas on humanity’s religions, starting with ‘Existence Divine’ and ending up with tolerance across religious traditions, with other ideas fitted in to make a continuous process. I will try to put these loose, but relating notes into an explication of the mentioned combination of ideas.

My starting point is the idea that ‘Existence Divine includes all there is’, which has been a fundamental concept in my thinking since 2006 as explained in my talk in the Spring of that year and posted on my website.

Next comes the observation that as humans we have our existence in the ‘realm of humanity’ within Existence Divine. In this human realm we have our experience, make our discoveries and construct our understanding of existence, such as we can know this. In it we experience ‘Existence Divine’ as a ’Mystery, but knowable’.

This know-ability we humans experience as an ‘emergence’ of new insights and knowledge, of something that we did not know before (aka revelation). Such new knowledge that emerges is specific to time, place, people and circumstance (TPPC), aspects which I have mentioned earlier this year.
Such specific revelations accumulate over time to form the specific traditions as we know these today in their varied forms of expression, handed down over many ages, as well as the modern ideologies.

These constructs order the experience of humans in the human realm, sharing a recognisable structure that I have called 'concept space' …

These constructs order the experience of humans in the human realm, sharing a recognisable structure that I have called ‘concept space’, which has independent categories. Theology gives five categories in religious terms, which can be generalised as I did a few entries back this month. [ See: Daily Entries 2016] They are origination of existence, origination of humanity, human development, community structure and process and expectations.

Knowing what we know today and applying our knowledge we can discover in our present ‘global circumstance’ as people of our ‘earth place’, that we have a serious problem in our ways of living together. This is what I call a boundary situation, which occurs when we are confronted with a problem where none of the known solutions work. We have reached the boundary of what we know, yet the problem continues to affect us.

… we now have to come to the understanding that ‘cultural diversity’ is not a threat, but an asset and gift, …

In this situation new knowledge emerges, but we need to recognise it for what it is. It is a new concept that is to be added to our existing set of categories to help us deal with the problem of conflicting traditions with their specific values, identities and expectations.

This added concept is one of tolerance across handed down traditions and ideologies. This implies the abandonment of self proclaimed superiority over others and the acceptance of the mutual differences that we humans have and value.

This diversity is recognised as valuable in the sense of ‘biodiversity’ and we now have to come to the understanding that ‘cultural diversity’ is not a threat, but an asset and gift, with the promise of further developments and achievement. That is, if we are willing to do the required work and make the needed changes in our set ways and power structures.
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