Construction Noise.

As you can see, I have figured out how to get my picture as a posting, but have spent considerable time and have not yet transferred it to where I want it on the page. In the process I have also figured out how to do a variety of other changes, including different scripts so will now be able to change font when I want to. It's fun (or not: read exasperating, frustrating, time consuming...) to figure this out.

The last few days have been contemplative, with a twist. Summer construction or renovations take place all around us and every so often I look up from my book-of-the-moment, or begin to pay attention to a birdsong, and realize that the zzzzzzz of sound from somewhere else is what has impinged on my consciousness. Sometimes it's as innocuous as a lawnmower. Other times, like now, a yappy dog from across the street. Signs of life...sounds of a summer Saturday...an overcast day which is cooler than the last week of scorching heat.

Best news is that yesterday our close friend Fraser Glen called...and he expects to visit in mid-August for a couple of days. Can you hear the shout of delight? He also wants to go to our National Art Gallery, which he has apparently not done before. We will also revisit the Museum of Civilization. I have rhapsodized about both, in letters to friends when we first arrived in the Ottawa Valley in 2000. It's a pleasure to go there each time, although when nephew Tim Doran was here our walk through the Museum was brief and I sent him off to do some exploring on his own. My kids say I can get too much like a tour guide, and I can't keep up with his energy anyway. Hopefully Fraser and I will set a pace I can enjoy. I have yet to visit our new War Museum. It just over the road like the prow of the boat it simulates, the copper sheen still not yet green, near a bridge across the river of two solitudes, the sound of water falling not too far. Much metaphor for a morning.

Time for tea. I will, however, leave you with something to contemplate. Each Wednesday I have been joining a group of friends who study a document called One Common Faith, a 2005 publication from the Baha'is international governing body, the Universal House of Justice. If you want an amazing synthesis of recent history, philosophy, ethics...get in touch and I'll share more. But I thought I would end with this paragraph, for your meditating pleasure, beginning, as it does, with a simple tautology followed by a concise and important differentiation:

"Religion is religion, as science is science. The one discerns and articulates the values unfolding progressively through Divine revelation; the other is the instrumentality through which the human mind explores and is able to exert its influence ever more precisely over the phenomenal world. The one defines goals that serve the evolutionary process; the other assists in their attainment. Together, they constitute the dual knowledge system impelling the advance of civilization. Each is hailed by the Master ('Abdu'l-Baha) as an "effulgence of the Sun of Truth."

Reconciliation of science and religion...sometimes, you just have to look at things from a different perspective.