THE BEGINNING

                             This is the picture of a ball that you bounce  to make the colours shine.

The beginning of my day I felt chilled to the bone and I warmed up a blanket to wrap around me.  [Was tempted to jump right in the dryer]  This chill warmed up when Jane brought us a orchid to celebrate our anniversary.  Going to the restaurant with all the huge trees and beautiful flowers around us was a good way to celebrate and just enjoy being together.  We are blessed to have one another and to have a special day to share our love. 

The beginning of the world, which I understand looks beautiful from space, is beyond our comprehension.  We can go back in time to discover what the ancient people have to tell us.  They drew pictures in caves, they had sacred places, they had rituals and different ways of describing God. 

"The story of a lost paradise was a myth that was central to ancient religion, not a factual account of a historical event."    It gave expression to the hardness and painful existence that seemed to fragment people that once felt close to nature and the wonder of the holiness of a creator.  Two beliefs were strongly held that there was a time when the earth was a paradise and that they would find that paradise again. 

Today the paradise we search for is happiness and comfort and freedom from stress and worry and illness.
We search for answer in many different ways and all of us find joy in doing different things.  At one time I would have thought lying on a beach was a great way to spend a day, now I am more concerned about burning and the worry of skin cancer.

Today we have found many paths to choose from in our quest for the spiritual.  We have the ability to journey to the beginning of time as archaeologists discover more and more about the civilizations that proceeded us. 

The Bible has been for me like a warm comforting blanket; from the pages I discovered evidences of a spiritual reality that was expressed in myth more real than the earth I walk upon.  As I walk around my neighbor hood I am seeing more and more signs of nature preparing to rest.  Soon the trees will be completely barren of their leaves and the days grow shorter and darker.  No wonder in time long ago they wondered if this was the beginning of the end of their world.  They had no control over nature but there had to be a "Being" a fundamental energy that supports and animates everything that exists.

This energy would be expressed in art and worship and music because how else can you share the emotions that are beyond words.  Sacred places were chosen as places where sacred rituals gave meaning to existence.