In an earlier blog I suggested that "Surly the God of the universe is not restricted to our own tiny speck?"  In support of this I've just been reminded that John Eriugena, who lived between, roughly, 815 and 877 CE, wrote that "God is beyond the dimensions of time ... and space". So, I would think, the presence of God is universal and, among the almost infinite entities in the universe, there will be creatures that have a string connection with God.
So what about Christ, and the declaration that Jesus is "the only-begotten Son of god", suggesting that Christ, and this world, is totally unique?. Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monogenēs) reveals that the word for "only" in "only begotten" is not the only sense of the Greek word monogenēs, which can mean "unique and special" as well as "the only one that there is".
The presence of God, in innumerable forms, is more vast than we can imagine. 

Am I a christian?

         Every so often, out of curiosity, I ask myself "Am I a christian?" ( I sometime think this during the christian discussion groups that I sometimes go to!). The problem for me is in particular expressed by some words in the the Lord's prayer: "our father ...maker of heaven and earth..." in juntion with Jeus' central speaking of God as "my father": e.g. Mark.14.36 'Abba, Father [abba is some times translated as "daddy"] Jesus's life was continually in the presence of the Father of which he spoke.
But there is a fundamental difference between this said father of Jesus and my own father. I knew about, and was aware of, a significant proportion of all that constituted my father. Whereas Jesus, in so far as he was a man, surely only had the capacity to grasp the minute extent of the God that embraces the entire universe.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Today I headed to the short walk along the path leading the "Beech Grove": a secluded patch of grass surrounded entirely by trees, entered only by a wooden plank laid across the stream that rang alongside the path.  As I had suspected, however, the path was mostly water-logged, so I entered from the other end, only to find that the plank, usually usually placed to walk across, was no more: I succeeded a running jump! Then on to the end of the base and home. Good fun, but not to do often.

The fluffy snow that had covered everything the previous days had started to disappear, and I took a walk around its edge, looking for paths I had not noticed. Everything was in the shades of dark trees and the white snow, obliterating any paths that others had trodden, so I set off through a rarely visited part where the trees and branches were fairly widely spaced, walking in a direction likely to take me home. To my surprise, I saw another man wandering in a vaguely opposite direction, smoking a cigarette. We greeted, commenting on the weather (what else!) and I continued on. But I had the impression, from his appearance, that he had nowhere to go - while I had a wife and home. 

To be aware only of nothing

My last blog, about being our aware with our whole body, reminded me (no I don't know why!) of a related event, when I was quite young, at my first dental operation, under full anesthetic. I retained awareness all the time, but its contents became steadily less, until I was aware of absolutely nothing ... except for a tine distant light. It was an uncanny and disturbing event. Reflecting on it now, I recalled T.S. Eliot's "When the evening is spread out against the sky, Like a patient etherized upon a table". He probably never felt it!

Today I was on my way to the common. As often, I walked through a path sloping downward by about 40 degrees, between closely branched trees on either side. There had been rain for several days, covering a rich mud over the path that settled around the tree-roots, and I was accordingly walked looking cautiously downwards as I walked so to avoid slipping. But soon, however, I found could again lookup: my entire body had taking care of my movements - a lesson for "letting-go". 

My study is full of books: no reason to get them out, though they are a bit scattered. Are words so important? Humanity lives on action, creation, development - very rightly, to give everyone their well-being. But when I open to the night sky, or the trees,  it is these that have the greater reality.

Mechanisation of the spirit

Poor words, but the best I can get. By "spirit" I mean the inner being of an entity: that which holds its isness. When I am overwhelmed by a landscape or a flying bird, it is not their picture that draws me to them, but a sort of connection with their being. It is so fragile: I start thinking, and it is gone. The birds themselves know only spirit. We humans, including me, usually crush it. 

An instrument of peace

After a gap, today I returned to the beech grove that is my main "church". Sometimes I had stood there singing the first line of "St.Francis`s song": "Oh Signore, fa' di me uno strumento della tua pace": That is: "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace". On this occasion I turned to the path feeling somewhat low. What can I, with my frequent struggles to discover words (because of Alzheimer's  syndrome) be an instrument of God's peace? But as I stood in the grove it seemed to me that this weakness perhaps more strongly shows me those things that really matter: my wife, the trees and much more, which can find peace.

The big universe

A few days ago I was again wondering about "all that is" (i.e the Universe), and the possibility  that the "flaring forth" which created "our" universe, could in itself create infinite universes. Douglas Adams, in  "A hitchhiker's guide to the universe" warns us: the universe: "The universe is big! I mean really big. If you think that walking to get your daily papers from the news-agent and back again is  long, it's absolutely nothing to the universe"  (I quote from memory!). Probably the first of those who realized that things were a lot bigger than reached by a very long camel ride was, perhaps, the Greek thinker Eratosthenes, who released that the earth curved, and measured quite a good shot its size. And it took until to 1653 for Huygens to estimate our distance from the Sun. Now we reach out with distances whose very means of measurement have repeatedly been recreated (see wikipedia.org/wikei/Universe). But where remains the question "why is there something, not nothing?".