In spitting distance of a new year.

Good day my brothers and sisters and the last this year. How has it been for you! Its been a good one for me. If I was to dwell on the past I could tell you some wonderful memories of the day my 1st wife and I were married in London. Lets just be in the now and share a recent painting.

  This artwork is called `The tree of life and fruits`. When I named this I was aware that there were no fruits to be seen. Not even on the bare branches of the symbolic tree. This is because we have to see a tree in our imagination. Imagine first, leaves budding and then we can see in our minds the fruits appearing. Because it is a symbolic tree the fruits can be material or non-material.  This is the last day of this year and I will not be wanting one minute to go quickly, so as to get to next year. Every moment in time is to be relished in a way as to fully appreciate all experience. What happens which we may on a conscious plane see as negative - war, terrorism, starvation, imperialism, soap opera's, Oprah Winfray. Yet reality is never the same for any two people. Knowledge comes from experience and so as our experience does differ not only by our location in space and time never being exactly the same, but also individual perceptions. So we are all inhabiting slightly, or even vastly differing universes. 
Imagine the reality of one individual who has mastered meditation and lives in a prayerful state. Then imagine the reality of another who`s mind is unbalanced, perhaps pychotic and self absorbed in both fear and anger. These two indivuals then walk down the same busy street just one minute apart, but worlds apart in their individual realities.
So important is the vital apprehension of this truth that we may well approach it from another angle. If We believe in God at all, we must believe that God has a purpose for the universe as a whole, which must include us as intrinsic individual parts of this! The seers have uttered this faith in scores of figures, but no one of them is adequate to express the full meaning of this confidence that creation means something, has a goal, is not a blind accident, but a wise plan. "Nothing walks with aimless feet," says Tennyson. "There are no accidents with God", says Longfellow. All who believe in God must share this faith, as I truly do. When we walk in the knowledge that we are not just individuals, but vital important bits in Gods loving plan, then this awareness is what seperates us from other sheep; who are the blind leading the blind.
Today is the time to have in mind that God can neither care nor plan for His world as a whole, without caring and planning for each of the individuals that make His one universe. The faith of the Bible, in the individual knowledge, love, and purpose of God for each of us is not mere sentiment. It is the inevitable corollary of theism. No man can think through the meaning of belief in God without coming to it.
Purpose for the universe and purpose for each life are two aspects of the same thing and they mutually involve each other and us all. You can easily find a shield with only one side as a purpose that concerns the whole and not the parts. Here, too, God calls us every one by name. As an Indian poet sings,
               " The subtle anklet that ring on the feet of an insect
                         when it moves are heard of Him."
  Whether, therefore, we consider the fact that God must care for value rather than for size; or the fact that knowledge, as it grows, always breaks up masses into units and understands each one of them; or the fact that no love and purpose in general can fail to include the particular parts, we come to the same conclusion : God`s individual care for us is not only a reasonable, it is an inevitable corollary of our faith. Therefore it is natural that the psalmist exclaims in the passage, quoted by Jesus, "All of you are sons of the Most High!" (Psalm 82:6).
How could He care for us all and not for each? And since trust in God`s individual love must always flower out of prayer, the word of Jesus follows naturally from His conception of God--" Having shut thy door, pray to thy Father who is in secret". (Matt. 6:6) We are all one when we have the imagination.

This is all the blogs you will see from me this year and so I will God willing be back next year. Blessings love and peace to you all. Your brother Peter.