Yesterday friends sent me a powerpoint presentation called “Seasons of Life“, with beautiful winter scenes and music.

The story is about a man who sent his four sons to go and see a tree and come back to describe it. He sent them at four different seasons, and each one described a totally different tree. So you also cannot understand the life of a man when you just have a momentary view of a part of his life. Nice thoughts – a good digital present for Christmas…

Sunset glow, last Sunday afternoon

A few days ago an Indian friend sent me the following humorous story:

God was in the process of creating the universe. And he was explaining to his subordinates, “Look everything should be in balance. For example, after every 10 deer there should be a lion. Look here my fellow angels, here is the country of the United States. I have blessed them with prosperity and money. But at the same time I have given them insecurity and tension…. And here is Africa. I have given them beautiful nature. But at the same time, I have given them climatic extremes. And here is South America. I have given them lots of forests. But at the same time, I have given them lesser land so that they would have to cut off the forests… So you see fellows, everything should be in balance.

One of the angels asked, “God, what is this extremely beautiful country here?”

God said,”Ahah…that is the crown piece of all. INDIA. My most precious creation. It has understanding and friendly people, sparkling streams and serene mountains. A culture which speaks of the great tradition that they live. Technologically brilliant and with a heart of gold.”

The angel was quite surprised: “But God, you said everything should be in balance…”

God replied, “Look at the neighbours I gave them.”

The fountain of Justitia (justice) in the City of Berne, blind-folded and with the sword and the balance in hand.

Two days ago a big parcel from the WTT-centre in Einsiedeln arrived, with books we will take to India in January. One of the copies, however, was for us – a beautiful hand-bound book on “25 Years The World Teacher Trust – Global”. Our friends in Einsiedeln had produced it in a limited edition. Last August we had been at the celebration, where a first copy was given to our teacher, Dr. K. P. Kumar.

The book now has been enlarged with photos of the celebration and texts of the talks. I went a bit through the volume and was deeply impressed by all the work which had been done by Sri Kumar: 27 pages were filled with titles of talks and seminars given all around the world during these 25 years. I had the good luck of participating in a small number of these, and they had left a lasting impact on my life. And I’m looking forward to the next seminar in January.

I’m always amazed about the deep wisdom pouring out of him, with a tremendous range of spiritual topics. The book contains a lot of photos from the sacred places  he had been visiting all around the globe – and some places evoked memories in me. There are also some photos with our children, from a ceremony of introduction into writing and another ceremony of introduction into the wisdom teachings. Many groups have contributed reports on how they met the Master and the teachings, and some of the service activities were portrayed. Among these there is also the article about our group, which, with his guidance and inspiration, slowly but steadily had evolved over the last years.

Through all these cumulated contents and pictures you get a faint impression of the enormously powerful, but very silent spiritual impulse which is manifesting through this work.

The sign of the WTT on the cover of the book symbolises the wings of the work of Spiritual Hierarchy uplifting humanity and the life on the Globe, thus creating a progressive movement.

Last Saturday the sun was shining from a brilliant blue sky and reflecting in the fresh snow. I went to the nearby Villa Mettlen to take some winter shots. In the villa there is the music school of our town, it is surrounded by a beautiful park.

Boxwood balls with snow-caps

The Villa – snow magic

A natural Christmas tree in the park

Old hut in the little forest

Another enchanted hut in the cold sun rays

The sculpture of the Black Sun

The boxwood dance around the winter fountain

Angel’s Spring

Sunrise over the boxwood globe

View through the old terrace window

Dwarfs’ greetings

Ducks in the river light

An old hermitage chapel

Christmas bells in front of the town hall

Yesterday I felt a great relief: At noon we had the launch of the new intranet of my office. We had been working for the launch for over one year – and the whole process took more than two years. (I had mentioned the project in a number of posts.)

About 2 months ago we saw that part of the project had to be taken out into another project: The document management, which shall replace the file explorer, turned out to be more complex than we had thought during the concept phase, so it will be developed in a second tranche of the project – again me as the project manager. We will start when I’m back from January’s holidays in India. It seems that this will again be a long project, we will start with a pilot.

Being the project manager I had a lot of trouble with instructing the team, finding and describing mistakes and cleaning the system. The last weeks we had been working on the migration of the content from the old intranet into the new system, and the team of our info-managers had done a good job, but – mostly out of ignorance – also created several “crises” by trying to adapt things in a “try and error”-way. I sometimes was reminded of Hercules fighting with the Hydra: Having cut off one head, two other heads appeared. The mistakes of the system didn’t seem to take an end.

Hercules fighting with the Hydra. Image of Antonio Pollaiuolo, from Wikimedia Commons

And then the launch – the director giving congratulations, the head of the agency speaking about the pioneer work and me about the team-work and the surprises of the process –  happy faces all around.

An hour after the launch new problems popped up – no safeguarding possible with different pages, strange way of presentation of the news in one of the news aggregators. This morning some other questions popped up…. The last months my patience has been tested a lot – and quite some times I failed. It seems that my personal testing phase isn’t over yet.

An old sewing machine – not so complex than a modern web collaboration technology, but also helping to stitch different matters together.

Friday I’ve published some e-Christmas cards. The motives I shot last week in the city of Berne. So when you want to send someone a Christmas greeting, here you find the selection.

The Christmas tree in the centre of Berne, next to the Federal government building. It is the second tree erected last Thursday (the photo I shot Friday morning), after a storm had broken the first one.

The lights and the stars of Christmas remind us of the greater Light of the soul.

Last Friday evening there was the third and last meeting of our series of public evening themes on „The Call of the Soul“. We were a group of nine persons, most of them members of our group a a few newbies. Before the meeting I felt quite groggy, for the last week at my office was very turbulent – the final sprint before the launch of the new intranet next Monday. But hardly we had started singing an invocation to the unity of all existence, all fatigue was blown away and the thoughts came flowing in.

I had prepared a powerpoint presentation on “The Fellowship” – a play with the title of a volume from the trilogy Lord of the Rings, but of course with a quite different content. It is about the persons and things coming across our way on the spiritual path. At a first glance it might not be obvious what this has to do with “my spiritual path”, seen in subjective individualistic terms, but the theme is of great importance, especially in the long run:

On the journey we don’t walk alone, we move in a group, in many groups. There are countless groupings travelling on the planet and they are going through their path of development. We are surrounded by many kinds of groupings, with which we connected and which accompany us. Very rarely we select the people with whom we are together on our journey, but it is no accident who the fellows are. They come together according to the law of resonance: We learn together and from each other. We learn to cooperate, to support or receive support.

When the taste of subjective living grows, the spirit of being together becomes stronger and the power of the lower nature decreases. Each one adds his stone to the building of a group, and an energetic temple is being constructed, where with a a loving understanding the hearts can meet.

Have a look at the presentations of this series.

A mosaic in Corinth, Greece – a beautiful representation of the energy field of relationships.

My wife and I today went on the Jungfrau (“Top of Europe“). Since the Jungfrau Railways now offer free birthday trips till the end of the month, we used the occasion of my birthday for this “pause” (see the sign on the post van in Grindelwald…). It was a beautiful sunny day, relaxing and full of a clear winter air. Quite a lot of tourists from all over the world were going into the same direction – Chinese, Japanese and Indian travellers, Buddhist monks in ocher colours and a Jew in a traditional dress, skiers – and also a number of “normal” Swiss people…

The air at the top (3450 m or 11333 ft) was rather thin and made us breathe consciously and walk snowly. Here are some impressions of the journey.

A “pause” in Grindelwald – good sign for the day

Radiant sunshine above the Jungfrau, at the “Top of Europe” (3450m)

Object of an art exposition at the Jungfrau of Housi Knecht.

A daw above the “Mönch” (Monk) mountain

Icy winds blowing over the Jungfraujoch

The 11th moon phase at the Eiger North Face

An alphorn at a chalet on the wayside

The valley of Lauterbrunnen at the foot of the Jungfrau on the way back

Yesterday late evening I went into the city of Berne to shoot some Christmas mood photos, here is a part of the series – to give you a feeling of Christmas and shopping romance.

The Christmas tree in front of the office of our village authorities

A Christmas tree at a nearby old people’s home

5-pointed stars over a street in the old town of Berne

A star at the cathedral

The Nutcracker Parade in the window of a shop with traditional arts and crafts from the Erzgebirge, Germany.

The Angel’s reception

Shop-sledging

Warm snow

Winter scenes from wood work

An angels’ choir

Santa Claus and singing angels

Hark, the herald angels sing…

Oh when the Saints go marching in…

Church-goers in the shop-snow

Riding a carrousel

Buddha’s Christmas

The Food Angels

Teddy Bears driving through the shop

The “Zytglogge” (Time-Clock) Tower with feistive decoration

Only the beautifully decorated huge Christmas tree in front of the Government building, which I wanted to shoot first, was no longer there, just the pedestal and a short rest of a broken trunk: The night before a storm had swept over the country and probably knocked it over…

Yesterday was the World Volunteer Day, an important day for fostering free commitment for the well-being of humanity. Volunteer work is not just a one-day festival, but a way to pay back to life what we have got for free.

The United Nations have just launched a redesigned platform, onlinevolunteering.org, where volunteers can find opportunities for activities and organisations can find volunteers (site in English, French and Spanish). The Red Cross here in Switzerland, where I work (as a professional, not as volunteer – my volunteer work is in other fields) is also chairing a forum, in 3 languages, for volunteer work in different organisations. And they are running an ad-campaign for thanking all the volunteers for their work and inspiring more volunteers to take action. Volunteer work is one of the 7 principles of the Red Cross organisations world-wide.

Volunteer work is often a silent activity not noticed by the masses. But it is most important to keep our society well functioning – particularly in fields where no money is spent to do the needed activities. Especially women do a lot of free work – and so Volunteer Day is a good occasion to commemorate these activities – not only on World Volunteer Day.

A poster of the ICRC-Campaign: “Our World – Your Move”.