Core Values

These would be the key elements or influences that have informed or shaped working beliefs and values.  It's interesting to note that as I struggle to identify what shapes my perceptions of threat or opportunity, I am learning how much I have long taken for granted.  It is easy to forget, in the hurly burly of the day to day, that one just might, in so very many ways, be truly blessed with good fortune.  

Christian upbringing.  Both Grandfathers theologians, one Baptist the other Presbyterian.

 

 One set of grandparents served as missionaries in Japan, the other in Northern India.

 

 Raised Anglican and United Church of Canada.  Married in the United Church and all children baptized. 

 

Rarely attend church.

 

Have reached an age and am in a profession where the death of friends and family has become reality not merely some abstract possibility in a vague and distant future.

 

Have recently begun to study older pagan paths of spirituality and find myself drawn to the early Druidism of the Britons.

 

This is the summer of my 56th year (though I do not celebrate the traditional culmination of that fact until my birthday in the fall).  As such it is an appropriate time in my new pagan/druidic life to acknowledge the transition to elder.  I confess I prefer that term to middle age.  I will mark my initiation to crone this July, in a wooded grove by the sea, in the company of respected and dear women friends.

        Family home primarily upper middle class while growing up.  The same while married.

Low income for many years as a single parent.  Regained middle class financial status eventually. 

 

Currently stable income source.  Want for nothing, but not fiscally free to vacation any where beyond local.  Dining out and entertainment are a seldom thing.

This refers to where I am in my personal evolution from an age or generational perspective.  I have evolved past childhood, adolescence and young adulthood to arrive at that vague, post parenting, gray area (literally) called middle age.  I think that the same kind of generational evolution can be applied to organizations and nation states.  The trouble is an annoying tendency to apply generational prejudices to the ages you've left or the ones that lie ahead.  This becomes even more of an issue when you demean an organization or a country because it has not moved as far down it's own developmental path as you believe you have down your own, or has branched in an alternate direction.  I suspect that it is a reflection of the very human tendency to be highly judgmental of  choices and views, even those that are age related, that are less familiar. My perspective on values is profoundly influenced by my generational age as well (Boomers - '60's and '70's Peace and Love) when we were younger and filled with wonderful passionate idealism and hopeful plans for a peaceful and green future.  Wonder where we got lost on the way to here and now.

University educated - the third generation of university educated men  and women.  My eldest son has recently graduated college while my younger son and daughter are just embarking down that path, so they would represent the fourth university or college educated generation.  A love of reading has been consistent through all generations and has sporadically manifested in my children.

 

Traveled - the third generation of a family inclined to travel, not as a vacation, but to live abroad.

 

Liberal in terms of core ideology.

Historical cultural influences include a sampling of Scots, Irish, English, German and Dutch.   

 

Second (birth order) of four Boomer generation siblings. 

 

A child of the sixties inclined to yearn for some of the visionary idealism of that time.

 

A military officer from the perspective of Peace Keeper/Peace Maker/Peace Builder - a Militant Pacifist?  Couldn't be any more of an oxymoron than enduring cynical references to "Military Intelligence".

 

Celtic - Pagan - Druid - I am studying all these and they are philosophical as well as spiritual.  A point of some fascination - in my studies so far an interesting discovery - apparently I am not alone in finding that my studies frequently strike a familiar and harmonic chord in my spirit.  The literature indicates that those called to the Druid Path often find they have been unconsciously walking that path for many years.