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There is only returning to return again and again. Because we live in a world of noise, complexity, and 10,000 things, and it is an easy thing to lose The Way, follow our desires, run from our fears, labor under our duties and obligations, wander from the path, and have nothing to do with the Flow of Life and Being. We return to the silence. We return to emptiness. We return to our original nature. We return to the work of balance and harmony, sincerity and integrity, spirit, energy and vitality. We return to listening and looking, seeing and hearing, knowing and understanding. We return to reflection and realization. We return to doing what needs to be done, moment by moment, in each situation as it arises-- without regard to the outcome or to what is in it for us. We return to returning here and now, forever.
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02

"The path that can be discerned as a path is not a reliable path." Which is to say, there is no path-- other than the one we make. We do not find the way. We make the way. By being attuned to the here and now, seeing what is called for and doing it when it needs to be done, the way it needs to be done, because it needs to be done moment by moment in each situation as it arises. And because what needs to be done might be anything, depending on the time and place and the circumstances of its arising, there can be no path that is imposed on each situation artificially, dogmatically, but the way is organic and of the moment-- like the wind that blows where it will-- from moment to moment, to be discerned in the moment by those with eyes to see and ears to hear here and now, moment to moment.
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03

Scrapping the Doctrine of the Atonement (along with all the other doctrines), would put Jesus' death on the cross in a new light-- and be the call for all of us to die, literally or metaphorically, in doing what needs to be done in each situation as it arises, which was the attitude that characterized Jesus' life, and the one he continually called his followers to display. "Why don't you decide for yourselves what is right?" he would ask, in saying "Stop looking to the religious authorities to tell you what to do!" "The spirit is like the wind that blows where it will," he said, in saying that each situation as it arises is a new situation, and may well call us to do what has never been done before, and may never be done again. In calling us to the Christ as only we can be the Christ, Jesus was telling us to become as he was, open to the moment, and willing to live there in ways that called into question all of the sacred assumptions of the day, in doing what needed to be done, when it needed to be done, the way it needed to be done, because it needed to be done, and then on to the next moment, and the one after that, all our life long. But, there is no profit to be made in a religion like that. So, Christianity became what it has become to pay for the organization that guarantees heaven for those who believe what they are told to believe, and hell for those who do not-- and to divert the people from the Way of being who Jesus was.
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Hi, Jim: Your posts remind me of the words of Richard Rohr of the Center for Action and Contemplation that come to me daily in emails. Here’s the latest post: https://cac.org/being-instruments-of-god-2021-09-05/
As always, your words resonate within me. Thanks for your lovely photograph paintings and the words you find to share every day.
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Hi Sandy, Thanks for the link, and the high five!
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