September 17-A, 2022

Posted byjimwdollarPosted inSeptember 17-A, 2022
Fishing Shacks 01 Oil Paint Rendered
There is a spirit of place
with every place,
accessible to our feeling/spiritual side.

We live mostly cutoff from that side,
learning as we do from shortly after birth
that the only side that counts
is our intellectual/rational side.

Intuition and instinct suffer
from this division,
and we live with half
(or less) of our faculties operational.

Developing our feeling/spiritual side
is our task for the second-half of life,
and too many of us put it off
well past the time 
for doing anything about it.

For all practical purposes,
this means we live without having lived at all,
because "spiritual" in this world
means "intellectual understanding
of what passes for religion."

All of our religious symbols
can be explained/defined/said/told/expounded.
We can do a better job with any of them
than we can with "ice cream."

Sheldon Knopp said, "Some things can be experienced,
but not understood,
and some things can be understood,
but not explained."

All of these things belong to the feeling/spiritual
side of things.

How many of them inhabit your world?
Live to enlarge/expand/extend
that aspect of your world.

Practice feeling more than you can think.
Feel yourself through life,
or through a day,
or through the next fifteen minutes.

Practice sensing the spirit of a place
in every place you enter.

Develop your sense of your own spirit.
And the spirits of those you enjoy being around.
And the spirits of those you cannot be around.

Open yourself to the world of spiritual reality,
that has nothing to do with theology,
or doctrine,
or dogma,
or dharma.
But has everything to do with truth.

Open yourself to that world,
and be amazed.

–0–

Published by jimwdollar

I'm retired, and still finding my way--but now, I don't have to pretend that I know what I'm doing. I retired after 40.5 years as a minister in the Presbyterian Church USA, serving churches in Louisiana, Mississippi and North Carolina. I graduated from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, in Austin, Texas, and Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana. My wife, Judy, and I have three daughters and five granddaughters within about twenty minutes from where we live--and are enjoying our retirement as much as we have ever enjoyed anything.

3 thoughts on “September 17-A, 2022”

  1. I was stunned and delighted to read your post because I have been prompted since the beginning of September to pay attention with more gravity to the spiritual in all of life that surrounds. Thank you for sharing your wisdom, your posts are encouraging.

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    1. Thanks, Suzette! Your words are encouraging! And so it is passed–heart for the journey! It is the way! The way to the Way! The way of the Way! And it is interesting to me how what we need to hear is facilitated by our realizing/knowing our need to hear it. In a, “When the students are ready, the teacher appears,” kind of way. Needing to know/hear something produces the likelihood, assists the revealing, of what we need to know/hear. Suggesting to me that we can rely on “invisible hands,” and trust that “the door will open” if we “watch, wait.” Something is cooperating with us–we can feel it working even if we cannot explain what we feel/know. Our place is to be awake/aware/patient/expectant/trusting/etc.

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