Until the church renounces its theology and embraces its role as children/servants of the light, rejecting sin and embracing seeing, it will remain a relic of wistful thinking, delusion, deception and denial. As things stand, the church is only a slight shift in perspective away from turning the light around, understanding metaphor, not fact, to be the ground of its resurrection from the death of its own devising. "The spirit is like the wind that blows where it will," and we cannot keep up with the spirit using spiritual laws, doctrines, dogma, catechisms, liturgical rigidity and ritual, systematic theology, orthodoxy and literal interpretations of the Bible. The qualities required to walk with the spirit are integrity, sincerity, spontaneity, balance and harmony. An affinity for emptiness, stillness and silence. An intense curiosity, innocence, and openness to the fullness of experience. And, the more we can be empty of opinion, expectation, judgment, wanting, fear, willfulness, stubbornness, resentment, jealousy, and the need to have our way NOW!-- the better things will go in developing our relationship with the spirit that is like the wind. And we will be able to be open to, listening/hearing, looking/seeing, feeling/trusting what is happening in each situation as it arises, and responding as needed to what is called for with the gifts of our original nature and our innate virtues/specialties/things we do well that came with us from the womb, offering what we have to give to what needs that which needs what we have to offer, for the good of the whole, and the joy of doing it, and the satisfaction of having done it, through all of the circumstances of our life, all our life long. May be be so! And, when it is so, the church will be the church!
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Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 