March 22, 2024 – A

Ocracoke Island Sunset 11-04-2008 — Pamlico Sound, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Outer Banks, North Carolina
We spend a lot of time between some things,
and no time at all between other things,
like everything else in the natural world.

Dogs and cats (etc.) lie around,
stretching and yawning and going back to sleep,
waiting for getting up and going time to arrive.

And everyone who has been there
knows what "Island Time" means,
and if we stay there long enough
we begin to apply it naturally,
and have difficulty fitting back into
"the real world,"
of clocks and calendars,
schedules and meetings,
and an order of the day
that doesn't have room for naps,
or being late ever to anything.

Which is to say "the real world"
has to learn to make room
for naps and time for meditation,
emptiness,
stllness
and silence,
if we are going to find our way
to intuition
and our natural awareness
of what needs to be done
when,
where
and how
in putting first things first
that have nothing to do with
clocks and calendars,
schedules and meetings,
and Left Brain orders of the day.

–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, five granddaughters, one great granddaughter, and a great grandson on the way, within about ten minutes from where we live--and are enjoying our retirement as much as we have ever enjoyed anything.

3 thoughts on “March 22, 2024 – A

  1. Your image today is interesting representation of something I have been contemplating in last few days about the middle path…it is the horizon always in front of us, all around in all directions, where the two realms of extremes converge. Like the meeting zone of the yin-yang, night-day, earth-sky, the mystical reality and conventional reality of this world. We are always required to adjust course, while continuing to walk in this middle space, balancing and transcending the pull of opposites! Yes, napping and taking it easy, fall in this middle space 🙂

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    1. It is amazing, and “amazing” is not a big-enough word for it, so that art in all its wonder, though “wonder” isn’t a big-enough word for it, is required to do justice to the allness of the realization of whatever it is that cannot be said, or painted, or danced, or sung…but is beyond all that can be realized, and beyond all response to what can be realized…but art is a close as we can come, and maybe the instrument that comes closest to expressing what can’t be expressed is an electric guitar solo that never ends but grows and goes on infinitely, eternally, inviting us for a ride, the ride, of our life. I think maybe the Buddha plays an electric guitar regularly as a close approximation to more than words can say.

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