Finding our way to The Way one situation at a time. I don't know how great it will be, but I expect it will be interesting, and I look forward to it going on past all reason because wonder is just that way. Are you coming or not?
Koi Fish 03/17/2025 — Pike Nursery, Charlotte, North Carolina
We cannot think up our associations. Association is not imagination. The associations we make with cigarettes, say, or pipe smoking, or alcohol, or cameras, or oceans... are ours alone to make.
No one can tell us what our associations are or ought to be. Our associations speak, reveal, disclose, display the truth of who we are.
What associations, if any, do you make with the above image? Do you feel attraction? Repulsion? Fear? What stirs to life within? What memories come to mind? Sit with the image and observe the train of associations that begins to form as the image generates associations that produce associations to the associations and your history takes form/shape as you become an audience of one as your life passes in review. What do those particular associations have to do with this particular time in your life? What is it about your here, now, that makes you susceptible to this particular train of associations? What are you saying to yourself? What are you needing to see about yourself, here, now. You are showing yourself memories/associations, here, now. Why these memories, associations, here, now? What do you need to be aware of it this moment in your life? What are you saying to yourself? About yourself?
Our associations are mirrors reflecting us to ourselves at particular points in our life. They are like nighttime dreams in this respect. We are attempting to guide/direct ourselves in response to our life, but we have to pay attention in an inquisitive kind of way to "get the message" and see what we have to say to ourselves.
As you move through your life, notice the things that catch your eye and look closer, becoming aware of the train of associations collecting around the source of attraction/attention. Hop aboard and see where it goes. Enlightening, exposing, unveiling, disclosing you to you.
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.
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Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 