July 14, 2025

Swamp Scene 04 — Lake Chicot State Park, Vill Platt, Louisiana, AI Enhanced
According to Martin Palmer's translation of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching, "The path that can be discerned as a path is not a reliable path." We can find the path that is a reliable path only in hindsight. No guides are helpful along the way that is the way, or they are helpful if we use their guidance to direct us away from the direction they suggest we follow.

Jesus talked about blind guides, and Palmer would have us hold all would-be guides as suspect. Which puts us in the position of having to trust ourselves in learning to read the signs and choose the way. Experience will come in handy in that knowing the ways not to go will shrink our available choices and give us things to not consider. From there, it will be a matter of learning to hear, listen to and trust our intuition, our "sixth sense," our "inner eye," and sit in emptiness, stillness and silence waiting to see what arises/emerges/appears there to suggest options for us to consider in "letting the Force be with us," here and now along the way.

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.

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