Category Archives: The Church of What’s Happening Now

On a large enough scale, nothing we do matters, and on a small enough scale, everything we do matters. I recommend living small. Live on the level where our next breath counts for something! Live on the level where what we think determines, or, at least, strongly influences, what we do, and where what weContinue reading “April 14-B, 2023”

We live our way into the presence of That Which Has Always Been Called God. And no one can tell us exactly how to do that. Those who know can tell us generally how to do it. Joseph Campbell said, “Follow your bliss.” That is as much as can be said. Beyond that, “The TaoContinue reading “April 13-B, 2023”

If you want to keep up with my other probing of reality, I’m also to be found at: 04/13/2023 – A and: https://www.clickasnap.com/jim-dollar –0– The path to transcendence is called the Tao. It is that simple and that complex. Transcendence is the heart of the matter. “The Tao that can be said is not theContinue reading “April 13-A, 2023”

We are being swept up in global fear produced by the extreme right who are always afraid of everything. For sixty years or so, the members of the extreme right have been filling the airways and media outlets with their fear of The Complete Loss Of Everything, and how Our Enemies Are Everywhere And AreContinue reading “April 11-A, 2023”

All bad religion is about theology and all theology comes down to opinion about hearsay. All good religion is grounded on experience, and comes down to what Harlan Howard said about country music: “Three cords and the truth.” We don’t have to believe anything in good religion. We don’t have to take anything on faith.Continue reading “April 10-A, 2023”

What needs to happen right here, right now? That is the question we take with us into every situation as it arises– into each moment in every situation as it arises. Not, “What do I want to happen?” What needs to happen? Wanting/Wants/Desire/Desiring have us where we are. How many of us want to beContinue reading “April 07-A, 2023”

In my dream, I am sitting at a table in a restaurant with a black man, about to order breakfast, and looking forward to our conversation about a movie we are thinking about making, when a white man walks up to our table, making a scene because we are ruining his breakfast by eating togetherContinue reading “April 05-C, 2023”

There is the plot, and the script, and the narrative, and the context which we are continually trying to impose our plot, script and narrative upon, thinking we are the director when we are only the actor in a plot without a writer, unfolding, ourselves, along with it as the circumstances keep evolving according toContinue reading “April 05-B, 2023”

When “the world is too much with us late and soon” (Wordsworth), where do we go to recover, regroup, revitalize, revamp, renew? Emptiness, stillness and silence are always right there. A return to silence is always in order. Giving ourselves a time-out can be the best choice available to us in a lot of situations.Continue reading “April 05-A, 2023”

I never stayed in the Num-Ti-Ja Lodge, but. I would like to have stayed there, and in all of the lodges in the Canadian Rockies, and to have discovered all of the tripod positions there, and to have taken all the photographs that could be taken there, through all of the seasons of all ofContinue reading “April 01-B, 2023”

We know when the cobber is done and when it is over-done and when it is not done. We know when we are on the beam and when we are off it. We know when our heart is in what we are doing, and when it is not. We have all it takes to findContinue reading “April 01-A, 2023”

There is nothing wrong with us that having a trustworthy sounding board wouldn’t fix. Clarity is everything. The Buddha’s Eight Fold Path can be reduced to two: Right Seeing and Right Doing. Clarity enables both of them. Of course, the Buddha’s word for clarity is Enlightenment. Enlightenment is clarity, is realization, understanding, comprehension, knowing… TheContinue reading “March 31-A, 2023”