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?
Brown Pelican at Sunrise — Ocracoke Island, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Outer Banks, North Carolina
What holds us together? What makes us One? Kindness and compassion come to mind. Psyche and the ideas we share in common. Good faith in/with each other, and the desire to be soulmates along the way.
"Good faith" for me means the willing/willful intention to be who we say we are.
Integrity, sincerity, authenticity.
Beyond that, the Void. No?
I participated in a Zoom call meeting of retired ministers several weeks ago. The moderator asked us to open the meeting with a short description of where we worshiped now the we did not have "a church of our own" to oversee. He asked me to start it off and I was happy to say that since my retirement in 2011 I have not darkened the door of anything church building anywhere ever. The rest of us all answered the question differently, and no one inquired about why I have no use for worship services in churches. It would have been an interesting question to explore together, but not appropriate to the occasion.
What do we have in common? Clearly, not theology, me and the other retirees. How can any thinking, rational, reasonable person embrace theology? A God who must be "taken on faith"? Which, to me, means making something up and saying it is so. Or embracing something someone else has made up and saying it is so.
What is true to our experience and doesn't require believing in to know that it is so--as in, "I believe in God, the Father, Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and in HIS only Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, born of the Virgin Mary..." What about our experience would lead us to believe/think this is so? Only somebody else telling us that it is so, and that we are hell-bound if we don't believe it ourselves, because "the Bible says..."
Well, "the Bible that says so" was crafted over 400 years between Jesus' crucifixion and the closure of the canon of scripture that says so. The Bible says so because human beings with a stake in the outcome said so and made sure that the Bible they created in those 400 years also said so.
And, in the words of R.D. Laing, "We are playing the game of not playing a game." Which anyone can see just by looking. Which leaves us where? Doing what? Well, here, now, wondering what's next.
Throw out theology and where does that leave us? With plenty of Emptiness, Silliness and Silence to sit with, experience, explore, and probe to see what it has to offer. And it has a world filled with interesting, exciting, things to offer--it only takes being quiet to know so. And I am all about being quiet and knowing what I know when I do so. And not having to believe anything, or take anything on faith. Mine is the church of the wide open spaces (the Void, no?) replete with wonders great and small. If you are not coming with me, you are on your own.
What makes this a sacred place? What keeps it from being a sacred place? How many sacred places do we have? How many does it take?
Sacred places are places of refuge. Places of refuge are off limits to all that threatens us. What threatens us? Unsettles us? Robs us of our peace? Burdens us with trouble and woe? The mere memory of a place of refuge can ease our mind and restore our balance and harmony, reuniting us with the AAUUUUMMMM of the cosmos and surrounding us with the hills from which our help comes, and delivering us from the scourge of our afflictions, or from our fear of them, which is just as bad.
Take shelter in sacred places. Seek them out and return to them often. Safe harbors within which to ride out the storms of life, and the fear that haunts us in the night.
John Deere Sunset — Concordia Parish Louisiana, Louisiana Delta
When I stopped trying to make sense of it in a reasonable, logical kind of way, and simply embraced the contradictions and dichotomies and welcomed the nonsense into my life, it all fell into place by my allowing it to not have a place.
I think nothing means anything, and we are all "just along for the ride." We listen for "Yes," and "No," in light of what is appropriate here, now, and let that be that by doing what is called for, when, where and how it is called for, trusting ourselves to the flow, balance and harmony, without having to understand or being able to explain any of it.
We are carried along by the events and circumstances of our lives like corks on the water, and it helps if we don't take anything with more seriousness than it deserves. Knowing that it doesn't mean anything and we aren't going anywhere, and nothing matters more than just doing what is called for here, now, when, where and how it is called for, trusting ourselves to the flow, balance and harmony, without having to understand, or being able to understand any of it.
Pamlico Sound Sunset 02 — Ocracoke Island, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Outer Banks, North Carolina
Knowing is a function of being open to here, now without expectation, desire, fear, greed, etc. imposing itself upon the moment. The Buddha called this "peaceful abiding, here, now."
Being free from all influences is being open to the moment and knowing what's what in the moment, and able to respond to the moment as the moment needs to be responded to.
Meditation at its best is a self-induced trance state in which we are entirely present in the moment without aims or ambition for the moment, and are open to what is called for--knowing what needs to be done without knowing how we know. We are then imposing nothing onto the moment, but are aligned with the moment, and cable of doing what is called for, when, where, and how it is called for, without intention or interest interfering with our natural, appropriate, action.
This is seeing/hearing/knowing/doing/being spontaneously out of "peaceful abiding, here, now."
Being who we are, where we are, when we are, how we are is integrity, being expressing/exhibiting being.
Integrity comes easy with rocks and oceans and things that have no choice in the matter. A bumble bee just is. The universe is crammed with things that are what they are and can't help it or do anything about it. And then we come along. Consciousness does it. We live in a world of things that are not aware of themselves. A world of not-knowing anything. Then there is life.
Life is the capacity to know something. The more we know, the more alive we are capable of being. Knowing without knowing that we know, or what we know, is basic life. Cells, for instance, know how and when to divide, but the cells have no say in the operations, and they are no better off for being alive without knowing what and how they know. The more conscious life is of being conscious, the "higher" we say the life forms are that know what they know. They become capable of introspection and wondering where knowing comes from and toward what end knowing knows. And, along with that, comes the process of "projection," wherein the knowing knower has the possibility of making things up, and not-knowing where experience stops and imagination starts. And "God," for instance is born out of nowhere and no one knows whether "God" is real of imaginary, but everything we "know" about "God" comes right out of our own imagination, and we tell ourselves things about "God" that become "true" but we are only making them up and they cannot be verified beyond the common agreement among those who are complicit in imagining what the group imagines to be so, unable to discern where "outside" and "inside" part ways, and they live in a world that is imagined to be real with no way of knowing what is real and what is imagined to be real. And here we are.
Pamlico Sound Sunset — Ocracoke Island, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Outer Banks, North Carolina
Knowing is the foundation of doing the right thing at the right time in the right way in the right place in each situation as it arises. But. It is an intuitive knowing, not an intellectual knowing. It is a knowing born of the here, now, not of the should, ought, must because someone says so variety.
Our Psyche is the source of the right kind of knowing, not our brain. We cannot think our way to doing what is called for here, now. We cannot be taught to know how to know what to do when, where, how. Instruction is in the way of the way, which waits for those who "just know."
Zen is knowing that doesn't know how it knows what it knows. Taoism is knowing the same thing. And there are Zen/Taoist "Masters" who market themselves as knowing how to teach us what we know. There are Buddhist teachers by the thousands who tell is how to know what the Buddha knew sitting under the Bodhi Tree, when the Buddha himself didn't know what he was doing beyond sitting, waiting, with "Peaceful abiding, here, now."
If we can live peacefully abiding here, now, that's it forever.
Sunset Mirror — Price Lake, Blue Ridge Parkway, Blowing Rock, North Carolina
Throwing theology away clears the way for knowing what is called for in each situation as it arises without bothering to try to control matters to suit ourselves.
The is no God to help us get what we want. There is only seeing, hearing, knowing what's what and what is happening and what needs to be done about it, in response to it, in each situation as it arises. Not so that God will be happy with us, but so that we might align ourselves with what needs to be done and do it when, where and how it needs to be done throughout the day every day.
We live in the service of what matters most here, now--doing what needs to be done in light of what matters most here, now. No matter what.
We step into each day, responsive to the needs/requirements of the day, looking to serve the day with the gifts we are born with--doing what we do best and enjoy doing most for the good of all things considered. Getting, having, acquiring, amassing, possessing, owning, consuming giving way to knowing, doing, being at one with what is called for here, now each day.
Think of your idea of The Unforgivable Sin. Got it? Good. I don't have a single example, but multiple ones. Homosexuality, Being transgender, having had or performing an abortion, Rape, murder, ... it goes on and on for me.
And you? Where you are concerned (Because I have already done it, and do it repeatedly each time I hear MAGAites decry some immigrant misdoing) take your idea of The Unforgivable Sin in hand and lay it at the feet of the Prodigal Son's Father.
And don't be swayed by the protest, "But he repented and asked for forgiveness!" Because, if you read the text, the Father cuts short his son's memorized "confession," with, "Get out of here with your litany of remorse and contrition! That has no place here! You were lost and now you are found! You were dead, but now you are alive! Welcome to the joy of your Father!" (Or words to that effect).
The Father of the Prodigal Son puts to rest eternally the need to repent and the need for any redemption and atonement ever by anyone, no matter what. Which is exactly Jesus' point.
We are not bound by our sin! We are freed by our recognition of the true nature of the Father, who will not allow anything we do to stand between us and the full embrace of the truth of who we are and what we are to be about: seeing, hearing, understanding, knowing, doing, being who we need to be in each situation as it arises in perceiving what's what and what is called for here, now, in doing what needs to be done, when, where and how it needs to be done, no matter what forever. No. Matter. What. Forever.
We are free from sin--as free as the Prodigal Son--through all that remains of time. Allow it to be so because it is so eternally.
DUCD Dune Walker? (About 1/3 the way up the first dune, casting a faint shadow to the left. She passed me some timebefore I took the picture. Duh. The Mesquite Dunes, Death Valley National Park, California
We have to wait some things out. Trump and the MAGA madness, for instance. Just think how long they waited to undo "Liberty and Justice for All"!!! They have been hating Truth!, Justice!, Freedom!, Equality! from the very beginning. That is 249 years. Anger, Hatred, Fear, Greed have been mostly underground all that time. Now it is bursting out all over everywhere. I do not foresee a quick return to human rights and privileges. The worst is yet to come. In the meantime, what? We have to shift into survival mode and find our way to finding a way through the madness of a world without moral bearings.
I am a big fan of Emptiness, Stillness, Silence (One thing not three), because dropping into the silence restores us to the Psychic foundation of all of life. The Psyche is the source of life and the ground of our being restored to life and wellbeing. Living water in a parched and withered waste land.
Being quiet returns us to the Source and to the Force of intuition, hope, purpose and direction. We are one with Jesus in his work of reviving, restoring, reforming the Judaism of his day. We have to realize the nature of that work and consciously, deliberately take our place in the long line of those who have shouldered the burden and put their shoulders to the Sisyphean task of rolling the rock up hill and down hill day after day in doing what is called for and what must be done no matter what because that is who we are and that is what is asked of us, here, now, forever.
Pamlico Sound Sunset — Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Ocracoke Island, Outer Banks, North Carolina
What would be helpful, here, now? I think honest conversation straight from the heart means the most to me all of the time, but it is not easy to come by.
Where would you go to find it? It's mostly trite repetition where I live. Yesterday and the day before replayed today.
Truth seems to be what everyone says is true without much in the way of personal experience or individual reflection evident anywhere at all ever.
Ask people what they know is true and trustworthy out of their own experience and they will act like they have never thought about it.
Truth is mostly hearsay.
The truth of our own life is difficult to talk about. Too personal. Too painful. Better to stick with truisms and one-liners. Or say nothing at all.
Johnson Creek Fall — Beaufort County, South Carolina
If we didn't want anything, how would we know what to do? How do we know what is called for? What determines our action on the field of action? What guides our boat on its path through the sea?
It is possible to remove wanting from our life. Why would we do that? To know what is called for, and to do what needs to be done-- whether or not we want to to it, or want it to be done.
Live without wanting and see what happens. What impulses will direct our living with wanting out of the way? If we have no interest in the outcome, what will determine how we live?
Death Valley Photographers — Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park, California
We find our way by asking the questions that beg to be asked and saying the things that cry out to be said. Reflection, realization and recognition lead the way. And we find our way to where we need to be, doing what is called for, day by day, all the way.
The answers reside in the questions that expose previous answers as the frauds they are ("Every answer is the step on the way to better questions"). And knowing what we need to know leads us to asking what we need to ask, and doing what we need to do, in each situation as it arises, all our life long.
What needs to be asked, known, seen, done here, now? That's all we need to know and do here, now, in every here, now that comes along. Being students of the moment makes us students for life. Moment to moment, all the way.
Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 