Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy

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 of the years they have been there.
And will be there.

My eternal quest is for what I cannot have.

Probably, I think, you know what I'm talking about.

We want what is just over the horizon,
out of sight.
Out of reach.
Beyond reason.
But, certainly desirable. 

We all want what we can't have.
What we have no business having.

But, being a cowboy isn't on the list for me.

Being a cowboy is on my mind
because last night I dreamed
I was eating a biscuit of shredded wheat,
the large kind 
that came in a box separated by small sheets of cardboard
to keep them from crumbling in shipment,
and the cardboard sheets weren't blank,
but had comic book type stories printed on them
for young boys to read while they ate their breakfast.
I don't know what the girls would read.
My world was sexist from the start.
And one of the most popular storylines
had to do with a cowboy, 
we will call him Rex Rider 
because that is probably close,
so I woke up thinking of shredded wheat biscuits
and cowboys.

And I would not want to eat a dry shredded wheat biscuit
or be a cowboy.

Then I come in here and open up my computer,
and see that legislators in Texas,
and probably those in Florida,
are voting down school vouchers because
preachers in those states
don't want the wrong kind of religion
taught to the children of their congregations.
And I will take that!

The only good religion is MY kind of religion,
and I don't want any of YOURS rubbing off 
on MY children!

What a world.

But, I will take it because I don't want religion of any kind
being pushed onto children before the age of discernment,
which I think, these days, is about 85,
or, maybe, 1,000, because everybody dies before they get there.

The only kind of religion anybody every needs
is completely devoid of theology.
It is the kind of religion that sees the world
as being transparent to transcendence (Joe Campbell's phrase),
seeing the wonder of what is there all about us all of the time,
and being amazed by the radiance everywhere.

We can't teach or be taught that.
We either see it or we don't.
But, we can be taught to not see it.
And, that has us where we are today.
Not seeing.
Not hearing.
Not knowing...
And afraid of everything.

–0–

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 find the paths
with our name on them
and forsake all others.

What. Makes. That. So. Hard?

We have a better idea.

Adam and Eve had a better idea.

And here we are.
Refusing to put 2 and 2 together,
connect the dots,
see what we are looking at/
dealing with,
and do what needs to be done about it.

It isn't that we cannot do it.
It is that we don't want to do it.

And that's the kink in the hose.

–0–

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...

The only thing wrong with us ever
is that we lack clarity.

Which makes a sounding board--
and emptiness,
stillness
and silence
essential to Right Seeing
and Right Doing.

The church,
any church,
every church,
all churches,
could throw out its theology
and take up the work
of becoming a place
where everyone is a sounding board
and everyone practices
emptiness, 
stillness
and silence.

It is an idea whose time came
during the life of Jesus,
and we are still waiting
for the light to go on,
and people to wake up
to what has been with them
all along.

Could be any day now.

–0–

The people who so proudly
take it on faith
that everything in the Bible is so,
because it is proof of their
celestial worthiness 
and the quality of their faith
to do so,
are quick to toss faith aside
from there on,
and speak not of what they believe
to be so,
but of what they know to be so
because the Bible says so.

What they just took on faith,
they now take to be a fact,
ignoring the fact
that a fact based on faith,
in complete disregard of the evidence
and the requirements for rational 
discourse
has no standing whatsoever.

A fact has its own validity
regardless of what is believed 
about it.

People of faith say things like,
"God hates gays,"
and "God will send sinners straight to hell!"
Without introducing either statement
with "I believe..."

They declare it to be a fact
beyond doubt
and not beholding to belief.

Because they say so.

It is their opinion.
And that is all it is.

The rest of us are free
to form our own opinions 
about their opinions,
and leave them in their own world
of "Let's Pretend,"
for as long as it pleases them to do so.

–0–

Trusting ourselves to our original nature
and our innate virtues/specialties
is the grounding principle of our existence.

We are one with ourselves
or, we are split off from ourselves,
divided within,
without guidance or direction,
lost in the wasteland of discontent.

The way out of the wilderness
is the way of deep listening
to ourselves--to our body,
our bones and our stomach,
to our symptoms,
to our heart,
to our nighttime dreams,
to our instinct and intuition,
our uh-oh feeling,
our sense of "Yes" and "No,"
our balance and harmony,
and the flow of our life energy.

All of which can be skewed 
by drugs/sex/alcohol/money.

When addiction to drugs/sex/alcohol/money
is running the show,
it's time to close things down,
go into hibernation,
isolate ourselves from
the disruptive influences,
and sit facing the wall
until we are sober
and capable of independent,
reliable,
judgment.

How long has it been?
It may be a slow road back
to being able to trust ourselves
in knowing what is good for us
and what is bad,
with the wherewithal to say "No"
to the bad
and "Yes" to the good.

All the Twelve-step programs
come down to having what it takes
to surround ourselves with the right
kind of people
who are sources of the right kind 
of support,
enabling us to find the way
to saying "No" when "No" should be said,
and "Yes" when "Yes" should be said.

Woe be unto those with the wrong kind of company!

–0–

If you take something, anything, on faith,
you can't say that's the way it is--
it is the way you believe it is.

The distance between the way things are
and the way we believe they are,
and the way we wish they were, 
is the distance between here/now
and the other side of the universe.

But, we don't let that stop us.
We are always taking the way we believe things are
to be the way things are.

It is a trick we play on ourselves
and any un-savvy others who happen to be 
in the neighborhood.

We see something we would like to be so
and declare it to be so,
and it suddenly becomes so,
just like that.

Of course, nothing changed
except the way we think about the things
we believe to be so.

It is magic in action.

When people start talking about 
the things they take on faith as being real,
like hell, say, or "the plan of salvation"
(Which we believe to be so as a counter weight
to our deserving to go to hell,
which we also believe to be so,
because we angered/disappointed God,
which we also believe to be so...)
we have to either walk away,
or step right in and say,
"You only believe it to be so.
It isn't so or you wouldn't have to take it on faith."

Being clear about what's what
and what's not
is steady work between this world
and the made-up imaginary world
of things we believe to be so
because somebody told us they are,
when what they really told us 
is that they believe they are.

"Fair winds and following seas"
sailing the course that is set before us
all the days of our lives!

–0–