Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy

What would be helpful?

This is one of the most timely
questions of the day every day. 
Here, Now.
All day long.

How can we be of help
to each situation as it arises?

If we knew the answer to that question,
it would be a different world,
here, now.

So, take the question as your own.
Ponder the question.
Offer tentative answers.
Learn as you go.
Seeking/doing what's helpful.
Here/now.

The waitress at the Glacier Diner
said, "Honey, if it isn't raining,
its burning.
And rain is a lot better."

So we took the rain with a smile,
happy it wasn't worse,
for a week of seven wet days
without a mountain top in sight.

We were regulars at the Glacier Pie Place,
with their "Pie for Courage" hats
and their menu with more pies
than I thought were possible,
making seconds an attractive option
with the rain coming down.

Going to the Sun Road was terrifying 
in the rain and fog,
with no guard rails
and an infinite number of drop-offs
into infinity,
so we took the long way around
on the return trip
and haven't regretted it yet.

But I do think about the pie from time to time,
and got the Courage connection with 
driving to the sun.
It's a definite requirement
for the trip.

I will not always be a human being, but.
I will always be of God.
All of us--and everything with us--
are/is of God.

God is not separate from us,
different from us,
other than us.

Everyone and all things are of God,
and are/is God.
God is the ground of all being and non-being,
even non-being IS!

All that IS is God.
Nothing is Not-God.

There is only God.
God is the matrix of the cosmos,
but then, the cosmos is the matrix of the cosmos.
The cosmos is God.

The cosmos is all there is.
Everything is God.

This means a lot of things.
The most significant thing it means,
from my point of view,
is that a lot of appologizing
needs to be done.

From non-native colonizers to natives.
From white people to black people.
From Jews to Palestinians...
all the way down the line.

There is no Us and Them.
No "I and It."

It is all "Thou Art That!"

Life is our opportunity 
to see that it is so--
to know that it is so--
and to live as though it is so.

Life not lived like that
is a wasted opportunity.
A shameful thing.
To be realized,
recognized,
and borne throughout eternity.

God and That Which Did Not Know
It Too Was God.

Making amends forever.

Stop striving,
pushing,
trying,
seeking,
having to have NOW,
etc.

Sit still,
be quiet,
wait in the silence
for your intuition 
to catch up with you,
and sit with you
at last.

And allow things to move
as they will,
even against your will,
from there.

Allow your life to be 
what it needs to be,
not what you need for it to be.

And simply celebrate
the wonder of you
in the service of your intuition
throughout what remains of time.  

Do not die 
without writing your story--
or all the stories you have to write.

Write everything that needs to be written,
and read it aloud.

Then post it wherever you can--
as a comment here, for example,
or on your own blog,
and/or as a letter to friends,
or as a book on line or in print.

Distribute it as you will,
but write it as only you can.

Telling our story/stories
is our gift to ourselves
and to the world.

No life needs to go untold,
unsaid, un-honored,
un-proclaimed.

We owe it to ourselves
to say what happened
and what we did about it
and then what happened...
all the way to here,now.

Speaking of now,
now is a good time to start
your new project/practice.

No?

I took this photograph 24 years ago this September.
I have more of a hitch in my stride now,
and less incentive to get up for an early drive to Lake Louise.
Or for a flight to Calgary and a rental car to Banff.
This scene has fared better than I have.
All things in their own time.

Knowing what it's time for here, now,
is always an art and a grace.
I leave it up to my intuition,
and do what I'm told--
which is all the advice
anyone ever needs to hear.
I trust you are "picking up
what I'm laying down here."

Our intuition knows,
and is our closest
connection with what has always
been called "God,"
and is "God," for that matter.

Certainly, "God's" way 
of calling us to action
throughout each day.

"Right there" for those to consult,
who have put their will, wants, 
wishes and desires aside,
to listen for what is called for,
here, now,
in each situation as it arises
around the clock,
year by year.

It only takes paying attention
to know that it is so.

There is what we make of it,
and what we do with it,
and that's that.

Our reflections 
lead to realizations
that impact the way we think
and live.

Thinking about our thinking
and our living
transforms both.

What leads us to think the way we do?
To live the way we live?
Why do we do it this way
and not some other way instead?

What do we care about?
Why?

We are right here, now,
by virtue of a long line
of circumstances
and the ways we responded to them,
of the choices we had
and the decisions we made.

We did not have here, now in mind
at any point along the way.
What might we have thought/done
that we did not think/do
that would have changed things
for better or worse?

Marriage and seminary were my
significant choices,
then how to be married
and what to do with a seminary degree
set a course guided by interests
and opportunity that bought me here, now.

The "Not Me" is as significant as the "Me."
I have said, "No!" to as much 
as I have said "Yes!" to.

Together they combine to put me here, now.
And I can imagine worse
a lot easier than I can imagine better.

I hope you can say the same!

And, may it continue to be said for us all
the rest of the way!

Last night was my best bad night ever.

Nightland is where I wrestle with my demons
and make my peace with how things are,
coming to terms some more again with what I have done
and with what has been done to me,
what I have failed to do
and what failed to happen to me along the way.

"Forgiveness" is a ridiculous term.
An absurd concept.
As though we can just go on
with what we have done 
to the Africans who are now Americans,
and the native tribes who always were Americans.
Etc.
 
The Wailing Wall is forever.
We grow up over time. 
Growing up is squaring up
with what is and with what isn't--
with what was and with what never will be.

I make very good use of Nightland
as a great place to grow up some more again
each night.
Getting up and living life as it may yet be lived,
anyway, nevertheless, even so.

And, to do that without any apparent addictions
or escapes of any kind,
represents, for me,
a courageous squaring up with the truth
of what's what
and what's to be done about it,
with it, in the time left for living--
in a "Here we are, now what?"
kind of way.

Which is as close to "forgiveness"
as I ever want to be.

(I will always think of "forgiveness"
with quotation marks
because I see it as cheap grace--
playing the game of pretending 
not to be pretending, making nice,
as though nothing happened, but it did.)

Turning ourselves over to our intuition
means living without plans,
agendas,
schemes,
plots,
dreams,
desires,
greed,
fear,
terror,
dread,
duty,
obligation,
guilt,
etc.
running/ruining our life.

With intuition in charge,
we would live from circumstances
to circumstances,
letting our original nature
and our innate virtues
(The things we do best
and enjoy/love doing the most)
create our way of being
on the earth,
which would shape our way of doing,
our way of living,
at the direction of our intuition
in each here, now
of every situation as it arises.

It would be a different way of doing life.

Like the Buddha and Jesus (etc.) did theirs.

And one whose time has come for us
and all others.

Doing the right thing
at the right time
in the right place
and the right way
is getting out of the way
and allowing our intrinsic intuition
take the lead.

One way to do this
is to simply sit
in the emptiness, stillness and silence,
waiting for the mud to settle
and the water to clear
and seeing what arises
to call us to action on the field of action,
and to follow our calling
from one thing to the next.

This is to live without profit motive or agenda,
but simply being open to the moment
with a gentle, noble, heart,
fealty,
liege loyalty
and filial devotion to the work at hand,
and seeing where it goes.

The right way to do things
is death to the spirit
across time and place.

Dharma is doing what is expected of us
exactly as it has always been done
through the ages.

Insisting on "exactly" evolved
into the caste system of modern India,
and the goosestepping "Heil Hitler"
of Nazi Germany.

Those were the ways to do it
that stifled life wherever they took root.

Sitting and not thinking
because thinking is "monkey mind,"
and destroys Pure Mind 
and Pure Consciousness
and we must do it right
if we hope to attain enlightenment and satori. 

And all the people shouted,
"Amen! We Must Do It Right--
as it has been done before us
throughout the ages--
and before time began!"

David Brooks suggests that we ask,
"How did you come to believe the way you do?"
when accosted by someone pushing their
view upon us
or attacking us for our views.

It is a beautiful shift in direction.

When we tell our stories--
even partially,
with only a sentence or two--
everything changes.

Story is magical in this way.
We are no longer in attack/defense mode.
We are sharing who we are with others,
with strangers,
acknowledging that we all share common ground.

The more common the ground,
the less bitter the confrontation.

I spent the first six years of my life
largely in Itta Bena, Mississippi.
Ten miles from Greenwood, 
where I was born because that is where the hospital was,
and still is.

You can Google map Itta Bena
on street view, 
and what you see isn't much different
from the way it was nearly 80 years ago.

In Itta Bena in the late 1940's,
my adult friends were black men,
Matt White, Shorty, and John Taylor.
John Taylor did not live in Itta Bena.
He and his wife Annie
lived on my uncle's plantation
near Inverness, Mississippi.

Anne left John and moved to live with relatives
in Chicago in the late 50's.
I expect it was a better life.

The three black men were my friends,
and the friends of other boys my age in Itta Bena.
We all shared the common fate 
of being treated with no respect
by the white men in town.

The black men taught us how to dig for worms
and fish for bream (Sunfish) in Roebuck Lake,
which had a large fish population
in the days before Round-Up was used to kill weeds
growing in the cotton fields,
and was washed into the lake by summer showers,
killing everything with gills.

All of the Delta lakes died that way,
Three Mile, Six Mile, Mosquito, Macon,
and hundreds of others I never knew.

Part of me died there, too.
The innocent part.
The trusting part.
The best part.
And I am much more like I am now
than I was when I got here back then.
And the black men (and women, boys and girls)
had it much worse than I did.
I still cry for us all, as I am now.

And that is how I came to believe as I do.