jimwdollar

Story Time

The nine stories in this collection originated as sermons in Amory, Mississippi. There were seventeen in all, before the congregation had enough and asked me not to do that anymore, but to return to the old comfortable way of telling them what they had already heard, and fully expected to always hear, as a confirmationContinue reading “Story Time”

Madonna with Child

She walked past the plate glass window next to the booth where I sat with my friend Bill in the worst hamburger joint on the eastern seaboard, eating a dripping grease burger oozing with melted Velveeta cheese of all things with fries fresh from a year in the freezer. She was twelve months pregnant, maybeContinue reading “Madonna with Child”

The Stile

I still see her climbing over the stile to meet the cows coming to the barn over the hard ground at sundown. I hear her saying, “I’ll miss these old cows,” and think, the cows miss her, too, in their way. We all do.

The Way of Soul Is the Way of Life

As conscious egos, we are full partners with our unconscious (so-called because we are not conscious of her/him) Self in effecting a growing union of conscious with unconscious, incarnating it in our life, and creating a life worth living. The Psyche (Soul) needs us to be its hero, championing the unconscious with compassionate, mindful, awareness,Continue reading “The Way of Soul Is the Way of Life”

The Stone of Life

Find a stone that attracts you. Claim it as a sacred (to you, anyway) object of meditation. You are the stone carrier, the stonemason, the stone. You activate the power of the stone through reflection and realization. Spend time with the stone on a regular basis, cultivating a ritual of recognition and reorientation, with theContinue reading “The Stone of Life”

The Foundation of Good Religion

The foundation of all good religion,world-wide(Universal, should there proveto be religions in other partsof the universe)is expressed in the four primary symbolsof Christianity–devoid of the theology surrounding them:Bread, Wine, Water, Cross.The Water is the amniotic fluid of birth.Every birth is birth by “water (and blood) and spirit,”with the “spirit” being the spirit of life andContinue reading “The Foundation of Good Religion”

The New Religion

The new religion will connect you with the life that is yours to live, and help you live it. The new religion has no interest in separating you from your money, or getting you to sing in its choirs, or teach its Sunday schools, or recruit people to the new religion. The new religion isContinue reading “The New Religion”

Symbols of Transformation

Carl Jung wrote a hefty book entitled “Symbols of Transformation,” and I like the title so much, I’m using it here. I trust that Dr. Jung would be kind in his response to my pilfering his term. Take all of the symbols of the Christian Church—the Bible, the Promised Land, the Manger, the Cross, theContinue reading “Symbols of Transformation”

The Fight for Life

We fight to free ourselves from the presumptions, assumptions, inferences, conjectures, speculations, suppositions, deductions, judgments, opinions and conclusions that form our perspective, force us to live in a world we generate from within, and prevent us from seeing things as they are. Compassionate, mindful, awareness transforms everything it perceives. May we all live to beContinue reading “The Fight for Life”

The Peace of God

There is no political solution to the religious problem—there is no solution at all. This was Jesus’ realization in the wilderness and in Gethsemane: There is no solution. The religious problem is the problem of religion, of all religions. It is the problem of seeing, hearing and understanding. It is the problem of “everyone justContinue reading “The Peace of God”