jimwdollar

Influencing What Can Be Influenced

One of the things I like most about life is that we never know what’s coming. The universe is full of surprises. Who knows what tomorrow—or the next five minutes—will bring? Turn a corner, and life changes forever. We can’t count on anything. We spend all our time getting our ducks in a row, andContinue reading “Influencing What Can Be Influenced”

What Works?

We are here to grow up. This is the essence of the Spiritual Journey. It is the work of a true human being. And we grow up against our will all along the way. Growing up is squaring up to how things are, and what is called for in response. It is facing up toContinue reading “What Works?”

Prayer

I. Prayer is where we articulate the truth of how it is with us, sometimes with “sighs too deep for words.” We rob prayer of its vitality, and of its capacity to heal and restore our souls, bind up, make well and encourage us for the task at hand when we reduce it to aContinue reading “Prayer”

How the Church Changes It’s Mind

The process by which the church forms it’s beliefs can be symbolized by a tent. Isaiah sings a new song in a foreign land: “Enlarge the site of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes” (Isaiah 54:2). Our tentContinue reading “How the Church Changes It’s Mind”

Community and Chaos

We cannot do it alone. However, together we can create an environment that enables us to do just about anything we can imagine. As members of communities of innocence, we come together to spark within one another the creative response to life. We come together to nurture that spark into a flame, and to sustainContinue reading “Community and Chaos”

Perfection

There is a practical test for every form of spirituality that has nothing to do with professed statements of faith. Does it work? Does it enable us to live well? Does it provide us with what we need to live our lives? Does it sustain us for the long haul? Does it bring us to life,Continue reading “Perfection”

The Two Things

The first thing is this: I am capable of living in ways which are good for me and that I am capable of living in ways that are not good for me. I can give myself to that which is “me,” and I can give myself to that which is “not me.” I can surroundContinue reading “The Two Things”

We Are the Ones Who Say So

Religion, in whatever form, is about a particular idea of Ultimate Reality. Religious people gather in sacred places all around the world to worship their understanding of Absolute Truth. It does not matter to any of them that the Absolute is depicted in contradictory and competing ways by other groups that are similarly gathered. ItContinue reading “We Are the Ones Who Say So”

The Foundation of Faith

The foundation of my approach to faith, to spiritual truth, to “that which is beyond,” is to say there is no foundation. There is no foundation to faith, spiritual truth, or to “that which is beyond.” There is no basis of “belief.” No authoritative “ground” upon which the edifice is built. The edifice is builtContinue reading “The Foundation of Faith”

A Handbook for the Spiritual Journey

The list of titles in the menu at the top of this page contains a drop-down sub-menu of posts available under the title. Send your little cursor on a search for something worth reading, and may you find it without much trouble! This is a blog post of my revised Kindle book available at Amazon.comContinue reading “A Handbook for the Spiritual Journey”