My thoughts as I contemplate the destruction our own divisiveness is creating in the world...
“Wide and easy is the road to destruction, but narrow is the path that leads to eternal life.”
Not a hell of eternal burning of the flesh in a lake of fire without the ability to die. Not a heaven of harps and angels and banquet halls.
The destruction is of our own making. The suffering is caused by our own choices, here and now, and stretching into our future—our own future and that of the Earth and other beings, human, animal and plant; perhaps even other beings we know yet not of. We destroy our air, our water, our earth, our food. We destroy health. We destroy lives. We destroy gateways that would have led to incredible opportunities for ourselves and others to learn, to enjoy the abundance of life, to create, to discover. We make rubble of beauty and garbage pits where there might have been paradise. We create hell. And when we die? Do we really “escape” it all? Or, as some believe, do we return to continue to experience whatever we created before? Are we given one life-time after another to continue to destroy, or to repair the harm we caused in previous lives and create a place for life to thrive?
The path that leads to eternal life? Narrow and difficult? Has it not always been easier to knock down the tower than to build it? To trample the garden than to plant it? To dump our garbage out of sight than to invent a way to put it to good use? To strike down our opponent than to sit in counsel and find a way to peace?
When we choose the narrow path that leads to Life, it is not for a heaven that we cannot see that will come to us when our body is dead. It is for the life we experience every day that we choose to walk this path. It is in the harmony lived with one another. It is in the sweet victory of making peace, rather than war. It is in the sight of a clean river and ripening fields and music and paintings. It is in knowing those in authority have the best interests of the people as their call to service. It is in knowing we have enough food for the children. It is in the smile on the faces of the people walking down the street without fear.
Life is eternal. It goes on and on. There is no death. Only transformation. Destroy the living vessel in which life is held, the spirit yet lives on. Destroy that which nurtures life, and there will be a void. But the energy of what was, remains, somewhere, somewhere in the Universe.
Man came to this Earth to be the gardeners of this planet. To be the Guardians of Her resources, to be Wisdom Keepers. But wide and easy is the road to destruction; narrow is the path that leads to eternal life. The experiment in Free Will is not yet completed. I have a choice. What do I want to experience and what do I want to weave into the Net of the Universe: Life or Destruction? Love or Fear? Joy or Sickness? Peace or Hatred?
I suspect that each moment, each decision, is affecting the whole of the Universe through Time and No-Time in ways my limited brain has absolutely no idea of. But the call to choose Life has been coming to us throughout history. The warnings of the unimaginable suffering created by our violence, our hatred, our unchecked greed—even our apathy have also been sounded throughout history. Whether we understand how it all works or not, we have this at least.
“This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.”
deuteronomy 30:19
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