As you have undoubtedly noticed, ditches on both the left and right sides of a country road keep excessive water and debris from degrading the surface. On either side of the narrow way of Love, there are, without fail, ditches that serve a similar purpose of preserving the path. The reason the ditch always adjoins the path is so that any who wishes may choose Love instead and abandon apathy and hate, and so, may leave the ditch life behind and climb higher up onto the path going toward life, of Loving and being Loved in Elohim. Some do, but the way called Love is narrow, and those who find it are few.

These ditches are the chosen home of those who confess the broken creed of I, me, and mine. Ditches are for those of the not yet fully human kind, who are as yet unable or unwilling to see themselves or to be seen by others as the universal We that is the reality of the Great Spirits’ splendid creation. All the ‘kinds’ of creatures she created share the Love of the one creator Spirit and partake of Her generosity as one. Humans are not the only creatures She loves; we are not somehow loved more than the rest. As Thich Nhat Hanh pointed out, “We see that the earth is not only the environment. The earth is us. And [in] taking care of the earth, we take care of ourselves”.

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Ditch Dwellers

Every one of us, no matter how enlightened, spends some time in the ditches. Anytime I indulge in self-pity, I have found my way into the ditch. I recognize that I have revisited the ditches and am no longer on the ‘Great Path.’ But, as the Apostle said,

“I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then, with my mind, I serve the law of God, but with my flesh, the law of sin. There is, therefore, now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.”

How I arrive at conclusions exposes me as a ditch dweller. Ditch Dwellers are invariably ‘dualistic’ in our judgment Judge not, lest you be judged. Rabbi Jesus, Matthew 7 of situations; we cannot reconcile with our personal truth or people with customs different from ourselves. Dualism is a primitive way of reconciling the apparently paradoxical so that a thing is this or that. Realities that appear to conflict with one another are not simply accepted as a mystery, beyond my understanding, or as simply other than myself and, therefore, outside of my experience. Dualism demands that we must choose one or the other. Dualism insists on the ownership of knowledge that convinces us. Paradox accepts that there is wisdom further in and higher up that is perhaps beyond my capacity today but perhaps apprehendable by me at a point in the future.

Many great truths are paradoxical.

• • •

Right-eousness

There is a certain self-right-eousness promoted by ditch dwellers whose ditch of choice may be on the left or the right of the Way. Being ‘right’ is a powerful elixir, the consumption of which demands that some-one or a tribe, the un-right-eous (anyone other than those you have identified as your own in your ditch- who are the right-eous), are wrong. To be ‘right,’ someone needs to be wrong. The un-right-eous are, on those grounds, excluded from our particular ditch and must either climb out of the ditch and onto the path or retreat to a ditch of our own design wherein they can be right…and so it goes.

In the ditch, my sometimes desperate need to be right always trumps generosity, compassion, inclusion, and kindness toward others When the Dali Lama was asked to explain his religion he offered, in a word, ‘kindness’. How is it, given the teaching of the one we claim to be following, Rabbi Jesus, that we cannot get this.. For ditch dwellers, the ‘heaven constructed in their minds more resembles a gated community in the sky for the ‘right’ than it does life for all (including the un-right). But the exclusive community is a perverted myth. For Love is never exclusive, is always inclusive. So all who love are at all times welcome to join Lovers in walking the ‘Great Path’ as followers no matter who they affirm they are following.

As John wrote,

“Brothers, let us Love one another, for Love is of God, and everyone who Loves is born of God and knows God.”

The Spirit is Love, and all the Love in the world is, in fact, Spirit herself. There is no other Love. The inverse of this is also true; “if it ain’t Love, it ain’t the Holy Spirit.” She is all the Love there is.