All Paths Lead Home
From the book "Home With God"
by Neal Donald Walsch
I say to you again, so that there can be no lack of
clarity: no path back Home is better than any other
path. All paths take you there, because all it takes
to get there is true desire, a pure and open heart,
and faith that God has no reason to say, "No you
may not be with me," to any person for any reason,
least of all because they've simply believed in God
in a different way.
All true religions are wonderful and all true spiritual
teachings are paths to God and no one religion and no
one teaching is more "right" than another.
There is more than one way to the mountaintop.
Religion was created by human cultures to assist those
who were born into those cultures in knowing and
understanding that there is an ever-present source
of help in times of need,
strength in times of challenge,
clarity in times of confusion,
and compassion in times of pain.
Religion is also a manifestation of humankind's
instinctive awareness that rituals, traditions,
ceremonies,and customs have enormous value as
markers that assert a people's presence in the world
and as the adhesive that secures that presence
by holding a people's culture together.
Each culture has it's beautiful and singular tradition
honoring a beautiful and central truth: that there is
something larger and more important in life than one's
own desires, or even one's own needs; that life itself
is a much more profound and far more meaningful
experience than many people at first imagine; and
that it is in love and mutual concern and forgiveness
and creativity and playfulness and the joining of
hands in a united effort to achieve a common goal
in which will be found the deepest satisfactions and
the most wondrous joys of the human encounter.
Take then, each of you, your own path to God.
Undertake your own Journey home.
Do not worry or render judgments about how others
are taking theirs. You cannot fail to reach God,
and neither can they.
Indeed, you will all meet again when you are together
at Home, and you will wonder why you quibbled so.