Thought for the Week: So many paths

'So many paths' by David Brown

So many paths and ways to God: some where you pray and some where you chant,

So many rules and instructions: things you can do and things you can’t.

So many teachings and religious books, telling us how to pray:

You must wear a hat or a scarf, and these are the words you must say.


So many ways to be punished if you leave the narrow way,

With karma and demons and hell awaiting those who stray.


Is it really so difficult finding the god within?

Must we be so fixated on rules and on sin?


No. God is the ground of our being. He’s as near to us as our breath,

At the very heart of our nature, beyond even birth and death.


Let not our religions and paths keep us all apart,

When God lives every second in every person’s heart.


This poem was written after the author visited a mosque, a synagogue, a temple and a church on a Faiths Together trip in Southampton one summer afternoon.

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