Reflections: A Narrow Path

About the Service: first the Teodori, then the Kagura.
Thus, I have opened just a narrow path.

But the weeds have gradually grown thick an the path is obscure.
Quickly, the preparations to open the main path!

When I was growing up I lived in a village that had been laid out along a busy thoroughfare. Most of the residential streets had vacant lots on the corners where they intersected with the much larger avenues that connected the cities that were built up on either side of the village. Though the streets and avenues had sidewalks along them, all of the vacant lots had narrow footpaths that diagonally crossed through them. The people who lived on the streets made and used these paths and the children of each street treated those lots and paths as their own private property.

Over the many years that I grew up in the village I never saw anyone who wasn't from the adjacent street use one of those narrow paths. It was understood that they were for local use only. Even the kids knew not to try and use someone else's path and it was strictly understood that under no circumstances was it wise to go uninvited and attempt to play on someone else's vacant lot.

So it was that those narrow paths, though useful and convenient didn't go very far and didn't accommodate the movement of many people. Though we didn't think of it at the time, those narrow paths were of course temporary paths that served a temporary purpose. There were times particularly during baseball season, when there wasn't a single weed on the entire lot. Then as the seasons and our interests changed they would once again become overgrown with weeds. So much so that the old path would almost completely disappear. Sometimes a whole new path would have to be made through them. All of those vacant lots and paths are gone now, filled in with stores and apartment buildings. Reflecting on God our Parent's use of the metaphor of a "narrow path", this image came to mind.

If you remain in accord with the reason of heaven, there will be a path wherever you are. If you do not have truth and sincerity, the path will only become narrower wherever you go and whatever you do. You will not understand unless you listen carefully. Listen carefully and advise others of this.

Osashizu, July 1887