The Rev. Megan Dembi
St. Thomas, Morgantown
Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.
–Matthew 7:13-14
Which gate are we choosing to take in this pilgrimage, both as a diocese as a whole and as individual parishes? Do we hope that this process will lead us onto a new and improved road, or are we more inclined to stick with the status quo? It is true that the familiar is often more comforting to us, even if the familiar is fraught with problems. After all, the enemy you know is better than the enemy you don’t know. Yet it is often the more familiar road, the easier road through the wide gate, that leads to destruction. Once taken, this road may seem harmless at first, with no monumental problems immediately presenting themselves. Yet slowly but surely, through refusal to change, through refusal to rethink and reassess, or even through apathy, we are lead into destruction. This destruction is harder to anticipate because it isn’t the in-your-face Michael-Bay-explosion kind of destruction. It’s much less dramatic than that, like a raging fire that is not fed and eventually slows and fizzles out. Though the status quo is not necessarily the wrong road, we won’t know unless we are willing to examine it, unless we’re willing to change it. Because the road to destruction will likely be the road that we choose to continue to follow blindly, without thought as to where it might be leading us.