It was Kathleen that noticed this sign nailed way up in a cottonwood tree. We were on our bike trip. Our very aptly named, Hell On Wheels bike trip. We were somewhere in Oregon and it was hot, hot, hot.

In fact, it was hot as hell.

She flopped onto her back on the shoulder of the road to stretch and said, “Look!” And so we did.

Looked. Up.

And behold, someone had decided that we needed to make a choice; albeit a rather simplistic and reductionist choice. One that said to me; Accept my way of thinking, my certainty about the world and everyone else will writhe in hell while we cavort on clouds in our rightness.

But I think that for most of us, Heaven and Hell is a present-time condition of our own making.

Although for some people it is not a choice at all…instead they are at the mercy of something that has nothing to do with bad choices between devils and angels. They are stuck with crappy genetics and uneven serotonin deliveries and whatever it is that causes paranoia and schizophrenia and depression and a raft of other mental illnesses.

Walking around Vancouver’s Hastings and Main, I don’t see drug addicts and criminals. I see mental illnesses and people desperately self-medicating to escape their close-up and very intensely personal hell.

And I’m going to guess it probably feels like a bit of heaven for them when it all finally stops. Because surely they don’t get delivered to another deeper Hell? Would you really want to believe in any god that was that cruel?

Heaven or Hell?

Black or White?

Us or Them?

I believe thinking in Either/Or terms is the first part of the problem. Either you’re with us or you’re against us. Uh. No…

How about we’re all in this together? How about a little kindness and consideration for those who are in pain? How about being less sure of how right we are and a little more inclusive and open to finding what we share in common?

Albert Einstein had a few good thoughts. Here’s one of them.

“A human being is a part of a whole, called by us ‘universe’, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”