TRUTH.
Truth is relative; that’s the fear I hear.
And if truth is relative, then it won’t exist at all.
We’ll make it into nothing, by trying to say it could be something other than what we’ve been taught, what we’ve held so dear.
We cling tighter and tighter with each passing year, each war, each mindless shooting, each orphaned child…
Nothing else makes sense, so we hold tighter to what we do know.
Now we can’t remember if it was truth keeping us safe,
or if we were charged with saving it.
We set out to protect it, at all costs. Just to be safe.
If we open our fists to look at it, much less share it, we might lose it altogether.
So we tighten our grasp, cracking whatever mutated form remains in our grip.
Better a small, broken truth, than no truth at all.
And that’s what we tell ourselves, and assure those in our closed circle, each with hands cupping his own invisible commodity.
We are indivisible. We are one.
Set apart from those outside, those missing the truth that saved us.
This is what I see.
And this is what I’ve known.
Certainty. Confidence.
At a cost.
Surely Truth was never meant to be held like this; like a vice. Like a right.
Like something to lord over others.
Something to beat them down with, and keep them in line with.
Nevermind that we claim to be the only ones who can see, or set, those floating lines.
Truth, to me, always sounded like Light.
Light like Love.
And Love like Freedom.
And Freedom like Grace.
Grace that can’t be clenched. Or controlled.
Earned. Or saved.
Grace that abounds in being spent up, given out, passed along, loosely held.
Grace that cannot be quantified, or calculated.
Grace that just is, with or without us.
Grace that doesn’t belong to any one person, or people group, or country, or religious sect.
Grace that is transformative, and transcendent.
Grace that covers the whole earth.
Grace best exhibited not by tight-knit circles, but by open hands.
The older I get, the more hurt I see.
Hurt too often inflicted by those fighting in the name of truth.
And I’ve felt like a traitor, for questioning what it is I’m doing here.
Straining under the pressure of trying to cling to something that slipped out of my hands long ago.
I worried what would happen if I admitted I’d lost it.
The certainty. The confidence. My shiny security.
Would I be accused of trying to outrun or outwit the truth?
An enemy of all I once loved?
Or, in accepting that my hands are empty, and giving up the fight, might I experience a Freedom I hadn't known before?
Might I find that Truth isn't made for keeping, but about being set free?
* I took a prolonged "vacation" from blogging there for a bit, and writing in general. (Sorta scary for someone like me, that processes best through internal dialogue followed by written, scribbled words.)
But the hiatus makes me all the more grateful that one little prompt could draw so much out of me. Stuff I've been struggling with for months now, unable to articulate.
These thoughts may still be a mess of rawness, scattered thoughts, but I, for one, am glad to get them out of my head. Thanks for "listening."
Recent Comments