A History of Truth

Jesus declared, beneath a clear blue sky “The truth will set you free.” So why, do we in loving freedom, and perhaps God too, not love the truth, but try instead, creatively, to use it when we lie, and later wonder that so much we love must die. Jesus made Pilot feel uncomfortable, that calm demeanour left him sweating in the hot, dry desert of his understanding. How could the cause of so much trouble be at once both humble and commanding. Brought face to face with such reality he found that keeping harmony was too demanding. Seeking a fulcrum, some escape, some way to stay his fall, he grasps the charged man’s words and asks, “What is truth?”. Walking through the brittle law courts, constantly repapered schools, bazaars and business capers of a planet sized bowel cancer, a busy tourist in my hat and shorts, I wonder, observing all the fools, watching TV, reading the papers, would it be any different if--- Jesus had given him an answer? I mean if Jesus had laid it down for us then and there so that we knew, like we know the time to catch a ferry or a bus, indubitably, for all to see, the view that --- “Truth is a glass of water for the thirsty, the purring of a cat, a plate of beans for the hungry, the chair wherein you’re sat, a kind word and a hug to the lost and lonely, the buzzing of a bug, a smile.” --- would the world be any different? But then I think to myself, he did, I’m sure he did. We, of course, uncouth in the absence of knowledge, believe fiercely in the truth, teach our children that they, unlike us, must tell the truth and convince ourselves that we, having stepped voluntarily off the cliff edge of reality, will only fall a little way, will not suffer any reprimand or, by any fate, be made to pay because we failed to understand. Mahatma Gandhi, holding a country in his strong brown hands, breathed gently into ears that “God is Truth”, and who, in their effrontery could claim he has bequeathed, to callous age as well as tender youth, much less of one than of the other. Buddha, when asked, we hear, replies, facts are not truth, nor tales, nor memories nor even thoughts or written histories, in fact, we’re told he earnestly denies that truth exists at all in browsing herds of well, or often poorly, written words that, like the junk some other owner left behind, clutter-up the unused spaces of our mind. And Lao Tze, I feel, would probably agree, that truth, when all is said and done, can never be caught and tied down or separately caged, it was against such ignorance he raged and taught that truth like God has always been a wonder we must want before its seen and love if we would know and understand. It is the “loving truth” that is so strange and yet if we could just do this each day we soon would realise we loved the world and in so do doing made the world love us. Truth is dynamic, flowing and eternal in seeing this and in accepting change we gain stability, find a new way to live and watch as beauty is unfurled around us with a minimum of fuss. Ralph Waldo Emerson, sitting by a lake alone, but never lonely in his soul, found it quite sad so many others slept while he found so much joy in life awake. In loving truth so well he knew it was a whole seen partially by us because, we are much less than what we seek to see, although we’re still a part of its reality, and this, I think, is what he truly meant when he wrote down, “Truth is our element”. To swim is so much harder than to float or clasp the nearest rock and say that this is now my truth, I will learn it by rote and in so doing seek eternal bliss, but like all skills once truly learned it seems well worth the blessings that are earned. There are more worms than fish more fish than birds, more foolish men than wise, and I, in truth can only wish, that you may find, within your eyes, the light to see the truth behind the words that those who lived in joy have left behind.