Reflections on Being, Love and Truth

Emerson once said, "Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" or something like that.  If you know the context of this passage, you know why he wasn't particularly liked by his academic colleagues.  In remembering the arrogant bastards I have known in my former ecclesiastical experience, I know, all too well, the critical arrows that are shot out of their mouths that say, "this is inconsistent with what you said earlier" delighting in the knight's fork of their polemics--to save the king you lose the queen and those are the systematic rules of the game--but in the end, they are out to win a game, I think, and to not find Truth if Truth, or God, or the Ultimate Macguffin if it exists at all.  In fact, they think they have the corner on the best view of the Truth there is, all neatly defined, systematized, and organized in the great card catalogue of scriptures, dead fathers, theologians, thousands of years of traditions, tomes, and councils.  

The best theology, to my mind, expresses the idea that Truth is a person--a being.  This notion is one of a few that I have not yet thrown in to the dust bin along with all the shattered glass of my religious heritage.  It is still too much of a curious thing, and is still on my heart's shelf for future reflection along with the even greater notion that God is Love and that this "greater notion" is far more than just a metaphor.  Most everything else, as the alleged Apostle Paul once said, "is horse shit" (politely translated as "rubbish" for more delicate ears).

All this to say, I write reflectively, I ponder, I brood, and I test the winds and as I do so, I will be inconsistent.  My compass lost, I am adrift at night on a starless, moonless sea, but lately, I have felt a wind and I have a sail...  I passed through the doldrums; that was the worst, just sitting still and going nowhere--or so it seemed at the time.  So, now that I feel a spark of wind I must ask, what is out there?  In the dark?  Does it matter where I am going?  Does it matter what direction?  I think this wind will take me where I am already am no matter what direction I may turn the rudder.  "Where" is not as important as the movement itself.  The movement is life, the heart beating, the lungs breathing.  Love is all around.  I exist in it, I leave it's harbor to return to it's harbor which is everywhere and forever.

Well what do I know for certain? and what do I believe in but can't prove?  What is the invisible force that pushes the sail? and where will it take me?  Here are the areas that I am most certain of since the summer of 1992 when I realized the compass I was using was bewitched and the stars and the sun were lost to me.

1. I exist, even if I am an illusion, a dream, a trick of the brain; I exist enough to at least appreciate the illusion of existence.  But it is not quite enough to say that I exist.  Rocks exist too.  I must rightly say, I-exist-and-I-am-aware-that-I-exist.  Cogito, ergo sum is incomplete: Cogito, sentio, Amo, ergo sum

2. You, dear reader, exist too.  I do not experience your perceptions of reality, if you are a dream to me, you are a dream, but I don't think so.  I think you are just as real in your existence as I am in mine.  The very fact that you see things differently than I do is partial proof that you do have a separate existence from me, the other part of that is that I simply think that you really do exist with no rational explanation at all.  Somehow I just know that you do.

3. Love exists.  This is not at all rational or scientific--this belief in the existence of Love--but I believe in it anyway.  But what is it?  It is the bond that connects us all and is the source of all being that ties our existence with each other all all things in a way that heals, cares, fulfills somehow.  In addition, I am convinced that love and existence are tied and that consciousness (awareness of existence) flows in, through, and is apart of all things. It is the thing we call God.  When I sing the song that says, "Love came down at Christmas" I sing about the incarnation of Love--looking at love in human form with the understanding that that same love is something that we too, must channel.  There is but one choice we make in life, although it seems like many, and that choice is to release love into the world, or block it.  Perhaps to exist is to love and to not love is to unravel existence. Amo, ergo sum, may be enough.

It may not seem like a lot and there are likely holes in it all--but this is the extent of my faith or credo.

Earlier I suggested that the concept that "Truth, if it exists, is a person" is still on my shelf for further examination.  What is Truth?  What is a Person?  What are they both but names for things we don't understand at all, but by naming them we pretend we do?  By Truth, I'm not talking about facts, I'm talking about the great Macguffin of human longing.

Macguffin is a term invented by the great director and sex offender Alfred Hitchcock.  It is that elusive thing that people are searching for in a movie, and something screen writers simply use as an excuse for the plot.  Where is that Maltese Falcon?  We spend the whole movie looking for it.  Truth is the ultimate Macguffin.  Some of us spend our lifetime looking for it.  Echoing Voltare, let me say, "if there is no Macguffin, human beings will make one up because they need it."  Can we live without purpose, direction, a journey to find something that makes it all meaningful?  The Truth is our Macguffin.

I'll be honest in saying that I don't know if  Truth exists at all.  Personhood seems real, because I am one.  Love exists, because I've known it, although this knowledge, I willingly admit, is a faith I have, and it's about all the faith I've got these days.  It is a wild thing, undefined, and refusing to be systemized, categorized and enslaved to scholars, theologians and self-help charlatans.   But Truth, on the other hand, and the quest for Truth, and the passionate belief in Truth as something absolute that can be used as a weapon in the hands of some sort of manifest destiny minded group, or Truth as something that can be possessed and used, and exploited for political and religious control--well that sort of Truth, I am certain, does not exist, and yet it is the source of most of our wars and many of our fears should some Galileo* come along to challenge it.  

Truth is a grand lie.  At least when it is something people think they have an exclusive corner on.

Truth as a person, is something I'm still thinking about in that a person is both someone you can know, but never know. Persons are not static.  Persons change and evolve.  They are not something that can be used or controlled--rather personhood something that is free with a will of it's own (I assume freewill exists as part of our personhood, but I don't want to have an imaginary argument about it right now).  The best one can do is have a relationship with it. But I haven't much faith in Truth, to be honest--it's elusiveness has led me and so many others into delusions.  I have come to the conclusion that "whatever is true, is true" whether I know it or not.  And whenever it bobs it's head above that murky water of unknowing and is seen clearly, I have to accept it for what it is regardless of how ugly or beautiful it is, though I doubt that I will ever see the entire creature itself.  I'm not going to bother searching for it, I'm not going to worry about it anymore.  It will have to search for me.  I don't have to find it, I don't have to serve it's great cause or defend it.  It can take care of itself and will out live us all as long as there is time and space.  Earth will grow cold one day, and all our skeletons will dissolve or freeze on this planet when it has become rouge and is wondering through empty space, our sun having burned out long since.  Truth will either be dead as a construct in our human brains, or will go on without us if it has an existence of its own to haunt and torment other beings in other places on distant stars and galaxies.  If I am eternal, if my existence out lives this biological temporary animal body, and evolves or transforms and lasts as long as all matter, for I am matter and will return to matter and still be matter which exists forever as far as anyone can tell, then I will still never fully know Truth and Truth will never fully know me--such is the nature of personhood and being eternal.

Here I will let my mind float a while: Matter, love, existence, truth, faith--words, words, words--words--the power of speech on the tongue of a primate. The first words were used to help in the survival of the clan, tribe, species, ideas became real: conceptualization of abstract thought imagining things, conceiving things, then articulating things like God, love, existence, truth,  Words, I think, gave us the ability to expand our awareness, Words took us to higher thinking and to a new form of consciousness, thought and self-awareness that we contemplate so often.  We, somewhere along the way, traded instinctual consciousness for word consciousness and then lost the instinctual consciousness or most of it disconnecting us from nature somewhat. When did we start to tell stories?  There was the hunt.  The hunt, the primal macguffin.  The hunter's return and telling of the stories.  A hero's journey. The quest.  A hero conquering a beast which became a monster.  The story got bigger, it became about gods and monsters.  And quest--ions arise. How did we get here? What happens when we die?  Stories, more stories, stories that we think are reality because our ancestors told them over and over again and only heretics question them.  Beware the novel truth.  A new story grows, endures persecution and becomes the primary story. It holds power for thousands of years.  The old stories remain as mere myths, but have no power anymore.  The new story says that God favors some people over others, and the new story is protected by laws, codes, canons, commentary, tradition and political power.  Wars are fought for the story, genocide is committed in the name of the god of that story.

Returning to my boat with my sail adrift on a sea in the dark with no compass, stars, moon or sun, all I have is a wind and the wind is existence, the wind is love blowing me in love, from love, through love to love.  

I love stories.  I love myths.  I love heroes and quests and magic.  I love the idea that there is more in heaven and earth that is dreamt of in Horatio's rationalism--which is another story, another Truth that will eventually replace the old story.  But as much as I love these wonderful, painful, horrible, beautiful stories.  I think, I may jump off of the Karma Wheel, and I may well leave the stories behind--they're all fiction anyway.  I have lived the stories of a thousand lifetimes; it is the same story.  

*Galileo found facts, not truth, but those facts challenged the Truth of church authority and Aristotle who was considered a sort of pre-Christ Christian.