THE TRUTH IS…

…not necessarily written in stone. Oh, undeniably, there are truths that are rock solid, that can’t be changed by wishing them away or looking at them from different angles. But, in general, what you believed with all your heart and soul yesterday, may not be what you “hold to be self-evident” today.

And often, that revelation is a kind of betrayal of all that you held dear, all you thought you knew and, in some cases, who you thought you were. I was taught that truth, was a line you didn’t cross. Truth was not negotiable, flexible, varying in degrees or substance. Truth was truth, the way sunshine is sunshine and rain is rain. It just is.

But, at the pain of disillusionment and unbearable disdain for my own gullibility, I have come to realize that “my truth” was just that, mine and did not necessarily embrace or define, others. In fact, as the light shines on yesterday, from the vantage point of today, I realize the world I grew up in, the world I held in extreme esteem, did not reach to all – many were left looking at my truth and knowing, for them, it was a lie.

Recently, having dinner with my son and daughter-in-law, we began talking about the way things were when I was growing up. We discussed my view of the world, as a child and young adult, and it was bright and shiny and filled with wondrous possibilities. For me. I was one of the lucky ones. I was white. I was middle class. I had opportunities. I had an education. I had summers at camp and holidays filled with presents. I did live the American dream. And I never knew that there were others, for whom that dream was beyond hope, beyond reach.

I guess I feel betrayed by the malleable nature of truth. We feed ourselves what “tastes” good and what nourishes “us” disregarding the fact that others go hungry. It is not that we are bad or evil but rather, I think, we are self-serving. I cannot, of course, know for sure what people really knew way back then, when I was young. I cannot know if they lied their way to the truth or honestly believed what they thought (or hoped) the world was like. Perhaps, like me, they lived within the boundaries of truth because that was what they were told, that was the safe and familiar place to be.

The truth started filtering through the cracks that were opened by my going out into the world and, the ever increasing, ever more immediate sources of news and information. Atrocities became headlines, lives lost suddenly had names and faces and the truth, the one we so fervently believed in faded away like daylight to darkness. We were not who we thought we were and perhaps, never were.

Today, the headlines scream of wars and atrocities, inequality and prejudice, discrimination and greed, avarice and deceit and unthinkable acts of inhumanity. The truth, once, seemingly so beautiful, has shown its true face and it is ugly and scarred and terrifying.

But then, recognizing something for what it truly is, facing it head on, demanding of ourselves that we be agents of change may, in fact, take us to a greater truth. To simply keep on breathing in and breathing out, I must believe that we can shape the truth of tomorrow into something as decent, as virtuous, as worthy, as we once believed it was.

The Gods Weep…

…for what is lost

the toll the cost

we live

we thrive at the expense

of everything that we held dear

every sacrament that echoed

clearly through the years every vow

we took and broke every prayer

we spoke and then

un-spoke

the Gods weep

Christ Yahweh Allah Krishna Haokah

with a thousand names we say them

now

they kneel and pray

at one another’s feet they seek

to understand in prayerful reverence

demand to know why we

rashly disavowed

their gift

of our humanity…

Susan A. Katz (All rights reserved)

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