Advent: 19 December 2022
Good morning,
As we begin the final working week before Christmas, it is time for T. And T is for… Truth. In the prologue to John’s gospel, we hear that “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world… And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”
What reflections on truth have found their way into the quotations box? For one thing, we may only be aware of a small part of the truth. Here are well-known words by Isaac Newton:
I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Moreover, truth can be difficult to discern. George Eliot says in Adam Bede, Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. And Hilary Mantel makes a similar point in her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost:
Truth isn’t pretty, I thought, and the pursuit of it doesn’t make pretty people. Truth isn’t elegant; that’s just mathematicians’ sentimentality. Truth is squalid and full of blots, and you can only find it in the accumulation of dusty and broken facts, in the cellars and sewers of the human mind. History’s what people are trying to hide from you, not what they’re trying to show you. You search for it in the same way you sift through a landfill: for evidence of what people want to bury.
Indeed, truth may emerge in a Freudian slip more than our intended communications, as Laurence Durrell puts it in his novel Balthazar:
Truth is not what is offered in full consciousness. It is always what ‘just slips out’ – the typing error which gives the whole show away.
But truth matters, as we read in Saul Bellow’s Herzog:
The people who come to evening classes are only ostensibly after culture. Their great need, their hunger, is for good sense, clarity, truth – even an atom of it. People are dying – it is no metaphor – for lack of something real to carry home when day is done.
There is a sense in these reflections that truth is often different from typical beliefs. Here is Victor Serge, the Russian novelist:
What is terrible when you seek the truth, is that you find it. You find it, and then you are no longer free to follow the biases of your personal circle, or to accept fashionable clichés.
And so following the truth has consequences – it may mean counting the cost of our commitment. Here is the character Harriet Pringle, in The Spoilt City, part of Olivia Manning’s sequence of novels, Fortunes of War:
“Truth is a luxury. We can only afford it now and then”.
Some have warned of an excessive commitment to a perceived truth. In The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco has a character say:
Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.
But once we acknowledge the truth, it may inspire us to do all we can to oppose falsehoods, and work for the good of the world. This how William of Saint-Thierny, a 12th Century Cistercian puts it:
Love of the truth drives us from the world to God, and the truth of love sends us back from God to the world.
And that is a task which is never ending, and rarely easy – as Japanese Christian Shusaku Endo says in A Life of Jesus:
The God of love, the love of God – the words come easy. The most difficult thing is to bear witness in some tangible way to the truth of the words.
Whatever our own beliefs, I hope that something true in or about the Christmas story, historical or metaphorical or a blend of both, helps us bear witness to love.
T is also for tree, so here is a picture of this year’s Christmas tree in the Chaplain’s house with snowy branches on another tree outside the window.
Finally, Interfaith Scotland has just produced an anthology of 40 poems by different poets sharing insights into what gave them support and inspiration during the pandemic – details here, https://interfaithscotland.org/interfaith-scotland-launches-poetry-book. The title of the book is The Courageous non-uniformity of Stones, which is a line from a poem by Rebecca Swarbrick, a colleague in the University. Her poem is the final T of today’s calendar – The things I like seeing. You can watch Rebecca reading her poem here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQhorgth8Fs
Yours,
Donald.