REAL TRUTH...
AND 25 DAYS TO GO...
How many times have I quoted Franz Rosenzweig's wonderful saying that real truth is polyphonous! The unspoken assumption is not only that truth is musical, but that beneath the level of G-d's understanding, none of us has a grasp on more than a small piece of the Elephant that is reality.And as the blind men said:
"An elephant is like a fan."
"An elephant is like a tree."
"An elephant is like a snake."
"An elephant is like a spear."
"An elephant is like a rope."
"An elephant is like a wall."
It all depends on which piece of the elephant you have ahold of. Only all the pieces together make up an elephant...
So I know that what I see is only part of the story, I know that there is another tale waiting to be told. I know it, but can I really bear to hear it?
For the real test of truth is that you have to hear it not just within the confines of your own head, or as it sounds crossing your own lips, but hear it returned to you from the heart of the one you address. And the difference in what you hear then can be quite simply staggering.
So here I sit waiting for a reply to a message, begging for a chance I have claimed here to have hung out to dry: for a chance not to have to choose between silence and separation. Even though a choice that simple may in fact be my salvation; no matter how stark it seems it may well mean avoiding worse choices down the road. More ambiguous, less defensible choices.
So as my heart has been, and currently my entire life has been, I am split neatly down the middle. The only thing I know that it can't go on THIS way. It may get better, and it may get worse, but THIS will have to pass away.
Or I will.
Lord, help me. I have no strength but yours.
Give me eyes to see and ears to hear, and paint the message you want me to see in BIG FAT letters on the side of a large building so I can see. Shout it till even I have to hear it.
Hit me with it, and show it to me in the stars.
Make it as inescapable as myself. But not so ugly. Amen.
"An elephant is like a tree."
"An elephant is like a snake."
"An elephant is like a spear."
"An elephant is like a rope."
"An elephant is like a wall."It all depends on which piece of the elephant you have ahold of. Only all the pieces together make up an elephant...
So I know that what I see is only part of the story, I know that there is another tale waiting to be told. I know it, but can I really bear to hear it?
For the real test of truth is that you have to hear it not just within the confines of your own head, or as it sounds crossing your own lips, but hear it returned to you from the heart of the one you address. And the difference in what you hear then can be quite simply staggering.
So here I sit waiting for a reply to a message, begging for a chance I have claimed here to have hung out to dry: for a chance not to have to choose between silence and separation. Even though a choice that simple may in fact be my salvation; no matter how stark it seems it may well mean avoiding worse choices down the road. More ambiguous, less defensible choices.
So as my heart has been, and currently my entire life has been, I am split neatly down the middle. The only thing I know that it can't go on THIS way. It may get better, and it may get worse, but THIS will have to pass away.Or I will.
Lord, help me. I have no strength but yours.
Give me eyes to see and ears to hear, and paint the message you want me to see in BIG FAT letters on the side of a large building so I can see. Shout it till even I have to hear it.
Hit me with it, and show it to me in the stars.
Make it as inescapable as myself. But not so ugly. Amen.
I love the elephant! (My mother told me that about truth when I was a child. but I only remembered 3 of them.)
ReplyDeleteI've asked G-d the same things: for the sign to shout out to me...and the reply is most often not what I expected; quietly like a whisper.
Jaded One:
ReplyDeleteHere's to Elijah who was looking for the voice in the whirlwind and the fire and the earthquake, but who finally heard it in the "still,small, voice". The OT has it all!
Still trying to get up the courage [and time] to write about yr comment. It cuts deep, my friend, and I don't want to leave it out there.
yr
Troll