Friday, November 5, 2004

Having said that...

My head spins with all the spin. Bushies are masters of illusion and spin! Moore and the Dems are masters of illusion and spin! There is no savor of truth in any of it. All of it is contested and nuanced and yet so awfully clear cut. It -- the maelstrom of political blogging and commentary -- actually makes me sick. The endless ranting and counter-ranting, the cunning demonization of man simultaneously a moron and a mastermind, the completely skewed hierarchy of moral issues -- it all really nauseates me. And here I am, blogging away, adding to the clatter, and I feel ill for it.

But I guess that just proves I'm an immature fideist most comfortable with my head in the sand. Truth does not and will never come from the media or from a cluster of facts. Truth is a person and it is a relationship of persons, because persons are relationships. The truth of life is not a reception of correct propositions, but is an intensive encounter with living persons in the whole range of our physical and mental faculties. The truth of faith, in turn, is an intensive encounter with one ultimate Person in the whole range of our bodies, minds and, uniquely, our conscience. The truth of life is not, however, really distinct from or opposed to the truth of faith, since, on the one hand, each encounter with a person is itself an encounter with God refracted through the particular finiteness of His creatures, and, on the other hand, each encounter with God is an encounter with the brilliant power that sustains and crafts the life of every person we meet. To know yourself alone is not to know yourself. To know yourself is to know another; to know another is to know God; and, of course, to know God is to know another.

My point? There is no truth without prayer. (Don't ask me how the second paragraph brought me to that claim. It was more the first paragraph that pushed me to that stark plea. That stark plea should explain how I got to the second paragraph.) My only shelter is prayer. God, when will I actually accept that truth into my life? Why waste so much time hating our neighbors, or at least "disputing" their "views," when there is only so much time for loving God, His ways and His creatures, our neighbors?

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