TRUTH . . . AN AFTERTHOUGHT

Having thought I had finished the manuscript for this book some time ago I then passed the seventy-five year milestone. Just as this event happened I heard a story about an elderly (seventy-five year old) man who had carried a passion for truth since he was very young. This is more than a mere coincidence I decided.

It seems when young this eager fellow set out in search of truth and travelled all his life across many lands and many seas. There was rugged terrain with high mountains and deep valleys to cross, so he experienced a great deal of hardship and suffering. One day, with three-quarters of a century in years behind him, he realised he had not found the truth he was looking for and decided to give up and return home. When he finally arrived back it was to discover that Truth had been patiently waiting for him all those years.

I wonder, did the man's journeying enable him to find the truth? I am sure that the answer is… 'No, but it helped him to recognise it!'

We really only discover what is there all the time. If you protest that surely we must grow and not remain static, I can only respond by saying that all progress is a growth in awareness. It is when we finally cease to struggle that we can enjoy the truth, or the reality of this moment. And this moment is all we can be certain we have. At the close of my story let me gently assert that 'We have all things that pertain to life and godliness'. They were within us all the time. Our light had become darkness, that is all. Now we can see, and we don't all have to wait until we are seventy-five years old to do so.

Many of us know the story of mankind eating fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, thereby losing the ability to eat from the Tree of Life. Thankfully I have fallen out of the branches of the first tree and cannot sum up what is good and bad anymore. Some of the things that seemed extremely bad to me at one time, I can now see have given me the most lasting benefits. Even as I write, that old Stroke health-scare has reared it's head again (you'll notice I could not write 'ugly head'), but that is alright; everything is.

Is my marathon finished then? Or are there several more miles to travel? Who knows? Better still … who cares? I can now 'Go carelessly', as my close friend Alan Halden so often signs off his letters to me. Now, two more years on from my seventy-five year milestone, with it's story of the life-long seeker after truth, I am putting a final touch to this manuscript as I wonder about a publisher. This touch concerns a much newer friend in our village who was entertaining me to some delicious cold white wine on a hot summer's day this year, as we basked luxuriously on his lawn.

//Continued