When I got home last night there was a package from L.L. Bean wedged in between the storm door and main front door. It was addressed to me! Pants. There was no indication who the pants were from and Kate was out for the evening. So, I'm guessing they are from my Mom. Thanks Mom. I guess. She doesn't read this blog. Doesn't have a computer and doesn't really want one. Some people live life in the real three-dimensional world. The touch and see and smell and feel world.
An awful lot of our information is two-dimensional these days. Flat. Odorless. Tasteless. No warmth or cold. That information has color and motion. It still carries a message. Just incomplete. But humans are good at taking incomplete information and filling in the blanks to make a complete picture. The thing is . . . we each fill the blanks in with information from our own, individual pasts and own individual present realities. So, the "complete" picture ends up being something different for each of us. Each has his or her own version of reality. Our own, individual, self-fulfilling version of the "truth." We each hold to that truth and act on that truth and tend to reject other people's truths. That's why we fight and war and bicker and quarrel and argue and all. We each hold our own truths to be "self evident," as Thomas Jefferson once famously wrote.
Maybe Jesus was right. The story goes that when Pilate asked him, "What is truth?" he answered, "I am." Maybe in today's version of the story Jesus would answer, "Well, duh, we all are, Pilate. You. Me. Everyone." We all have a hold of what is true. Maybe it's not until we see that there is no one "Truth" with a capital "T" but that we each have a little bit of the truth with a small "t" that we start to listen to and learn from each other. . . start to complete our incomplete information with little bits of the truth of others.
So. I don't really know if it's true whether the pants came from my Mom or not. I won't really know that until I talk with her and get some more information. . . the little bit of truth that she has to offer on the subject. Then I'll know. Then, when people say to me, "Nice pants!" I can say "Yes. Isn't that the truth!"
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About Me
- Mark Gorman
- I was born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, along the banks of the Susquehanna River, in the valley made up by Bald Eagle Mountain to the south, and gentle hills and valleys to the north. That place that sheltered me, gave me food and friends, and both physical and spiritual nourishment for 18 years. That is the space where I was physically and emotionally formed. Ever since growing up there . . . because of growing up there . . . I have been inexorably linked to nature . . . to the earth and to all life.