Finding God’s truth [1] is a daunting task, requiring a strategy. It would combine an analysis of the words of various sages including Mahatma Gandhi, Khalil Gibran and Confucius aka Kǒng Zǐ and in religious books such as the Bible, the Torah and the Koran with an amalgamation of different definitions and descriptions of truth. Then God’s truth ought to become apparent as a result.
Wasting no time, I began googling. The task turned out to be excruciatingly tedious. Within two days I had lost interest and quit.
Unable to think of an alternative approach, I became obsessed. A prayer was in order. I said one and gave my mind a rest. It remained blank for a few moments or maybe even a day when preceded by nothingness the answer came. It was a single word.
The word was love. I was stunned and did not know what to think. How could love be equated with truth? There would be no sympathetic ear for my childish protests. It was decreed.
What followed was a writer’s disappointment. Love was not my next topic. In my amorphous plan for this blog I would ultimately address it but not until I have finished reading Dante’s Purgatorio and found inspiration in Dante’s Paradiso. It would not be anytime soon. The plan had been changed.
Had the concept of love not entered my consciousness, I would have nonetheless carried on despite obsessing over the lack of a “plan B.” In preparation for it, I had all my mental faculties fully sharpened, ready to discover God’s truth and state it in my own words. At the time I had no clue what to say but in retrospect I would probably have begun examining the issues of the day, to see if God’s truth could reasonably be found hidden somewhere among human sufferings. I realize now that that would have been a waste of time since God’s truth does not reside in the brain; it resides in the heart. Being told that love, not ever being cerebral, is God’s truth, God’s truth is therefore beyond analysis and superior to reason.
I now know that to make a meaningful difference, good works must be done out of love, but what kind of love?
[1] Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy. The Purgatorio, Notes, p. 433-4. Trans. John Ciardi. New York: New American Library, 2003.
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