Tents, Stars, and Truths

I recently read a little book titled "A Tent In Which to Spend a Summer Night." It was the title that drew me to the book. I want to quote a few memorable lines from the book which really spoke to me.

Here they are:

"Our highest truths are but half-truths;

Think not to settle down forever in any truth.

Make use of it as a tent in which to pass a

summer's night.

But build not a house of it, or it will be your tomb.

When you first have an inkling of its insufficiency

and begin to descry a dim counter-truth looming beyond,

Then weep not, but give thanks.

It is the Lord's voice whispering,

"Take up thy bed and walk."

(Earl Balfour)

"Cragged and steep Truth stands, and he that will reach her

about must, and about must go." (John Donne)

I resonated with these lines, because recently I have been reflecting on how much I have changed in how I see life and what I understand to be true, compared with ten, twenty, thirty, or forty years ago. I am sure many of you could say the same. Life has a way of changing our minds and hearts through our experiences and revelations. Then we realize how truths we may have once thought to be as solid and eternal as the pyramids are much more like the tent in which to spend a summer night.

Surely, not one of us has a perspective much bigger than a tent. We are so enclosed by the canvas of our little individual life, we sometimes forget that Truth itself is like a great mountain towering over a town of artificial lights---little half-truths which give their limited light to people for a limited time. But alway far above shine the Stars of Truth, far beyond our reach, a shining reminder of Divine Mystery way beyond the grasp of the greatest minds.

It strikes me that if all us humans considered our current structure of beliefs and opinions and what we call "our truth" as simply a tent in which to spend a summer night, we would avoid a great deal of the hostility and conflict which people engage in because they take their current beliefs and opinions to be like the mountains, or stars. How ridiculous is that?

If I can humbly and simply regard my ideas, beliefs, and opinions as a tent, without identifying them as me, or as Universal Truth which everyone else should believe too.....I imagine I will enjoy a greater peace than what otherwise might be mine. Better yet, perhaps I will someday sleep out under the stars without a tent on a summer night, and in amazement gaze at those starry glimpses of Eternal Truth which shine in the sky of Eternity, and wonder how I could ever have thought I or anyone else, or any human institution or belief system, for that matter, really knew "The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But The Truth."