Truth capped

Some of you have asked about my meeting with the guy with the Truth, so I’ll tell you. At first I wanted him and me to meet before the column about his email came out. If he was to be offended, I wanted him offended after we’d met, so the meeting wouldn’t start out antagonistic. We met early Thursday morning, and he hadn’t gotten the new paper, so that was all right. I’m glad it worked out that way now, because whenever he read the column he could be sure that my response had nothing to do with him, just with his email. This has to do with him.

I’m reluctant to reveal his whole story because I don’t want to reinforce a stereotype. I’m not sure why, and I’m giving it some thought. Anyway, we met at the 100th Monkey, and after a few social noises, I asked him to tell me about capitalized Truth. He started by asking me how I thought life got started.

“I don’t know.”

“Is there an Absolute Truth in your mind?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“There are working hypotheses. I think there may well be absolute truths or an absolute truth, and I have no reason to think that that truth could be verbalized. That would require an absolute language, and I haven’t imagined such a thing.”

After a while, when I’d agreed that evolution was just a theory and cells were awesome, and admitted that I believed in other dimensions, we got to the part where he postulated the existence of an anthropomorphized creator referred to as “he” or, more likely, “He.” That’s when I veered off what was obviously a well-worn path.

He asked questions designed to be answered “Yes” until he could slip in the man-like Creator and a few references in the Bible. By then I was convinced that he had said all that stuff many, many times. He’s had his examples and allusions down cold for years. He knows the patter backward and forward and had found a way to justify approaching me with his convictions. About all he had to say about my mourning was that grieving takes as long as it takes, and there’s no timetable. Fancy that.

I asked him if he had ever lost a spouse. No. I could’ve started with that and been done with it. Here’s where I avoid both stereotyping and a lawsuit by revealing only that he’s a lifelong member of a well-known Christian sect and happened to have some things in his trunk for me to read later. That’s all I’m saying.