Truth has always been important to me.  That probably stems from my discovery early in life that truth was a scarce commodity in the world I was born into…which, of course, was and is the only world there is!  What I didn’t realize then was the extent to which duplicity consumed me also even as I began to ponder the duplicity that I saw everywhere around me.  I was well into my adult life before I realized that truth was not something that one “has” but something that “has” us though can get past our blinders only if we come to realize, in the depths of our heart, just how resistant we are to it.  We always prefer the comfort of seeing “through a glass darkly” without much appreciation of the “darkliness.” In fact, those of us who talk most about it are often the ones to whom it is most a stranger. Gwendolyn Brooks, a mid-20^th century American poet captured this wisdom with the following poem:

And if sun comes
How shall we greet him?
Shall we not dread him,
Shall we not fear him
After so lengthy a
Session with shade?

Though we have wept for him,
Though we have prayed
All through the night-years—
What if we wake one shimmering morning to
Hear the fierce hammering
Of his firm knuckles
Hard on the door?

Shall we not shudder?—
Shall we not flee
Into the shelter, the dear thick shelter
Of the familiar
Propitious haze?

Sweet is it, sweet is it
To sleep in the coolness
Of snug unawareness.

The dark hangs heavily
Over the eyes.