whose Truth is True?

Up alive and awake way too dark o'clock this morning so, neither live enough nor wake enough to do anything sensible, started browsing live earth-cams in places I can't get when it's daytime in North America. Kiev where people were walking across the square, automobile traffic in Moscow, Istanbul with the bridge, Bulgaria was turned off, Murmansk, Iraq was turned off, I didn't think to check Kabul. Saudi Arabia was on and live, I should've snapped a pic when there were just a few people on their Hajj circling the Kaaba, but I went back a few hours later to see quite a gathering; though, owing to covid precautions, not the massive crowd I recall seeing in the past. The picture looks like they're standing chatting, but not so: except for the guards inside the fence, everyone is walking at a quick pace, all moving counterclockwise.  

Live stream views of the Great Mosque of Mecca, Al-Masjid al-Haram, in Saudi Arabia. The largest mosque in the world has as centrepiece Islam’s most sacred shrine, the Kaaba, a stone cubic structure covered with black cloth that is considered the House of Allah. It is precisely in this direction that all Muslims should pray, no matter what part of the world they are in.

And it occurs that these are the Faithful, as a group; not those we fear, but ordinary, everyday worshipers as deep in their confidence in things not seen as their Faithful counterparts I meet at church every Sunday; or Christians who make their journey to our own Holy Land to walk the Via Delarosa and to stand on a height gazing out over the Sea of Galilee knowing that Jesus looked at the exact same scene, maybe even from the exact same spot, as shivers run up and down.

And those on Hajj believe Truth is theirs as devoutly as any Christian fervently clings to different sets of Truth. 

In one of his books, I don't remember which one, John Claypool recounts a time in his youth when his family hosted an exchange student, a Muslim boy from overseas. Fr John says that he once, in a conversation, pulled out his soul winners Bible to lead the boy to Christ; whereupon the boy took out his own Koran and responded that this was his holy book. John is stunned at the challenge. Which was right? John says that the following week he asked his Baptist Sunday School teacher, "How do we know the Bible is true (and not his guest's Koran)?". John says the teacher, visibly shaken, shocked, taken aback, responded, "How can you ask such a question, with a mother like yours?"

Indeed. How CAN we ask, how DO we know? Again, no manner of belief makes anything a fact. And just because you believe it, even believe it fervently with every fibre of your being, that don't make it so. With an open mind, Seek the Truth. It may cost you your salvation, your certainty of eternal life, that you are as sure for heaven as if you were already there; but To Seek is life itself. Listen to and contemplate the testimony of witnesses and their recorders, but don't settle for anyone else's dogma. And don't feel compelled to "decide": again our line, "this is the Episcopal Church, where you don't have to check your brain at the door". Questions are more to be valued than answers, doubt than certainty, and to contentedly hold mutually exclusive possibilities in tension may be an intelligent, and respectable, place to take your stand and settle.

Enough

RSF&PTL

T+