Friday, February 24, 2012

Panning for Truth

"Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not be its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold." - Leo Tolstoy

How do we seek and deal with the truth? Do we believe it to be something that is ever expanding and accretive process, or is it something that we need to work at by paring away all that is not the truth until we arrive at it?

It's not as idle a conversation as one might think. In our social lives, in our work lives, in our political lives, even in our personal lives, there is a great discussion of what truth is and, therefore, how we are to run our lives.

It's not, as Pilate asked Christ, "What is truth?" in the sense of the nature of truth. It's "How do we obtain the truth?"

Does truth grow? Is it an evolving thing? Or is it something, as Tolstoy seems to suggest, that is not so much grown as it is mined by removing all that is not truth?

Gold panning, for those that don't know, is essentially this process. First by eliminating larger rocks, the miner agitates the remaining mud and gravel in a pan with water. As the material is agitated, the heavier items (including gold) fall to the bottom of the pan as the lighter material is washed away. This process is repeated over and over until all that is remaining is gold.

Has the the gold grown in the process of panning? The unwise might say "Yes it has, as the over time more and more is in the bottom of the pan." The wise would respond "It has not grown. The amount has increased, but only in relationship to the amount of material panned to get that gold" (and trust me, you have to pan a lot of material to get a little gold).

So here is the question: are teaching others - indeed, are we teaching ourselves - to pan for truth as for gold, to mine it out of Life as we would seek anything else precious and worthy? It's the same as panning, after all: you have to go through a lot of dirt and rocks to get that which is most precious and even then, you have to continue to wash away everything that is not what you seek until you find it.

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