This poem by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a favorite.  It sums up the essence of Provisional Truth, in that what we think, feel, believe and swear to be true, sometimes isn't, and the mystery of truth often is revealed only slowly, through the efforts of countless lives and generations, if at all.

I welcome your view of the truth...Send me an email. --Keith Hazelton

Once we thought the earth was flat - What of that?
It was just as globos then, under believing men
As our later folks have found it, by success in running round it;
What we think may guide our acts, but it does not alter facts.
                                          --Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)

  What Is Provisional Truth?
As Charlotte Perkins Gilman observed a century ago, "what we think may guide our acts, but it does not alter facts."

Like a flat earth, yesterday's "truth" has become today's fables, superstitions and discarded dogmas and doctrines. Today's "heresy" may become tomorrow's truth.  As such - like tax law - truth is provisional and always subject to change.

Everything we "know" yet may be altered, refined, perhaps someday proven wrong, so it's advantageous to keep an open mind.  Welcome to the world of Provisional Truth, where absolutes are not to be found.

For a chilling example of only one recent discarded "truth," see author Michael Crichton's brief summary of the theory of Eugenics which ultimately led to the horrific extermination of millions of humans in World War II.

But what do I know?  Send me an email.                               --Keith Hazelton

This I Believe                   Truth is Provisional, Love is Absolute                          March 2007

Like many, I received ample childhood religious instruction, raised to follow the faith of my parents, but I never encountered that sense of peace others professed and I never outgrew my doubt and concern about the conflicting doctrines proclaimed by myriad religions.

Over the years I sampled several variations of Christianity, from Catholicism to Fundamentalism to end-times Hal Lindsay-ism, but eventually, invariably, I drifted away. Always so much attention – infatuation really – not on this life, but the next.

After some recent years of introspection, I decided if all faiths claim to be “right” then certainly all must be wrong. I reveled in my revelation that no single, earthly belief-system possibly could own “the truth.” Weren't we clever, I reasoned, as did Voltaire, to have created God in our image.

I had arrived at my own special place, hesitant, on a precipice above a dark valley of disbelief in any supreme being, much less one with the comical cosmic countenance of a bearded, old, white-robed man who continually watched me.

A place where one day, I was sure, humankind would discover the last remaining secrets of a universe ordered only by immutable physical law, not the mysterious. A place where human truth, all things considered, must be regarded as provisional – not absolute, but conditional and temporary, like tax law and election promises.

Yes, human truth is a moving target. Yesterday's belief in a flat world and an earth-centered universe eventually became discarded nonsense. Today's heresy – a married Jesus or his bones in an ossuary – may become truth in the next millennium of human progress.

What a different world if we regarded all human truth as subject to change. Each of us willingly would embrace as equally valid the beliefs and opinions of our fellow travelers, with dignity and respect and kindness, demonstrating, in turn, that pure form of self-sacrificing love.

Which is, as I better understand, our calling in this life. To love one another – despite our differences and because of them – for it is written, “If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even the neo-conservatives do that.” (Matthew 5:46, my translation.)

If willingly we love those whose truth we accept and with which we agree, we are compelled – more – to love – more – those whose beliefs we cannot fathom or tolerate.

So this I believe: human truth is provisional, as fleeting as each living thing on this wonderful planet, and, though we may be fond of our conflicting, temporary precepts and the discord they foment, there is but one absolute, not of earthly origin, and that is love.

Love then, I believe, manifests in our visible world the mystery and essence of that we call God. Love is what many, past and present, including Yeshua bar-Joseph of Nazareth, have been called to proclaim, sometimes at tragic cost. How could I, in my comfort unworthy to tie their sandals, not feebly attempt to walk that same path?

One day, perhaps, a scientist peering intently at the sub-atomic particles of some hidden dimension may confirm that love, all along, is the force which binds together the universe, a discovery which we, on faith, have known from the beginning of time.

I still linger near that precipice, but I have stepped away from the edge – the kingdom of God cannot be far.

Keith Hazelton                                                                Oklahoma City, March 2007 CE

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Oklahoma City, Oklahoma                                                                 September 2006 CE

My name is Keith Hazelton, and I have been born again.  Again.
Not religiously this time, although inwardly my transformation has been, in fact, more life-altering, unlike when, on another occasion many years ago as a college student, I declared myself born again in a traditional fundamental Christian religious sense. (After which, under the heavy mantle of such a burden, I promptly “backslid” into that ever-questioning state of “this just doesn't seem right.”)

So I’m born again. Again. Or maybe I’ve only re-invented myself. I don’t know, perhaps the terms are interchangeable.

But I think, finally, at 50 years of age or so, I have found that for which I have been searching for so long: the purpose. At least for me, but perhaps for all of humankind, although I know it may be a hard sell to the other 6.6 billion or so members of humankind at this stage in our evolution.

I feel now with a certainty today (to the extent we ever can be certain of anything), unlike at any time in my life, why I am, or why any of us for that matter are, “here.”

Here. As in, “here on this small, perhaps indistinguishable planet revolving around a normal yellow star lodged somewhere in the outer reaches of a fairly ordinary spiral galaxy hurtling silently through the cold, empty vastness of that we call the universe.”

That’s an interesting image now, isn’t it.

So what is that purpose, which for so long had eluded me, and obviously countless others?

I am a link.

Maybe more, maybe less, depending on what else I do with my life on this sphere, but, essentially, I am a link.

A link in the chain of life, for the purpose of life is more life.

A chain that stretches behind me for untold millions, more likely billions, of years.

A chain that could stretch, hopefully for humankind and all life on this planet, far into the future.

My link was forged sometime in 1955 CE, in the usual way, by my parents passing along to that which became “me” a combined measure of their genetic code. The next links in my corner of this interwoven chain of humanity, my children, similarly were created, and they, too, more than likely will extend, and, hopefully, improve the texture of this fabric of our species.

Not that there wasn’t a lot, and I mean a lot, of nurturing involved, certainly in my case. I never would have had the opportunity to “forge the next link” had it not been for the attention of my parents and their single-mined devotion to my health, safety, education and well-being, which continues yet today. As I realize this, now in my middle age, I only hope that my children will themselves come to the same realization at some point in their lives.

But what about that pesky little issue of “the meaning of life?”

As in, “Is this all there is?” Is there no meaning to life other than this, to “propagate the species,” or, rather, this species, and nurture our young to adulthood so that they too can combine their genes, and so on and so forth? And drive better cars and live in bigger houses, etc.

Well of course there is meaning to life, and I now am delighted to share my version of it with you. Among others, the late astronomer Carl Sagan helped answer this nagging question for me. As he recounts in his book Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors a young man in a lecture audience, awakening to the possibility of a new reality in the world, a reality absent the ghosts, gods and demons of the past, afterwards complains to Dr. Sagan that he “had taken away all meaning to life.” To which the astronomer responded: “Then (you) do something meaningful.”

Hmmm…do something meaningful. Each of us, doing some meaningful things, and those acts, in and of themselves, giving life meaning. And freedom. Freedom to act as we choose to give meaning to our individual lives. Not the meaning of life as proscribed, taught, opined or suggested by others, or, worse, forced upon us by others who yet skillfully use the ancient tools of fear, guilt or the promise (?) of pleasure or threat of punishment to come in another life after this mortal one.

In my most recent “conversion,” Dr. Sagan has been ably assisted by Dr. Richard Carrier, a Columbia University professor, philosopher and historian. In his June 2001 essay, “The Meaning of Life,” Dr. Carrier has contributed by providing a definition of the meaning of life to which I now fully subscribe:

“We live for only one reason: because we love life, all of it, any of it. And if it disappoints us that there is not enough happiness in the world, not enough goodness, we can contribute toward rectifying that, and that is what gives our lives meaning (emphasis mine).”

“The more good things we can create or teach and thus leave behind for others, the more lives we can light up with our company and companionship, the more precious our short existence will have been, and the more satisfied we will be that we used our bank account of life well, and thus deserved our measure.”

I would describe my “rebirth” – this time – as not some emotional, rapturous event but much more of a slow, deliberate process of awakening, akin to coming out of a drug-induced anesthesia following surgery. Over a period of several years, in retrospect, I have been led by the nagging doubts of my Christian upbringing to seek whatever truth may be available to find.

The “a-ha” moment (does anybody say “eureka!” anymore? Does anybody know what eureka means?) came in June 2004, when one evening after dinner with friends, our discussion turned to things philosophic, and I posed this question to them immediately after it popped into my head: “If I could guarantee you that this life is “it” - that there is no afterlife whatsoever, good, bad or indifferent - would you lead your life any differently?” 

Everyone, including me, agreed that was an interesting question, and certainly one without an immediate answer. In the days and weeks that followed, I decided that I would lead my life differently. I decided that I would enjoy this life, that I would try to make the most of this life, that I would not waste any more time being unhappy about my lot in this life, and that I would try to do all the things I have been putting off in this life.

OK so it took me 50 years. Some of us are just slow learners. But in this sense, I - alone - have arrived at a place of quiet acceptance and peace. I have no burning desire, or need, to “shout from the rooftops” my newfound creed, as I thought I must the first time I was born again. For now I believe there is no one keeping score, on this earth or any other realm. I do not anticipate the accrual of benefits in the hereafter for converts won today. As I have told my children:

“My only wish for you is that one day you will spend the time necessary to examine your own beliefs, with a mind open to the possibility of alternatives to that by which you have been raised and indoctrinated, and arrive at your own conclusion of the truth.

You subscribe to the beliefs of catholicism/christianity today (at your young age) only because those are the creeds which you were raised to believe from birth, not because you have examined that particular brand of religion, compared it to all other forms of human worship, philosophy and belief, and selected it to represent your truth of choice.

Had I wished you to be Jewish, I could have made it so. Muslim? As well within my power. A Deist? A snap. Rastafarian? No problem, mon! The point is: you believe what you believe only because I, as your parent, desired it to be so.

Now, or someday, is the time to discover for yourself what it is you really believe, not by faith but by careful examination. It has taken me 50 years, and the process continues every day.

And I will point out, of course, that you believed in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny at one time, also because I willed it to be so, but eventually you discovered, for yourself, that such creatures also are myths of mankind, created for your enjoyment and the welfare of merchants, manufacturers, Hallmark and the world economy in general.”

So, that's it.  Provisional Truth is my way of expressing these ideas, with the understanding that, unless we, as humans, can eliminate the incompatibility of our belief systems that threaten to exterminate us as a species, we may not create many more links to the future.

There are no absolutes. No one knows "the truth," therefore all beliefs are equally valid until proven otherwise.  We just can't keep killing each other in our quest for proof. 

Once we thought the world was flat...I hope your search for truth is as rewarding. But what do I know?  Send me an email.   --Keith Hazelton 

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