Truth: be told
Trips to our local post-office have to be time-factored carefully. It’s tucked inside a corner shop, already a small space and always busy. There’s little possibility of social distancing amongst the jumble of fridges, groaning shelves and mountains of produce that pass for displays. The queues are long because the conversations are epic, and I love the waiting. This shop is a microcosm of life in all its crazy. As I walk in I am hugged by a cacophony of different languages with only expletives-in-common.
Today the post-office till to the left of the shop counter has a card propped up against the perspex don’t-cough-on-me shield. It informs me that the clerk has gone for a wee. Back in 5.
People come in and out, buying electric top-ups, tobacco and sweets for the kids. And fly spray. Everyone is buying fly spray. We’ve had swarms of them in our houses for a week now. Theories abound as to why, but most people blame the meat processing plant up-wind. Apart from those that are pretty sure the Lord is responsible and planning on dispatching boils next.
I watch an elderly gentleman reach the front of the queue with his newspaper and pint of blue-top. The vendor offers fly-spray, and he responds with a chuckle saying that chain-smoking roll-ups inside was doing the trick. Although, he pauses before stating, truth-be-told he’d never known it to be this bad. Then he turns and winks at me before leaving, saying again with his Yorkshire gravelly lilt:
Truth be told.
The clerk returned, and dealt with my parcel whilst joining in the general fly-related lament. I smiled my thanks, but was caught up somewhere in the wink and the phrase. John the beloved had hidden himself in that wink, peeping through hooded eyes with an invitation to engage.
Truth-be-told I’d folded allelon-love* and my questions about community and the bride up and tucked them in my back pocket. The stretch to become love had moved from my doorstep and invaded my house recently and that had felt enough for now. But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t.
Truth-be-told.
I guess most of us have experienced, in all of its raw physicality, the loss of connection. Like a missing limb we can compensate, adapt, cover. Then there is an itch we reach to scratch thus remembering the absence.
My errands done, I figured I should unfold both the paper from my pocket, and my heart towards oneanother. I made a slow brew, and decided to curl up on my bed. At the start of the year, before I met John, I’d written a list of the allelon (one-another) passages in the New Testament. It was my way of scratching the itch. Running my finger down the list I realised how many of these John had challenged me on. Then I paused as my finger rested on speak truth. Then admonish. Then encourage. And have fellowship with.
Truth. The word feels heavy to me in 2021. Felt truths have been fired like arrows in every direction. I’ve been caught too many times both in the cross-fire and by direct assault. Your truth, it seems, gives you immunity from dispensing grace and license to judge. One of my great loves has been hearing others share their story and experience. Listening, crying, celebrating the wonder of humanity. Listening again, as time passes, to the story changing. Deep truth emerging, magic springing up from the ground. When we tell ourselves that any story, as it is experienced in that moment, is truth we begin to atrophy. I’ve watched as stories have become controlled and weaponised and it’s hard to find life in them. I miss story. I miss people.
Whilst pondering this the Spirit invited me to spend some time in Ephesians 4:25: “Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.”
Put off falsehood. Sometimes falsehood feels like a favourite sweater. One we’ve had for years and kept meaning to throw out, but we just can’t quite bring ourselves to let go of it. The one that hugs us and hides us and warms us on dark days. A covering of the story-we-like-to-tell. A story that we believe serves us and saves us and doesn’t hurt anyone else. Truth is we’ve often outgrown the sweater years before we ditch it. And the truth is that any sweater I put on invites you into its embrace too. Sometimes falsehood feels like an agreement made with whatever big story is being told because its easier, in the moment, than paying the price of conflict. The weight of Paul’s words rest on me softly, reminding me that my falsehood can easily become our story. We are members of one body.
Union is a reality.
I can feel the challenge inside me. The question: am I observing in this time, or creating? If I’m creating, what is the raw material in my hands? When I’m just observing I can make the flies my street conversation. It is easy, because we all agree about the pesky things. I remember walking my dogs around the streets where I live during the finals of the Euros. I could hear the same commentary from every open window I passed. The peculiar music of a sporting event: voices raised in celebration and mourning. Shared sounds. Open windows. Every door shut. Shared experience is not fellowship.
I feel like I’m both standing watching the swarm of flies gathering around the decay, the free-falling of a culture, and I’m caught up in the swirling too.
Another kind of buzzing interrupts my lament: a text informing me that my afternoon appointment is cancelled:
The fly infestation in the building is becoming a problem, and it will remain closed until they find the source.
The interruption becomes my invitation:
Go find the Source.
I turn back to my notes, and read 1 John 1:7:
If we walk in the light we have allelon fellowship.
I know the Source. The light and truth that are the 3God and can be walked in, befriended, an anchor. How can the buzzing of flies, of voices, of chaos, take my attention when They are mine to know? In the silence, into my lament, the Spirit sings the words of Sinead O’Conner to me. We both love her:
For oh you’re like a ghost in your own home
Nobody hears you crying all alone
Oh you are the one truly voiceless one
They have their back turned toward you
For worship of gold and stone.
And to see you prisoner oh makes me weep
Nobody hears you screaming in the streets
And it’s sad but true how the old saying goes
If God lived on earth people would
Break his windows.
I long for you as a watchman longs
For the end of night…
(Sinead o Connor- out of the depths)
The song ignites the fire of longing in me. For company with Them, the 3, the source. Truth isn’t information to know, but One who desires connection. As I ponder this, I feel a longing rise in me for connection with you too. There’s only one dance. I’m aware of how still my body is, lying on my bed. How dense it feels; how deep I’m breathing.
Admonish, encourage… have fellowship: stop observing. Start creating.
The song has pulled me into the embrace of truth. Into remembering. For a moment I rest there. The buzzing of flies in my room here engages my senses reminding me of the swirling chaos around and the two realms I live in. If union is truth, and truth is union, I can live in both at once. I’m in the 3 in both. Falsehood tells me tales of separation and distance and there are times I engage with the buzzing and retell those stories instead.
As I walk with John, as I unfold, and as am pursued by allelon love, I begin to understand what it is that I hold in my hands. I begin to understand what I can create with, and what I am free to leave behind. There’s no rush.
Peace. Lying on my bed with allelon love in my belly and my hands, I begin to dream again of kingdom-come. I want to get rid of the pesky flies, but haven’t figured out how yet. I remember the encounter at the post-office, and the elderly man with his wink and lilt. In that moment I feel the reassurance of John’s kiss on my forehead and the warmth in my heart that tells me I’ll figure this out. And until then I guess I can always try roll-ups
Truth be told.
*in the New Testament, the word allelon is used at least 50 times. In our English Bibles this tends to be translated as one-another. If you google the list of allelon references you can begin to engage your imagination with what allelon love could look like in real time, in community.
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